One of the brightest names among the exiles was the one of Stefan Gruev – the son of the tsar’s clerk office chief Pavel Gruev. After his high school graduation, Stefan entered the Sofia University and later on continued his studies in Geneva where he graduated in law. In 1944, he was ordered to return to Bulgaria, but he refused to do so. Thus he escaped the repression that his family had to suffer a few years later. On 1 February 1945, his father was sentenced to death by the 1^st unit of the People’s Court, along with the regents, MPs and the living premiers of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom.

There were three groups of political emigrants after the Soviet occupation. The first one consisted of those people who left the country in the period 1944-1946. Some of those were diplomats, industrial businessmen and students, who had been abroad even before the occupation of the Red Army. Stefan Gruev was one of them. Others left it on the very eve of September 9, while the third group managed to escape after the start of the red terror. Upon his leaving to Geneva, the future journalist couldn’t imagine that the borders of his motherland would remain closed for him over the next 46 years. His family was displaced to Dobrudja and lived a life of total misery. After 13 years away from each other, Gruev managed to save his mother who joined him in Paris. In the period 1947-1948, he published the Bulgarian People emigrant’s edition in the French capital and later on he became a reporter for the Paris Match. He would interview Fidel Castro, German scientist Werner von Braun, the Egyptian Gen. Nasser and many others. In the period 1957-1977, he was in charge of the New York branch of the magazine. In 1963, he received American citizenship.

It seems like Gruev was among the brightest and smartest representatives of the Bulgarian emigration abroad. He was also a writer with 8 books in English and French on his record. He even reached the Antarctic and the South Pole, but never forgot Bulgaria. He was an active and rebellious anti-communist who worked for the cause with the Free Europe and the BBC radio stations. Stefan Gruev established several organizations together with other Bulgarian emigrants, the Free Bulgarian Centre being one of them. Here is what he said about the center during one of his visits to Bulgaria:

“One of our main goals was to convince the public abroad that the Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian government were not only two completely different things, but that the people were the greatest victim of that government. We thought that all those accusations, thrown at the Bulgarians, such as the murder of Georgi Markov, weapon and drug trafficking etc. were really harmful for Bulgaria. That was why we had to explain to the world that those were not deeds of the Bulgarian people.”

Stefan Gruev's bitter observation on the democratic transition period was that the new Bulgaria’s foundations were made of sand and not of concrete. His assessment proved to be right.

Still, he was lucky – he lived long enough to see the fall of the communist regime and was allowed to return home and to publish his books here: The Manhattan Project, Crown of Thorns, the autobiographic volume My Odyssey and others. He became the co-establisher of the American University in Bulgaria and was distinguished with state orders for his contribution to the popularization of culture and history in Bulgaria.

Stefan Gruev passed away in New York in 2006 at the age of 83, closing a page of Bulgaria’s latest history – lived through, but still ill-judged even today.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev