Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949) was a Bulgarian and Soviet Communist leader who served as head of the Communist International (Comintern) from 1935 to 1943 and as prime minister of Bulgaria from 1944 until his death.

Georgi Dimitrov was born on June 18, 1882, in the village of Kovachevtsi, District of Pernik, near Sofia. His parents, poor peasants, came from Bulgarian Macedonia, then under Turkey, where American Protestants conducted successful missionary activities. A devout Protestant, his mother wanted him to become a clergyman, but according to his Marxist biographers, he rebelled against "the religious mysticism in which he was brought up at home" and turned to atheistic socialism. At age 12 he quit school, apprenticing as a printer and working (in 1903) in the printing shop of the American college at Samokov. He became active in the nascent labor union movement and in 1902 joined the Bulgarian Social Democratic Labor Party. As the party split in 1903 into "Narrow...