Petkov, Theodoro

Family

His father was a Bulgarian emigrant, and his mother was of Polish Jewish descent. On the paternal side, his grandfather Todor and grandmother Raina were veterans of the labor movement, were in the BJDP (t.s.) . His father, Petko Todorov, also became a communist revolutionary and in 1923 supported a peasant uprising against the military-authoritarian regime that overthrew the government of Alexander of Istanbul (the uprising did not receive support from the Bulgarian Communist Party , which soon began its own September uprising , also crushed by the authorities).

Pursued by the police and sentenced to death in absentia, Petkov’s father fled to Vienna, where he collaborated with Georgy Dimitrov , and then moved to Brno ( Czechoslovakia ), where he met his wife, a doctor by profession. They left for South America and settled in Maracaibo , where Petkov’s mother became the first female doctor.

Professor of Economics and Communist Partisan

Teodoro Petkov received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Central University of Venezuela , where he then worked as a teacher for 14 years.

Theodoro, like his brothers, twins Miroslav (Mirko) and Lyuben , participated in an underground student movement against dictatorship. In the 1950s, they were activists of student resistance against the dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez : Miroslav was killed in a protest demonstration, and Teodoro was repeatedly imprisoned. In the 1960s, along with his other brother, Lyuben Petkov, Theodoro was a communist partisan, fighting under the command of Douglas Bravo against the government of Romulo Betancourt .

He later joined the Venezuelan Communist Party (CPV) ^[3] . He was elected secretary of the CPV Central Committee, but was soon arrested. On February 5, 1967, together with Pompeio Marquez and Guillermo Ponce, he made a sensational escape from the prison of San Carlos through a tunnel dug into the camera (based on these events, the film “ This Sweet Word - Freedom! ” Was shot in the USSR). Previously, Petkov was already distinguished by original shoots - so, transferred to San Carlos, he feigned a serious illness in order to get transferred to the hospital, from where he went down a 40-meter rope from the seventh floor to the garden.

At the head of the Movement to Socialism

By the beginning of 1971, Petkov left the CPV in order to establish a new party together with other dissidents. On January 14, 1971, a group of former members of the Communist Party of Venezuela (CPV) led by Pompeio Marquez and Teodoro Petkov with the participation of Eloy Torres, Carlos Arturo Pardo, Tirso Pinto, Freddy Munoz and Archelio Laya at the Blind Club of Caracas held a constituent congress of the left-wing socialist party D "(MAC).

The creators of the new party were critical of Soviet communism (while seeing an alternative to it not so much in European communism or Maoism as in the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania), which is why they were forced to leave the Communist Party as a result of disputes surrounding the suppression of the Warsaw Pact by troops " Prague Spring . " In the course of the congress, a split occurred. A prominent figure in the CPV and partisan movement Alfredo Maneiro and several other dissident communists decided not to participate in the creation of the IAU, later creating his own party, Radical Cause .

The newly formed MAS has become the country's largest left-wing force. Petkov was elected a member of Congress and was twice nominated as a presidential candidate. Both times he took third place: in the 1983 presidential election (in addition to his own party, he was supported by the Revolutionary Left Movement and Electoral Integration of Renewal) he gained 4.17%, and in the 1988 presidential election - incomplete 2.75%.

Collections of his articles in 1986, together with the book by Gabriel García Márquez “The Secret Adventures of Miguel Littin in Chile ”, were burned in Valparaiso ( Chile ) by order of Augusto Pinochet .

Neoliberal Minister

In the second government of Rafael Caldera (1994-1999), the IAU was in a coalition with the center-right party of the president, National Convergence , along with a number of other parties, including the left ( the Venezuelan Communist Party and the People’s Electoral Movement ). Petkov served as minister of the central apparatus for coordination and planning (Cordiplan), directing the economic policy of the government. He planned the Venezuela Agenda, a neoliberal government program to reduce the public sector, control inflation and stop the devaluation of the national currency, which was accompanied by the administration of social programs aimed at improving public health and providing child care services for the poorest

Opponent of Hugo Chavez

In 1998, Petkov left the ranks of the IAU, as his party supported the candidacy of Hugo Chavez in the 1998 presidential election . He left direct political activity, concentrating on the activities of a publicist and journalist. Initially led the publication El Mundo, but then founded his own newspaper Tal Cual. She criticized both Chavism and those who participated in the coup attempt against Chavez in 2002.

Petkov made several political books. In 2005, he published the book “Two Leftists” ( Las dos izquierdas ), dedicated to the revival of leftist politics in Latin America. In it, he contrasted the group of center-left governments of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva , Nestor Kirchner , Tabar Vasquez and Ricardo Lagos , to the “bad” left governments of Chávez and Castro .

On the eve of the 2006 presidential election, rumors circulated that a group of intellectuals and liberal middle-class activists were about to nominate Teodoro Petkov as president of Venezuela. On April 21, 2006, he announced his nomination. At first, he refused to participate in the primaries of the opposition, the procedure of which was developed by the Súmate organization, but on August 4, 2006 he announced that he was leaving the presidential race. Five days later, Petkov, who was the third in opinion polls, supported the candidacy of Manuel Rosales, the former governor of Zulia , who was ahead of him.

In a July 2008 article for the Inter-American Dialogue, Petkov described Venezuela Chavez as “a Bonapartist democracy, the only one of its kind dictatorship”, based on the armed forces ^[4]

In an October 2012 interview, Petkov noted that separate democratic institutions such as political parties and a free electoral process remained in Venezuela under Chavez, but a number of aspects of democracy, including the “full realization of the right to freedom of expression,” were in a “besieged” position . Moreover, he stated that “Chavez had more fascist than socialist elements if we are not talking about Stalinism : a cult of violence and death, contempt for opponents, exaltation of the past, etc.” ^[5]

Personal life

On May 12, 2012, Petkov and his wife were robbed by armed people on motorcycles when they left a restaurant in Caracas ^[6] . In December 2012, on the island of Margarita Petkov suffered from a fall, injuries required surgical intervention ^[7] . He died on October 31, 2018.

• "Checoslovaquia: El Socialismo como problema." (Monte Ávila Editores: 1969, 1990) ISBN 980-01-0295-7
• “¿Socialismo para Venezuela?” (Editorial Domingo Fuentes: 1970).
• “Razón y pasión del socialismo: el tema socialista en Venezuela” (Editorial Domingo Fuentes: 1973)
• “Proceso a la izquierda: O de la falsa conducta revolucionaria.” (Planeta: 1976) ISBN 84-320-2509-7
• Del optimismo de la voluntad: Escritos políticos (Centauro: 1987) ISBN 980-263-073-X
• “Por qué hago lo que hago” (Alfadil: 1997) ISBN 980-354-050-5
• (with Raúl Huizzi) “Venezuela en la encrucijada” ( Universidad de los Andes : 1998) ISBN 980-11-0280-2
• “Una segunda opinión: La Venezuela de Chávez: un libro hablado con Ibsen Martínez y Elías Pino Iturrieta” (Grijalbo: 2000) ISBN 980-293-211-6
• Hugo Chávez, tal cual (Catarata: 2000) ISBN 84-8319-142-3
• Las Dos Izquierdas (Alfadil: 2005) ISBN 980-354-170-6
• “The two lefts: A new South-American revolution” Published by Matthew Clark and Daniel Petkoff 2006
• “El chavismo como problema” (Libros Marcados: 2010) ISBN 980-6933-71-0
• “El chavismo al banquillo: Pasado, presente y futuro de un proyecto político” (Editorial Planeta: 2011) ISBN 978-958-42-2581-8