Vlado Chernozemski

Vlado Chernozemski (; born Velichko Dimitrov Kerin ; October 19, 1897 – October 9, 1934) was a Bulgarian revolutionary and assassin of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.

He is also known as "Vlado the Chauffeur". He killed two notable Bulgarian politicians, communist Dimo Hadzhidimov, and IMRO member Naum Tomalevski. Chernozemski trained a group of three Ustaše to assassinate Alexander of Yugoslavia, but eventually assassinated Alexander himself in 1934 in Marseille, and was killed afterwards. French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou was also killed by a stray bullet fired by French police during the scuffle following the attack.

Croat and Macedonian Bulgarian circles celebrated his act. For murdering King Alexander I, Chernozemski was posthumously declared the most dangerous terrorist in Europe. Chernozemski is considered a hero in Bulgaria. The official historiography in North Macedonia regards him as a controversial Bulgarian.

Early life Velichko Dimitrov Kerin was born in the village of Kamenitsa, then in the Principality of Bulgaria, now a quarter of the town of Velingrad. His father, Dimitar Kerin, and his mother, Risa Baltadzieva, were both local peasants. He received primary education in his native village. His mother died when he was 14 years old and the young Kerin was induced to help his father feed the family along with his younger brother and two sisters. Chernozemski joined the military in Plovdiv. During World War I, he served in the engineer corps. After the war, he worked as a driver and watchmaker. As a youngster, he was prone to drinking alcohol, but later reformed and became a vegetarian. He married in 1919. In 1923, his daughter Latinka was born. In 1925, he divorced and remarried. He lived in Sofia until 1932. According to a conspiracy theory promoted by himself, he was born in a village called Patrick near Štip, that was burned down by the Serbian army during the Second Balkan War, and was never restored. His mother and father were therefore living in Bulgaria as refugees. He used different aliases and pseudonyms such as Vlado Georgiev Chernozemski, Peter Kelemen, Vlado the Chauffeur, Rudolph Suk, Vladimir Dimitrov Vladimirov etc. Even his second wife did not know his real name or anything about his past. There are no records of him in Bulgaria beyond 1932, but he was re-identified in 1934, after his death in France.

Revolutionary activity

IMRO A legend describing Chernozemski as Vlado the Driver appeared in Macedonia, since he worked for a company in Dupnitsa as a driver for a short time. In the early 1920s, he moved to Bansko, when the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was re-established by Todor Alexandrov. Chernozemski joined the IMRO in 1922 in the unit of the voivode Ivan Barlyo. He soon became one of the best marksmen in the organization, In the same year, Mihailov became the new leader of IMRO. Chernozemski was sentenced to death before being amnestied.

In 1927, Chernozemski proposed to IMRO's Central Committee to enter the main conference building of the League of Nations in Paris and detonate grenades attached to his person, in order to attract the attention of the world and generate publicity over the question of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, but his proposal was rejected. In 1929, IMRO and the Ustaše started cooperating, with the former training the latter.

In 1930, Chernozemski, following an order by Mihailov, assassinated another member of the IMRO, Naum Tomalevski, and his bodyguard.

Assassination of King Alexander

Chernozemski moved to Italy, where he became an instructor for the Ustaše in a camp in Borgotaro. He was then transferred to the Ustaše camp in Janka-Puszta, near Nagykanizsa in Hungary. The main purpose of this camp was planning for the assassination of King Alexander I. Chernozemski was the instructor of the group of three Ustašas: Mijo Kralj, Zvonimir Pospišil, and Ivan Rajić, who were preparing to assassinate the king. In mid-September 1934, Chernozemski went to Zurich, where he met Ante Pavelić's right-hand man, Eugen Kvaternik. Chernozemski and Kvaternik arranged to meet the Ustaše group at the city's train station. On September 28, the group went by train to Lausanne, where they were given fake Czechslovak passports by Kvaternik. On September 29, the group arrived in France by ship through Lake Geneva, He shot Alexander repeatedly, fatally hitting him in the chest and liver. The shot killed the chauffeur on the spot. Barthou died due to blood loss. They also found a Walther pistol, two bombs, a compass and 1,700 French francs in his possessions.

Legacy In 1934, sections of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, named after him, were founded in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and Shepparton, Victoria, Australia.

According to an article by the last leader of the IMRO, Ivan Mihailov, published in 1971 in the Macedonian Patriotic Organization's newspaper Macedonian Tribune under the headline: "A necessary clarification. What was Vlado Chernozemski's nationality", the following is stated: Chernozemski remains a symbol of lasting friendship between the Croatian people and the Bulgarians, but in no case he is a symbol of any Macedonian nation, such as Chernozemski had never met anywhere in Macedonia, although he had been there for a long time as a guerrilla... We need to point out that both, under the Ottoman regime and in the Great war against Serbia, as well as between the two world wars, not some imagined Macedonians, but only Bulgarians, fought against the Serbian rule in Macedonia. Per Mihailov, anyone who claims he was not a Bulgarian insults his memory.

In October 2000, he was commemorated by a group of Macedonians as a martyr for the Macedonian cause. VMRO-DPMNE also participated in the commemoration. A memorial plate was erected in his honor in Velingrad in October 2005, with the financial support of VMRO-BND and a Macedonian Bulgarian association "Horizonti" (Horizons) from Ohrid, present day North Macedonia. In Bulgaria, there are streets named after him in Blagoevgrad and Velingrad.

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