On June 14, 1923, after several days of torture, Prime Minister Alexander Stamboliyski dies.
The assassination attempt on the Prime Minister is one of the numerous political murders with huge consequences for the country and certainly one of the most heinous. After his administration completely lost support outside the peasantry, and the entire Bulgarian intelligentsia, the army and other political parties stood against him,
On June 9, 1923, a military coup was carried out.
During the coup, Stamboliyski was in his native village of Slavovitsa and failed to react adequately. Meanwhile, spontaneous rural unrest broke out in the country in support of Stamboliyski, which went down in history as the June Uprising. They gained the greatest strength in Pleven and Shumen. Pleven was even besieged and partially occupied by the village groups. Ultimately, the riots were put down by the military garrison and forces loyal to the new government in Sofia.
Stamboliyski organized several thousand villagers and local Orange Guards and attempted to besiege Pazardzhik. No attack order given. The forces are unequal, and after the local garrison did not obey the legitimate Prime Minister, on June 11 Stamboliyski ordered the villagers to disperse to prevent further bloodshed. Meanwhile, the guard under the leadership of Stamboliyski, captured and killed on the way to Pazardzhik several supporters of the coup d'état, as well as villagers who refused to support them. Their bodies are disfigured so that when their relatives arrive to bury them, they cannot recognize them.
This exacerbates the sentiment against Stamboliyski to the extreme.
As early as June 10, the Minister of Defense Ivan Valkov gave a verbal order to Captain Ivan Harlakov Stamboliyski to be captured and killed, and he left with a group of soldiers for Pazardzhik, where the operation to capture him was already led by Colonel Slaveiko Vasilev. Stamboliyski tried to get to the palace in Krichim, but on June 13 he was captured near the village of Golak, after which he was taken to Pazardzhik, "Pamet Bulgarska" recalls.
On the way, mobs of local villagers make repeated attempts to stop the convoy and lynch the Prime Minister on the spot. Slaveyko Vassilev managed to avoid self-mutilation. In Pazardzhik, Vassilev refused to hand over Stamboliyski to Ivan Haralakov. The dispute between the two is under whose command he should be taken to Sofia, as Vassilev has secured a special train for this purpose, which is waiting at the station.
After ordering over the phone that Stamboliyski be handed over to Harlakov, the latter put him in a car and took him back to his villa in Slavovitsa, where he was handed over to Chetniks of the VMRO. There he was killed by the autonomist detachment of the VMRO, led by the Skopje voivode Velichko Velyanov. His body is disfigured beyond recognition.
Cut with a knife and stabbed in nearly a hundred places, on June 14 Alexander Stamboliyski died in inhuman agony. His head was subsequently cut off. After this sadistic execution, the wheel of violence in Bulgarian history turns again, sweeping away the little remaining common sense in our political reality.
Historians recall that Stamboliyski is the third assassinated prime minister in the annals of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom.
The beginning was made with Stefan Stambolov, who was killed on July 15, 1895 in the center of Sofia.
Less than ten years after this political assassination, Bulgaria is struck by the assassination of yet another prime minister. In 1907, Dimitar Petkov, who headed the 27th government of Bulgaria, was killed by his political opponents on "Tsar Osvoboditel" Blvd. in Sofia. He was buried next to Stefan Stambolov.
Dimitar Petkov is the father of agricultural politicians Nikola Petkov and Petko Petkov. Both have their father's fate – were killed by their political opponents.