George Getchev

A revolutionary poet, writer and publicist, Georges Getchev was one of the best translators of Russian and French art literature. Through his remarkable work as a translator and publicist, he contributed greatly to the enrichment of the country’s culture, apart from his contribution to anarchist propaganda.

Getchev was born on April 20, 1897 in Haskovo, to a family of small craftsmen. He completed his primary and secondary studies in his hometown and higher education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. He joined libertarian ideas at the age of 16. Intellectually awake early, he reads a lot and began to write and publish before 1914.

Founder of the first libertarian groups in Haskovo, he distributed the newspapers, magazines, books and brochures he received regularly. Refusing military service, he took himself out of the law, in 1917 and the following year (1918), he was one of the main defendants of the great military trial against the anarchists.

Of all the collaborators of the libertarian press, for many years, Getchev was one of the most regular, being himself editor of anarchist newspapers and journals.

From 1921 to 1923, he was part of the terrorist group of Vasil Ikonomov. The Communist Anarchist Federation of Bulgaria sent him to the international anarchist congress to be held in Paris after the Bulgarian Congress in Yambol in 1923.

Still outlaws, he returned to Bulgaria in 1924. But after the attack of April 1925, he was forced to take refuge again in France so as not to fall into the hands of the police.

Taking advantage of an amnesty in 1928, he returned permanently to Bulgaria and devoted himself entirely to legal propaganda, and prolonged cultural work, as a publicist and translator of great works of art. In 1930, he launched the anarchist literary weekly Missal I Volia (Thought and Will) which continued to appear until 1935. This weekly made a unique cultural work, creating a whole era in Bulgarian literature. Almost all the best writers, poets and literary critics collaborated there. Some, already influenced, even tried to write as libertarians without really being. It is for this reason that censorship suspended the publication of the weekly.

As a poet and writer, Getchev is the author of several collections of poems and children's stories.

As a translator and publisher, he published, in addition to major works by famous French and Russian authors, several books and brochures of anarchist propaganda. He worked for the largest publishing houses of works of art.

Under the current regime, he replaced the F.A.C.B.’s secretary of international relations, Boris Yanev, after his death in 1957, and continued this difficult, responsible and dangerous work until his death on 28 August 1965.

Arrested and interned at the concentration camp of Béléné, in 1949, when he had no office and responsibility for the anarchist organization, he was quickly released, thanks to the effective intervention of the Union of Writers, of which he was a long-time member.

Suspected of clandestine relations with the foreigner, he was arrested and questioned, without result, by the State Security in 1963.

His death was one of the greatest losses to the movement in the conditions of the clandestinity imposed today.