Ferdinand Kozovski

Who was Ferdinand Kozovski?

Ferdinand Todorov Kozovski was a Bulgarian communist politician and Lieutenant General in the Bulgarian Army who served as Chairman of the National Assembly of Bulgaria from 1950 to 1965.

Born in Knezha in the Principality of Bulgaria's northwest, Ferdinand Kozovski graduated from the Reserve Officers Academy. He became a member of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, the precursor to the Bulgarian Communist Party, in 1911. Kozovski took part in the Balkan Wars and World War I as a serviceman in the Bulgarian Army; after the wars, he graduated in law from Sofia University.

In 1923, Kozovski was among the leaders of the quickly-crushed June Uprising, a chaotic agrarian uprising against the right-wing 9 June coup d'état; he also participated in the better-organized communist September Uprising of the same year. After that uprising's suppression, Kozovski was forced to emigrate to the Soviet Union, where he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy and became a reader of military science at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West.

Ferdinand Kozovski took part in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, he headed the Bulgarian edition of Radio Moscow and edited several illegal publications. He returned to Bulgaria after the Soviet invasion in 1944 and the 9 September coup d'état. As Bulgaria switched allegiance to the Allies and took part in the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany, Kozovski was assistant chief of staff of the Bulgarian forces which drew the Nazis out of much of Yugoslavia and Hungary.