The The Workers' Party under the Monarcho-Fascist Rule (1934-1939)

Abstract

The Workers' Party in Bulgaria existed and struggled as a legal political party from February 1927 till May 1934. During that period, it consolidated, turned into a mass political organization of the workers and other toiling strata, and successfully fulfilled the role of a legal manifestation of the illegal Bulgarian Communist Party. The military fascist coup d'état staged on May 19th, 1934, put an end to the legal activities of the Workers' Party. It became the reason for the left sectarian sector of the BCP to make the wrong decision of dissolving the Workers' Party, the consequences of which had to be overcome at the cost of great efforts.

During the period after the coup d'état, the development and activities of the Workers' Party took several basic directions. The party cadres had to firstly solve the question concerning the restoration of the Workers' Party and its consolidation as a mass political party, though already an illegal one. The solution to that question became possible due to the efforts made and the positive results achieved in the struggle for the final overcoming of left-sectarianism and the establishment of the new Leninist course in the Bulgarian Communist movement. The reconstruction process was carried out with great verve after the Fifth and especially after the Sixth Plenary of the BCP.

Together with the recovery of its strength as an independent party, the Workers' Party began to practically solve the main task which stood before the communist movement in Bulgaria – the unity of the democratic political forces in a broad people's antifascist front. It was namely the basic direction of the Workers' Party activities during that period. Through the Workers' Party, the Communist Party successfully carried out the new political course outlined by the Seventh Congress of the Comintern and the Sixth Plenary of the BCP. Due to the great self-denial, political maturity, and flexibility manifested by the cadres of the WP, the Bulgarian revolutionary movement was able to take important steps along the way of confirming the Leninist approach and style of political struggle.

The activity of the WP during that last final stage of its development is also characterized by the fully-fledged, tenacious work done by the different mass organizations of the toilers – trade unions, the reading clubs, the cooperatives, etc. A lot was done for blocking the way of fascism to those organizations, for winning them on the side of the antifascist people's forces.

Characteristic of the WP development was also the complex process of its organizational reconstruction, its reorganization together with the BCP into a united party. Though being an organizational problem in its essence, its successful solution had a direct bearing on the tasks that were solved by the party in the political sphere. That's why it was a topic of continuous discussions in the party. The development of that discussion proved that in the final reckoning, there had to be confirmed and realized a course of uniting and consolidating the BCP and WP cadres in a united party. It gave an opportunity to the Bulgarian Communist movement to strengthen even more and to more successfully solve the problems of the antifascist struggle and the revolutionary movement in Bulgaria.