On September 23, 1947, at around 00:15 after midnight, the death sentence of the agricultural leader Nikola Petkov was carried out. According to the decision of the People's Court, the enemy of the fatherland should be killed by hanging, but declassified archival documents from the ominous 1947 show that the great democrat was brutally killed with hammers on the head, and then hung from a rope.
With the murder of the agricultural leader, Bulgaria leads a black list - in just 40 years, a father and his two sons were killed in a Bulgarian family because of politics. Because of his party affiliations, the liberal, Stambolov's associate and Prime Minister Dimitar Petkov, and then his sons - the farmers Petko and Nikola - were killed.
Nikola Petkov, however, turned out to be an enemy of two regimes - of Boris III and of the communist government, then personified by Georgi Dimitrov.
From August 5 to 16, 1947, the trial against the leader of the democratic opposition Nikola Petkov was held.
The liquidation of Nikola Petkov was part of the destruction of the political opposition in Bulgaria, ordered by the Bulgarian communists by the Soviet dictator Stalin in 1946. This was commented on by the State Security website.
On June 5, 1947, the leader of the united opposition was arrested in the parliament itself, and the opposition BZNS, of which he was the leader, was disbanded. Nikola Petkov is accused of being the organizer of the military conspiracy "Neutral Officer" and in support of the Military Union. The prosecutor's office, which was placed under communist control, attributes to him the creation of an organization that set itself the goal of overthrowing the government through an armed coup.
Before the arrest, the leader of the opposition and the leader of the communists Georgi Dimitrov got into a verbal skirmish. Petkov stated that if he had been such a big reactionary, Georgi Dimitrov would not have sought him out from Moscow to join the Fatherland Front. Dimitrov angrily replied that the farmer would get what he deserved. Nikola Petkov replied that "one cannot govern with vengeance", after which he was arrested along with a large number of opposition deputies (the election of 23 deputies was annulled).
Nikola Petkov was subjected to an investigation by the State Security, and in early August 1947 a staged political trial began against him, staged in the manner of Stalin's "trials" in the USSR. He was accused of espionage and organizing a coup and was found guilty. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
On September 19, the US State Department informed Sofia that diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of Bulgaria was imminent, insisting that Nikola Petkov's death sentence be overturned.
Georgi Dimitrov, however, defined such a possible concession as a manifestation of weakness on the part of the regime. After receiving Stalin's approval, he insisted on a speedy execution of the sentence.
The death sentence was carried out on September 23, 1947 (72 hours after the US request). The communists did not allow a public funeral to be organized. To this day, the location of his grave is unknown.
After the collapse of the totalitarian communist regime in 1989, a monument to Nikola Petkov was built in the garden in front of the church “St. Seventeenths”.
In January 2017, at the suggestion of Borisov's second government (GERB and Reformist Bloc), President Rosen Plevneliev posthumously honored Nikola Petkov with the Order of “Stara Planina” – First degree for his contribution to the fight against the communist dictatorship and for his exceptional civic position and opposition to the imposition of the communist totalitarian regime.