Traicho Kostov

Traicho Kostov, who had been particularly instrumental in supervising the destruction of the opposition, was accused of treason and of collaborating with Yugoslavia’s communist leader Josip Broz Tito against Stalinism. Kostov’s execution in December 1949 was followed by the purge of thousands of “Kostovites” and…

…László Rajk in Hungary and Traicho Kostov in Bulgaria—though Kostov broke precedent by failing to confess and maintaining this position through the whole trial. As a result, the last of these affairs, the Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia in 1952, though notionally public, was in effect held in camera.