Khristo Stefanov Kabakchiev () (2 January 1878 – 6 October 1940) was a Bulgarian

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

politician,

revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society. Definition The term—bot ...

, journalist and historian.

Biography

Kabakchiev, son of a teacher, was born in

Galați Galați ( , , ; also known by other #Etymology and names, alternative names) is the capital city of Galați County in the historical region of Western Moldavia, in eastern Romania. Galați is a port town on the river Danube. and the sixth-larges ...

, Romania. While studying in Bulgaria and

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

he encountered socialist ideas, and in 1897 he joined the

Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party The Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party (; BRSDP) was a Bulgarian leftist group founded in 1894. History In July 1891, on the initiative of Dimitar Blagoev, the social democratic circles of Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Kazanla ...

(BWSDP). When the party split in 1903, Kabachiev followed the more radical Narrow faction of

Dimitar Blagoev Dimitar Blagoev Nikolov (, ; 14 June 1856 – 7 May 1924) was a Bulgarian political leader and philosopher. He was the founder of the Bulgarian left-wing political movement and of the first social-democratic party in the Balkans, the Marxist ''Bu ...

; from 1905 he was a member of its Central Committee, and in 1908 he was made editor of its central organ as well as elected a deputy to the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

. In 1919, the party was re-organized as the

Bulgarian Communist Party The Bulgarian Communist Party ( Bulgarian: Българска комунистическа партия (БΚП), Romanised: ''Bŭlgarska komunisticheska partiya''; BKP) was the founding and ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria f ...

(BCP) and joined the

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

. Kabakchiev was a BCP delegate to the

Second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

and Fourth Congress of the Comintern, held in 1920 and 1922 respectively. After the failed

September uprising The September Uprising (, ''Septemvriysko vastanie''), also called the September Riots (Септемврийски бунтове),Голяма енциклопедия България, том 10, Главен редактор акад. Вас ...

of 1923, Kabakchiev was arrested and condemned to twelve and a half years' imprisonment. He was freed by an amnesty in 1926, and left for

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

and then the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. There, he joined the International Control Commission (ICC) of the Comintern, which he had been elected to ''in absentia'' in 1924. By 1928, however, Kabakchiev had been removed from the BCP's Central Committee, and he was not re-elected to the ICC at the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International held in that year. Instead, he started teaching at the

International Lenin School The International Lenin School (ILS) () was an official training school operated in Moscow, Soviet Union, by the Communist International from May 1926 to 1938. It was resumed after the Second World War and run by the Communist Party of the Soviet ...

and worked as a researcher at the

Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute (, ), established in Moscow in 1919 as the Marx–Engels Institute (, ), was a Soviet library and archive attached to the Communist Academy. The institute was later attached to the governing Central Committee ...

in Moscow; he also joined the

All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

. Kabakchiev was briefly arrested in 1937 during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

, but was released the following year. After falling gravely ill, he died in Moscow in 1940. The urn with the ashes of Khristo Kabakchiev was buried at the New Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow until the 1980s. In the 1980s, it was transported to his homeland and buried in the

Central Sofia Cemetery The Central Sofia Cemetery () or the Orlandovtsi Cemetery ("Орландовци") is the main cemetery in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. The cemetery has several chapels used by various Christian denominations, such as a Bulgarian Orthodox ch ...

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kabakchiev, Khristo 1878 births 1940 deaths Bulgarian Comintern people Bulgarian Communist Party politicians Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party politicians Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Members of the National Assembly (Bulgaria) People from Galați People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Bulgarian emigrants to the Soviet Union 20th-century Bulgarian historians Bulgarian journalists Sofia University alumni Burials at Central Sofia Cemetery