site.btaBulgarian Author Predicted Nazi Germany's Alliance with Soviet Union a Year before It Was Sealed

The alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was predicted by a Bulgarian author a year before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed in 1939. The book L'Inévitable alliance Berlin-Rome-Moscou (The Inevitable Alliance Berlin-Rome-Moscow) by Alexandre Likoff, writing under the penname Gabriel Leslie, was first published in French (Union, Genève, 1938).

It is now coming out in Bulgarian for the first time. Published by Riva, it will be press-launched at the Central House of Architects in Sofia on February 7.

The author's grandson Yordan Likov, who translated the book from French into Bulgarian, told BTA: "The book is important in the sense that such a comparative analysis was not made in Western European literature until much later, in the late 1950s."

According to him, L'Inévitable alliance... received no reaction to speak of when first published. The author donated a signed copy to the French national library, with a message to the people of France. A facsimile of the original message appears in the Bulgarian version of the book.

Another copy of the first edition is available at the National Library in Sofia, but it was off limits to the public until 1990.

There is little information about the circulation of the French original, Yordan Likov said. He noted that it remains to be clarified why his grandfather used a penname. According to one theory, the author may have expected that he would have to conceal his identity after returning to Bulgaria.

"This is a mystery. If the book existed, why was he not harmed? Despite the difficulties he went through, he was practically not repressed. Judging from the content of the book, one would think he would not have been able to get away with it," the grandson reasoned. He added that the fact that the book was published in French and under a penname probably helped his father.