Mara Kinkel

Kinkel was born in Gabrovo in 1885.^[2] She worked as a teacher in villages near Gorna Oryahovitsa and became a member of the socialist movement.^[2] She went to Switzerland, where she studied literature and sociology in Geneva, completing her studies in 1914.^[2] While in Switzerland, she met several Russian revolutionaries, including Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya.^[2] She married professor Ivan Kinkel [bg],^[1] and the couple lived in Russia from 1917 to 1922.^[2] She later wrote books on Lenin and Georgi Dimitrov.

Following World War II, she was a candidate in the 1945 parliamentary elections, the first in which women could stand. She was elected to the National Assembly, becoming one of the first group of women in parliament.^[3]