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From The Militant, Vol. X No. 27, 6 July 1946, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
NEW YORK, July 1 – Mass arrests of Trotskyists in Bulgaria were today characterized by Farrell Dobbs, editor of The Militant, as “an infallible sign that a blood purge of major proportions is now in progress in the Balkans.”
Speaking for the Socialist Workers Party in a press release, Dobbs declared that the purge in the Balkans is “an extension of the purge now underway in the Soviet Union itself.” The full text of his statement to the press follows:
The Militant has just received word from its Paris correspondent that the reign of terror in Bulgaria has led to sweeping “mass arrests” of “Trotskyists.”
Dr. Gatchev of Ploudiv is among those arrested. Dr. Gatchev, a member of the Fourth International, is a well known revolutionary leader in Bulgaria.
Others under arrest include leaders of the League for the Defense of the Rights of Man.
Reuters dispatches reported June 28 the arrest and imprisonment of the Bulgarian Social Democratic leader, Krstiu Pastuhov. Early in June the Agrarian leader, Trifon Kunev, was beaten by “thugs.” R.H. Mark-Jiam, veteran Balkan correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, declared in an interview in Athens June 27 that people are being “killed by the thousands” in Bulgaria. He repeated his previous report about “concentration camps” in Bulgaria and “executions in the form of legal massacres, the victims of which are placed in unmarked graves.”
Markham has been expelled from Rumania by the Stalinist-dominated government. He and three other correspondents were refused permission to enter Bulgaria.
This ruthless purge of all political opposition in the Balkan countries today, Bulgaria in particular, resembles in many respects the monstrous blood baths which accompanied the infamous Moscow frame-up trials. The purge in the Soviet buffer zone is an extension of the purge now underway in the Soviet Union itself.
It is common knowledge that the interjection of the term “Trotskyism” in a Stalinist purge has invariably signalized the most ferocious type of repression. In the Stalinist dictionary “Trotskyism” not only-covers all opposition but also signifies that the authorities have decided on the physical extermination of all opponent tendencies, including the genuine followers of the assassinated Leon Trotsky.
Stalin’s executioners have for years secretly hounded the Trotskyists in the Balkans. Thus during the civil war in Greece the Stalinists shot down in cold bleed hundreds of workers whom they labelled as “Trotskyists.” The same was true in Bulgaria. After the entry of the Red Army the Stalinists systematically hunted down revolutionary workers and killed them, no matter how heroically they may have resisted the Nazis during the war. Those who survived Nazi persecution fell before the Stalinist firing squads.
The public arrest of prominent Bulgarian Trotskyists is therefore an infallible sign that a blood purge of major proportions is now in progress in the Balkans.
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