Biographies from Inprecor of fifteen Bulgarian Communists murdered or executed during 1925 in that country’s white terror. A turning point in 1920s Europe was the June 9, 1923 overthrow of Agrarian Party leader Aleksandar Stamboliyski by the Bulgarian military, instituting a reign of terror under the White Guard rule of Aleksandar Tsankov. At the time the Bulgarian C.P. was one of the most influential in the world, a genuine mass party it was the largest single Party in Bulgaria and failed to intervene in the coup. Repression was met with lost armed risings, followed by guerilla operations, and then terrorism with the Bulgarian C.P., as it was, destroyed in prison, exile, and the grave over the next years. A generation of revolutionaries wiped out.

‘Our Martyrs’ from International Press Correspondence, 1925.

Haralambi Stojanov. Inprecor. March 12, 1925.

One after another there fall the most courageous and self-sacrificing champions of the Bulgarian proletariat, struck down by the bullets of the government’s murder organisation or tortured to death in prison. The plan of the fascist government, literally to exterminate all persons known to be communists, and in the first place all communist leaders, is being drastically carried out. All communist members of parliament, all communist members of municipal bodies etc. are being systematically shot down on the open street. On Friday the 6th of March, comrade Haralambi Stojanov, the only communist member of parliament remaining alive, was shot down, as he was returning home from parliament, by an agent of the government’s murder organisation.

Comrade Stojanov was a railway worker. At the elections which took place immediately after the insurrection in September 1923, he was elected on the joint ticket of the communists and the Peasants’ League.

At the time when the centrist elements in the C.P. of Bulgaria, out of fear, made the cowardly and treacherous declaration in parliament, in which they repudiated Communism and condemned the September insurrection, comrade Stojanov was the only one who fearlessly declared from the parliamentary tribune that he had been elected as a communist and had come to parliament as such. He made a strong protest against the acts of cruelty which the government had exercised upon the arrested communists and members of the Peasants’ League. Comrade Stojanov thereby saved the reputation of the Party in the eyes of the working masses, who had been disappointed by the cowardly and treacherous attitude of the centrist members of parliament. He received messages of congratulations from workers and peasants from all parts of the country.

When the centrists, who a short time ago again acknowledged communism, again on the occasion of the proceedings in parliament regarding the new Exceptional Law deserted their posts and made a fresh treacherous cowardly declaration, comrade Stojanov was the only who remained undaunted at his post and made all preparations to indict in parliament the reign of terror in Bulgaria. The bullets of the government agents have now silenced his voice forever.

The death of this brave leader will stimulate the international working class to conduct the fight against the bourgeois murderers and bandits until they are completely annihilated.

Janko Dorossiev. Inprecor. April 16, 1925.

To the innumerable losses which the Bulgarian proletariat has to undergo daily, there is added yet another: Comrade Janko Dorossiev has been shot down in broad day-light in the streets of Sofia by agents of the government’s murder organisation.

A teacher by profession, comrade Dorossiev had already as a student devoted himself with the greatest enthusiasm and self-sacrifice to the cause of the working class. As a teacher he was persecuted on account of his opinions and his propagandist activity, and finally discharged: Since 1922 he was the secretary of one of the district organisations of Sofia. After the dissolution of the Communist Party of Bulgaria by the fascist government he worked in the illegal C.P. of Bulgaria. The Party has suffered a severe loss by his death.

Kosta Jankov. Inprecor. May 7, 1925.

Among the latest victims to be claimed by the white terror in Bulgaria is our comrade Kosta Jankov, a son of the well-known Macedonian revolutionary Colonel Jankov, who in the year 1903, at the head of a division of insurgents fell while fighting against the troops of the Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, for the liberation of Macedonia. Comrade Jankov, on his father’s side, was a distant cousin of the old leader and founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party, comrade Dimitri Blagoyev.

During his whole life comrade Jankov lived amidst revolutionary surroundings. Twenty years ago he entered the party of the Bulgarian Social Democrats (orthodox). During the war he served as a Major on the General Staff of one of the Bulgarian armies. After the war he wrote a book in which he sharply criticised those responsible for the military disaster at Dobro Polje, and exposed the whole criminal policy of conquest of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie.

During the September events of 1923 the Zankov government had him arrested, but soon set him free. Comrade Jankov was arrested in connection with the explosion in the Cathedral of Sofia and at once shot by the Zankov fascists.

In Comrade Jankov the Bulgarian Communist Party and the revolutionary movement have lost one of their best workers.

