874.00/5–1345: Telegram
The United States Representative in Bulgaria (Barnes) to the Secretary of State
[Received 12:25 p.m.]
250. Remytel 248, May 11, 6 p.m.46 Following is the substance of statement made to accredited correspondent of Bulgarian Ministry of Propaganda by Nikola Petkov speaking as Secretary of Bulgarian National Agrarian Union.
Without the consent or knowledge of the Permanent Committee of Agrarian Union a so-called Agrarian Party Conference was held in Sofia on the 8th and 9th of this month. Control over the meetings was so strict that even some of the representatives in regional and county Agrarian Groups who had helped to instigate the conference were not permitted to enter.
The so-called Governing Board and Permanent Committees the party elected by this conference are spurious. While my name appears on both, it is without my consent and I can take no part in them.
In connection with this conference I prepared a message to all regional, county, city and village groups of the Agrarian Party which I have not been able to communicate to them. This message informed organized groups on behalf of the Permanent Committee of the Union that the conference in question was the work of one member of the Permanent Committee, Alexander Obbov, and that the conference had been called without the consent or the knowledge either of the Permanent Committee or of the Secretary of the Agrarian Union. The message contained an appeal to the members of the Union to remain calm in this fateful moment for our country and stated the Permanent Committee would summon a regular party congress shortly.
Now that an irregular Permanent Committee has come into being, it is my duty to declare, bearing in mind the need to preserve the unity of the Agrarian Party and to save the FF, that the Agrarian Union and myself as Secretary of it are prepared to consent to the formation of a provisional Permanent Committee for the purpose of summoning a regular congress to constitute new governing bodies of the Agrarian Union in accordance with the Union’s constitution. It is also my [Page 215] duty to declare the internal foreign policy of the Union remains unchanged; sincere cooperation between organizations forming the FF especially with the Communist Party; prompt and effective measures in defense of the laboring class in towns and villages; understanding with the new Federal Yugoslavia of Tito; eternal friendship with the USSR and sincere friendship with the great democracies, the United States, England and France.
Upon learning of this declaration and that the Minister of Propaganda, a member of Zveno, had sanctioned publication, Tsola Dragoycheva, Secretary of the FF, telephoned the Ministry of Propaganda and stated she and she alone “was giving orders” and there would be no publication of Petkov’s statement. To date there has been no publication of it.
Petkov has shown considerable courage in making this statement as to run counter to Communist will, at the present time, is to court imprisonment and rough treatment at the hands of the militia.
Repeated to Moscow as 119 and AmPolAd as 130.
- Not printed.↩