“May the ideas of Stambolyiski and the awareness of the importance of the moment become part of you – now, when Bulgaria and its people stand on the threshold of a new life. Get organized in unified local area unions, into one strong Bulgarian Agrarian People's Union /BAPU/, full of ideas. We should build up a powerful Fatherland Front (FF).”

That was the speech that the Bulgarians heard from agrian party leader Nikola Petkov on the wavelengths of Radio Sofia on 13 September 1944, a few days after the pro-Soviet coup d’etat in this country. However, the joint actions of communists and agrarians ended up yet in the middle of the next year, when Nikola Petkov was removed from the government of the FF. At the same time all governmental members from the BAPU resigned, as a sign of solidarity. In the spring of 1946 the first Fatherland Front government resigned after a failure of the negotiations with the opposition. Stalin ordered to local communist leader Georgi Dimitrov to ignore the opposition and to drown it. The court trials kicked off during that same summer. The first sentence against G.M. Dimitrov /a notable agrarian activist/ was life in prison, though the man had already left the country. 71-year-old social-democrat Krastio Pastuhov got five years in prison for two articles written. In October 1946 the opposition blamed the government for not providing the conditions necessary for free elections – terrorist bands rallied across the country, chasing away oppositional meetings and gunning down oppositional leaders. Mikhail Mikhailov, an activist of the BAPU told the story in a 1990 Golden Archive recording of the BNR:

“It was a time of awful violence, forgeries and terror at those elections. The People’s Agricultural Flag newspaper had published the images of 24 people from the union on the election day, killed as members of the poll sections. Despite that situation the BAPU got 1.3 mln. votes and 101 MPs got elected. Then a fierce battle followed in Parliament on the legislation, the election program and the creation of the Dimitrovska constitution. The Nikola Petkov BAPU, represented by its secretary Nikola Petkov stepped out with its own draft constitution for that purpose.”

In the end of May 1947 oppositional leader Nikola Petkov rejected at parliament the draft constitution of Fatherland Front. The idea was to prevent a Soviet-type of constitution and the establishment of a totalitarian system. The opposition submitted a project, based on parliamentarism and guarantees of fundamental human rights, but the response of the majority, headed by the Bulgarian Workers’ Party /communists/ was fierce. On 5 June 1947 the Great National Assembly withdrew the parliamentary immunity of Nikola Petkov and he was arrested yet at the plenary hall, accused of the preparation of a coup d’etat along with military organizations. The made-up trial and death sentence of the leader of the most influential oppositional party were a powerful hit against it. A few days after Nikola Petkov was sentenced to death, a draft bill was adopted, banning the Nikola Petkov BAPU.

“The routs kicked off from the moment, when everyone saw that the union was unwilling to accept the Soviet dictatorship even after the visit of Andrey Vishinsky, the Soviet deputy commissioner on foreign affairs here. Stalin himself decided to liquidate the BANU via his executioner Vishinsky. We all know that Nikola Petkov was hanged after a made-up process. His organization was dismissed via a special law and all its notable members – sent to labor camps and prisons. They gave thousands of scared victims in the name of this democracy that we all try to work for today as a way out of the crisis,” Mikhail Mikhailov wrote in his memoirs on 1947, when the totalitarian era started.

After the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty in the beginning of 1947 the opposition had its hopes that the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Bulgarian territory would make things better. However, that didn’t happen. The USA changed their strategy in the Balkans via the Truman Doctrine and did not interfere here in exchange of Soviet allowances in West Europe. In the meantime, following Moscow’s directions, Bulgaria refused to take part in the Marshall Plan for post-war recovery with the financial support of the USA.

Three days after September 15, when the Peace Treaty with Bulgaria entered into force, the Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed the death sentence of Nikola Petkov. On 23 September he was hanged in Sofia’s Central Prison. On 15 January 1990 his sentence was canceled by the Supreme Court and Nikola Petkov was rehabilitated.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev