The partisan Iliya Karagonov from the Pavelban village of Tazha died at the age of 96, he knew Mitko Palauzov personally
“If we had overthrown Todor Zhivkov in 1965, it would have been different in Bulgaria – real socialism. Because these people were traitors to the idea – both Zhivkov and Khrushchev, and later Gorbachev. They did it cunningly, under the pretext of supposedly good socialism, their actions were aimed at its liquidation. But they did not deny it publicly because they could not. They even accused me of being a Chinese agent, and who came out right? ” This is what Iliya Karagonov from the Pavelban village of Tazha, who left this world at the age of 96, thought during his lifetime. If he regretted anything in his long life, it was only one thing – that they did not remove Zhivkov in time.
Time had changed him only physically. At the age of 18 he was a partisan, at the age of 40 he was insulted by a colonel in a private for the conspiracy against Zhivkov, at the age of 92 he was a member of the Union of Independent Bulgarian Writers and wrote books of poetry, journalism and memoirs.
He complained, however, that age and arthritis had damaged his fingers and he was already struggling to hold the pen.
On July 22, he turned 96 years old. As always, he gathered his friends for a gala lunch and raised a toast with homemade brandy. He had undergone leg surgery shortly before. But he still said with a sense of humor and a little sadness about himself: “I’m fine with my head, but my legs don’t listen to me anymore, I can’t go to my favorite cafe every day.”
Fate had decreed that – on July 20 to celebrate the name day – St. Elijah, on July 22 – birthday. And another thing had been destined for him – to live a life like in Hollywood action. He said of himself that his memories were like swans, white and black. At the age of 18 Karagonov was expelled from the Kazanlak high school as an active remnant and became a partisan. Immediately after September 9, 1944, he was at the front, then rose to the rank of colonel in the army, commander of naval intelligence and a professor at the Military Academy. In 1965 he took part in Gorunya’s conspiracy to overthrow Todor Zhivkov, for which he was dismissed from the army, appealed and sent as an accountant to the cooperative in the town of Kubrat, Razgrad region. After 3 years he was allowed to return to Sofia, where he worked until his retirement in 1986 in the Corecom system.
He was certainly the last living partisan who knew the child from Gabrovo personally, Mitko Palauzov, as the partisans from Tazha met in the winter of 1943-1944 with their comrades from the Gabrovo-Sevlievo detachment.
Iliya Karagonov died in Sofia, with his daughter, on December 30. Today, January 22, the urn with his ashes was laid in the cemetery of his native village. His longevity allowed him to rest forever in a grave with his mother, father and brother.
“They asked me later: why did you become a partisan, didn’t your father be poor? Well, I said, why didn’t you? Then the world was divided. Now they deny that there was fascism. There was, people, and the world had to is being saved “, Karagonov was categorical.
He said that he joined the partisans on September 21, 1943, together with two of his classmates and fellow villagers, who, like him, were permanently expelled from high school – Koycho Karakoev and Kalcho Kalchev. Both died in November of that year.
“In the Kazanlak high school we, the students, were divided into legionnaires, warriors and defenders. I was known as a remnant, and Lyubomir Kabakchiev, the People’s Artist, was the head of the defenders. Then he played Georgi Dimitrov and rose, I became an enemy,” he said. Карагонов.
“My brother was a soldier in Kazanlak and I went to see him. Then they thought we were going to steal weapons from the barracks and flee to the Soviet Union, so they expelled me. It was March 3, 1942, expelled a whole group of young people. Earlier, on January 30, the first police blockade of my home village of Tazha took place, looking for a soldier, Lazar Mitev, who managed to steal a machine gun from the airport in the village of Asen and went underground on his own initiative.
Thus he reached the “Vasil Levski” detachment. Okay, but the boy was from Radomir, nobody here knows him and the partisans took him as a provocateur. He was shot as a traitor, while police set fire to his home in the village of Izvor as illegal. After September 9, his comrades raised the issue and those who killed him were tried. Then, at the beginning of the changes after 1989, when I started writing this memoir, the partisan Kiril Donev, who took part in the murder of the soldier, came to me. He wanted me not to write, it wasn’t educational. “Wait, I’m calling him, Zhivkov didn’t scare me, was it you?” Iliya Karagonov added.
He joined the partisans voluntarily, but in the line of mobilization. There was such a thing in the past – following the example of the Yugoslav partisans, our people decided to form “free territories”, so they mobilized in their ranks people they knew had leftist ideas. Even those who have once surrendered to power – as punishment to atone for their guilt.
In the forest, he chose the name Ruby, like the Kremlin’s ruby pentagram.
“Many were opponents of the mobilization, because unprepared people went to the detachments without weapons,” Iliya Karagonov recalled. But along with this idea of joint action, his Golyamosel detachment (once called Tazha Golyamo selo) spent some time with the partisans of the Gabrovo-Sevlievo detachment. “I met Mitko Palauzov there. When we arrived, he was just cleaning his pistol. I remember how enthusiastically Mitko recited Smirnensky’s Red Squadrons, and my countryman Todor Ganarev played the flute,” the old partisan was excited.
