Bulgaria: From the Fatherland Front to the Kostov Trial

September 1944: The Declaration of War and the Change of Power on the 9th

In the summer of 1944 Bulgaria was an ally of Germany but not at war with the Soviet Union. Since the death of King Boris III in August 1943 three regents had ruled on behalf of the boy king Simeon II, and when the Red Army passed through Romania and reached the Danube at the end of August the government moved quickly. On 26 August the government of Ivan Bagryanov declared neutrality, and the government of Konstantin Muraviev, formed on 2 September, announced that it would break with Germany. On 5 September the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria, on the grounds that the country was serving as a corridor for the German withdrawal. The Muraviev government declared war on Germany on 8 September, but the same day Fyodor Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Front crossed the frontier, and the Bulgarian army did not resist.

Between the night of 8 September and the early hours of the 9th the Fatherland Front took power in Sofia. The Front was a coalition proposed by the Communists in 1942 and formed in 1943, comprising the Communist Party (then named the Bulgarian Workers' Party), the Pladne wing of the Agrarian Union, Zveno and the Social Democrats. Inside the army, officers linked to Zveno such as Damyan Velchev took over the war ministry and the general staff, while in the provinces partisans and Fatherland Front committees took over the local offices. The prime minister was Kimon Georgiev of Zveno; four posts went to the Communists, including the interior ministry under Anton Yugov and the justice ministry under Mincho Neychev. The Agrarians held four posts, with Nikola Petkov as minister without portfolio, Zveno four and the Social Democrats two. On the morning of 9 September Georgiev read the new government's programme over the radio, and there was little shooting in Sofia that day; the ministers of the Muraviev government were arrested. What outlasted the distribution of ministries was the reorganisation of the police: under Yugov's ministry a People's Militia replaced the old police, and its officers were Communists and former partisans.

On 28 October in Moscow Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Allies. It provided for Bulgarian participation in the war against Germany, withdrawal from the occupied territories in Greece and Yugoslavia, reparations, and the establishment of an Allied Control Commission. Marshal Tolbukhin was its chairman, and the vice-chairman, Colonel General Sergei Biryuzov, ran its work in Sofia until 1947. The American and British representatives sat on the commission, but the decisions were taken on the Soviet side. As the parent page sets out, the arrangement was the same as in Hungary and Romania and applied the Italian precedent in reverse.

The People's Court and the Army at the Front

Two things ran together in the first four months after the change of power: the trial of the old regime and the new army's entry into the war.

On 30 September 1944 the government issued the decree establishing the People's Court. It was a special court set up outside the constitutional order, and it tried the ministers, deputies, officers and journalists of the years after 1941 for "drawing the nation into the war". The first trial opened in Sofia on 20 December, and the verdicts came on 1 February 1945. Death sentences were passed on the three regents (Prince Kiril, Bogdan Filov and Nikola Mihov), eight royal advisers, twenty-two ministers, sixty-seven deputies of the 25th National Assembly and forty-seven generals and senior officers, and they were executed that night at Sofia Central Prison. By April 1945 the court had tried 135 cases across the country with 11,122 accused and passed judgement on 9,155, of whom 2,730 were sentenced to death. The number actually executed has not been established. Separately from the court, the number killed without trial in the provinces in September and October 1944 ranges in the scholarship from a few thousand to thirty thousand, and no figure has been fixed from official records; the former prime minister Muraviev received a life sentence. The government described the trials as the liquidation of fascism; the opposition and the Western legations questioned their scale and procedure. In 1996 the Bulgarian Supreme Court quashed the principal verdicts, and 1 February is today a day of remembrance.

In the same period the Bulgarian army moved west under Red Army command. In October 1944 the First, Second and Fourth Armies, some 450,000 men, advanced into southern Yugoslavia and blocked the withdrawal of German Army Group E around Niš, Skopje and Kosovo; in March 1945 Vladimir Stoychev's First Army took the German spring offensive on the Drava front in Hungary. The army reached Klagenfurt in Austria in May, and its losses over the two phases were about 32,000. Participation was an obligation of the armistice, and at the same time the argument the Fatherland Front put forward in the Paris peace negotiations.

The Split in the Agrarian Union and the Postponed Election

The Front's first crack opened inside its largest member, the Agrarian Union. The Union had polled more votes than any other party in interwar Bulgaria, and its leader in September 1944 was Georgi M. Dimitrov, known as "Gemeto" to distinguish him from the Communist Dimitrov. Under pressure from the Communists and the interior ministry he resigned as secretary in January 1945, took refuge in the American legation in May and left the country in September. His successor Nikola Petkov was the brother of Petko Petkov, a minister in the government of Aleksandar Stamboliyski killed after the coup of 1923, and had taken part in founding the Fatherland Front.

