IN BULGARIAN AFFAIRS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 32, 7 August 1923, Page 7

IN BULGARIAN AFFAIRS

AGITATION AMONG PEASANTS

ZANKOFF REGIME MENACED,

(UNITED PRESS ASSDCIATION.—COPIRIOHT.)

(PUBLISHED IN THE TIMES.)

(Received 7«i August, 10 a.m.)

LONDON, 6th August. A special corespondent of "The Times" in Sofia says that the relations between the Zankoff Government and the Comumnists are daily becoming more strained. The Communist leaders are spreading propaganada among the peasants, to iucite them against the authorities, and have also appealed to non-Communist artisans and workmen, inviting them to collaborate against the present regime. News from the provinces indicates that the agrarian class is recovering from the fright caused by the events of June, and is beginning to reorganise, showing an unfavourable disposition towards the Government.

The events of Juno referred to in the message were those of the coup d'etat which overthrew the ministry headed by Stambouliski, whose Ministers were arrested at the outset. Stambouliski, who had the confidence of the peasants and other agrarians, was generally recognised as a willing collaborator with the Allies in the settlement o£ Balkan problems. The rising was apparently engineered by, among others, the old bourgeois militarists, who found the example of the Kemalists a, poworful aid in stirring up the population to realise the efficacy of the sword as a political factor. Later it was stated that Stambouliski's papers revealed a plot to remove King Boris and to establish a Jugo-Slav Empire which should include Bulgaria, and also to wipe out the Bulgarian intelligentsia, who shared in the rising that destroyed the Stambouliski regime. Zankoff, who is Premier under the new order, was assisted in the coup by Macedonian revolutionaries; a.nd .the whole affair was a cause of much disquietude, as it was regarded, as creating a situation that might lead to a new war in the Balkans.