The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

congress of the Komintern. Only the official delegates – Khristo Kabaktchiev (1878-1940), Nikola Shablin
(1881-1925) and Dr. Nikola Maximov – had the right to intervene for defending the utility of parliamentarism.
In September 1920, “in nearly all the industrial centres” left communist groups were founded, and under the
leadership of the journalist and translator Ivan Ganchev (1877-1925), started the 4 th Sept. 1920 a paper: Iskra
(‘The Spark’). These groups then elected a provisional Central Executive Committee. 577 Their struggle against
the politics of the Bulgarian CP centre was exacerbated when in November 1920 the latter applying the
Komintern policy of fusion with left social democracy merged with the majority of the social democracy. This
merger produced an enormous mass party of 40,000 members, a considerable number for a working class of only
150,000 workers. Opposing both this merger policy and the leadership of the party, a mass of workers in the
industrial towns were excluded. 578 By spring 1921 the opposition had grown from 1,000 to 2,000 members, both
within and outside the party. Their basic positions were antiparliamentarism and propaganda for a genal
workers’ Union (obshchiya rabotnitcheski yunion), following on this road the model of the German communist
left.
The opposition did not at all want to leave the party or the Komintern. It wanted to obtain the reintegration of
those excluded. Consequently the left communist groups of the Bulgarian CP sent delegates to Moscow to obtain
a mandate to allow them to participate, at least with a consultative voice, in the 3 rd Congress of the Komintern.
By March 1921 the Bulgarian delegates were in Moscow where they tried repeatedly to obtain a mandate as had
been accorded to the VKPD opposition to participate fully in the congress of the International to which they
belonged. 579 This was refused by Radek, for whom there was no ‘Bulgarian question’. Following this refusal, the
left communists made contact with the delegates of the KAPD in Moscow, in June and July, and even sent
delegates to Berlin to make contact with the leadership of the KAPD and participate in its next congress.
Excluded from the Komintern, the Bulgarians found themselves forced to form a party. This was done soon after
the KAPD congress. From 7 th to 10 th January 1922, in the industrial town of Sliven an important textile centre a
founding conference formed the Bulgarian Communist Workers’ Party (BRKP), whose executive committee was
based in Varna. 580 The statutes of the party insisted that two thirds of the Central Executive Committee should be
577 The left communist groups were formed in the most industrial centres and elected in September 1920 a provisory
Executive, with Prodanov (ps. of Ivan Popov), Christo Fashchiev, Ziporanov and Gurinov. [Letter in French from the
Bulgarian KAP (BRKP) to Emil Sach, member of the Bureau of Organisation of the KAI, March 1922, in: Canne-Meijer
Archives, map 240/5, IISG, Amsterdam.]
578 Letter of greetings to the September 1921 Congress of the KAPD, from Ivan Ganchev, in the name of the executive of the
‘Bulgarian Left Communist Groups’, in: Protokoll des ausserordentlichen Parteitages der KAPD, op. cit., p. 18-20. Ivan
Ganchev – born in Vidin in Oct. 1877 – had been a member of the Bulgarian social democracy since 1898. He had studied
Chemistry in Germany. Since 1907, he was a socialist journalist in Sofia for the Rabotnitcheski Vestnik. He had been an
important leader of the trade unions movement in Bulgaria: in 1911, with Kolarov (1877-1950) and Dimitrov (1882-1949),
he was delegate to the VII. International Conference of social democratic trade unions in Budapest; in 1913 delegate to the
Balkan trade unions conference in Vienna. He must participate to the Balkan war of 1912-13 as officer. In 1919, he led the
left tendency of the BKP, the newly formed communist party. He founded in Sofia – with Georgi Petrov (Barzev) – the
paper Iskra (1920-21), organ of the left communists (Levite Komunisti). At the mids of 1922, he published the ‘leftist’
periodical Revoliutsionnata Istina (‘Revolutionary Truth’). Nevertheless, he was reintegrated after June 1923 in the BKP,
after the putsch against Stambolijski, and became the editor of the legal journal of the party: Lach (Rays) [1923-25].
Rapidly his periodical was in the opposition and he was expelled. In 1924, he had probably joined also an independent
cultural ‘leftist’ group, which published Nashi Dni (‘Our days’). In April 1925, he was killed in a police station of Sofia.
[See: S.S. Arabadzhiev, Borbata na BKP (t.s.) protiv ‘Levite’ komunisti 1919-1921 (Sofia, 1964); Dimitar Blagoev (1859-
1924), ‘Levite Komunisti’, pp. 204-209, in: Blagoev’s Sachineniya, Vol. 19 (Sofia 1963); and Entsiklopediya Balgariya, 4
Vols. (Sofia, 1978-1988).]
579 KAZ (Berlin), No. 219, August 1921, ‚Die Linken Kommunisten Bulgariens’.
580 Cf. Emil Sach’s letter, already cited. Out of distrust of the ‘intellectuals’ in Sofia, like Ganchev and Prodanov, the Central
Executive Committee was moved to Varna, on the Black Sea: “a provisional measure as long as Sofia could not form an
organisation with workers’ training, spirit and discipline’. Ganchev was opposed to the move. In 1922, Zhetcho Dikidzhiev,
was the secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Varna tendency, and the student Krum Zhekov represented
Varna to the official KAPD of Berlin.
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