BULGARIAN AGRARIAN NATIONAL UNION

also called Peasant Party, Bulgarian Bulgarski Zemedelski Naroden Suyuz (BZNS) Bulgarian political party founded under the name Bulgarian Agrarian Union in 1899. The party controlled the government between 1919 and 1923 and introduced extensive land reforms. Originally a professional organization, it became a peasants' political party by 1901. Its popularity increased after World War I; in the parliamentary elections of August 1919, it received 31 percent of the vote. Its leader, Aleksandur Stamboliyski, became premier (Oct. 6, 1919) and introduced a reform program, which included the redistribution of land to poor peasants, revision of the tax structure and the judicial system, the establishment of a compulsory labour service, and a readjustment of the state's foreign policy. The party's policies had widespread popular support (it won 52 percent of the vote in the elections of 1923), but they alienated other political groups and military leaders. In June 1923 the Agrarian government was overthrown in a coup d'tat, and Stamboliyski and other Agrarian leaders were murdered. Although beset by internal factionalism, the party revived and participated in the Popular Bloc government from 1931 until the royal-military coup d'tat in 1934. After World War II the Agrarian Union provided the core of the opposition to Communization. After the execution of its leader, Nikola Petkov, in 1947, this struggle was lost, and a new leadership converted the party into a loyal partner of the Communists. This arrangement allowed the Agrarian Union to retain an institutional existence and the Communist Party to claim that it had taken a partner in the governing of the country. After the collapse of communism in 1989, the Agrarian Union attempted to reestablish itself as an independent party. Its program called for safeguarding private farmers during Bulgaria's shift to a market economy.