June coup

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The leaders of the June coup, from left to right :
Dimo Kassasow , Kimon Georgiev , Nikola Ratschew , Janaki Mollow , Ivan Walkow , Aleksandar Zankow , Christo Kalfow , Ivan Russew , Petar Todorov , Zvyatko Boboschewski

The putsch of June 9, 1923 , known in Bulgaria as the June 9th Putsch (Bulgarian Деветоюнски преврат / Dewetojunski prewrat), was a successful military coup against the government of Aleksandar Stambolijski , who was shot in the wake of the coup. Sections of the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) also took part in the coup .

prehistory

In the elections for the National Assembly in May 1920, the Bauernvolksbund was by far the strongest party. Their leader Aleksandar Stambolijski was able to 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 .

With the neighbors and former enemies of the war Greece and Serbia ( Serbian-Bulgarian War , Balkan Wars , First World War ) Stambolijski pursued a policy of reconciliation and rapprochement after the lost World War. 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 .

With this, Stambolijski came into the role of the number one enemy of the IMRO and the Bulgarian officer elite. IMRO could no longer operate unhindered from Bulgaria in the Serb-occupied part of Macedonia . The IMRO, which already disapproved of the rapprochement with the Serbian archenemy of the organization, now began, with nationalist officers, with the tacit consent of King Boris III. to organize a coup in which Stambolijski should be ousted.

output

When Stambolijski was on vacation, the nationalists put on a coup on June 9, 1923 under the leadership of Aleksandar Zankow . On the same day he took over the command of the military and the police and declared Stambolijski deposed.

Stambolijski hid in his home village in the district of Pazardzhik , where he on 14 June by members of the IMRO- comitadji was tracked down and shot. After Stefan Stambolow, he was the second Prime Minister of Bulgaria to be killed by Bulgarian nationalists from Macedonia.

The Orange Guard , the Free Corps of the Bulgarian Peasant Party , was smashed.

With Zankow, Bulgaria had a right-wing government again, which gave IMRO sovereignty over Pirin-Macedonia . IMRO took control of the border between Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and not only supported the right-wing government, but also established close contacts with fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini , which had come to power in the neighboring kingdom of Albania .

consequences

Aleksandar Zankow was appointed Prime Minister of Bulgaria on June 9, 1923 as the successor to Stambolijskis . He also took over the post of Minister for National Education.

The unsuccessful defensive struggles of the workers and peasants against the coup became known as the June uprising . It began on the day of the coup, on June 9th, and ended four days later, on June 13th, when the last nest of resistance fell in the area of Malko Tarnowo on the Turkish border. Many supporters of the Bauernbund were murdered without judgment. Leading politicians like Petko Petkow were interned.

Although the Bulgarian communists maintained strict neutrality in the coup, they were persecuted by the new government of "democratic unity". After a wave of arrests in September of the same year, in which around 2,500 communists were arrested, they decided to carry out the September uprising .

literature

  • Edgar Hösch: History of the Balkan Countries: from the early days to the present. CH Beck, 2008, pp. 209-209.
  • Björn Opfer: In the shadow of war: Occupation or annexation - liberation or oppression? A comparative study of the Bulgarian rule in Vardar Macedonia 1915–1918 and 1941–1944. In: Volume 3 of Studies on the History, Culture and Society of Southeast Europe. LIT Verlag Münster, 2005, p. 170.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathias Bernath, Felix von Schroeder, Gerda Bartl: Biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte Südosteuropas. Volume 3, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1979, p. 83.