After September 9, 1944, he volunteered for the front. At the end of March of the following year, he was promoted to an officer candidate and returned to Bulgaria – in the army they began to form guerrilla and political prison companies loyal to the new government. “In the military academy I witnessed Georgi Dimitrov telling the Minister of Defense Damyan Velchev that he could not use a double standard because of his order not to hang the tsarist officers who took part in the persecution of partisans, but then fought on The army had to get rid of them, about 1,200 people were fired, “Karagonov recalled.
He himself first joined PO2, the organization that fought against the Communists in the army, and then against the people of the old government. As a spy, Karagonov also had to fight the black market in the army. “Then the Serbs were very hungry, they could kill a man for a piece of bread, and our fighters were tempted to sell them their food. One day a woman came to us in Sofia and brought 1 million levs. She explained that her son, a lieutenant in the back of the First Army, he sent them for a soldier, and she didn’t know what they were. It turned out that he was also selling food illegally, we had to arrest him, “the former spy had not forgotten. They then saved BGN 16 million from speculators.
Before he was ordained in the plot of Ivan Todorov-Gorunya, he was chief of intelligence in the Navy, then a lecturer at the Military Academy in Sofia. In 1953 he came under a foreign name in Istanbul – it was the Turks who celebrated 500 years since the conquest of Constantinople. At that time, a Bulgarian ship loaded with trucks was pushed out of a storm in the fortified area of Chataldja in Turkey. “Our people failed to break through this area during the Balkan War, it was very important for our intelligence to understand exactly how the docks and fortifications are located there if a landing is made. That’s why they sent me – I’m supposed to be a representative of an insurance company. they saw and returned the ship to the Bosphorus. I saw nothing, but we had our men on board and we learned what we needed, our agents wrote reports, “said the scout, who claimed to have patrolled the entire Black Sea coast meter by meter.
“At the time, I was on a business trip, but I returned some of the dollars they gave me for it. I didn’t think I deserved it. My father was shouting, “You fill the bank with money.” I was embarrassed, I even went to the head of military intelligence to ask for my salary to be reduced, and he said he couldn’t because he was going to punish me. if I had submitted a report to General Ivan Bachvarov that I wanted my salary to be reduced, I had reached that point, “Karagonov added.
Iliya Karagonov became a colonel, taught at the Military Academy in Sofia. His doctoral dissertation is on the topic of intelligence in counter-battles, the most complex battles. There is even a scientific publication in a satellite intelligence magazine.
Khrushchev fell in 1964. We were erudite people, we knew how the April Plenum came about, how they committed blasphemy against Valko Chervenkov, creating this cult of personality … We also knew who Todor Zhivkov was, for many he was a traitor. I was not surprised when one day my classmate from the military school and the academy, Colonel Ivan Velchev, who at that time was the head of the office of Dobri Djurov – Minister of National Defense, came to me. and at some plenum to close the door and make the plenum remove Zhivkov and his faithful as Dobri Djurov.
I accepted that for me the actions of Todor Zhivkov then were a counter-revolution. At the same time, Ivan Velchev went to the former commander of the Sevlievo partisan detachment, Tsanko Tsankov-Bonchuk, and dedicated him to the conspiracy. However, he did not accept immediately, seeking advice from Generals Ivan Bachvarov and Boris Kopchev. They are also “at war” with Zhivkov, but it seems doubtful to them that it was the head of the minister’s office who took up the matter, they see a provocation. This is how they came to Boyan Balgaranov, who is loyal to Zhivkov and the orb began to unravel.
On April 8, 1965, according to the official version, Ivan Todorov-Gorunya committed suicide at his home, and arrests began. “I was detained on April 17 at the academy, I had a lecture the same day. Dzhurov called me and explained to the entire staff that they had caught another criminal.
I was under investigation for 37 days, I was released on May 23. A provocateur was sent to my cell, I was not allowed to sleep – a terrible harassment. I was not tried like some others, but I was interned in Kubrat, Razgrad region. There I was made responsible for the transport of the consumer cooperative. I was expelled from the party, my scientific title and the title of active fighter against fascism and capitalism were taken away, I was pardoned as a private, my family was evicted from my office apartment in the center of Sofia. I learned that all the time Dobri Djurov was pressuring me to stand trial, he even wanted to fire the head of the Investigation Department for not doing his job. But I’m a spy, I know how to defend myself, and we hadn’t done anything, “Bai Elijah recalled those days.
He was allowed to return to Sofia in 3 years without 3 months – in 1968. All his sentences were lifted in 1974 by decision of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, he retains his 12 orders and medals with which he was awarded. But he did not have a document for his scientific title, because as early as 1965 his materials in the High Attestation Commission were burned publicly.
He was no longer returned to the army, and was denied the infamous 20 salaries in total upon retirement. With the help of his friend from the military school Boris Manov, who at the time was head of the Sixth Department of State Security and later first secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party in Pernik, he began working in the Corecom system and foreign trade.
“I retired on my birthday on July 22, 1985, when I turned 60. I returned to the village in Tazha. Now I am not a member of the BSP, I am not a member anywhere. When the changes took place, there was betrayal in the BSP leadership. The treasury was robbed and they gave away their money … Alexander Lilov spent two summers here. Wasn’t he ashamed? Then the local socialists came to me to sign to nominate Lilov for president, I persuaded them too “, Iliya Karagonov, one of the last surviving partisans in Bulgaria, had not changed his mind.
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