A Communist who went from acquittal at Leipzig to Soviet camps
When Dimitrov again asked in 1946 for Popov to be sent home to Bulgaria, Stalin refused: after the torture used during the investigation, it was not advisable to let him go abroad.
Born into a village schoolteacher’s family in Dren near Radomir, he joined the Communist Youth League in 1919 and the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1922, took part in the September Uprising of 1923, and in exile graduated from the Academy of Communist Education in Moscow. A Politburo member working underground in 1931–32, he was sent to Berlin by the Comintern. Arrested over the Reichstag fire in 1933, he was acquitted at Leipzig with Dimitrov and Tanev and in 1934 received Soviet citizenship and went to Moscow. Arrested in the Great Terror in 1937, he confessed under torture, was sentenced to fifteen years and spent nearly seventeen years in camps such as Dudinka in the Arctic. He returned to Bulgaria in 1954, wrote his memoirs and died in Varna in 1968.
Also known as: Blagoi Popov
Activities and affiliations
-
1922–
Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP)
Political and party leadership -
1931–1932
Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP)Member of the BCP PolitburoMain
Political and party leadership -
1931–1937
CominternMember of the Young Communist International executive
Political and party leadership -
1954–1964
Bulgaria state institutionsOfficial in the Bulgarian culture and foreign ministries
Government and administration
Career Timeline
- 1922–1924Law student at Sofia University; joined the BCP in 1922
- 1923.09Took part in the September Uprising
- 1924.10–1929Emigrated; graduated from the Krupskaya Academy of Communist Education in Moscow
- 1929.10–1932Political secretary of the Komsomol CC; BCP Politburo member 1931–32
- 1932.11–1933.12.23Sent to Berlin by the Comintern; acquitted as a defendant in the Reichstag fire trial
- 1934.02–1937Received Soviet citizenship; worked for the Young Communist International in Moscow
- 1937.11.07–1954Arrested; fifteen-year sentence in Dudinka and other camps and exile
- 1954–1968Returned to Bulgaria; worked in the culture and foreign ministries and wrote his memoir of the Siberian camps
From Leipzig to the Soviet camps
Popov joined the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1922 and participated in the uprising of 1923. He was acquitted with Dimitrov and Tanev in the 1933 Leipzig trial. After moving to the USSR he was arrested in 1937 and experienced imprisonment and exile.
He returned to Bulgaria in 1954 and recorded these experiences in a memoir published as From the Leipzig Trial to the Siberian Camps, linking acquittal under Nazism with repression in the Soviet Union.