Bomb attack on the Sveta Nedelja Cathedral

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The cathedral before the assassination (1922)
The cathedral after the attack
The cathedral after the attack

The bomb attack on the "Sweta Nedelja" cathedral ( Bulgarian Атентат в църквата "Света Неделя" ) was an attack on April 16, 1925 on the cathedral "Sweta Nedelja" in the center of the Bulgarian capital Sofia by Bulgarian communists . The attackers were supported by the Communist International (Comintern for short) and the Soviet Union .

In the bombing of the cathedral over 120 people, mainly from the Bulgarian political and military elite , were killed and around 500 people were injured.

The aim of the attack was to eliminate the leading Bulgarian politicians and generals in one fell swoop in order to prepare for a takeover of power by the communists. For this purpose it was decided to kill a distinguished person and at the subsequent state funeral the political and military leadership of the country, as well as the tsar Boris III, gathered in the cathedral . to murder.

The bomb attack occurred during the memorial service for General Konstantin Georgiev , who was killed on April 14 in a communist attack.

preparation

After the failure of the September communist uprising in 1923 and the ban on the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP) by the Supreme Administrative Court on April 2, 1924, the Bulgarian communists found themselves in a difficult situation. The government arrested many activists, which also threatened the party's underground existence. The militant wing of the party, the so-called military organization (Bulgarian Военна организация / Woenna organisazija, MO for short) under the leadership of Kostan Janew and Ivan Minkow, was able to break through isolated groups called shestorki ( Bulgarian for: sixes (group ) ) carry out individual attacks against the government. Over time, however, the police have been more and more successful in exposing and destroying the MO's illegal structures.

In December 1924, the MO was able to win over the sexton of the cathedral "Sweta Nedelja" and sympathizers of the BKP Petar Sadgorski for an assassination attempt. Dimitar Hajidimitrov and Dimitar Slatarew , head of the MO armament department, proposed the murder of police chief Vladimir Natschew and the carrying out of a large-scale assassination attempt during the expected funeral service in the cathedral for the murdered man. This should kill a large part of the police and military leadership and so should disrupt the actions of the Bulgarian state against the communists.

The idea of ​​an attack was taken up by Stanke Dimitrov , the secretary of the central committee of the BKP, who discussed it with Georgi Dimitrov , an active member of the Comintern, and Vasil Kolarov , the then general secretary of the Comintern, in early 1925 . The latter two disagreed with the proposal, believing that such an action should be accompanied by preparations for a large-scale uprising after the attack. However, everyone agreed that preparations should be pushed ahead.

Under the increasing pressure, the Bulgarian communists decided to carry out the planned bomb attack, although Georgi Dimitrov and Kolarov, as representatives of the Comintern, had spoken out against it. Thanks to direct contacts with the Soviet communists and the Soviet secret service, they were able to bypass the leadership of the Comintern and gain support. Through intermediaries in Vienna, the assassins received financial resources and armaments, including deadly explosives, from the Comintern. As a result, the "group of six" under the leadership of Petar Abadschiev was activated.

Under Abajev's supervision, the explosion was prepared in several shelters near the cathedral. Sadgorski brought the explosives into the cathedral in small packages and fixed them under the main dome. The bombers managed to place around 25 kg of picric acid and TNT in the church . Sadgorski received a total of 11,000 leva (1,000 leva per parcel) for attaching the parcels . He was also promised help in escaping abroad and a higher post in the Soviet Union. At the same time, Abajiev threatened Sadgorsky with death if he refused to cooperate. Marko Friedman later stated that each member of the conspiracy received a monthly salary of 3,000 leva for unmarried people and 5,000 leva for married people.

Meanwhile, the government continued to increase the pressure on the BKP and its military wing: On February 11, Waltscho Ivanov , an influential BKP official in Sofia, was killed; On March 10, the Parliament passed the Law for the Protection of the State (Bulgarian Закона за защита на държавата ), which expanded the powers of the state - the death penalty now applied not only to the activists of the BKP, but also to their helpers; On March 26, one of the bombers' secret accommodations was blown up. In the ensuing raid was Jako Dorosiew , head of a department MO killed.

These events no longer only threatened the existence of the communist movement as an organization, but also directly threatened the life of the BKP leadership. Since Police Chief Vladimir Nachev had increased the number of his bodyguards, the plan to kill him was dropped. As a prominent victim, the communists finally selected General Konstantin Georgiev , head of the Sofia district association of the ruling party Democratic Unity and a member of parliament. He was shot on April 14, 1925 in Sofia in front of the Sweti Sedmochislenizi Church (Bulgarian Свети Седмочисленици ) when he wanted to attend evening mass with his granddaughter.

execution

With the assassination of Georgiev, the first stage of the assassination plan, the killing of a high-ranking victim, had been implemented. As a second stage, the assembled political and military elite were to be killed by an explosion during the memorial service in the “Sweta Nedelja” cathedral.

On April 16 ( Maundy Thursday ) at 5:30 a.m., Nikola Petrow-Wasko and his bodyguard Zhivko Dinov met to go to the cathedral together at 8 a.m., where Sadgorski, the cathedral sexton, was waiting for them and the attic for them Petrov unlocked. Police arrived at the cathedral at noon to search her. In doing so, they believed Sadgorski that there was no one in the attic and did not check him out.

At 3 p.m. the coffin with the body of Kosta Georgiev arrived at the cathedral. In the funeral procession followed the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Alexander Zankow, with some ministers as well as many MPs and off-duty officers from the Sofia garrison. In order to increase the number of victims, the communists had sent out fake invitations to the funeral to other high-ranking members of the military and police on the same day. The cathedral was cordoned off by an honor guard security ring. Because of the crowd, Metropolitan Stefan ordered the coffin, which was initially located directly under the main dome, to be moved closer to the altar to make room for more people in the church. As a result, the ministers moved forward and no longer stood directly under the deadly dome.

