Two years, and much blood, after the 1923 military coup in Bulgaria, an April 16, 1925 assault on Sofia’s St Nedelya Cathedral during the funeral of assassinated General Konstantin Georgievin killed 200 people, most members of the Bulgarian political, military and economic elite. Bulgaria was home to many White refugees from Soviet Russia and, with its substantial Communist and peasant movements, was the site of a ferocious campaign against the left that would, in many ways, be a precursor of the 1930s fascist regimes.

‘The Bomb Outrage in Sofia’ by Boyan from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 5 No. 36. April 23, 1925.

The outrage in Sofia is no ordinary event.

On the 15th of April Reserve General K. Gheorghieff, the President of the “Kubret” (a conspiratory military organisation which really governs the country) was murdered in Sofia. During the funeral service which took place the following day in the “Sveti Kral” Cathedral, an infernal machine exploded. The explosion was terrific. The cathedral was almost destroyed. There are over 200 killed and 500 wounded.

Who has committed this terrible outrage, which constitutes a blow at the heart of the official government in the country, the government of the professors and generals?

The blow is very severe, the horror is very great; hence therefore the hysterical outcry against the “agrarian communists”. The bourgeois press of the whole world once more has the opportunity of launching a furious attack against “bloody” bolshevism, against communism. The rage of the kept press of Bulgaria knows no limits. The bourgeois press gives expression to the rage and the lust for revenge of the governing class. This bloody desire for revenge is again directed against the defenceless workers and peasants. Numerous murders have already been carried out in Sofia and in the whole country as revenge for the outrage. The bourgeois press characterises these murders as “regrettable incidents”.

The whole bourgeois press today is bemoaning the fate of some generals, members of parliament and higher officials. The murderers are weeping: those who shed no tears when those who are now buried beneath the ruins of the Cathedral organised the wholesale slaughter of thousands of workers and peasants. May the indignant journalists, professors, generals and parsons weep! The workers and peasants of the whole world fully realise that there is nothing of humanity and culture to be moaned for here.

These bearers of culture of the bourgeoisie did not weep but triumphed when, in June 1923, over a thousand peasants were slaughtered and when in September of the same year over 10,000 workers, peasants and intellectuals were done to death in the most brutal manner. It was in the same Cathedral that there was then celebrated the victory of “law and order”, the salvation of the State…

The 200 dead do not even number one per cent of the workers and peasants who have been murdered during the 22 months existence of the Zankov government. Up to now the Bulgarian people have lost in their struggle against Zankov over 20,000 victims, among them being 2000 teachers, lawyers, popular representatives and village clergy.

We do not write these lines in order to justify the outrage. It requires neither our justification nor our condemnation. It is our task to explain it.

The outrage in Sofia is inseparably connected with the countless mass and individual assassinations which the Zankov government has for 22 months committed without cessation against the freedom and the existence of the Bulgarian working people.

June and September 1923 and September 1924 were nothing else than periods of mass assassinations which cost the Bulgarian people almost as much blood as did the first Serbo-Bulgarian war.

Political murders became quite usual events. Since the beginning of the present year in particular there have been fresh murders every day. The months of January, February and March were full of arrests and murders. At the end of March alone over 1000 workers and peasants were arrested within the course of 10 to 15 days. The month of April was marked by fresh “revelations” and murders.

The massacring of political opponents was legalised by the extension of the law for the protection of the State and by the Law as to the Police.

In this stifling political atmosphere of murder and violent suppression of the workers and peasants and their political and economic organisations, the economic situation of the broad masses of the people became unendurable. The journal of the Bulgarian Economic Society represented the situation as follows: If one reckons the cost of living in the period from 1900 till 1910 as 100, the cost of living in the year 1924 was 3580 times dearer, in January 1925, 4230 times and in February 1925, 4375 times. On the other hand, the workers wages sunk from 100 in 1913 to 68 in 1924 and to 64 in 1925. In February 1925 the real wages of an official amounted to 32.2. The cost of living index amounted last year to 3572; in this year to 4375.

Regarding the economic and political situation the “Zname” wrote on 6th April: “Human patience is not inexhaustible. The economic policy of the government, as far as it has one, leads to fresh suffering, to new increases in the cost of living; and what then?”

At the beginning of April a fresh wave of high prices set in. In the cities one could only obtain a very bad quality of flour which has been imported from America. Still greater were the restrictions in the sphere of political life. All workers’ newspapers, whether political or Trade Union, are suppressed, meetings of any kind are prohibited. Freedom of the Press is abolished for the workers and peasants, while they are also deprived of the right to organise on the political, the Trade Union or the co-operative field. They are likewise robbed of all possibility of conducting any kind of struggle to better their position. Any protest against this rank reactionary policy of the government of professors is replied to by their organs with bestial murders.

All opposition parties of the bourgeoisie have condemned this policy. The newspapers of these parties warned Zankov repeatedly that “his bloody Reaction would be answered by a still greater strengthening of the activity of the conspirative elements”.

Because all other ways of struggle were barred, we now experience such terrible events. The outrage is terrible, just as the causes which gave rise to it are also terrible. “How fearfully must the Zankov government have misruled in order to call forth this elementary and inhuman rage?” wrote even the Vienna “Arbeiter Zeitung” on the 18th of April.

Who has committed this outrage? It is not the work of a party. The whole population is conducting the struggle against the bloody reaction. The will to revenge is assuming such monstrous forms in order to give expression to the hatred against the present rulers. Perhaps it is an insane act. But as the cultured rulers of Bulgaria have allowed themselves to commit insane acts the people have the right to reply to the same.

It depends upon whether the Bulgarian rulers abandon their insane policy whether the causes of an insane act such as the outrage in Sofia will be removed in the future.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1925/v05n36-apr-23-1925-inprecor.pdf