monarch predecessor successor death_date birth_place death_place party ethnicity office birth_date term_start birthname image article_title term_end name
boris iii teodor teodorov aleksandar tsankov 14 june 1923 slavovitsa , pazardzhik province , bulgaria slavovitsa , pazardzhik province , bulgaria bulgarian agrarian people 's union bulgarian 20th prime minister of bulgaria 1 march 1879 14 october 1919 aleksandar stamboliyski al.stamboliiski.jpg aleksandar stamboliyski
 9 june 1923 aleksandar stamboliyski
aleksandar stamboliyski

aleksandar stamboliyski -lrb- , variously transliterated -rrb- -lrb- march 1 , 1879 -- june 14 , 1923 -rrb- was the prime minister of bulgaria from 1919 until 1923 .
stamboliyski was a member of the agrarian union , an agrarian peasant movement which was not allied to the monarchy , and edited their newspaper .
he opposed the country 's participation in world war i and its support for the central powers .
in a famous incident during 1914 stamboliyski 's patriotism was challenged when members of the bulgarian parliament questioned whether he was bulgarian or not , to which he shouted in response `` i am neither a bulgarian nor a serb , i am a south slav -lrb- yugoslav -rrb- ! '' .
this statement relates to his belief in a balkan federation which would unite the region and supersede many of the national identities which existed at the time .
he was court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison in 1915 .
in 1918 , with the defeat of bulgaria , tsar ferdinand abdicated in favor of his son tsar boris iii who released stamboliyski from prison .
he joined the government in january , 1919 , and was appointed prime minister on october 14 of that year .
on march 20 , 1920 , the agrarian union won national elections and stamboliyski was confirmed as prime minister .
during his term in office , stamboliyski made a concerted effort to improve relations with the rest of europe .
this resulted in bulgaria becoming the first of the defeated states to join the league of nations in 1920 .
though popular with the peasants , he antagonized the middle class and military .
many considered him to be a virtual dictator or a peasant thug .
he was ousted in a military coup on june 9 , 1923 .
he attempted to raise a rebellion against the new government , but was captured by the imro , who detested him for renouncing bulgarian claims on the territory of macedonia , was brutally tortured , and killed .
born to a farmer , aleksandar stamboliyski spent his childhood in the bulgarian village of slavovitsa , the same village where he would later gather several thousand insurrectionists from the region and advance against the town of pazardzhik .
however , before this grand counter-insurgence was to transpire , stamboliyski had to work himself up the ranks of the nation 's political scene as the leader of the bulgarian agrarian people 's union .
although successful in his political ambition of acquiring the highest political office of the state , the unstable political atmosphere of bulgaria in the early inter-war years ultimately contributed to stamboliyski 's demise .
