Dimitrov was born in Kovachevtsi in present-day Pernik Province, the first of eight children, to refugee parents from Ottoman Macedonia (a mother from Bansko and a father from Razlog). His father was a rural craftsman, forced by industrialisation to become a factory worker. His mother, Parashkeva Doseva, was a Protestant Christian, and his family is sometimes described as Protestant. The family moved to Radomir and then to Sofia. One of Georgi's brothers, Nikola, moved to Russia, joined the Bolsheviks in Odessa until he was arrested in 1908 and exiled to Siberia, where he died in 1916. Another brother, Konstantin, became a trade union leader but was killed in the First Balkan War in 1912. One of his sisters, Lena, married a future communist leader, Valko Chervenkov.
