The Union of Bulgarian National Legions (Bulgarian: Съюз на Българските Национални Легиони) was a right extremist organization in Bulgaria that was formed in 1933.
Also known as the Legionnaires’ Association, the movement was founded and led by Hristo Lukov, a Bulgarian army general who had commanded the 13th Division during the closing days of World War I. Initially identifying as an extreme monarchist group, it later sought unsuccessfully to work with the National Social Movement before finally emerging as a harassed opposition party that was largely supportive of Nazism. In its early days it was known as the Union of Young National Legions and was nominally led by a three man group that included student leader Ivan Dochev.
The movement was initially small, although it did gain some support from Nazi Germany and experienced some growth during the Second World War as a result. The movement floundered after the assassination of its leader by a Communist insurgency group on February 13, 1943, and it did not survive the war. However Dochev and a number of other leading members would re-emerge in the anti-communist exile group, the Bulgarian National Front.
Famous quotes containing the words union of, union, bulgarian, national and/or legions:
“Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
The union of this ever-diverse pair!
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.”
—George Meredith (1828–1909)
“And thus they sang their mysterious duo, sang of their nameless hope, their death-in-love, their union unending, lost forever in the embrace of night’s magic kingdom. O sweet night, everlasting night of love! Land of blessedness whose frontiers are infinite!”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system ... has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.... Now they’re lunch, and we’re number one on the planet.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.””
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)