site.btaSeptember 9, 1944: Totalitarian Regime Is Installed by Military Coup as Soviet Army Invades

Eighty-one years ago, a bloodless military coup deposed Bulgaria's government on the night of September 8 to 9, 1944.

At 2:15 a.m. on September 9, a battalion of the 1st Engineer Regiment and a floodlight team, led by several mid-level officers, seized the War Ministry without any resistance. They were let in by the officer of the day of the Ministry guard detail. The attackers arrested the members of the Konstantin Muraviev Cabinet. At the same time, a company from the Military School took over the General Post Office, Radio Sofia and the government telephone centre at the central bank basement. A little later, the underage king's three regents were forced to decree the new cabinet in office. They were then detained and replaced by a Fatherland Front Regency Council.

A tank brigade, based in the suburb of Gorna Banya, was ready to intervene, but this proved unnecessary.

These military units were enlisted by Kimon Georgiev's Zveno Political Circle on the side of the Fatherland Front (FF) - a clandestine left-wing political organization formed on instructions from the Comintern and with a leadership invariably dominated by the Communists. Georgiev, a retired lieutenant colonel, had been instrumental in the two previous Bulgarian coups during the 20th century, on June 9, 1923 and May 19, 1935.

A day earlier, on September 8, the FF conspirators gathered at Georgiev's home to plan the action and determine the line-up of the new cabinet. It was headed by Georgiev and consisted of four Zveno members, four Communists, four Agrarians, two Social Democrats, and two "independent intellectuals".

At 6:30 a.m. on September 9, Radio Sofia interrupted its regular programming to broadcast a "proclamation to the Bulgarian people". It had been written on the previous day at the meeting at Georgiev's and was read by him live from the air-raid alert centre in the War Ministry basement. 

"Fully aware of being a faithful and full-fledged exponent of the people's will, the Fatherland Front is taking over the governance of the country in these fateful hours and severe conditions in order to save it from perdition," the proclamation said. It described the disastrous situation to which Bulgaria had been brought as an ally to Nazi Germany and announced the formation of a FF government, presenting its members. The government promised to make the country part of the anti-Hitler coalition. The proclamation did not specify the way in which the new cabinet had taken office.

In a much related development, the 260,000-strong Third Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Army invaded Bulgaria unresisted at 9:00 a.m. on September 8, crossing the Danube at Silistra, Tutrakan and Ruse and landing in the Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas. The Red Army reached Sofia on September 10. The Soviet forces occupied the country until 1947.

The Communists called for a red-carpet welcome for "the liberators who saved the country from fascism." In the towns and villages on the route of the Soviet troops, the FF committees put up makeshift triumphal arches, and people were herded out in streets and squares to wait for the "liberators." The Bulgarian people's traditionally strong sympathies toward Russia were at the root of the euphoric welcome Soviet troops received in the country. At that time, very few people in Bulgaria were aware of the true situation in the USSR and had no idea of what would happen in the future.

At 3 p.m., a rally was held in Sofia in front of the Soviet Legation. Several of the new ministers addressed the multitude, along with other representatives of the FF parties and their youth organizations, as well as three priests. They called for "unity and unanimity", "calm and discipline" and "serried ranks and brave struggle" and recalled the victims of "over 20 years of darkness and obscurantism", those who struggled against it, and the merits of the "Union of Soviet peoples and its leader, Marshal Stalin".

In the space of days, Communist partisans and other activists, including released political prisoners, assumed control of the entire country and established the new regime at the local level.

The takeover triggered a wave of extrajudicial violence committed mainly by communist groups against political or personal opponents. Varying estimates put the number of those who were killed and disappeared in 1944-1945 at not less than 18,000.

In 1945, September 9 was celebrated for the first time as Bulgaria's national day and retained that status until 1990, when it was replaced by March 3 (the anniversary of the signing of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano). It even figured on the country's coat of arms between 1948 and 1971.

Historians are divided in their assessments of what happened on September 9, 1944. Until 1971, the event was categorized as a "popular uprising". Then, until the end of 1989, it was redefined as a "socialist revolution". After the advent of democracy, it was called a "military coup d'etat".

The fact remains that the September 9 coup set in place a totalitarian regime that changed the course of Bulgaria's development for decades to come and anchored it in the Soviet sphere of influence.