Cyril, Prince of Preslav

Kirill ( Bulgarian. Kiril Heinrich Franz Ludwig Anton Karl Filip ) ( November 17, 1895 - February 1, 1945 ) - Prince of Preslav, the second son of the king of Bulgaria Ferdinand I and Marie-Louise of Bourbon-Parma , the younger brother of the king of Bulgaria Boris III . Infantry Inspector ( 1935 ), Lieutenant-General of the Bulgarian Tsarist Army ( 1938 ), Honorary Admiral of the German Navy ( June 13, 1917 ).

Cyril, Prince of Preslav
Kiril, prince Preslavski, princes on Bulgaria
Regent of Bulgaria August 28, 1943 - September 9, 1944
Together with	Bogdan Filov Nikola Mihov
Monarch	Simeon II
Successor	Todor Pavlov Venelin Ganev Tsvyatko Boboshevsky
Birth	Sofia , Bulgaria
Death	Sofia , Bulgaria
Rod	Saxe-Coburg-Gothic dynasty
Father	Ferdinand I (King of Bulgaria)
Mother	Marie-Louise Bourbon-Parma
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Battles

Prince Cyril was fond of cars, he drove his own "Packard" . After graduating from the Military School, he took part in the Balkan Wars ( 1912 - 1913 ) and in the First World War , in which Bulgaria supported the Central Powers against the Entente countries. The defeat of the Central Powers in the war caused the loss of the throne for most of the defeated monarchs. Even before the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II , October 3, 1918, the father of Cyril, King of Bulgaria Ferdinand I , abdicated the throne.

When his brother Tsar Boris III ascended the throne, the prince with his father moved to Coburg . In the 1920s he studied agronomy at the University of Prague . In 1926 he returned to Bulgaria, where he began to lead a bohemian life. According to V. Ardamatsky, he informally oversaw all Bulgarian intelligence and counterintelligence and was the author of the plan to liquidate the leaders of the Military Union.

After the death of his brother on August 28, 1943, he became chairman of the Regency Council of three with the minor king Simeon II . In addition to the prince of Preslavsky himself, the Council included Prime Minister Bogdan Filov and War Minister Nikolai Mihov . Metropolitan Lovchansky Filaret was elected the fourth member of the Council, but on October 16, 1943, he refused to participate in it ^[2] .

Prince Kirill was formally considered the central figure, but he had no political influence in the country. General Mihov, who took the post on the recommendation of Bogdan Filov, fully supported the prime minister. The Regency Council was dominated by the head of government, who was nicknamed the “Tsar Deputy." The Regency Council continued the policy of military-political cooperation with Germany , although it sought, in the face of the obvious defeat of the German troops, to avoid expanding Bulgaria’s participation in the war ^[3] . Prince Cyril largely continued the political course of his brother , in particular, at the insistence of the church, he refused to extradite the Bulgarian Jews to Germany ^[2] .

On September 5, 1944, the Soviet government declared war on Bulgaria. The Red Army entered the country. At the same time, a pro-communist uprising broke out in Sofia, which ended on September 9 with the overthrow of the Regent Council and the establishment of the authority of the Fatherland Front. After Bulgaria went over to the side of the anti-Hitler coalition and the coup d'état organized by the BKP , Prince Kirill was arrested.

After a three-month imprisonment in Soviet captivity by the verdict of the People’s Court, he was shot on the night of February 1, 1945 near the central cemetery of Sofia . Along with him, former Prime Minister Bogdan Filov , Lieutenant-General Nikola Mihov , 8 Tsar's advisers, 22 Cabinet Ministers Filov , Dobri Bozhilov , Ivan Bagryanov , 67 deputies of the 25th Bulgarian National Assembly , including its chairmen Nikola Logofetov and Hristo Kalfov were shot. . The bodies of the shot were lowered into the funnel formed by the bomb during the air attack on Sofia , the grave was covered with ashes and leveled with the ground, and after a while a new cemetery was broken at this place. Until 1995, there was no monument to perpetuate the names of 104 executed.

On August 26, 1996, the Supreme Court rehabilitated the prince posthumously, overturning sentences of February 1, 1945 , according to which Prince Kirill Preslavsky and representatives of the ruling elite of Bulgaria were shot by the communists.