People's Bloc (Bulgaria)

The People's Bloc (Bulgarian: Народен блок, romanized: Naroden Blok) was the ruling coalition of Bulgaria between 29 June 1931 and 19 May 1934.

During its time outside government, the Democratic Party under the leadership of Aleksandar Malinov (1903–1934) led and took part in several opposition coalitions.^[1]

In January 1907, the Democrats, the People's Party, the Progressive Liberal Party, the Radical Democratic Party and the Broad Socialists formed the Patriotic Bloc coalition, opposed to the People's Liberal government. However, when tasked with forming a government in January 1908, Malinov formed a minority government, composed solely of Democrats.

In 1917 the entire Parliamentary opposition, except the Narrow Socialists (the Democratic Party, People's Party, Progressive Liberal Party, Radical Democratic Party, Broad Socialists and BZNS) united in the Civic Bloc coalition against the People's Liberal-Radoslavist-Young Liberal government, which had joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. Malinov, seen as a moderate, was appointed as Prime Minister in the last months of the war with the Bloc's support, although his initial government only consisted of Democrats and Radicals. Following the armistice of Salonica, the government was expanded to include all parties of the coalition, except the Progressive Liberals. Malinov resigned the following month and was replaced by Teodor Teodorov and the Democratic ministers were removed from their positions several months later.

In 1922 the Democrats founded the Constitutional Bloc, opposed to the BZNS government, which included the Radicals, People's Progressives and in some constituencies the Broad Socialists. They failed to achieve success in the 1923 election and several of its members became involved in the organization of the 9 June coup. In the aftermath of the coup the parties of the bloc merged into the Democratic Alliance, however the Democratic and Radical parties were reestablised the following year.

The coalition, consisting of the Democrats, Radicals, the Petrov faction of the NLP and BZNS-Vrabcha 1, was founded shortly before the 1931 election, which they won. The democrats took several important positions (the Foreign, Interior and Finance ministries, as well as the positions of Chairman of Parliament and Prime Minister), despite the fact that BZNS-Vrabcha had won a plurality of the coalition's seats. Many of the coalition's parties suffered internal splits and there was a constant power struggle between the democrats and agrarians. The ongoing great depression was only partly alleviated.^[1][2] The Bloc governments are generally regarded as unstable, unsuccessful and partly responsible for the fall of the country to authoritarianism with the 19 May coup.