A Bulgarian was supposed to kill the German ambassador in Ankara, Franz von Papen, reports 24chasa.bg, but the bomb exploded in his hands and tore him apart.
They call General Pavel Sudoplatov the chief saboteur and terrorist of the USSR. He is a specialist in sabotage, assassination and kidnapping. Heads the network of Soviet agents around the world.
For 32 years he worked in the system and state security bodies of the Soviet Union, under the direct leadership of Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria.
In the 1930s, Sudoplatov was deputy head of the foreign department of the NKVD. During the war, he was the head of the Fourth (intelligence-sabotage) department of the NKVD-NKGB.
There are quite a few Bulgarians in Sudoplatov’s agent network. Their exact number is hidden somewhere in the Russian archives of that time. He writes about the Bulgarians and the operations in which they participate in his book “Kremlin and Lubyanka. Special operations 1930-1950”. However, the author does not name them by their real names, but by their agency pseudonyms.
In 1942, Stalin decided that the German ambassador in Ankara, Franz von Papen, should be killed. There are deliberate rumors that he will head the new government of Germany if the Wehrmacht generals succeed in eliminating Hitler.
This makes it possible to conclude a separatist peace between Germany, England and the USA. However, such an agreement would limit Soviet influence in the future European alliance.
A Bulgarian, an agent of the NKVD, was chosen as the executor of the wet order, but Sudoplatov does not even mention his code name. The assassination failed because the Bulgarian turned out to be very nervous and chaotic in his actions and the bomb exploded in his hands. He died on the spot, and Von Papen escaped with a few minor wounds.
At the beginning of 1946, the diplomat was brought before the International Military Court in Nuremberg, but on October 1, 1946, he was acquitted of all charges. In February 1947, the German Denazification Court sentenced him to 8 months in prison as a major Nazi war criminal. Von Papen appealed the sentence and in January 1949 he was released.
In the 1950s, he tried unsuccessfully to return to politics. He spent his last years in Benzenhofen Castle, where he wrote several books and memoirs. Died May 2, 1969.
In 1937, the death sentence of a famous Soviet illegal spy was signed
in Western Europe codenamed Rice. He appropriates the money given to him for operational needs and deposits it in a bank. He takes shelter in Paris, but begins to lead a lavish and baronial lifestyle. Soon other Soviet agents tracked him down.
His murderers were determined to be the Bulgarians with the agent names Afanasiev and his brother-in-law Pravdin. They were ordered to liquidate Rice in Switzerland. The two find him in a small restaurant in Lausanne.
They sit at his table, pretend to be businessmen, and begin to draw him. Before long they stage a scandal and a beating, push him outside and stuff him into their car. Three kilometers from the restaurant, they shot him and threw his body into the ditch.
Later, Afanasiev and Pravdin were invited to Sudoplatov’s office and awarded with orders. Pravdin’s mother, who lives in Paris, receives a lifetime pension by special decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
Afanasiev was promoted to intelligence officer, where he served until 1953. He was sent on secret missions in Switzerland and other European countries. And Pravdin was appointed to the publishing house for foreign literature in Moscow and worked until his death in 1970.
In his book, Gen. Pavel Sudoplatov calls Ivan Vinarov “my good friend”. And it describes how agents Vinarov and Eitingon in the 1920s came into contact with Richard Sorge – the legendary Soviet intelligence officer in Tokyo. But both the Japanese and the Germans consider him a double agent.
Ivan Vinarov is perhaps the most famous Bulgarian Soviet military intelligence officer
Colonel of the Red Army, adviser in the Chinese army and lieutenant general of the Bulgarian army.
He was born on January 11, 1896 in the city of Pleven, Bulgaria. He participated in the First World War and in the Vladai uprising in 1918. For his participation in the terrorist military organization of the BKP in 1921, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
In 1922 he escaped from prison and emigrated to the Soviet Union. He studied at the Higher Party School of the CPSU(b), and became a member of the party. From April 1924 to November 1925, he was part of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. He deals with the transfer of weapons to the Bulgarian communists, with which they carry out a series of terrorist acts. The biggest was the attack on the church “Sveta Nedelya”.
