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2025-04-17 Europe
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Bomb, Poison, Execution. How Red Globalists Brought Bulgaria to Nazism
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Igor Ivanenko
[REGNUM] Exactly one hundred years ago, on April 16, 1925, a large-scale terrorist act shook Bulgaria. It was organized by the Military Department of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP).
It is paradoxical that the day before, the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, based in Moscow, declared that the paramilitary unit of the BCP should be closed down, checked and rebuilt, and directly condemned the terrorist activities of the Bulgarian comrades.
However, the shout from the capital of world communism did not achieve its goal. The explosion in the St. Nedelya Cathedral in Sofia took the lives of a total of 213 people. Among them were many military personnel who had come to the funeral of retired General Konstantin Georgiev. Three days before the terrorist attack, he was shot by a militant from the military department of the BCP.
But the bulk of the victims were ordinary citizens. The members of the Bulgarian government, almost all of whom were present at the ceremony, by a coincidence did not even receive serious injuries.
The terrorist attack of a century ago was not an act of unmotivated violence. In Bulgaria, there was actually a civil war, largely inspired by Soviet Russia.
And General Georgiev, the head of the paramilitary Military Union, who had more than one dead communist on his account, turned out to be a legitimate target in this war, and the explosion of an Orthodox cathedral was a justified means.
But in order to understand the reasons for what happened, it is necessary to move from 1925 to 1923.
HOW THE "KORNILOVS" DEFEATED "KERENSKY"
In June 1923, the Bulgarian military carried out a military coup, removing the government of the Agricultural People's Union (ZNS) led by the popular leftist politician Aleksandar Stamboliyski from power. The prime minister himself was killed.
If we draw analogies with Russia, then our analog of the right-wing Bulgarian putsch was the speech of Lavr Kornilov in August 1917. The ZNS were roughly equivalent in ideology to the Socialist Revolutionaries, and Stamboliysky turned out to be someone like Alexander Kerensky.
But there are two differences. Firstly, Bulgaria was still ruled by a tsar ( Boris III had been on the throne since 1918 ). Secondly and most importantly, the Bulgarian military and the right-wing politicians who stood behind them turned out to be stronger than their "Kerensky", who paid with his life for his weakness.
Moreover, unlike the Russian Bolsheviks, the Balkan communists took a neutral position in the confrontation between the Kornilovites and the Socialist Revolutionary farmers. The Sofia party press described this confrontation as a struggle between the urban and rural factions of the bourgeoisie.
But unlike 1917, there was already such a global player in the world as the Communist International (Comintern) with its headquarters in Moscow. And Moscow was unhappy with such self-elimination of the Balkan comrades.
"THE UNIFORM OF THE COMMANDER OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION"
The 3rd extended plenum of the Comintern on June 23, 1923, at the instigation of Karl Radek, an active comrade of Leon Trotsky, reproached their Bulgarian colleagues for failing to take advantage of a favorable opportunity for armed action.
"Every mass party is obliged to take risks and fight even with the fear of defeat. Even if it is defeated... it will show the working masses that it is the center of the struggle around which they can unite," Radek said.
In fact, over the head of the BCP, the Comintern called on Bulgarian workers to rise up to fight the "White Guard coup". This epithet, by the way, is not far from reality, since the white emigration from Russia in Bulgaria assisted the local right.
The Bolshevik leaders perceived the events of 1923 in Europe as a new wave of world revolution. They were most inspired by the events in Germany and Bulgaria. In relation to the former, it was believed that it was generally on the threshold of a socialist revolution.
Trotsky was especially enthusiastic. The People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs clearly did not benefit from the introduction of the NEP and the reduction of the Red Army that had won the Civil War. A coalition of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin was already forming against him.
According to the doctor of historical sciences Alexander Vatlin, the “troika” could not allow “Trotsky to be dressed in the uniform of the commander-in-chief of the forces of world revolution.”
Moreover, the process of establishing diplomatic relations between Soviet Russia and Western countries was beginning, and provoking political upheavals in them was becoming counterproductive.
According to the Russian historian Ilya Suzdaltsev, Trotsky's opponents in the Comintern "did not strive to carry out the revolution to the extent that was stated in official documents." Therefore, the German direction was assigned to individuals who successfully failed it.
Bulgaria is a different matter. Christian Rakovsky was responsible for Balkan affairs for the Bolsheviks from the moment the Comintern was established in 1919. A very well-informed American journalist working in post-revolutionary Russia, Louis Fisher, reported that in 1923 Rakovsky was removed from the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR and sent into diplomatic “exile” to London because of his rapprochement with Trotsky.
AN ADVENTURE THAT ENDED IN DISASTER
Nevertheless, Moscow placed its bet in Bulgaria on Rakovsky’s former colleagues in the Balkan Communist Federation (which became part of the Comintern), Georgi Dimitrov and Vasil Kolarov.
Thanks to their efforts, the Central Committee of the BCP at the end of the summer of 1923 took a course towards preparing an armed uprising.
The rebellion began on the night of September 19-20 and provoked the peasantry to anti-government actions. The epicenter of the uprising was the northwestern part of Bulgaria. Stubborn battles between the rebels and government troops continued for several days, but without the support of the townspeople, the rebels were doomed. Together with the remnants of the peasant detachments, Kolarov and Dimitrov evacuated to Yugoslavia.
The rebels suffered up to 10,000 casualties, while the government forces suffered 600. Many left-wing activists suffered from the wave of repression that swept across the country. General Georgiev's Military Union made a major contribution to it.
The Bulgarian communist leaders who fled Yugoslavia moved to Vienna, where in October 1923 the Foreign Committee of the BCP was created. It advocated for the continuation of the armed struggle. The Comintern also contributed to the consolidation of the radical opposition forces in Bulgaria. On February 20, 1924, in Moscow, representatives of the foreign structures of the Bulgarian communists and the ZNS, overthrown by the military, signed an agreement on the creation of a joint Revolutionary Committee.
EXPORT OF REVOLUTION IS CANCELLED
Rakovsky, by the way, had very warm relations with the leaders of the Agricultural Union during their time in power. He also contributed to the rapprochement of the positions of the Bulgarian communists with the Macedonian autonomists. These nationalists advocated the secession of Macedonia, which was close in language and culture to Bulgaria, from the Yugoslav Kingdom (where non-Serbian peoples did not have any autonomy at that time).
The plans for a new uprising in Bulgaria focused on a Yugoslav military invasion against the backdrop of escalating tensions over Macedonia. However, the Yugoslav invasion expected in the spring of 1924 did not take place. Great Britain, which was not interested in an interstate crisis in the Balkans, played a significant role in its cancellation.
Moscow, which at that time had diplomatic relations with London, had itself lost interest in exporting the revolution. On March 13, 1924, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) stated that the Bulgarian revolutionary movement should rely exclusively on internal forces, since assistance from the USSR was impossible. This turn coincided with the weakening of the positions of Trotsky's supporters in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Comintern.
"NOT LEFTISM, BUT COURAGE"
The Foreign Committee of the BCP was clearly annoyed by this turn of events. Kolarov recalled two years later: "Having gone through fire, we became bold to the point of recklessness. Bomb, poison, execution - this is our new psychology, is this leftism? This is a demand of the revolution."
In May 1924, an anti-Moscow coup d'etat took place in the Bulgarian Communist Party. Contrary to the position of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the Bulgarian communists, at an illegally held conference, took a course on preparing a new uprising for the autumn of 1924. This decision was inspired by the Foreign Committee and the Balkan Communist Federation.
From this moment on, the Military Organization began to develop rapidly within the party. An officer, a veteran of the World War, Kosta Yankov, became its head. Thanks to his energetic actions, the party acquired structures for intelligence, counterintelligence, subversive activities, and a wide network of partisan detachments (chet). The number of the military organization grew so quickly that its scale became comparable to the entire party.
The rapid growth in the number of members of the BCP's combat wing was stimulated by the protest sentiments that engulfed the lower classes after the brutal suppression of the September Uprising.
The growing activity of the Bulgarian underground fighters inspired the Soviet security agencies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their analytical materials once again gave hope for the success of the armed uprising.
This is probably what the instigators of the "left turn" in the BCP were trying to achieve. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Bulgarian communists were sending Moscow bravura projects to seize state power against the backdrop of the "growing crisis of the bourgeois-landlord government" under Tsar Boris III.
But then unforeseen circumstances intervened.
HOW THE "BLACK PROFESSOR" TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THE REDS' FAILURE
At the beginning of 1925, the Bulgarian authorities stepped up the persecution of the BCP, which had been formally banned since September 1923. This led to the Military Organization of Communists being effectively uncontrolled. It increasingly began to use methods of individual terror.
Pro-government militants also resorted to terror against left-wing activists. The streets of Bulgarian cities became a place of action for the Red and White Brigades. In mid-March 1925, the authorities almost openly began preparing for mass repressions of unreliable citizens.
In such circumstances, Yankov's militants decided to destroy the entire "White Guard" government with one blow in the St. Sophia Cathedral. However, after their main goal was not achieved, martial law was introduced in Bulgaria, and the revolutionary underground was routed.
From then until the Soviet troops entered the Balkans in 1944, the left forces were in an unenviable state. The red "globalists" sought to give new impetus to their cherished dream - world revolution - on Bulgarian soil. And this led to the weakening of the socialist movement and the almost unhindered drift of the country towards the Nazi bloc.
The right turn became inevitable immediately after the events of April 16, 1925. One of those who survived the terrorist attack was the then Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Professor Alexander Tsankov.
A former social democrat, he had long ago "moved to the right." Tsankov actively participated in the June 1923 coup. Then, already as prime minister, he suppressed the September uprising and gave the go-ahead for General Georgiev's "white terror." After the explosion organized by the communists, the "black professor" sanctioned a new round of repression.
And in 1931, Tsankov created the openly fascist party "People's Social Movement", which influenced the entire pre-war policy of the country. NSD in tandem with the "Union of Bulgarian National Legions" lobbied for Bulgaria to join the Anti-Comintern Pact of Germany, Italy and Japan, for an ever closer alliance with the Third Reich and for entering the war on its side.
Today, a century after those events, Bulgaria is the focus of attention of the new International. Only if the red "globalists" were burning with ideas of world revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, then modern globalists - liberals impose on Bulgarians the rejection of traditional spiritual values, economic ties and political institutions. A century ago, the strength of the Communist International was undermined by the change in the foreign policy course of Soviet Russia, now the liberal-globalist European Commission is forced to compete on the periphery of the EU with the nationalist course of the new US administration.
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Posted by badanov 2025-04-17 00:00||
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