/ world today news/ Once a year in February, a mainly youth procession inflames public passions as much as another, equally youth procession, which always takes place in June and is under flags with the colors of the rainbow. However, if it should ever – purely hypothetically – happen that the two processions collide, it will not be without a lot of broken heads; because both are extreme, and extremely unaccepted by the overwhelming part of our society. This last one has no bearing on our topic today, but it came to mind, I don’t know why; probably because it’s apocalyptic.
The concept of “Onion March” is not at all as one-component and one-layered as it might seem to someone at first glance. And not only because in its preparation the marks of the so-called hate speech are completely absent, which makes it difficult to recognize. On the contrary, in all the materials prepared by the organizers of the march, one can find concepts that no one would object to – patriotism, patriotism, heroic death for the motherland.
Shameless exploitation of humility and unselfishness will not be enough for us, however, we want to look beyond the fine words; the essence of the event is what will concern us. There is no doubt, and this should be noted first, that behind the apparently spontaneous event there is some big money – inventing the humility of the Onion March is not cheap, believe me; all this excellently contrived by one who certainly neither did it for nothing nor took little. The march is not spontaneous, nor is it without money. The organization of the onion march is terribly expensive; I say it categorically.
It was not for nothing that we started with the seemingly side issue of the funding of the Onion March; he is not a sidekick at all. Behind it lies the all-important question of who actually finances modern Bulgarian neo-fascism and why; only after we answer this question, we will know which, undoubtedly economic in the end, socio-political forces want to revive fascism in Bulgaria and strive to destabilize Bulgarian society, pushing it to the extreme right.
Unfortunately, at least I did not find any open sources for the funding of the Onion March. The frugal thanks on the event’s website for 5-10 BGN allocated by sympathizers do not sound satisfactory to me at all.
However, the organizers themselves admit that, in addition to personal donations, which I will argue are an insignificant part of the necessary amount of money for the organization of the Lukov march, “organizations” are also involved in the preparations, without, however, finding it necessary to inform us who they are. It also becomes clear that these benefactors have helped organize lectures in eight Bulgarian cities, apparently to entice prospective participants, as well as advertising campaigns, which are only known to be always prohibitively expensive, especially if the advertising materials are to “reach to every part of the Motherland, and beyond it” (spelling preserved).
We were already categorical that we would not be concerned with the words of the organizers of the Lukov march, but with their deeds. The deification of a Bulgarian general, whose personality is extremely controversial, the torchlight processions, the actors dressed in the uniforms of the Bulgarian fascist youth organizations, the participation exclusively of young people who can easily be misled by sweet-talking shamans and who cannot be expected to be all too aware of the origins and nature of fascism – all this should make us wary.
So, because of all this, we will not be concerned with kind words, but the essence of the onion march, and especially its instigators; the answers to the questions we ask ourselves are important in order to prevent a new, even more significant collapse of Bulgaria into an abyss from which we will hardly be able to get out.
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Comparatives
The murder of Alexander Stamboliyski was one of those for which responsibility should not be sought, according to the nine-war coup d’état Alexander Tsankov, in whose mouth Iliya Beshkov put a bloody “Here it is!” in his famous drawing “Reply to the throne speech” from 1923. The severed head of the agricultural leader is also the most wonderful gift for Tsar Boris (1918–1943), the remaining obstacles to the establishment of the actual unconstitutional tsarist regime (1935– 1944) in Bulgaria.
Composite image of the author based on the drawing by Iliya Beshkov
We cannot be fooled by the ostentatious humility and sweeping patriotic appeals of the Onion March, we have already noted this; the fascist form of the event is more indicative for us, and it is precisely this that necessarily makes us look beyond the apparent. If we want to see the essence of the onion march and justify its neo-fascist and pseudo-patriotic character, we will have to go back in time. And if we claim that Lukov March is a neo-fascist gathering, then first of all we have to answer the question “Was there fascism in Bulgaria in the years before and during the Second World War?”.
Whatever the answer, we will have to begin the historical parallels with the end of the agricultural administration in mid-1923; from there the idea of Bulgarian fascism developed, at least that is indisputable. It is the Nine-War coup that is the first historical occasion that is widely discussed when it comes to the Bulgarian version of fascism.
