Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov (Bulgarian: Никола Йонков Вапцаров; 7 December 1909 - 23 July 1942) was a Bulgarian poet, communist and revolutionary. Working most of his life as a machinist, he only wrote in his spare time. Despite the fact that he ever published only one poetry book, he is considered one of the most important Bulgarian poets. Because of his underground communist activity against the government of Boris III and the German troops in Bulgaria, Vaptsarov was arrested, tried, sentenced and executed the same night by a firing squad. He is also considered an ethnic Macedonian poet in the Republic of Macedonia.
He was born in Bansko. Trained as a machine engineer at the Naval Machinery School in Varna, which was later named after him. His first service was on the famous Drazki torpedo boat. In April and May 1932 Vaptsarov visited Istanbul, Famagusta, Alexandria, Beirut, Port Said, and Haifa as a crew member of the Burgas vessel.
Later he went to work in a factory in the village of Kocherinovo - at first as a stoker and eventually as a mechanic. He was elected Chairman of the Association protecting worker rights in the factory. Vaptsarov was devoted to his talent and spent his free time writing and organising amateur theatre pieces. He got fired after a technical failure in 1936. This forced him to move to Sofia, where he worked for the state railway service and the municipal incinerating furnace. He continued writing, and a number of newspapers published poems of his. The "Romatika" poem won him a poetry contest.
With time Vaptsarov absorbed a lot of Communist ideas and started taking an active part in the ideological movement. In 1940 he participated in the so-called "Sobolev action", gathering signatures for a pact of friendship between Bulgaria and the USSR. The illegal activity earned him an arrest and an internment in the village of Godech. After his release in September 1940, Vaptsarov became a leader of a Central Military Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. His task was to organise the supply of guns and documents for the antifascist resistance. He was arrested in March 1942. On July 23, 1942 he was sentenced to death and shot down on the same evening together with 11 other men.
His only released book of poetry is Motoring Verses (1940).
In 1949, the Bulgarian Naval Academy was renamed Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy. On 3 December 1953, he received posthumously the International Peace Award. His Selected Poems were published in London in 1954, by Lawrence & Wishart, translated into English with a foreword by British poet Peter Tempest. His poetry has been translated in 98 languages throughout the world. Vaptsarov Peak in eastern Livingston Island, Antarctica is named after the famous Bulgarian poet. Today, Nikola Vaptsarov's childhood home in Bansko is a museum.The poet's quarters in Sofia are also a museum.
