"[2] During the late 19th century, prominent figures of the Bulgarian National Revival, including Lyuben Karavelov and Hristo Botev, first came into contact with anarchism.
Under the influence of Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Bulgarians joined the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) and participated in the uprisings of the Paris Commune and Herzegovina.
All cattle were brought under common ownership, food was handed out for free and money was abolished, while non-essential goods were distributed by a system of labour vouchers.
By this time, Dimitar Blagoev and Spiro Gulabchev had brought socialist ideas back from their studies in Russia, initially influenced by Marxism but later moving towards anarchism.
[7] In 1893, Bulgarian anarchists established the Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee (MTRK) which,[8] through its organ Otmastenie (English: Revenge), rejected ethnic nationalism and called for the formation of a Balkan Federation.
[2] Anarcho-syndicalism arrived in Bulgaria at the turn of the 20th century,[12] when Varban Kilifarski founded a rural trade union, began publishing the journal Besvlastie and translated anarchist works into Bulgarian.
With the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in 1912, he fled to France, where he worked at Sébastien Faure's progressive school and participated in the local class struggle, for which he was often arrested and imprisoned.
In June 1919, the Federation of Anarchist-Communists of Bulgaria (FAKB) was established and, after the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union was elected to lead the government, anarchist organisations were legalised for the first time.
A number of the exiled anarchists joined the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War and returned to Bulgaria to fight against the fascist regime, which was finally overthrown in 1944.
[18] International pressure secured their release and the FAKB continued its activities, gaining popularity and falling under further political repression, with the government banning its journal and forcing the anarchist movement underground by 1946.