Aleksandar Stambolijski

This article is about the person. For the village, see Aleksandar Stambolijski (village) .

Aleksandar Stambolijski, 1921.

Aleksandar Stoimenow Stambolijski ( Bulgarian Александър Стоименов Стамболийски ; born March 1, 1879 in Slavovitsa ( Eastern Rumelia ), Bulgaria ; † June 14, 1923 ibid) was Prime Minister of Bulgaria from October 1919 until his assassination . Several localities in Bulgaria were named after him.

Career

Stambolijski grew up on the country dominated by agriculture and attended from 1893 to 1895 first the agricultural school in Sadovo and from 1895 to 1897 the college of viticulture in Pleven . There he met Janko Sabunow , a politician of the peasant movement. Stambolijski, who knew the social and economic difficulties of the farmers, could identify with the left and partly communist ideas of the peasant movement and joined this movement. There he met his future wife Milena Daskalowa. In 1900 Stambolijski went to Germany to study philosophy at the University of Halle . In 1901 he went to Munich, where he devoted himself again to studying agriculture.

The first years as a politician

Studying philosophy sharpened his senses for politics, which he devoted himself to after his return to Bulgaria in 1902. In 1905 he was elected chairman of the Bauernvolksbund and in 1908 as a member of the National Assembly. There he represented the interests of the farmers and was re-elected in 1911. The Bauernvolksbund was now the strongest party in the opposition . After the outbreak of World War I , it became apparent that Bulgaria would enter the war at the urging of the nationalist leadership on the side of the Central Powers Germany and Austria-Hungary. Stambolijski, who had already taken positions contrary to those of the Bulgarian power elite in the two Balkan Wars , openly opposed the efforts of Tsar Ferdinand and called for the support of the Entente , the alliance of Russia, France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Then Stambolijski was imprisoned in 1915.

Stambolijski as the new Prime Minister

When Tsar Ferdinand had to abdicate at the instigation of the Entente after the armistice of Thessaloniki on September 29, 1918 , his son Boris came to the throne , who pardoned Stambolijski and released him from prison. In the elections for the National Assembly in 1919, the Bauernvolksbund became the strongest party and Stambolijski became Prime Minister . In this capacity he took part as the Bulgarian envoy in the negotiations that led to the conclusion of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine , in which the losses of significant areas to Romania , Greece and Yugoslavia were confirmed. Although unpopular, Stambolijski had to take the apparently inevitable measure and sign the peace treaty. The peaceful settlement, especially with Serbia and Greece, was elementary for him in order to be able to deal with the catastrophic social and economic situation in the country caused by the war. This offended nationalist circles.

The years as a reformer

In the renewed elections to the National Assembly in May 1920, the Bauernvolksbund was by far the strongest party. Stambolijski could now govern alone and implement his ambitious reform program, the most important points of which were the expropriation of large estates and the tight state organization of agriculture. Stambolijski ruled the country with an iron hand, his political opponents and bourgeois circles accused him of having led the country into a "peasant dictatorship". From 1922 at the latest, he began to take action against members of the opposition with arrests and censorship .

The months until his death

Monument to Alexandar Stambolijski in Sofia

Towards Serbia, Stambolijski pursued a policy of rapprochement. In March 1923 he signed the Niš Agreement with Yugoslavia , in which the two states undertook to take measures to protect each other at the state border . Stambolijski thus hit the nerve of the Slavic-Macedonian liberation movement Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which could no longer operate unhindered from Bulgaria in the Serbian part of Macedonia . The IMRO, which already disapproved of the rapprochement with the Serbian archenemy of the organization, set about organizing a coup with nationalist officers, with the tacit consent of the king , in which Stambolijski was to be removed. When Stambolijski was on vacation, the nationalists staged a coup on June 9, 1923 under the leadership of Aleksandar Zankow , took control of the military and police on the same day and declared Stambolijski deposed. He hid in his home village, where he was tracked down, tortured and shot dead by members of IMRO on June 14th. As a declaration of war to all opponents of a Macedonian annexation to Bulgaria, the hand with which he had signed the Treaties of Neuilly and Niš was cut off from his corpse and his head was sent to Sofia. The June coup sparked the September communist uprising .

Honors

Two municipalities in Bulgaria have been named after Aleksandar Stambolijski:

• Aleksandar Stambolijski , a village in north-east Bulgaria
• Stambolijski , a city in Plovdiv Oblast in central Bulgaria (since 1979)

Web links

Commons : Aleksandar Stambolijski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• http://www.mfa.government.bg/history_of_Bulgaria/4.html ( Memento from July 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Newspaper article about Aleksandar Stambolijski in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Robert Gerwarth: The vanquished . 1st edition. Siedler, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-8275-0037-3 , pp. 196 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Teodor Teodorow	Prime Minister of Bulgaria 1919–1923	Aleksandar Zankow
Mikhail Majarov	Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Bulgaria April 16, 1920–9. June 1923	Aleksandar Zankow