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Dimitar Popov loved to sing and play his guitar …
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He is the first prime minister non-communist after 1946
Lawyer Dimitar Popov was the first non-communist prime minister since 1946. He was born on June 26, 1927 in Kula, Vidin region. He comes from an old family, which for eight generations gave Bulgaria priests and writers.
His wife Maria is the granddaughter of Exarch Stefan – a senior Bulgarian Orthodox clergyman and exarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (1945 – 1948).
As a teenager, Dimitar Popov was a member of the Brannik organization, established in 1940 to educate Bulgarian youth in a nationalist and pro-monarchist spirit.
Because of this “stain” he was hardly allowed to study, but still managed to graduate in law from Sofia University.
Serves laborers and
then about 2.5
years working in a mine
He then became a lawyer for the Association of Private Motorists, which provides transport services.
When the communist government closed the association, Popov started working again as a lawyer in the Union of Bulgarian Motorists (UBA) and was a longtime member of its leadership. As a judge of the authoritarian, he was finally allowed to go abroad, including in capitalist countries.
Since 1972 he has been a judge in the Sofia City Court (SCC). In 1983 he became chairman of its criminal board, and since 1985 he has been chairman of the Sofia City Court.
Popov is a legal consultant for several newspapers, including the weekly Pogled, where he wrote for the column “A topic that excites me.”
He once brought a text entitled “Black Ingratitude.” He commented from a legal and moral point of view on a case from his practice: a fire broke out in an apartment and the neighbor broke down the outer door to save the child inside. After a while, the child’s father asked the same neighbor to pay for the repair of the broken door.
The artist Gencho Simeonov is the constant illustrator of the column and for this text he paints a huge good-natured man who puts a wreath on the head of an evil little man, and at the same time he kicks him in the ankles. Very emblematic for our country text and drawing …
The case for which Popov must have received the most criticism and vicious attacks is the death sentence he issued in 1985 for 26-year-old Todor Dechev.
He is accused of desecrating the grave of Lyudmila Zhivkova while intoxicated. After the arrest, he confessed to two more serious crimes committed by him – an attack on the guard in front of the Sofia fire brigade and the theft of his machine gun and an attack on a police officer in the Hadji Dimitar district.
The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, the State Council, chaired by Todor Zhivkov, refused to pardon the convict, and the sentence was carried out.
Years ago, in Popov’s office on Vitosha Blvd., I gathered courage and asked him about this case. He paused and said only one sentence:
“That was the law,
on it had to
to judge … ”
After handing over the prime minister’s staff to UDF leader Filip Dimitrov on November 8, 1991, Dimitar Popov tried to stay in politics.
In 1992 he ran for president of the country on behalf of the Bulgarian National Democratic Party. The attempt failed and Popov returned to his favorite profession, to books and songs.
He died at the age of 88 on Sunday afternoon, December 5, 2015. He passed away after complications from Parkinson’s disease, from which he has suffered for the last 5-6 years.
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