Bulgarians in the GULAG: The Cases of Political Exiles Nediu Sakov and Petar Marinov

Abstract

The article examines Stalin's confrontation with the Bulgarian communist exiles in the USSR by the example of two political émigrés – Nediu Sakov and Petar Marinov, who were arrested during the mass purges in 1936 – 1938 and sentenced to five and three years in labor camps. For reconstruction of the experienced repressions and imprisonment in the Gulag are used published documents from the Bulgarian archives, electronic databases of the victims of political terror in the Soviet Union of the international human rights organization “Memorial”, as well as the unpublished memoirs of the two Bulgarians, stored for many years in the former Central Party Archive of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The comparison of documents and memoir testimonies, which contain a wide range of personal experience, helps to more completely reconstruct the repressive policy towards the Bulgarian communist emigration in the USSR during the “Great Terror” and to expand the scientific knowledge about the Bulgarians in the GULAG.