He attempted to raise a rebellion against the new government, but was captured by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which detested him for renouncing Bulgarian national interest on the region of Macedonia, was brutally tortured, and killed.

When the regime released Stamboliyski from prison, it did so with the hope that he would contain the growing unrest within the army, which at that time was essentially in full rebellion and heading for Sofia.

[4] The rebellion, centered to the west of Sofia in the town of Radomir threatened to develop into a national revolution, but the movement for a new, agrarian republic was quickly eliminated due to several factors and was left without the sufficient means to bring about the change it desired.

Unlike many of his supporters, Stamboliyski was able to escape the fate of imprisonment or execution and, instead, went into hiding until he was to re-surface in the political arena during the reign of Tsar Boris III.

The movement, however, could not be considered a total failure by the Agrarian Union as it was successful in eliminating the rule of Tsar Ferdinand, who fled Bulgaria by train on 3 October 1918.

By March 1920, however, Stamboliyski was able to form a solely BANU government with another decisive election victory and some tactical manipulation of the parliamentary system (common practice at the time).

From his complete acquisition of power in March 1920, until his death on 14 June 1923, Stamboliyski ruled Bulgaria with a strong personality leading many to remember him as a kind of strongman, dictator, or thug.

[citation needed] Stamboliyski's government immediately faced pressures from the political left and right, a harsh international occupation force, debt amounting to a “preposterous sum”,[5] as well as national problems such as food shortages, general strikes, and a great flu epidemic.

[6] Part of his objective was to offer each member of the dominant group an equitable distribution of property and access to the cultural and welfare facilities in all villages.

The local BANU cooperative organizations known as the Zemedelski Druzhbi (Agrarian fellowships) were to play a vital role in linking the peasant economy to the national and international markets in addition to offering the benefits of large scale agriculture without resorting to Soviet style collectivization.

In foreign policy, Stamboliyski abided by the terms he helped set in the peace treaty signed at Neuilly-sur-Seine in November 1919, which was eventually exploited by the nationalist factions of Bulgaria as he failed to lessen the outstanding reparations payments until 1923.

Stamboliyski rejected territorial expansion and aimed at forming a Balkan federation of agrarian states, a policy which began with a détente with Yugoslavia.

Being ardently anti-war himself he kept the army below the low level set by the Neuilly treaty, further angering the military by restriction their social status and opportunities for advancement.

On February 2, 1923, Stamboliyski and three of his ministers survived an assassination attempt in the National Theater carried out by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).

[7] On 4 June 1923 - just few days before the coup, the internal minister Hristo Stoyanov said that if someone kills Stamboliyski or some other leader of BANU "the Pirin region and maybe Kystendil and the capital will look like graveyards.

On March 23, 1923, he signed the Treaty of Niš with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and undertook the obligation to suppress the operations of the IMRO carried out from Bulgarian territory.

[10] On 9 June 1923, Stamboliyski's government was overthrown by a coup composed of the right-wing factions of the Military League, IMRO, the National Alliance, and the army led by Aleksandar Tsankov.