Preparations for the coup began long before the middle of 1923. Some excessively rude actions of Alexander Stamboliyski accumulated hatred for him and for the management of the Agricultural Union, further accelerated the preparations, and strengthened the confidence that it was time for a decisive showdown with the agricultural government. On September 17, 1922, the leaders of the newly formed Constitutional Bloc (on July 6, 1922, from the merger of the Democratic, United People’s Progressive, and Radical parties) led a great fart of Orange Guards and occasional peasant masses. The event was organized by the Committee for Rural Dictatorship, and its goal is to prevent the blockaders from reaching Veliko Tarnovo, where a congress of beet growers has also been announced. The oppositionists were taken to Shumen prison.
The revolutionaries of June 9, 1923 recreated their gathering at the home of Gen. Ivan Rusev (right on the right, right on the left is Gen. Ivan Valkov) from the beginning of June 1923. Seated from left to right are Dimo Kazasov, Kimon Georgiev, Nikola Rachev, Yanaki Mollov, Alexander Tsankov, Hristo Kalfov, Petar Todorov, Tsviatko Boboshevsky; National History Museum – Sofia
In the capital, the preparations for the coup are most thorough, led by reserve general Velizar Lazarov, reserve lieutenant colonel Damian Velchev and other leaders of the Military Union. On the night of June 8-9, 1923, with the forces of the Military Union (since 1919), the People’s Agreement (among its creators in 1922 were also right-wing university professors) and with at least the tacit consent of the Palace, they were captured almost instantly the buildings of the state institutions, the agricultural ministers who are in Sofia were arrested, a government was formed. In the morning, a Manifesto to the Bulgarian citizens was distributed throughout the country (see Sources), signed not only by the Prime Minister, Alexander Tsankov, but also by the new ministers, Gen. Ivan Rusev, Boyan Smilov, Petar Todorov, Tsviatko Boboshevski, Dimo Kazasov, Yanko Stoyanchev.
Even when we examine in detail, as far as possible here, the policies of the governments of the Democratic Alliance (August 10, 1923-May 19, 1934), in power after the coup of June 9, 1923, we can still hardly find anything but similarities here and there with the “classic” Italian model of Benito Mussolini. It seems that the Nine-War coup plotters were rather too careless and not talented enough to build the most labor-intensive part of Bulgarian fascism – the creation of a real mass fascist party. It is the absence of such a party that forces the Bulgarian form of fascism to be defined most often as a “non-classical” form of fascist dictatorship, as a regime that sets itself rather authoritarian rather than specifically fascist goals (for the marks of fascism and its advanced continuing German National Socialism, see, for example, Wolfgang Wippermann, Europaischer Fascismus im Vergleich, Frankfurt, 1983).
Both the Nineteenths, the Nineteenths, and the tsarist regime remained with a limited social base, with exceptional power and too massive political opponents, and their too quick inclusion in the sphere of influence of the “classic” fascist regimes in Italy and Germany masked their originality. Thus, the nineteen-year-olds, the nineteen-year-olds, and the tsarist regime failed to develop into a bright independent historical phenomenon, they remained authoritarian regimes that generously used elements of fascist ideology.
And what is the attitude of Tsar Boris? A statement by Gen. is indicative. Ivan Valkov at a court hearing on August 23, 1954:
“About 2 months before the June 9 coup, the tsar made an appointment with me through Colonel Draganov. The meeting took place in the Zoo in a room … There I found the king. He immediately asked me: “What’s going on with the army?”. I replied that the mood among the officer corps was such that it might express itself in an undesirable manifestation against the government of Stamboliyski …
The next day I reported to the Central Command of the Military Union the meeting with the monarch, and the final conclusion was drawn that the king would not be against the coup. We also set a date – June 8 vs. 9, Friday … And on June 10 … I presented myself to the king. His first words were: “You saved Bulgaria and the throne.” And then I was completely convinced that everything, that is, the coup, happened at his will. When I reported to the new Council of Ministers that Stamboliyski was killed while trying to escape, it was met with indifference by everyone. Alexander Tsankov just got up and laughed nervously. And he said that in such cases responsibilities should not be sought…”
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