Ivan Minkov. Inprecor. May 7, 1925.

On the 16th April 1925 Comrade Minkov, at the age of 35, fell at his post as a fighting revolutionary.

Comrade Minkov was the son of a Bulgarian officer with whom he took part in the world war. As an ensign in a technical corps he distinguished himself by extraordinary courage and bravery. After the war comrade Minkov, along with many young and enthusiastic officers who had perceived the predatory aims of the imperialist slaughter, joined the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, to which he remained true right up to the end of his life.

The Bulgarian government denounced him as being one of the organisers of the explosion in the Cathedral of Sofia, and the fascist militia therefore surrounded the house in which he lived and fired upon it for several hours. Comrade Minkov, along with five other comrades who did not wish to be taken alive by the Zankov hangmen, courageously resisted up to the last.

Simeonov-Georgiev. Inprecor. May 7, 1925.

Comrade Simeonov-Georgiev, a young student, has been killed in Losence by the Zankov murder bands after the house in which he lived had been fired upon. The Young Communist League and the revolutionary movement of the working class and the peasantry of Bulgaria have lost in him one of the best, most courageous and self-sacrificing young revolutionaries.

Only 22 years old when he died, he had, while still a scholar, joined the communist movement. In 1920 he entered the Bulgarian Young Communist League. The outbreak of the revolt in September found him in Plevna, where he actively participated in the struggle.

After the suppression of the revolt he unwaveringly continued to work in the Young Communist League. At the end of March police agents surrounded the house in which he lived along with two members of the Young Communist League. In order not to fall alive into the hands of the police he defended himself heroically right up to the last.

Dimiter Tchintulov. Inprecor. May 21, 1925.

Dimiter Tchintulov is one of the many who have been murdered by the Zankov government, without either trial or sentence, as one of the alleged originators of the Sofia Cathedral outrage. Tchintulov was attacked in his lodgings on 22. April and brutally done to death.

Tchintulov was a simple worker, a proletarian. He entered the Labour Movement at the time of its inception. While still a youth he became a “Tesnjak” and in the year 1903, the year of the split, when he was a dock worker in Burgas, he took an active part in the ideological struggles on the side of the “Tesnjaki” (the orthodox socialists now the communists).

He is known to the Bulgarian working class as a faithful and self-sacrificing fighter. His forty years life was wholly and entirely devoted to the Movement.

His murderers have put an end to his life all too soon. But his faith in the victory of Communism, which is at the same time the faith of the whole of the working people, they could not destroy. With this faith the working people will be victorious, in spite of everything.

Constantin Schulov (Kotzeto). Inprecor. May 21, 1925.

This young fighter of twenty five years had abandoned his studies and lived only for the Movement. He spoke little, but he worked hard.

After the seizure of our printing office he organised the duplicating of appeals by means of the type-writer. He was discovered by the authorities and arrested. He was subjected to the most fearful tortures in order to extort a confession from him, but without success. When, in March last, he flung himself from the fourth storey of the premises of the Security Police, the people who were passing at the time saw with indignation and horror that nails had been driven into his feet. He devoted his whole life to the working class. His death serves to mirror the bloody regime of Professor Zankov, which “civilised” Europe considers to be a democratic regime.

Ivan Manev. Inprecor. May 21, 1925.

This Comrade had also been active since his youth in the Labour Movement, but not with us, not in the leadership of our Party. He came to us after the war.

As a bank official he worked with inexhaustible energy among the commercial clerks, and it is owing to him that their union marches at the head of the Trade Union movement.

After the September defeat in the year 1923, he worked actively in building up the Party and in its preparation for fresh struggles.

On 23. April, he was foully murdered, when he was scarcely 37 years of age. He was not able to see the victory in which he believed as firmly as very few believe. The workers of Bulgaria will not forget him.

Dimitri Grantcharov. Inprecor. May 28, 1925.

Dimitri Grantcharov was murdered on the 29th April. He was 42 years of age. He had worked illegally in Sofia from whence, on the 27th April, he fled from the persecutions of the brutalised Zarkov agents to the village of Darvenitza.

Grantcharov was one of the most active workers among the peasants and was formerly a member of the left wing of the “broad” socialists, from whom he broke away in 1921. He proved himself to be a convinced and consistent supporter of the united front of the workers and peasants, especially after the fascist putsch of 1923. He had written a number of pamphlets on the question of the united front and also edited a whole number of left wing peasant newspapers which were constantly confiscated by the Zankov government.

Nikolai Petrini. Inprecor. May 28, 1925.

