sustainable proportions in the countryside after the execution of Bulgarian Agrarian National Union leader Nikola Petkov in 1947 and the banning of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1948. By the late 1940s, the Goryani comprised mostly country folk, members of the disbanded opposition hiding from the authorities, former soldiers and officers, former Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists, a handful of former pro-communist Partisans, and communists who had been associated with executed "Enemy with a Party Ticket" Traycho Kostov. Large-scale forced land collectivisation campaigns began in the Fifties. They involved mass intimidation of the peasantry, including threats, extrajudicial imprisonment and torture, and murder. This brought a new upsurge of support for the Goryani Movement. Numbers and scope At first the Goryani were poorly armed and merely hid from the authorities or agitated against them in fear of arrest. By 1947 they had banded into armed Chetas [Bulgarian, чети: bands] in highland and mountain areas. At that time, the overall number of armed Goryani was estimated at 2000 in 28 Chetas, with another 8000 illicit helpers supplying them with food, shelter, arms and intelligence. By the early 1950s, the DS secret police had identified some 160 Chetas, of which 52 were supplied from abroad or comprised hostile emigres who had infiltrated across borders. The movement was strongest in Southern Bulgaria, particularly in the localities of Sliven, Stara Zagora, Velingrad and the Pirin Kray (area). The movement was strongest in the Pirin area in 1947 and 1948. The main Cheta led by Gerasim Todorov controlled the larger part of the Sveti Vrach (today Sandanski) county in the southwest of the area, traversing as far as the Mesta valley and Razlog to the northeast, Nevrokop (today Gotse Delchev) in the south and Dzhumaya (Gorna Dzhumaya, today Blagoevgrad) in the north. In the spring of 1948, thousands of narodna militsia police and troops invaded the northern Pirin, imposing a two-week emergency in the area. Gerasim Todorov and his men were encircled and he killed himself on 31 March. This cleared the area of Goryani for a period. In late 1948 Borislav Atanasov and other former IMRO fighters crossed the Greek border and renewed resistance. One of the very few officially acknowledged incidents involving anti-communist resistance involved the death in an armed skirmish of border guard Vergil Vaklinov on 2 July 1953. Vaklinov had ambushed diversanti who were claimed to have "fulfilled a