Germany Austria-Hungary and Turkey

Still worse were the results from the First World War, in which Bulgaria got involved on the side of the Central Powers — Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. The first military successes were followed immediately by exhaustion, hunger and dejection with the clearly apparent material supremacy of the enemy. The Bulgarian soldiers, who had been initially taken in by the noble idea that they would fight for the liberation of their enslaved brothers, fought bravely during the first year of the war, while during the following years they had to stay in the trenches and to go into attack hungry, dressed in rags and worried about the fate of their relatives who were living in dire poverty.

In spite of severe reprisals and executions by the firing squads, the number of soldiers’ mutinies on the front was on the increase. Strongly influenced by the two revolutions in Russia in February and particularly the 1917 October Revolution, the revolutionary moods of the masses both on the front and in the rear were growing irresistibly.The propaganda of the Bulgarian revolutionary Marxists in the army against the war acquired enormous dimensions and soldiers’ revolutionary committees were set up after the example of Russia.

The troops of the Entente, having secured their numerical and technical supremacy, made a break-through in the Bulgarian positions at Dobro Pole from September 15 through 18, 1918. This speeded up the outbreak of revolutionary events which had come to a head. A con-siderable part of the retreating soldiers headed for Sofia with their arms to call to account the ones guilty of the im-minent second national catastrophe. On September 24 the mutinous soldiers took the army headquarters in the town of Kyustendil and went on to Sofia.

Bulgarian Agrarian Party Alexander

The government set free from prison the leader of the Bulgarian Agrarian Party Alexander Stamboliiski and his closest associate Raiko Daskalov, and sent them to reason with the soldiers. Instead of this, however, the two agrarian leaders headed the mutiny. On September 27 a republic was proclaimed in Radomir, Stamboliiski was elected president and Raiko Daskalov – commander-in-chief of the rebel army. King Ferdinand was forced to abdicate and leave the country to which he had caused immeasurable disasters and suf-ferings. The army of the mutinous soldiers came as far as Sofia, but it was routed there with the help of German troops.