Vŭlko Velyov Chervenkov

Vŭlko Velyov Chervenkov (born August 24, 1900, Zlatitsa, Bulgaria—died October 21, 1980, Sofia) was a Bulgarian communist leader and premier of Bulgaria (1950–56).

Chervenkov joined the Bulgarian Workers’ Party in 1919 and was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League (1920–25). In 1923 Chervenkov took part in an unsuccessful communist uprising, and in 1925 he fled to Moscow. There he studied at the Marx-Lenin School, where he later served as director. In 1941, shortly after the German army invaded the Soviet Union, he was appointed director of the Khristo Botev radio station, which broadcast to Bulgaria. In September 1944 Georgi Dimitrov, head of the Comintern and Chervenkov’s brother-in-law, sent him to Bulgaria, where he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP). He became secretary-general of the party in 1949 and in 1950 was named premier. His position was seriously weakened after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and became precarious with Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation (1956) of the Stalin personality cult. On April 17, 1956, Chervenkov was replaced as premier, but for five years he remained in office as one of the deputy premiers. In 1962 he was expelled from the BCP, but he was silently rehabilitated seven years later.