Military Coup in Bulgaria 1934

By the spring of 1934 external and internal tensions were rising in Bulgaria. Macedonian terrorist activities, from bases in Bulgaria, combined with the steadfast refusal of the Bulgarian government to drop territorial demands in Macedonia eventually led to the Balkan Entente of 1934, by which Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, and Romania pledged to honor existing borders in the Balkans. For Bulgaria the isolation inflicted by this pact was a serious diplomatic setback in southeastern Europe. Meanwhile fragmentation of the governing People's Bloc coalition, under the leadership of Nikola Mushanov, resulted in yet another cabinet crisis. At the same time, there appeared to be a threat of a power-grab by pro-fascists under Professor Alexander Tsankov, one of the architects of the violent overthrow of the government of Aleksandur Stamboliiski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union in 1923. Tsankov had called a large rally for May 21, 1934, and confidently expected an audience of over fifty thousand people; the rally was to coincide with a private visit to Bulgaria of Hermann Goring.

An novel alternative to the governing coalition and the pro-fascists opposition developed around the ideas of the political circle formed by Dimo Kazasov and called Zveno (the Link). Zveno was a small group with connections to most of the major Bulgarian parties and to fascist Italy. Placing itself above partisan politics, it sought to link across party lines people from the political, intellectual, and professional elites fed up with the sterility of partisan struggles and the failure to deal with the economic and moral crises. Their program advocated "law and order" and a nonpartisan policy of national reconstruction, to be led by a strong government. The ideas of the Zveno group acquired strong support from the Military League. Among the adherents to the Zveno program was Colonel Damian Velchev, another of the primary organizers of the 1923 coup against the Stamboliiski government.

On May 19, 1934, Colonel Velchev, with the support of a group of young colonels and officers with strong ties to the Military League, staged a bloodless coup and occupied Sofia. Velchev's friend, Colonel Kimon Georgiev, was appointed prime minister and a new cabinet was formed consisting of military officers and Zveno intellectuals. Velchev, the moving spirit behind the coup, stayed out of sight in order not to appear to be grasping for power, and urged austerity and self-sacrifice at all levels of the new administration.

The "Nineteenth of May" government, as it was called, proclaimed a program of "social renewal" to be achieved by authoritarian rule based on Article 47 of the Turnovo constitution, which provided that in case of external or internal threat the king could issue decrees (with the cabinet taking responsibility) having the force of law. It dissolved the National Assembly and banned all political parties as well as trade unions. Economic measures to assist in the consolidation of insolvent peasant farms were also introduced, and most important of all, severe actions were taken to reestablish law and order. The government also took steps to improve relations with Yugoslavia and made overtures to Britain and France; diplomatic relations resumed with the Soviet Union in July 1934, despite a marked increase in internal repression of communists and suspected communists.

Restoring diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and building friendly relations with Yugoslavia entailed giving up traditional territorial claims. The main obstacle to better relations with Belgrade was the Bulgarian tolerance of Macedonian terrorists. Perhaps the single lasting contribution of the devetnaitseti (nineteenth-ers) rule was the suppression of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). A concerted drive by the Bulgarian military against IMRO permanently reduced the power of that organization, which by 1934 had exhausted most of its support in Bulgarian society. Sponsorship of Balkan terrorism finally ceased to hinder Bulgarian foreign policy.

References

Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II, 331-2; Outcast Europe: The Balkans 1789-1989, 109; Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe : From the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism, 477; Concise History of Bulgaria, 162, 164; Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, 89-90; Bulgaria - A Country Study.

Category

TBD

Region

TBD

State(s)

TBD

Belligerents

TBD

Dispute

TBD

Initiation Date

TBD

Termination Date

TBD

Duration

TBD

Outcome

TBD

Fatalities

TBD

Magnitude

TBD