From April 1929 to June 1930, he took an intelligence improvement course and became chief resident in Austria.
Responsible for it and for Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. In 1933 he returned to the Soviet Union and in 1936 he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow.
From December 1936 to March 1938, he was head of the intelligence organization in Paris. In July 1938 he was dismissed from the Red Army, but in June 1940 he was rehabilitated.
From 1941 to 1944, he prepared Bulgarian political emigrants for waging a partisan war in Bulgaria. In 1941-1942, he performed an intelligence mission in Turkey.
Then he became Georgi Dimitrov’s adviser on intelligence matters. In May 1944 he was sent to Montenegro and joined the partisans in Yugoslavia.
After September 9, 1944, Ivan Vinarov was briefly a member of the Politburo, but by order of Georgi Dimitrov, he was removed from its composition to organize intelligence in the State Security – he knows best about this work. He also became a representative of the BKP in the command of the Third Ukrainian Front, as well as head of the Military Department of the Central Committee of the BKP.
From 1945 to 1949, he commanded the Labor Service, the predecessor of the Construction Troops. In 1949-1951 he was the assistant minister of construction and roads, he also became a minister in the first government of Chervenkov.
At the end of 1952, Vinarov was removed from the government for financial violations
He authorized the payment of salaries above the planned ones in his subordinate enterprises. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison.
On September 14, 1957, he was appointed first deputy minister of the Ministry of Communal Economy, Public Works and Roads. In 1959, the ministry was closed and the “Roads” department was created, which he headed.
In 1960, Vinarov was promoted to lieutenant general, and in 1964 he received the title “Hero of Socialist Labor”.
After his retirement, he lived in a small house in “Kailaka” park. From 1958 until his death, he was a People’s Representative from Pleven. He is credited with almost quadrupling the protected park territory.
His are also the ideas for the construction of dams and the creation of the Vit irrigation system. For his contribution to the development of Pleven, he was declared an honorary citizen. He died on July 25, 1969 in Sofia.
The Bulgarian ambassador to Moscow, Ivan Stamenov, is also an agent of the NKVD
He was born in Sofia in 1898. He graduated in law at Sofia University and in 1925 was appointed head of the Information Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He married a niece of Alexander Malinov. When Malinov became prime minister in 1931, he sent Stamenov as director of the royal legation in Rome.
From 1935, Stamenov was the first secretary of our embassy in Paris. On July 1, 1940, he was appointed Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Moscow. There are two versions of his recruitment. According to one, he was recruited by the experienced intelligence officer Zhuravlev in 1934, when he was third secretary in our embassy in Rome. He was promised a personal pension for the rest of his life.
The second version says that Pavel Sudoplatov himself, then deputy head of one of the most important secret services – the international secret-political department of the KGB, attracted him to Moscow as an agent.
Wherever the recruitment took place, it was already known that Stamenov was an outspoken Russophile and a supporter of the Slavic idea: “He sympathized with the Soviet Union and cooperated with us for purely patriotic reasons,” Sudoplatov wrote in his memoirs. And he adds: “Stamenov was convinced of the need for a permanent union between Bulgaria and the USSR and saw it as the only guarantee for the protection of Bulgarian interests in the Balkans and in European politics in general…”.
In the summer of 1944, Ivan Bagryanov’s government wanted to recall him, but encountered diplomatic obstacles from the Soviet side.
One of the strangest stories in the relations between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union is connected with the name of Ivan Stamenov. Our ambassador is involved in a secret diplomatic probe with Tsar Boris the Third and a disinformation war between the Russians and the Germans.
Photo: Ivan Vinarov – colonel of the Red Army, adviser in the Chinese army and lieutenant general of the Bulgarian army
