October 1966 Todor Zhivkov visited France. The delegation stops in Saint-Paul-de-Vence to look at a hotel – school of tourism. Pavel Pisarev is a correspondent of “Labor Affairs” in Paris and accompanies the delegation around France. And while they are in the town, he hears Mara Maleeva arguing with Todor Zhivkov:
– Go to Bashev to learn something, why are you squatting here next to Milko Balev.
Ivan Bashev was born in Sofia. His father Hristo Bashev is a butcher, an immigrant from Prilep.
In 1936, his son completed his secondary education at the German School in Sofia. Then he enrolled in law at Sofia University. Even during his student years, Ivan Bashev sympathized with the pro-communist National Student Union. In 1943, he was arrested and sent to the “Enikoi” concentration camp.
After 1944, Ivan Bashev was in the composition of public figures close to the new government, who formed the leadership of the newly established football club “Chavdar” – one of the predecessors of CDNA, today CSKA.
In 1946, he became a member of the BKP and the Central Committee of the People’s Youth Union. From 1948 to 1951, he was the secretary of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Paris.
After his return to Bulgaria, he became the editor-in-chief of “Narodna Vladjes” magazine. His career rapidly grew upward and from 1951 to 1956 he was secretary of the Central Committee of the DKMS (Dimitrovsky Communist Youth Union).
And then this union is a “forge of personnel”
for the future management of the party and the country.
These are the most difficult years, when the enemy with a party ticket is sought, and the cult of Valko Chervenkov is comparable only to Stalin’s personal dictatorship.
In 1957, Ivan Bashev was sent to work in the Ministry of Education and Culture, where he rose to the position of First Deputy Minister.
He was already a “hewn stone” and in 1961 he became Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. And the very next year, 1962, he not only became the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but also a member of the Central Committee of the BKP. He has been in this position for 9 years.
Ivan Bashev knew six languages. He was highly educated and had an impressive general culture. He looked like a “white crow” among the gray flock of mediocre and uneducated senior managers.
Diplomatically and consistently, he convinced Chervenkov, and then Todor Zhivkov, that Bulgaria needed more contacts and freedom with the Western countries. He especially insisted on improving our relations with Yugoslavia.
Less than two years after assuming this post, Ivan Bashev faced an event without parallel in Bulgarian history, after the Communists took power in 1944-1945.
On July 16, 1964, African students in Sofia attacked the embassy
of Great Britain The windows and several cars of the legation were broken. The militia intervenes after half an hour. What is the reason?
On July 15, the President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, was attacked in London, having arrived in the English capital for a Commonwealth conference.
He was the first indigenous person to lead the country as Prime Minister in 1963-1964 and as President from 1964 until his death.
Jomo Kenyatta was instrumental in transforming Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. And although many white Kenyans accept his rule, he remains an opponent of right-wing activists.
The attacker is the English neo-Nazi Martin Guy Alan Webster, who is only 21 years old. Echoes of the events in Sofia reach all the way to the USA. The New York Times published the following op-ed:
“Sofia, Bulgaria, July 17, 1964. African students smashed windows and overturned official cars of the British Embassy to protest the attack on Kenyan Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta in London yesterday. A group of 50 students pelted the embassy with stones, bottles, bricks and pieces of iron and marched outside the building with placards reading ‘We protest the assassination of Jomo Kenyatta.’
Ironically, the day before the attack, Ambassador William Harpham and his wife were at a private dinner hosted by Foreign Minister Ivan Bashev at his official residence.
The British diplomat finds himself in a delicate situation. He goes to Minister Bashev to thank him for his hospitality and nice dinner and at the same time to express his protest against the act of vandalism committed by the African students. In time, he will admit that this was his most unpleasant task as ambassador in Sofia.
The meeting lasts 50 minutes. Ivan Bashev expresses his and the government’s great regret for what happened. And he adds relief from the fact that there were no injuries or casualties.
The conversation continues within the diplomatic style. Ambassador Harpham says there are many signs that Bashev’s policy of developing good relations between the two countries is not shared by everyone. The Bulgarian minister remained silent, but without a doubt he understood the suggestion. The Englishman is referring to his colleagues in the government led by Todor Zhivkov.
“Some Bulgarians, it seems, do not want to have any dealings with the British. Others want to have contacts with us,
but they are afraid to come to the embassy”, says the diplomat.
There is no way that Ivan Bashev was not impressed by this unorthodox speaking of the ambassador. Instead of protesting more strongly and saying that the British government reserves the right to express an opinion and leave, Harpham expresses his and his colleagues’ desire to improve Bulgarian-English relations.
Minister Bashev admits that, unlike the British, who has been in diplomacy for more than 20 years, he has only been in it for two. During this time, however, he learned that international relations are extremely complex and that the two most necessary qualities are patience and realism.
And Harpham also says that he is trying to help in every way, but the impression was created of an invisible Berlin Wall between him and the Bulgarians. We had to move slowly and not forget that in the past there was never a close relationship between the United Kingdom and Bulgaria.
Unexpectedly, Ivan Bashev met his death on Vitosha on December 13, 1971.
He was an avid hiker, and it is inexplicable how an experienced man like him stayed overnight in the open. The official version is that he got lost in the mountains and became a victim of the white death.
However, Radenko Grigorov, Ivan Bashev’s first deputy in the Foreign Ministry, says years later that Bashev was deliberately taken to a secluded place on Vitosha, immobilized with handcuffs and “discovered” only after the onset of the “White Death”. There were strange bruises around his wrists and ankles.
The white death version was then talked about in hushed tones in society.
I think she is untenable. After the case of the murder or suicide of the former partisan Ivan Todorov-Gorunya, who dared to organize a coup against Todor Zhivkov, the power struggles became more civilized. If Bashev had become inconvenient, he would have been removed as a minister and sent as an ambassador to some country.
In 2002, his daughter – the great poet Miryana Basheva, wrote a poem dedicated to her father:
I’m not saying goodbye to you.
I’m not saying goodbye.
I don’t know you died.
I don’t even want to know.
I don’t want you to be gone.
I don’t want to realize –
went away, as
went
Alone.
We don’t say goodbye.
You will stay by my side
silent.
And our earthly time,
although it is short
will protect you –
nice
my only
alive
I’m not saying goodbye, dad.