The funeral service began at 3:15 p.m. On an agreed signal, Petrov lit the fuses and left the cathedral, followed by Sadgorsky. Dinow would be waiting for them nearby and bring them to safety. The explosion occurred at 3:23 p.m. The explosion caused the dome to fall into the crowded cathedral, instantly killing over 100 people. Many of the injured died from their injuries in the next few days.

Victim

Memorial plaque at the south entrance for the victims of the attack

The number of victims is given as 128, 134 and more than 213. It is certain that more than a hundred people died in the attack and another 500 were injured. By chance, all members of the government survived. The monarch, Tsar Boris III, was not in the cathedral as planned. A few days earlier, when he was returning from a hunt in Sofia, an assassination attempt had taken place on himself , which he only escaped because a personal friend, Deltscho Iltschew , covered the tsar with his body. Ilchev succumbed to his injuries and was buried at the same time as the funeral service for Georgiev took place in the cathedral "Sveta Nedelja". The tsar preferred to attend the funeral of his friend and lifesaver, which again saved his life. Among the injured, however, were the Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Zankov , the Interior Minister Ivan Rusew , the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Boris Wasov , the later Prime Minister Andrei Lyaptschew , the Metropolitan of Sofia Stefan and the influential banker Atanas Burov .

Among the victims were 12 generals, 15 colonels, 7 lieutenant colonels, 3 majors, 9 captains and 3 members of parliament, and more than 25 women and children.

The terrorist attack on the Sweta Nedejla cathedral on April 16, 1925 was considered the worst bomb attack in Europe until the train attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004.

Direct consequences

Although more than a hundred dead and hundreds were injured, the attack failed. It triggered a wave of persecution organized by the Military Union (Association of Officers of the Bulgarian Army ), with the tacit approval of the Bulgarian government under Aleksandar Zankow , who proclaimed martial law on the evening of the attack . In the following two weeks hundreds of people were murdered without a court order or judgment, including the poet Geo Milew , the journalist Josif Herbst and the leaders of the MO, Kosta Janew and Iwan Minkow. Later, the attack was to be condemned by the BKP as a ruthless approach that had fatal effects on the anti-fascist movement, and the role of the BKP was denied.

Some of the organizers, including Dimitar Slatarew, Petar Petrow and Nikola Abajiev, managed to flee into Soviet exile via Yugoslavia . Deprived of party support, Petar Sadgorski surrendered to the police and confessed. The trial came before the military tribunal , where it was heard from May 1 to May 11, 1925. During the trial, Marko Friedman , a group leader of the BKP's military organization , confessed that the organization had been financed and supplied with weapons by the Soviet Union via Vienna . However, he put the responsibility for the attack on Kosta Janew and Ivan Minkow.

Not only Sadgorski was sentenced to death , but also Marko Friedman and Sergeant Georgi Koew , who tried to hide Kosta Janew and Ivan Minkow in his house. In their absence, Stanke Dimitrov, Dimitar Grachanov , Petar Abadschiew , Christo Kosovsky and Nikolaj Petrini were sentenced to death, the last three of whom were murdered prior to the trial.

Martial law was repealed on October 24, 1925.

literature

The cathedral after the attack

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maren Roth: Education for Democracy ?: American Democratization Aid in Post-Socialist Bulgaria , Waxmann Verlag, 2005, p. 60
  2. ↑ Georgi Markow: Покушения, насилие и политика в България 1878–1947 (Bulgarian for: assassinations, violence and politics in Bulgaria 1878–1947), Sofia 2003, p. 223 (bulg.)
  3. ↑ Elena Statelowa / Stoycho Grantscharow: История на нова България, 1878-1944 (Bulgarian for: History of the New Bulgaria 1878-1944), Volume III, Sofia 1999, p 421: [...] големите средства за издръжка и въоръжаване на терористите, включително фаталния взрив, идват от Комунистическия Интернационал […]
  4. ↑ Gerald Knaus: Bulgaria (= Beck'sche Reihe, 866). CH Beck, 1997, p. 73.
  5. ↑ Krum Blagov: 50-те най-големи атентата в българската история (German: "The 50 greatest attacks in Bulgarian history").
  6. ↑ Ernst Nolte: The crisis of the liberal system and the fascist movements. Piper, 1968.
  7. ↑ a b Списък на убитите и ранените при атентата в катедралата “Св Неделя” на 16 април 1925г. Един Завет, April 14, 2009, accessed April 16, 2020 (Bulgarian, list of those killed in the bombing of the Sveta Nedelya cathedral).
  8. ↑ The figures vary, thousands [Wasil Gjuzelev: Istorija 11. klas na SOU , Sofija, 1996, p. 302], 124 death sentences [Joseph Rothschild: The Communist Party of Bulgaria. Origins and Development 1883-1936. , New York 1959, p. 261]. Richard Crampton [ A concise history of Bulgaria , 1997, p. 158] expresses accordingly cautiously, “ […] Many of the detainees disappeared and there were rumors that some of them had been fed into the furnaces of the Sofia police headquarters. Others were executed in public. […] “- John R. Lampe [ The Bulgarian Economy in the Twentieth Century . New York, 1986, p. 50] says at least 5,000 communists were killed.
  9. ^ A mass grave with those killed in 1925 was discovered in the 1950s during the construction of a dam. Among them was Geo Milew's body.
  10. ↑ Кратка Българска Енциклопедия (Bulgarian for: Brief Bulgarian Encyclopedia), Sofia 1961, Volume 1, p. 141
  11. ^ Georgi Markov. Покушения, насилие и политика в България 1878–1941, Sofia 2003, p. 227