Traycho Kostov

Traicho Kostov Djunev (Bulgarian: Трайчо Костов Джунев; 17 June 1897, Sofia – 16 December 1949) was a Bulgarian politician, former President of the Council of Ministers and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

Traicho Kostov, at the age of 52, was sentenced to death by the Bulgarian Supreme Court. He was tried together with ten others in Sofia from 7 December till 14 December 1949. Two days later he was executed. Kostov was the leading figure of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

On 31 March 1949 Kostov was dismissed from his post of acting President of the Council of Ministers and President of the Economic-Financial Committee of the Council of Ministers. Fifteen days later he was appointed Director of the Bulgarian National Library in Sofia. At a plenum of the Central Committee held on 11 and 12 June 1949, Vasil Kolarov delivered an indictment of Kostov's anti-Party activity.

Kostov was accused of tolerating and spreading anti-Soviet sentiment in the Party because of his nationalistic deviation, of using anti-Party methods in the Party and Government leadership and trying to kindle a fractional struggle in the Party, of attempting to cause mistrust in the Communist Party and the Party leader, Georgi Dimitrov. Kostov was dismissed from the Central Committee, expelled from the Party and deprived of his seat in the National Assembly. He was arrested on 20 June 1949.

In December 1949, together with Traicho Kostov, 10 other prominent Communists were tried. Kostov was sentenced to death on the grounds that he had organized the headquarters of an underground organization aiming to overthrow the government by violence, had committed actions aiming at the worsening of the friendly relations between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union and the other people's democracies, had placed himself under the orders of the British, American and Yugoslav intelligence services for espionage, that while fulfilling state duties and instructions before foreign governments he had deliberately performed his services and carried out his instructions to the detriment of the state and he had committed acts aiming at the disorganization of the national economy and the supply system of the country and that he had close political connections with Tito, who had broken with Stalin. Kostov repudiated his written confession and the trial proceeded in his absence.

...
Wikipedia