Nikola Hristov Geshev ( bg, Никола Христов Гешев) (13 April 1896 – 1944 probably) was a famous
Bulgaria
Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...
n
policeman
A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...
between the two World Wars. A native of Sofia, Geshev had fought in the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
As a youngster he became interested in
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
for a short time. After the end of the war he traveled to Fascist Italy where he was impressed by
Benito Mussolini and the fascist state. When he returned to Bulgaria he started to work in the Police. He reached his peak in the end of the 1930s, when he became commander of second department of the Bulgarian Secret Police. He was known as a "super policeman" and was a strong enemy of the
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; bg, Българска Комунистическа Партия (БКП), Balgarska komunisticheska partiya (BKP)) was the founding and ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 198 ...
. In 1942 Geshev succeed to break the Central committee of the Communist Party. Furthermore, he introduced his own agents inside the Bulgarian Communist Party. Some sources prove that even the communist leader of Bulgaria
Todor Zhivkov
Todor Hristov Zhivkov ( bg, Тодор Христов Живков ; 7 September 1911 – 5 August 1998) was a Bulgarian communist statesman who served as the ''de facto'' leader of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB) from 1954 until 1989 ...
was an agent of Geshev. The same goes for many other communist politicians. After the Soviets took over Bulgaria, Geshev's destiny is unknown. There are many theories, but the most common of them say that either he was killed near
Plovdiv by partisans or he fled to Turkey and then to West Germany. Less common versions of his destiny made him working for the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
or for the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
. During the Cold War some of the communist leaders of Bulgaria were afraid that if Geshev become an agent of the KGB he could show his records.
Some Bulgarian writers have written that Geshev lived until 1984 in a Rancio near Munich, West Germany.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Geshev, Nikola
1896 births
Bulgarian anti-communists
Bulgarian police officers
1980s deaths
Year of death unknown
People from Sofia