Napoleons to Exile & Back

Napoleons to Exile & Back

The rocky isle of Saint Anastasia in the Black Sea is Bulgaria's Elba. One dawn last week in Sofia, before the hordes of milch goats were out on the streets, police burst into the homes of two Bulgar would-be Napoleons, dragged them from their beds, gave them each a few minutes to dress, bundled them off to Saint Anastasia.

Bold, black-bearded Great Exile Professor Alexander Tsankoff staged a successful machine-gun coup in 1923 and was virtual master of Bulgaria as Premier for the next five years. His companion in banishment, Lieut.-Colonel Kimon Gueorguieff, came in as Premier last May at the head of an Army officers' junta that promised to end political bickerings in Bulgaria. Last week these two had hardly set out before Gueorguieff adherents pulled so many potent wires that the Cabinet of Premier General Petko Zlateff collapsed, resigned. The Army clique was hopelessly split. Result: Little Tsar Boris found himself again the strongest man in Bulgaria. His Majesty called in a 70-year-old friend of the Royal Family, M. Andrew Tocheff, seasoned Bulgar diplomat. When he failed to win support for a Cabinet after three days, the Tsar made him Premier anyhow by decree. "This will be a transitory Cabinet," said Royalty's old Premier, "to facilitate a return to normal political conditions."

The Army clique began fulminating so many different plots to overthrow the "transitory Cabinet" that this week Tsar Boris called a score of Army bigwigs to the Palace. They were still defiant. Whereupon the Little Tsar summoned a detachment of military school cadets who herded the grizzled officers into confinement.

Before he proceeded to the work of "normalizing" Bulgaria, Boris snatched Tsankoff and Gueorguieff back from their romantic exile.

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