Member of parliament, a member of the left wing of the Agrarian Union and a close collaborator with Grantcharov, Petrini was one of the most decided supporters of the united front of the workers. The Bulgarian secret police had repeatedly attempted to hunt him down and kill him. He was killed in the bloody massacre which the Zankov bands carried out in the night following on the Cathedral explosion

Peter Abadshiev. Inprecor. May 28, 1925.

Peter Abadshiev who was 24 years of age, was a member of the Communist Party and of the Young Communist League of Bulgaria.

The secret police considered him to be the “leader of the terrorist group in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bulgaria”. He took a very active part in the trade union movement. Owing to the enormous unemployment in Sofia, and being quite without means, he was compelled to emigrate to Germany, where he devoted himself with renewed energy entirely to the revolutionary movement. An excellent comrade and a staunch revolutionary, he always acted with great foresight and deliberation.

Dimitri Daskalov. Inprecor. May 28, 1925.

The indictment of the prosecution described the above comrade as one of those who had bribed the sacristan of the Cathedral. He was a metal worker, aged 18, from the town of Kratovo in Macedonia. He was exceedingly devoted to the labour movement and to the Young Communist League, and was also at the same time an active worker in the metal workers’ trade union and in the workers’ sport movement. This young revolutionary, who was filled with the joy of life, was prepared to sacrifice everything for the workers’ movement.

Blagoy Kamburov. Inprecor. May 28, 1925.

This 19 year old student from Thrace had eagerly participated in the movement in Thrace and Macedonia. In the Summer of 1924 he was a delegate to the Macedonian Congress. Without being a communist he was closely connected with the revolutionary movement in Bulgaria, and was profoundly devoted to the cause of the working class and the peasantry of Bulgaria.

Marko Friedmann. Inprecor. June 5, 1925.

The Public execution of the alleged perpetrators of the Sofia Cathedral outrage Friedmann, Koev and Zadgorski took place today.

One of the best of the Communist Party of Bulgaria, comrade Marko Friedmann, who was charged with having participated in the preparation of the outrage in the Sofia Cathedral, has been executed. He was hung in the Cathedral square, and even his last request, that his death sentence be carried out by his being shot, was refused by the bestial hangmen.

In his final speech at the mock trial he proclaimed in proud, noble and burning words his political belief:

“What I have done I have done out of love for the people, as a true fighter of the Communist International. I also love my country, but in a different way from you. In this solemn moment I swear once again that I had nothing to do with the outrage in the Cathedral and that I condemn this act. I have no fear. In the war I often stood face to face with death. Should you however condemn me to death, then I request that you do not hang but shoot me. I wish to all by the bullets in the face of your soldiers with open, not bandaged eyes, as an honest soldier, for I stood in the war for my country as a soldier of the Communist International.”

Our brave comrade Marko Friedmann, and the innumerable known and unknown heroes of the proletarian fight for emancipation in Bulgaria and in the Balkans, will find revengers who will carry out their will, which was expressed by comrade Marko Friedmann in his last speech with the words:

“Only Communism, which has given to the Russian people a new life aim, life force and power, can and will also save Bulgaria and the whole Balkans by the creation of a free Federation of all the Balkan peoples; that is the aim for which I and my comrades are fighting.”

Nicola Christov Gabrovsky. Inprecor. July 30, 1925.

He was a veteran of Communism in Bulgaria.

He was born in 1863 at Tirnovo. After returing from the International Socialist Congress in 1889 he began propaganda for socialism in Bulgaria by founding a group in Sofia, composed of workers and intellectuals, under the name of “Nov Zivot” (New Life). His pamphlet on “The Moral Task of the Intellectual” published in 1891, shows his development to Marxism. In co-operation with D. Blagoev he laid the foundation stone of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Bulgaria, whose left wing developed later into the Communist Party of Bulgaria.

His youth was devoted to energetic propaganda, causing his dismissal from his position as grammar school teacher in Plovdiv (beginning of 1891). This gave him the opportunity of devoting himself entirely to the cause, and of playing the leading role in the drawing up of the programme and in the organisation of the Social Democratic Party.

Nicola Gabrovsky remained true to our ideals in his old age. When over 60 years of age, he fell a victim to the White Terror. Even before the September insurrection he was brutally maltreated, and only his physical tenacity preserved his life.

Comrade Gabrovsky worked as political speaker and writer. His ardent speeches aroused the utmost enthusiasm.

On 13. July he was murdered by Zankov’s myrmidons in his house at Tirnovo. Working Bulgaria will avenge him.