At the Agrarian congress of May 1945 Petkov demanded an independent organisation for the Union inside the Front and equal participation in the local committees, and parted from the wing led by Aleksandar Obbov that stayed with the Front. In the summer Petkov and other opposition ministers, including the Social Democrat Grigor Cheshmedzhiev, resigned. The government intended to hold a general election on 26 August on a single Fatherland Front list. The United States and Britain protested that the election contravened the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe; the Soviet Union at first favoured going ahead but on 24 August agreed to a postponement. The election was held on 18 November. Petkov's Agrarians and Kosta Lulchev's Social Democrats refused to take part, and the official result gave the Front list about 88 per cent. At the Moscow conference of foreign ministers in December the three powers agreed to advise the Bulgarian government to include two opposition figures, but government and opposition could not agree on terms, and American and British recognition was withheld.

In January 1946 government and opposition negotiated again at American urging, but Petkov made the replacement of the interior and justice ministers his condition and the government refused. Georgi Dimitrov was still in Moscow in this period. The former general secretary of the Comintern returned to Sofia in November 1945, became a deputy alongside the party leadership, and led the party from outside the government until November 1946.

Dimitrov's Return, the Referendum and the Grand National Assembly Election

The politics of 1946 proceeded through three votes. In March the National Assembly passed a land reform law setting a ceiling of twenty hectares on holdings (thirty in Dobruja) and a law on labour cooperative farms (TKZS). In the referendum of 8 September on abolishing the monarchy the official result was 95.6 per cent in favour, and on 15 September the Assembly proclaimed the People's Republic. Simeon II and the royal family left the country the next day. Since the opposition did not oppose the abolition of the monarchy, the referendum was not a contest between the Front and the opposition.

The election of 27 October for the Sixth Grand National Assembly, which was to write the constitution, was different. It was held on party lists, and the opposition took part. The official result gave the Communist Party 53.9 per cent (278 of 465 seats), the Fatherland Front Agrarians 13.4 per cent (68 seats), the Front Social Democrats 1.9 per cent (9 seats) and Zveno 1.7 per cent (8 seats), while the joint opposition list of Petkov's Agrarians and Lulchev's Social Democrats took 28.4 per cent and 101 seats. The opposition polled more than a million votes. During the campaign the American legation reported beatings and arrests of opposition workers, and the government said the opposition was linked to "reaction". On 22 November Dimitrov became prime minister, with Kolarov continuing as provisional head of state. When the Grand National Assembly met, Petkov became the opposition's principal speaker and challenged the People's Militia and the conduct of the election. In Dimitrov's first cabinet Georgiev of Zveno remained as foreign minister and Obbov of the Front Agrarians as deputy prime minister, so the form of a coalition was kept, and until the spring of 1947 the opposition papers Narodno zemedelsko zname and Svoboden narod continued to appear.

The Petkov Trial and the Peace Treaty

On 10 February 1947 the peace treaty between the Allies and Bulgaria was signed in Paris. It left Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, fixed reparations to Greece and Yugoslavia, and provided for the withdrawal of Allied forces within ninety days of its entry into force. The United States Senate ratified the treaty on 4 June.

On 5 June the Grand National Assembly stripped Petkov of his immunity, and he was arrested in the chamber. The charge was that he had conspired with the "Neutral Officers' League" inside the army to prepare an armed coup. The trial was held in Sofia from 5 to 16 August, and Petkov denied the charges; the choice of counsel and the calling of witnesses were restricted. On 16 August he was sentenced to death. The United States and Britain asked repeatedly that the sentence not be carried out, and the Soviet Union replied that it was an internal matter. The peace treaty came into force on 15 September, and on 23 September Petkov was hanged at Sofia Central Prison. After the execution the government announced that he had petitioned for clemency, but the document was not published. His Agrarian Union had been dissolved on 26 August, and twenty-three opposition deputies were deprived of their seats. The British House of Commons debated the trial on 27 October. On 1 October the United States recognised the Bulgarian government.

Two accounts of the Petkov trial stood against each other. The government and the party held, on the basis of the trial record, that there had been a real conspiracy; the Western legations and the opposition saw the removal of a political rival. In 1990 the Bulgarian Supreme Court quashed the verdict and acquitted Petkov. Lulchev's Social Democratic opposition deputies received prison sentences at a trial in November 1948.

The Constitution, Nationalisation and the Social Democrats' Merger

On 4 December 1947 the Grand National Assembly adopted the new constitution. Soviet jurists took part in the drafting, and the structure, modelled on the Soviet constitution of 1936, provided for a National Assembly and a Presidium acting as head of state. Known as the "Dimitrov constitution", it remained in force until 1971. On 23 December the Law on the Nationalisation of Private Industrial and Mining Enterprises transferred 1,997 larger and 4,027 smaller enterprises to the state, and on 27 December all private banks were nationalised. By the end of 1948 about 85 per cent of industrial output came from the state sector.

The Second Congress of the Fatherland Front, on 2 and 3 February 1948, turned the Front from a coalition of parties into a single mass organisation with individual membership. Zveno dissolved itself in February 1949; the Agrarian Union inside the Front remained but no longer put forward its own candidates. The Front wing of the Social Democrats went through a vetting of members from June 1948 and on 11 August resolved to merge with the Communist Party; about half its members were admitted, and the process was completed at the end of the year. On 18 March the treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance with the Soviet Union was signed in Sofia.

