| The schism in the Bulgarian socialist movement in 1903 gave rise to two factions, the Broads and the Narrows, the latter becoming the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1919. Neither the schism, which is still a controversial topic in Bulgaria today, nor the relationship of the Bulgarian Social Democrats to the Second International has been adequately or objectively studied. In the light of some unpublished as well as hitherto unused sources, this thesis analyzes the split and, quite in constrast to the standard Western (American) and Bulgarian (including Soviet and Yugoslav) interpretations of it, concludes that the split was neither inevitable nor a division between two incompatible "Western" and "Russian" strains of socialism.;After dissecting and interpreting the split in the Bulgarian Social Democratic Labor Party, the thesis proceeds to describe the attempts of the International Socialist Bureau and the Trade Union International to heal it, their failure, and the reasons for their failure, such as their unwillingness to take direct responsibility for uniting the quarreling factions and their ignorance of the Balkans, especially Bulgaria. The continuation of the Bulgarian schism in turn had profound consequences for the socialist and labor movements in Bulgaria. First of all, the split damaged the trade union movement, doomed Social Democracy to impotence, and led to the birth of the Communist Party of Bulgaria in 1919, the year in which the extreme left-wing faction joined the Comintern, or Communist International. |
