No satellite leader tried harder to please his Soviet masters

[Time magazine Monday 30 april 1956]

No satellite leader tried harder to please his Soviet masters than Bulgaria's Premier Vulko ("Wolf") Chervenkov. When Stalin denounced Tito, Moscow-trained Chervenkov denounced Tito. He personally directed the trial of Traicho Kostov, who was hanged in 1949 as a "Titoist spy." Chervenkov made Bulgaria into the most docile of Soviet satellites, had himself referred to as "the most faithful pupil of Stalin," plastered the country with his own picture labeled "Our Beloved Leader."

But cold-eyed, paunchy Chervenkov proved a little slow to toe the new post-Stalin line, slow to apologize to Tito and to repudiate "the cult of the individual." Three weeks ago the Bulgarian Politburo charged him with "violation of legality in the trial of Kostov," pronounced Kostov posthumously innocent, and freed his accomplices. Last week Chervenkov's comrades deposed him as Premier, relegated him to one of four Deputy Premiers. His successor: dandified Anton Yugov, 52, a home-grown hatchet man who, as Interior Minister in 1945, admittedly executed 2,000 political enemies. Tito's Yugoslavs will presumably find Yugov more friendly than the Wolf. Bulgarians are unlikely to notice much difference.

The floodlights in the Sofia courtroom came up full force, concentrating on the miserable defendant in the dock. The court asked Traicho Kostov, once Bulgaria's No. 2 Communist, if he wished to make a final statement. Earlier in the trial Kostov had refused to play his assigned role, had denied being guilty of espionage and treason against Bulgaria (TIME, Dec. 19). This was his last chance to redeem himself—and he rejected it. "I must say once again," he began, "that I was never a police agent, never an imperialist spy . . ." Hisses and catcalls from the Communist...