National Social Movement (Bulgaria)
Encyclopedia
The National Social Movement was a minor Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 formed in 1932 by Aleksandar Tsankov
Aleksandar Tsankov
Aleksander Tsolov Tsankov was a leading Bulgarian right wing politician between the two World Wars.-Biography:...

.

Although a member of the governing People's Bloc of Nikola Mushanov
Nikola Mushanov
Nikola Stoykov Mushanov was a Bulgarian liberal politician who served as Prime Minister and leader of the Democratic Party....

, Tsankov had come to be a strong admirer of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 and as a result he set up the NSM to offer a version of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

. The group avowedly preached its own idea of 'social nationalism' which for Tsankov involved support of a national workers' syndicate
Syndicate
A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies or entities formed to transact some specific business, or to promote a common interest or in the case of criminals, to engage in organized crime...

 against class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....

. The party itself failed to find much favour (despite gathering a reasonable following, particularly amongst the urban youth), although its formation helped to speed up the collapse of the coalition government. The group did gain some following in 1934 when a number of members left Zveno
Zveno
Zveno was a Bulgarian military and political organization, founded in 1927 by army officers. It was associated with a newspaper of that name....

 to join other groups, including the NSM. However, under orders from Boris III
Boris III of Bulgaria
Boris III the Unifier, Tsar of Bulgaria , originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver , son of Ferdinand I, came to the throne in 1918 upon the abdication of his father, following the defeat of the Kingdom of Bulgaria during World War I...

, the government of Pencho Zlatev moved against the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...

 groups and as a result the NSM was put down.

The group maintained links with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, as evidenced by the appointment of Tsankov to the leadership of a government in exile in 1944, although it did not gain power.
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