Ivan E. Geshov (1849 - 1924)

Ivan Evstratiev Geshov was born on February 8, 1849 in Plovdiv in the family of rich trader. He studied in the Greek school and in the Bulgarian school in Plovdiv. In the autumn of 1865 he left for England where became a financial and political science graduate in Manchester (1869). In 1872 he came back in Plovdiv and started dealing with trade. In 1876 he informed the Times paper about the Ottoman inhumanity during the April Uprising, and therefore he was arrested by the Turkish authority and convicted to death in 1877. He was reprieved with the assistance of the English ambassador in Constantinople. After the Liberation (1878) he took an active part in the setting of Eastern Romalia. He was one of the leaders of the People’s Party by 1883. He became a deputy and the first chairman of the District Assembly (1879 - 1880), and later – Finance Director (1882 - 1883). In 1883 he settled in Sofia, and became the governor of the Bulgarian National Bank (1883-1886). He was involved in the negotiations for signing the Bucharest Peace Treaty (1886). He was the chairman of the First Bulgarian Agricultural-Industrial Fair in Plovdiv (1892). During the Stambolov’s regime he was an opposition, and from 1901 he headed the People’s Party, and after its union with the Progressive-Liberal Party, he led the United People’s Progressive Party. He was a Member of Parliament in the Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh to Nineteenth Regular National Assembly, and in the Third and Fifth Grand National Assembly. He was a chairman of the Eleventh and Fifteenth Regular National Assembly. As a foreign minister in 1912 he prepared the Bulgarian-Serbian and the Bulgarian-Greek contract that formed the Balkan Union. Ivan E. Geshov is considered as one of the perpetrators of the First National Collapse (1913). In 1915 he stated against Bulgaria’s joining to Germany and Austria-Hungary. After the First World War he participated in the fights against the ruling of the Bulgarian Agricultural People’s Union. In 1922 he emigrated to France and worked actively against the government of Alexander Stamboliiski. He was one of the founders of the Constitutional Block (1922). After the military coup-d’tat, performed on June 9, 1923, he joined the Democratic Union. He is of the seven Bulgarian awarded the biggest Bulgarian medal – Sts. Cyril and Methodius. Ivan E. Geshov died on March 11, 1924 in Sofia.