Marxism in Bulgaria Before 1891

Abstract

The gestation period of Marxism in Bulgaria before a Marxist party came into existence in 1891 is one of the least studied periods in the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party. In Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, where most of the work on BCP historiography has been done, attention has primarily, and understandably, gone to the activities of Dimitŭr Blagoev, the so-called father of Bulgarian Marxism, whose early career as propagandist and organizer of the new movement included a notable effort while he was a student at the University of St. Petersburg to form the first Marxist group in Russia. The story of the penetration and dissemination of Marxism in Bulgaria, however, is by no means exhausted with accounts of Blagoev's life to 1891. Yet, Bulgarian Marxist historians have done little to date to reconstruct this story in monographic investigations of the kind they have produced for other phases of their party's history. Of the general accounts they have produced, the best one, relatively speaking, is in the latestIstorita na Bŭlgarskata Komunisttcheska Partiia, which devotes fifteen pages (out of 699) to Blagoev's early activities and the party's prehistory, including the founding congress of 1891.