St Nedelya Church Assault - Direct Consequences

Direct Consequences

The evening after the assault, martial law was declared. The attack caused a wave of violent repressions organized by the Military Union with the government's tacit approval. During the following two weeks, approximately 450 people were killed without being sentenced, including figures like poet Geo Milev and journalist Yosif Herbst. (A mass grave of those killed in 1925 was discovered in the 1950s during the construction of a dam, and the corpse of Geo Milev was identified by his glass eye - he had lost an eye in World War I.) Many other communists were heavily judged for taking part in the organization.

The MO leaders Kosta Yankov and Ivan Minkov were among those assassinated. A few of the organizers of the attack, such as Dimitar Zlatarev, Petar Abadzhiev and Nikola Petrov, managed to escape to the Soviet Union through Yugoslavia. Abandoned by his party, Petar Zadgorski surrendered to the police and made a confession.

The assault trial was up before a military court in Sofia between 1 and 11 May 1925. Petar Zadgorski, Lieutenant-Colonel Georgi Koev, who unsuccessfully attempted to hide Ivan Minkov, and Marko Fridman, an MO section leader, were all sentenced to death. Stanke Dimitrov, Petar Abadzhiev, Dimitar Grancharov, Nikolay Petrini and Hristo Kosovski received capital punishment by default, with the last three of those having already been killed in the previous weeks.

Marko Fridman, the highest-ranked individual of those accused, confessed that the organization was financed and supplied with weaponry from the Soviet Union, but pinned the ultimate responsibility for the attack on Kosta Yankov and Ivan Minkov, who, according to Fridman, acted without the BCP management's agreement.