Dimo Hadži Dimov

Dimo Hadzhidimov (, ; 19 February 1875 – 13 September 1924) was a Bulgarian teacher, revolutionary and politician from Ottoman Macedonia. He was among the leaders of the left-wing of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which he considered a Bulgarian creation. In 1923 he became a deputy in the Bulgarian Parliament from the Bulgarian Communist Party.

Life

Dimo Hadzhidimov was born on 19 February 1875 in Gorno Brodi, Ottoman Empire, now located in Serres regional unit, Greece. In 1880 his family emigrated from the Ottoman Empire and settled in Dupnitsa, Bulgaria. He studied pedagogy from 1891 until 1894 in Kyustendil and then in Sofia, at this time he adopted socialist ideas and later became a member of the Macedonian-Adrianople Social Democratic Group. After that he worked as a teacher in the Bulgarian schools in Dupnitsa and later in Samokov. In May 1903 Hadzhidimov arrived in the village of Banitsa for a meeting with Gotse Delchev, after which the famous skirmish with Ottoman troops happened in which Delchev got killed, while Hadzhidimov managed to escape. Later that year he participated in Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising. The following years he was involved with the Serres group of Yane Sandanski. After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 he returned to Ottoman Macedonia and was one of the founders of the People's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section). From August 1908 until January 1909, Hadzhidimov and Pere Toshev redacted the newspaper "Konstitutsionna Zarya" (Constitutional Reveille), which was the organ of Sandanski's Serres group, and was issued in Turkish, French and Bulgarian in Solun. In 1909 Hadzhidimov went back to Sofia, where he joined the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Narrow Socialists). During the Balkan Wars Hadzhidimov was a Bulgarian sergeant. He was captured in Thessaloniki during the Second Balkan War and was exiled by the Greek authorities to the island of Paleo Trikeri, where he contracted jaundice. He was later released and returned to Bulgaria. During the First World War, due to his deteriorating health, he served as a non-combatant. In 1919 Hadzhidimov was among the founders of the Provisional representation of the former United Internal Revolutionary Organization. The same year he published his brochure called "Back to the autonomy" in which he considered that IMRO and the idea of autonomy was launched by the Bulgarians. Hadzidimov was convinced that Macedonian Bulgarians should exist politically outside Bulgaria and together with other "nationalities" of Macedonia. This view surely promoted a identity that was becoming more and more "Macedonian". At the end of 1919 he joined the Bulgarian Communist Party and was elected as a member of Bulgarian Parliament in 1923. After the murder of IMRO leader Todor Aleksandrov there were series of assassinations conducted as a revenge against left-wing activists, thus Hadzidimov was assassinated by the right-wing IMRO activist Vlado Chernozemski in Sofia in 1924. His surname was given to Zhostovo village (now a town since 1996) in Blagoevgrad Province in 1951; It was renamed as Hadzhidimovo.

Gallery

File:Dimo Hadzhidimov - left, and a schoolmate from the Kyustendil Pedagogical School 1892.jpg, Hadzhidimov (left) as a student in the Kyustendil Pedagogical School in 1892
File:Sandanski Hadzhidimov.jpg, Hadzhidimov with Yane Sandanski
File:Dimo Hadzhidimov and his Family.jpg, Hadzhidimov with his family ca. 1900
File:Dimo and Alexandra Hadzhidimovi in 1905.jpg, Hadzhidimov and his wife Alexandra in 1905
File:Dimo, Alexandra and Dafina Hadzhidimovi.jpg, Hadzhidimov with his wife and daughter ca. 1907
File:Nazad kam avtonomiyata.jpg, Front page of the "Back to the autonomy" brochure
File:Excerpt of letter from Aleksandrov to Karamfilov 1919.jpg, Letter from Aleksandrov in which he accuses Hadzhidimov as a traitor of Bulgarian people."''Only the narrow-minded bolshevik Hadzhidimov, the lazy anarchist Gerdzhikov, the scheming-beelzebub Gyorche and the traitors of the Bulgarian people, both in the past and now, the Sandanists, speak and agitate that autonomy should be demanded for Macedonia, because it is a separate economic and geographical unit with a separate "Macedonian people", with its own history spanning centuries, and so that they would not have to pay Bulgaria's debts, and some of them threaten as follows: "If by some miracle all of Macedonia is given to Bulgaria, we will fight with arms in hand to prevent this unification''."
File:Dimo Hadzhidimov and his Family 1924-09-10.jpg, Dimo Hadzhidimov with his family three days prior to his death in 1924

Notes

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hadzhidimov, Dimo
1875 births
1924 deaths
People from Salonica vilayet
Members of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
Bulgarians from Aegean Macedonia
People murdered in Bulgaria
Assassinated Bulgarian politicians
Assassinated revolutionaries
20th-century Bulgarian educators
Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire
Bulgarian revolutionaries
Bulgarian military personnel of the Balkan Wars
Macedonian Bulgarians
Members of the National Assembly (Bulgaria)
Deaths by firearm in Bulgaria
20th-century Bulgarian politicians
People from Serres (regional unit)
Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to Bulgaria
Politicians assassinated in the 1920s