On the 140th anniversary of Georgi Dimitrov's birth (June 18th)

En Marcha #2003, June 1-7, 2022

Central Organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador [ pcmle.org ]

[Posted May 31st at:  pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article11862  See also:  pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?page=recherche&recherche=dimitrov , neodemocracy.blogspot.com/search?q=dimitrov , www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/index.htm , and the Dimitrov archive at www.revolutionarydemocracy.org  For a more negative view see:  ml-review.ca/aml/index/subject.html#d  Some relevant books are available from redstarpublishers.org ]

The creation of the United Front to confront fascism

June 18 marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of Georgi Dimitrov, a communist who gave his life to the cause of popular liberation and the establishment of socialism. Born in [1882 in] the Bulgarian city of Radomir [other sources say he was born in nearby Kovachevstsi, later moving to Radomir], from 1910 he was part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bulgaria, and from 1935 to 1943 he served as General Secretary of the Communist International and was a member of the Supreme Soviet from 1937 to 1945. In 1946, the Bulgarian people held a referendum to establish themselves as a republic, and the following year the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP) came to power. Georgi Dimitrov assumed the head of government and the general secretariat of the BKP until his death in 1949 [July 2nd at a sanatorium near Moscow].

His life was devoted to fighting against fascism and laying the foundations for the struggle of the international communist and workers' movement. At a historical moment when fascism was on the rise, the discussion was to get the national and world anti-fascist forces to unify. The Seventh Congress of the Communist International, held in 1935, received the report of Comrade Dimitrov entitled "The Offensive of Fascism and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle for the Unity of the Working Class against Fascism", which set out the tasks that the youth, workers and peoples had to carry out in order to defeat it.

Dimitrov maintained that "fascism is war", it is a terrorist dictatorship of imperialism and financial capital, represented by its most reactionary and backward elements, who seek to stabilize the internal economy of their countries through wars of aggression against other peoples, to achieve a new redivision of the world. In each country, it creates conditions of persecution and terror on the working class, peasants and intellectuals; and it develops if there are no revolutionary forces to stop its advance, intensifying violence and terror against the social forces and parties that oppose it.

In the midst of World War II, the Report of the Seventh Congress established the policy of the United Front and the Anti-Fascist and Anti-Imperialist Popular Front, in which the fundamental task of the workers and peoples is the unmasking and defeat of fascism. Confronting fascism requires developing political collaboration with parties and organizations that allow the accumulation of revolutionary forces to confront reaction. At present, the validity of these approaches is sustained, to confront the fascist groups that have appeared in Europe and in several countries of the Americas.

Dimitrov established that the "united front of the proletariat would exert an enormous influence on all other strata of the working people, on the peasants, on the urban petty bourgeoisie, on the intellectuals. The united front will instill in the wavering sections faith in the strength of the working class." In this way, Dimitrov laid the foundations on which the workers and peoples must act to confront reaction, strengthen their struggle against the bourgeoisie and achieve definitive emancipation, the only condition of which is unity. Only with the development of the United Front will the working class and the peasantry succeed in becoming the force that defeats fascism and capitalism.