A Concise History of Bulgaria by R. J. Crampton

Author:R. J. Crampton [Crampton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

The Rule of the Democratic Alliance, 1923–1931

After seizing power Tsankov fashioned a new grouping, the Democratic Alliance, to provide him with reliable support in the sûbranie. The Democratic Alliance was a coalition of the National Alliance, the Military League, the mihailovists, and a motley collection of factions from the Democratic and Nationalist Parties.

Initially Tsankov’s rule was firm but tinged with attempts at consensus. A defence of the realm act was passed in November 1923 which once again banned terrorism and gave the government powers which it used to influence the elections held that month. The act was also used in April 1924 to ban the BCP, confiscate its property, and dissolve its trade union; using the same legislation the eight BCP deputies elected in November 1923 were deprived of their seats in March 1925. Yet at the same time the government repealed very little of agrarian legislation and continued with the programme of land reform enacted by Stamboliiski.

Any pretence at conciliation ended in 1925. On 16 April a bomb planted by the communists exploded in the roof of Sofia’s Sveta Nedelya cathedral during a state funeral due to be attended by the king and the entire political establishment. Amazingly no prominent figure was amongst the one hundred and twenty or so fatalities. The bomb unleashed a ferocious reaction. Martial law was declared and thousands of left-wing activists were detained. Many of the detainees disappeared and there were rumours that some of them had been fed into the furnaces of the Sofia police headquarters. The fate of others was all too clear: they were executed in public.

Violence was not a communist or a government monopoly. In the early 1920s there had been further divisions in the ranks of IMRO with one faction calling for cooperation with the communists. This led to more feuding and consequent assassinations in Sofia and elsewhere. The mihailovists meanwhile retained their hold on the Petrich enclave and continued their guerilla activities in Serbia and Greece. After one raid in October 1925 the Greek army moved into southern Bulgaria; that it withdrew without further complications was one of the League of Nations’ more notable successes.

Despite this help from the League of Nations the internal excesses which Tsankov had allowed were making Bulgaria into a pariah state. The king had already suggested to leading army officers that changes had to be made, but as yet his political standing was weak and his words went unheeded. International bankers were more effective. By 1925 Bulgaria was in desperate need of a loan. In an astute move it asked for one to help finance welfare schemes for the thousands of Macedonian refugees most of whom were still living in abject poverty. The refugees, the government argued, were a fertile recruiting ground for communist or Macedonian extremism, and could only be kept immune from such viruses by an injection of welfare spending, particularly if that spending were directed towards providing them with land of their own. The League of Nations was persuaded but in London where the bulk of the cash would be raised there were doubts.

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