Hero

For a few weeks of his life, the burly Bulgarian commanded the free world's admiration. In 1933, two tyrannies faced each other in a Berlin courtroom -- Naziism represented by a fat bully, Hermann Goering, Communism by an obscure, curly-maned agitator named Georgi Dimitrov. In this instance, the Communist was the hero, accused of complicity in the setting of the Reichstag fire which, by then, everyone suspected Hermann Goering had set himself. Dimitrov, acting as his own attorney, alone in a hostile courtroom and a hostile country, fought Goering with courage. "I am not here to be questioned by you, you scoundrel!" cried Government Witness Goering at one point.

"Are you afraid of my questions, Herr Minister?" taunted Dimitrov.

"I am not afraid of you, you rascal!" screamed the Premier of Prussia.

Dimitrov was dragged from the courtroom. "I wish I had a pistol!" he cried before he was out of hearing.

Dimitrov was acquitted (but still held by the Nazis); his half-witted fellow defendant, Marinus van der Lubbe, was beheaded. A year later, Dimitrov was finally released to Russia, in exchange for some German spies the Russians had caught.

Trojan Horse. Dimitrov was "born (1882) in the village of Radomir, Bulgaria; his parents were among Bulgaria's few Congregationalists. Georgi's first rebellion was refusal to go to Sunday school. At twelve he went to work in a print shop and at 15 became active in the printers' union. His mother remembered him as a good boy whom she rarely had to punish because "he never lied."

He became a Communist, spent years in jail for his revolutionary activities. Forced to flee Bulgaria in 1923, he first went to Vienna, later to Berlin. After the Reichstag trial, he became a Soviet citizen. As chief of the Comintern (1935-43), he propounded the Popular Front policy with extreme candor. "Comrades," he told the Comintern's 7th World Congress, "you recall the old legend of the Conquest of Troy . . . We revolutionaries should use the same strategy . . ."

In 1945, after 22 years in exile, Georgi Dimitrov went back to Sofia where, in his own phrase, he started to sweep away all opposition with an iron broom. In 1947, Dimitrov's regime hanged Nikola Petkov, courageous democratic leader.

For a while it looked as if Dimitrov would make himself head of a Red Balkan federation, but Moscow squelched the idea; lately, the Kremlin was rumored dissatisfied with Dimitrov's insufficiently vigorous opposition to Tito. The Politburo, it was said, sent a special four-man commission to keep an eye on Dimitrov.

Soft Music. The hero of the Reichstag trial was ailing and growing old. On public occasions he rouged his cheeks to appear younger. Last April, he left his job as Premier of Bulgaria, went to Russia to "rest." There were the usual rumors of liquidation, but he seemed to be really ill. Last week, Moscow announced that he had died of diabetes in a sanitarium near the Russian capital. The body lay in state in Moscow; the Russian radio added that music played softly while "thousands & thousands of the working people" filed past Dimitrov's casket.

Joseph Stalin himself stood solemnly in a guard of honor before the body of his late friend.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.