Alexander Metodiev Nakov

Alexander Nakov had started working after his primary studies as a farm worker. Then he left for the mining region of Pernik where, in 1937, he participated in the activities of the libertarian movement and created a group in the machinery factory (in 1960, Machinostroitel factory) in which he worked. In 1941, he was arrested along with 5 other activists by the fascist regime and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Upon his release in 1944, he returned to his home village of Kosacha where he was a group with among others Miltcho Slavov, Asparush Gruzhov, Jordan Borisov and Georges Kirilov. At the end of 1944, he moved to work in Pernik where, together with Dimitri Vasiliev, Bojan Alexev, Laserman Asenov Minev, Maria Douganova and Kotze Zacharinov, he founded the group "Elisée-Reclus". Alexander Nakov was then a member of the libertarian youth and head of the local organization of the Bulgarian Anarchist Union of the south-west, whose secretariat was in Stanke Dimitrov. After the ban on the anarchist movement by the communist authorities, he participated in a clandestine conference, spread self-help stamps and raised funds to help the fellow victims of the repression.

During the large anti-anarchist raids at the end of 1947, he was arrested in Pernik and then sent to the concentration camp in Belene, where, following his behavior described by the police as “very bad”, he was punished several times. Released from the camp on 10 August 1953, he continued his anarchist activity in particular and continued close contact with many activists from all over Bulgaria, of whom he had become acquainted at the Belene camp. During the summer of 1961, he went to Varna where he met the militants Bojan Tidiriv Mangov, Atanase Mangov and Todor Baramov; then to Kolarovgrad where he met Trouftcho Nikolov Trouftchev, to Knegea where he spoke with Trifon Todorov Tersijski, to Debesk with Letcho Todorov Natchev, and to Sandan

Train-adjusting worker at the Pernik Republic mine, police reported that he often met with Dimitri Vasiliev Stojanov, Bojan Alexev Stefanov, Michail Stijanov Mindov, Vladimir Andonov and Ilia Geirguyev Minev with whom he commented on the events, exchanged literature and helped each other.

In the 1960’s, a snitch, Bogdanov, reported Nakov’s following statement: “Observe the events through the prism of a free thinker, who cannot have fallen under the dogmas of present-day communism, and so you will see and understand where the world is going. The Communists have taken all hope from the people and train them by resisting all over Eastern Europe and especially in Poland, Hungary, East Germany. There, the power stands only on the Russian spikes. Good example and confirmation of this was given by the Hungarian events.” In a State Security report concerning him, the police specified: “... The attitude of the individual in question, towards the popular power, is unfriendly, he makes derogatory reflections, undermining the prestige of popular power... The individual in question, as a character, is modest, does not drink alcohol, does not smoke, good worker. He has a good general and political culture, reads a lot, knows Esperanto and is a member of the Society of Esperantists “New Road” in Pernik. He is a fanatical anarchist, who openly declares that nothing in the world can deviate him from his ideas and relations with the anarchists.”

A. Nakov was also a member of Pernik’s Esperantist group Nov Pat.

After the fall of the communist regime, he had participated” in the activities of the Bulgarian Anarchist Federation (FAB) founded in 1990.

In August 2006, he participated in Belgrade at the 79th Congress of the Workers’ Espervantist Association SAT, and on 31 May 2009 at the 4th Balkan Anarchist Book Fair in Thessaloniki.
In 2006, he also published his memoirs, an edition in English available.

Alexander Nakov, who was also a collaborator of the anarchist newspaper Svoboda Missal, died in Pernik on 10 November 2018.