Ivan Ivanov Bagryanov

Ivan Ivanov Bagryanov

Iwan Iwanow Bagrjanow ( Bulgarian Иван Иванов Багрянов ; English transcription Ivan Ivanov Bagryanov ; born October 17, 1891 in Razgrad Oblast , † February 1, 1945 in Sofia by execution ) was a Bulgarian politician and prime minister .

biography

Officer, studies and promotion to ministerial level

During the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and the First World War , he served as a soldier in the artillery , in which he rose to major in 1919 . He then completed a law degree at the Kliment of Ohrid - Sofia University . He then worked as a diplomat in the foreign service. On November 14, 1938, Prime Minister Georgi Kjoseiwanow appointed him Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in his cabinet. He held this office in the subsequent government of Prime Minister Bogdan Filow until February 4, 1941.

Prime Minister from 1944

On June 1, 1944, he was appointed Prime Minister of the Regency Council to succeed Dobri Boschilow . As such, he should primarily begin peace negotiations. In contrast to his predecessor, he represented largely pro-Western views and saw his main task in Bulgaria leaving the hostilities of the Second World War before the possible invasion of the Red Army . For this reason he intended to start peace negotiations with the Western allies .

However, the declaration of war by King Michael I of Romania against the Third Reich led to a change in the political situation in the Balkans and a rapprochement between the region and the Soviet Union . Nevertheless, he tried to achieve a separate peace in which he rejected any alliance with the German Reich on August 26, 1944 and declared Bulgaria's neutrality . Three days later he invalidated all anti-Semitic laws ; this was ratified on September 5, 1944 by the successor government . Furthermore, he ordered the withdrawal of the Bulgarian army from Macedonia .

Nevertheless, his striving for neutrality, more than the declaration of war against the Axis Powers , paralyzed negotiations with the Allies, so that he was dismissed as Prime Minister on September 2, 1944 (see also Soviet occupation ). Konstantin Murawiew became his successor as Prime Minister ; his government was overthrown on September 8th by an alliance (officers, communists, politicians from social and radical democratic circles, members of the left wing of the farmers' union). On the same day, the putschists declared war on Germany .

Between September 9 and 12, 1944, several hundred leading figures were arrested (including Bagrjanov) or murdered by the communists . On February 1, 1945, communist people's courts sentenced large sections of the country's political, military and intellectual elite to death . This affected a total of 2730 people, another 1305 received life sentences . The death sentences - including the one against Bagryanov - were carried out on the night of February 2.

Web links

• Biography information in rulers.org
• Biography (french)
• Bulgarian coup d'état of 1944 in the Engl. Wikipedia

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Björn Opfer: In the Shadow of War: Occupation or Anschluss - Liberation or Oppression? A comparative study of Bulgarian rule in Vardar Macedonia 1915-1918 and 1941-1944. LIT 2005, ISBN 978-3825879976 (plus dissertation, Uni Leipzig 2004), p. 209
2. ↑ Among them were 67 members of parliament, all members of the governments between 1941 and September 3, 1944 including the Prime Minister, the rulers of the Tsar ( Kyril , Bogdan Filow and Nikola Michow ), nine state and government secretaries , the publishers of the major newspapers and magazines, intellectuals, 47 generals and officers.
3. ↑ Day of the Tribute to the Victims of Communism (Bulgarian)

predecessor	Office	successor
Dobri Boschilov	Prime Minister of Bulgaria 1944	Konstantin Muraviev