site.bta75 Years since Passing of Former Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikola Mushanov

Sunday marks 75 years since the passing of prominent Bulgarian politician and public figure Nikola Mushanov (1872-1951).

Born in Dryanovo (Central Bulgaria) on April 12, 1872, he completed his primary and secondary education in his native town and in Tarnovo, after which he studied and graduated in law in Aix-en-Provence, France (1889-1893). Between 1893 and 1896 he was public prosecutor in Stara Zagora and Varna, and in 1897-1908 he worked as a lawyer in Ruse.

Mushanov joined the Democratic Party in 1897 and was elected to the party's Governing Board in 1903.

He first ran for Parliament in 1902 and served as MP in 11 National Assemblies (1902-1903, 1908-1911, and 1913-1944).

Between 1908 and 1944, Mushanov was part of nine different Bulgarian governments (including all five headed by Democratic Party leader Alexander Malinov), holding a variety of portfolios: Public Education (1908-1910), Interior (1910-1911), Public Works and Roads (1918), Railways, Posts and Telegraphs (1918), and Interior and Public Health (1918-1919, 1931). After Malinov's resignation, he took over as Prime Minister on October 12, 1931, serving concurrently as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Public Worship. He headed three successive cabinets (October 1931 - September 1932, September 1932 - December 1932, and December 1932 - May 1934) until deposed by a military coup on May 19, 1934. During that period, he was also briefly in charge of the ministries of justice and of railways, posts and telegraphs.

When Bulgaria and the Western powers negotiated on a Bulgarian surrender in August 1944, one of their conditions was that Mushanov should take a leading role in the cabinet. His last government post was minister without portfolio in the Konstantin Muraviev Cabinet (September 2-9, 1944).

In 1920 he was Deputy Chair of the Democratic Party and in 1938 succeeded Malinov as Chair, keeping that position until 1947. An opponent to the Government of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, Mushanov was imprisoned in 1922 and was released after the June 9, 1923 coup.

As leader of the legal opposition in Parliament, Malinov was an outspoken critic of the antisemitic Defence of the Nation Act, adopted in December 1940. During WW II, he advocated a policy of strict neutrality, opposed Bulgaria’s accession to the Tripartite Part in 1941, and took a stand against the powerholders' decision to declare war on Great Britain and the US.

Mushanov refused to join the Communist-dominated Fatherland Front. After the September 9, 1944 Communist takeover, he was tried by the "People's Court" and was sentenced to imprisonment and deprivation of civil rights. He was pardoned and released in September 1945 on the eve of the parliamentary elections. Mushanov revived the Democratic Party and tried to turn it into a strong centre of opposition. In 1947 he was sent into internal exile to Tarnovo, and in July 1949 he was arrested and confined to the Nozharevo forced labour camp (near Silistra, Northeastern Bulgaria) despite being 78 years old. In April 1951, he was rearrested and investigated for links with outlawed opposition parties and figures.

Nikola Mushanov died at the Sofia Investigative Detention Centre of State Security on May 10, 1951. His cause of death was given as "rupture of the heart". According to other records, his death occurred on May 21, 1951. The actual circumstances remain uncertain to this very day. The "People's Court" sentence was reversed by the Supreme Court in August 1996.

Nikola Mushanov was one of the most steadfast champions of parliamentary democracy in Bulgarian history. Equipped above all with a legal education, parliamentarian culture, and a moral sense of statesmanship, he sought to uphold a democratic vision during a deeply turbulent century. Throughout his life, he insisted that society should evolve within a framework of broad civil liberties, with a clearly defined constitutional order, respect for the law, and the primacy of private economic enterprise.

He believed that freedom from enmity was to apply to every nation. Based on this principle, Mushanov attempted to reconcile Turkey and Yugoslavia with Bulgaria.

"Politics is a practical endeavour. It is judged by its practical achievements, not by the trumpeting of lofty principles," Mushanov wrote in his diary. "There are two kinds of politics: idealistic and realistic. The former ignores the objective conditions of life; it builds castles in the air; it is utopian. The latter, on the other hand, is empirical, dry, soulless, devoid of any ray of light, any guiding light. A sound, true policy is both idealistic and realistic. A politician must have an ideal, a guiding star, but it can be attained only to the extent allowed by the objective conditions of life, real life. Neither utopia nor myopia."