Zarezankov, Hristo (1890-1938)

Hristo Georgiev Zarezankov was born into an artisan family on 1st January 1938 in Veles, Macedonia, which was then still under the domain of the Ottoman Empire. He attended primary school and then high school primary there. Under the influence of the teacher Andon Shulev he joined a socialist group and then studied at the Bulgarian pedagogical school in Skopje. There he gained a detailed knowledge of socialism in all its forms. He took part in a student revolt there, and was expelled from the school in December 1905.

He worked as a teacher in Veles between 1908 to 1913. By now a convinced anarchist communist, he took part in the activities of the Class Unity workers’ society, and was an active member of its drama group, acting in several plays.

He was a close friend of Yordan Ivanov, whom he had met at the Pedagogical School. Ivanov was a local leader of the MRO (Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, which sought liberation from the Ottomans through armed struggle). After the murder of Ivanov in 1911, he joined the federalist left wing of the MRO, which was led by Jane Sandanski.

He was involved in an expropriation at a bank in Sofia during the First Balkan War. Fearing arrest by the Bulgarian Army, he fled to Switzerland in 1913 and then on to France. There he worked as a manual labourer. He mingled in Russian revolutionary exile circles. After the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917, he went to Russia in December of that year, settling in Moscow. Here he married a Russian teacher, Ekaterina Vinogradova, and worked with her in a bookshop.

He was in a partisan unit in Ukraine up until April 1918.From May 1918 to March 1919, he worked as a deliverer of literature to both the front and the rearguard of the Red Army. From May 1919 to August 1922 he worked as an employee in Poltava. There he joined the Red Army and fought the White forces of Baron Wrangel.

In 1922 he moved back to Moscow and worked as the assistant manager of the bookshop of the Union for Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda, Golos Truda (Voice of Labour). He worked there until 1929, when this group was repressed. The following year he was arrested and spent a month and a half in the Butirky prison. He was released from there after having publicly recanted his anarchism in the pages of Pravda.

In 1930-1931, he worked at the State Publishing House of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), where he selected articles for publication as an editor. From May 1931 to May 1932, he was the manager of a book shop, and then until 1933, assistant manager of a book shop.

He was under constant surveillance by the security services. This resulted in his arrest again, on February 17th 1933, as it appears he still had anarchist inclinations and did not stop the sale and purchase of books by Mikhail Bakunin. On April 10th he was sentenced to three years of exile. He served this at Kustanai in Kazakhstan. He worked as a bookkeeper there, and as chair of the Court of Comrades.

Immediately after his return from exile, on October 28, 1935, he was again sentenced to three years of imprisonment and internal exile.. The stress of this caused him to lose his speech and his hair turned white. He served the exile in Minusinsk in eastern Siberia, where he again worked as a bookkeeper.

His final arrest took place on November 6th, 1937. On April 11, 1938, as a former anarchist and member of an anti-Soviet organisation, he was sentenced to death with confiscation of property. He was shot on May 4, 1938 in Minusinsk. His family was informed in 1943 that Zarezankov had died of stomach cancer.

Nick Heath

Sources:
https://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Христо_Зарезанков/