In May 1949 the former war minister Damyan Velchev of Zveno, then minister in Switzerland, refused to return, and in the same year the Zveno officers left the army. In agriculture the labour cooperative farms grew. By the end of 1949 some 1,600 cooperatives held a little over 11 per cent of the arable land; large-scale collectivisation belonged to the years after 1950.

What "People's Republic" Meant: From the Balkan Federation to the Fifth Congress

From 1945 to 1947 Dimitrov and the Bulgarian Communist Party explained their system as distinct from the Soviet one. In speeches of 1945 and 1946 Dimitrov said that Bulgaria would be a people's republic rather than a Soviet republic and could reach socialism through parliament within the framework of the Fatherland Front. According to his diary, on 2 September 1946 Stalin told the Bulgarian delegation that a road bypassing the Soviet form was possible and that in that case a dictatorship of the proletariat was unnecessary. The line was the same as the "own road" discourse of the other parties before the founding of the Cominform.

In the same years Dimitrov pursued a federation with Yugoslavia. On 1 August 1947 at Bled Dimitrov and Josip Broz Tito signed an agreement providing for a customs union and the abolition of visas, preparation for the union of Pirin and Vardar Macedonia, and the return of the Western Outlands to Bulgaria, and on 27 November they concluded a treaty of friendship at Evksinograd. Macedonian teachers and books came into the Pirin region, and in the census of December 1946 most of its inhabitants were registered as Macedonians; the registration was reversed after 1948 and changed once more in the census of 1956. What the federation idea left in Bulgarian domestic politics was this double reversal over the Macedonian question. On 17 January 1948 Dimitrov told journalists in Bucharest of a Balkan federation that would include Greece, and on 28 January Pravda publicly disowned the idea. On 10 February in Moscow Stalin and Molotov summoned the Bulgarian delegation of Dimitrov, Kolarov and Kostov together with the Yugoslav delegation of Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Djilas and rebuked them for diplomacy conducted without prior consultation. Dimitrov acknowledged his error. When the Cominform expelled the Yugoslav party in June, the Bulgarian party endorsed the resolution and withdrew its Pirin Macedonia policy. The split itself is covered in the Tito-Stalin split entry.

The moment the definition changed is documented. At the Fifth Congress, held from 18 to 25 December 1948, Dimitrov's political report of the 19th defined "the people's democratic regime and the Soviet regime" as "two forms of one and the same power, the dictatorship of the proletariat". The congress renamed the party the Bulgarian Communist Party and adopted a five-year plan. The "people's republic, not a Soviet republic" of 1946 and the "form of the dictatorship of the proletariat" of 1948 were the words of the same man, with the Cominform and the expulsion of Yugoslavia between them. The reading of this turn as a design from the start, and the reading of it as a response to the changed situation of 1947–48, are set out in the parent page's section on interpretations.

1949: Dimitrov's Death and the Kostov Trial

In the spring of 1949 the settling of accounts inside the party began. Traicho Kostov had led the underground organisation at home during the war and since 1944 had been a party secretary, deputy prime minister and chairman of the Economic and Financial Committee in charge of the economy. The Central Committee plenum of 26 and 27 March criticised him for "nationalist deviation", and on the 31st he was removed as deputy prime minister. At the plenum of 11 and 12 June Kolarov reported on his "anti-party activity", Kostov was expelled from the party, and on 20 June he was arrested. The starting point of the criticism was an instruction that Bulgarian information in trade with the Soviet Union be withheld from the Soviet representatives. The same spring Rajk was arrested in Budapest, and the two cases belonged to the search for "Titoists" in each party after the Cominform resolution on Yugoslavia.

Dimitrov left for the Soviet Union for treatment in April and died on 2 July at Barvikha near Moscow. His body was brought to Sofia and placed in a mausoleum. On 20 July Kolarov became prime minister, and the running of the party fell to the secretary Vulko Chervenkov.

From 7 to 14 December the trial of Kostov and nine co-defendants was held in Sofia. The indictment charged espionage for British intelligence and a conspiracy with Tito to overthrow the government. On the first day Kostov withdrew the confession of the preliminary investigation and denied the charges of espionage and conspiracy, and he held to this position to the end of the trial; in this the trial differed from the Rajk trial in Budapest in September of the same year. He was sentenced to death on 14 December and executed on the 16th. After the execution the government announced that he had left a petition for clemency together with a confession. Western correspondents who attended reported his denial in court; the Soviet and Eastern European press printed the verdict. In April 1956 a plenum of the Central Committee rehabilitated Kostov, and the Supreme Court quashed the verdict the same year. Kolarov died on 23 January 1950, and in February Chervenkov became prime minister.

By the end of 1949 Bulgaria had a Fatherland Front led by the Communist Party, the constitution of 1947, nationalised industry and banks, the treaty with the Soviet Union, and trials inside the party. Of the four forces that had joined the coalition of September 1944, Zveno and the Social Democrats had disappeared and the Agrarian Union remained inside the Front. The Petkov and Kostov trials were reversed in different ways in 1990 and 1956, and the verdicts of the People's Court were quashed in 1996. What followed is set out in the parent page.