The Balkan Wars and World War I

The Interwar Period and World War II

When the tide of war turned against the Germans in 1943, German dictator Adolf Hitler attempted to force Bulgaria to declare war on the USSR. In August 1943, after returning from a meeting with Hitler, Czar Boris died under mysterious circumstances and was succeeded by his six-year-old son, Simeon II, and a pro-German government under Dobri Bozhilov. An anti-German resistance movement organized by the Communists and the Agrarians opposed the Bozhilov regime, which fell in May 1944. The succeeding government severed its ties with Germany, but it was too late. The USSR formally declared war on Bulgaria on September 5. No fighting occurred, and the Bulgarian government subsequently asked the USSR for an armistice; Bulgaria, moreover, declared war on Germany on September 7. The armistice was agreed to by the USSR on September 9, and under the protection of Soviet forces a government subservient to the USSR was immediately established. The armistice, signed by the USSR, the United States, and Great Britain in October 1944, provided for the control of Bulgaria, until the signing of final peace treaties, by the Allied Control Commission under the chairmanship of the Soviet representative, who was also the commander of the Soviet occupation forces. The armistice provided also that the Bulgarians evacuate Yugoslav Macedonia and territories they had taken from Greece.

Soviet pressure in the Bulgarian election engaged the attention of Great Britain and the United States in the fall of 1945. National elections originally scheduled for August were postponed because of U.S. protests concerning the nature of Soviet political manoeuvres within Bulgaria. The opposition parties boycotted the elections held on November 18, and a single list of candidates of the Communist-dominated Fatherland Front won 85% of the vote.

Back Home

Previous Page

Next Page

The Communist Regime

In February 1947 the peace treaty formally ending Bulgarian participation in World War II was signed in Paris. It provided for reparations to be paid to Greece in the amount of $45 million and to Yugoslavia in the amount of $25 million; severe limitation of military strength, with partial demilitarization along the Greek frontier; and the retention of southern Dobruja. (The borders with Greece were returned to their status as of 1941.) In December 1947 the National Assembly adopted a new constitution modelled on that of the USSR; this document replaced the presidency with the presidium, an executive committee. That September, Nikola Dimitrov Petkov, leader of the opposition to the Fatherland Front, had been executed after being convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. During the two year period between 1947 and 1949 as many as 20,000 "bourgeois" Bulgarians were executed or imprisoned by the Communist People's Court.

Under pressure from the USSR, Bulgaria renounced its treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia after the Soviet-Yugoslavian rift in 1948; relations with the country and its successor states have since continued to fluctuate, as have those with neighbouring Greece and Turkey. Diplomatic ties with the United States, broken in 1950 but restored in 1959, have frequently been marred by Bulgarian accusations of U.S. espionage activities. The U.S. ministry was raised to the status of an embassy in 1966.

During most of the Communist period, under the leadership of Todor Zhivkov-secretary of the Communist Party from 1954, the country's premier from 1964 to 1971, and head of state from 1971 to late 1989-Bulgaria was one of the most restrictive societies among the former Soviet satellites. As a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and the Warsaw Pact, Bulgaria long remained among the USSR's most dependable allies. During the 1970s the country received substantial financial aid from the USSR, which was used for industrialization.

During the mid-1980s the Zhivkov government launched a campaign to assimilate members of Bulgaria's Turkish minority by forcing them to take Slavic names, prohibiting them from speaking Turkish in public, and subjecting them to other forms of harassment; during 1989 alone, more than 300,000 Bulgarian Turks crossed the border into Turkey to escape persecution. Late in 1989, Zhivkov was ousted from power and expelled from the Communist Party; replacing him as general secretary was the foreign minister, Peter T. Mladenov. Under Mladenov's leadership, Bulgaria restored the civil rights of Bulgarian Turks and began to institute a multiparty system. Bulgaria had now joined the rest of Eastern Europe in removing the old communist guard and embarking on the road to democracy.

The Post Communist Era

Mladenov, who had become president in April, resigned in July over a scandal regarding the use of force in the suppression of student demonstrations. The parliament replaced him with Zhelyu Zhelev of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). Political stalemate and growing economic chaos, strikes and rallies forced the BSP government of Andrei Lukanov to resign in November 1990, after only a few months in office. A former Supreme Court judge, Dimitar Popov, was appointed to lead a caretaker government of experts in which many BSP, Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and Agrarian figures took part-as individuals rather than party representatives-with the BSP having a majority of ministers but the UDF holding key economic portfolios. Having carried out its mandate to enact certain basic economic reforms and stabilisation measures and pass a post-communist constitution, the Popov government resigned, paving the way for new parliamentary elections in October 1991.

In this election, the former Communists were voted out of office for the first time since 1944. The UDF won 110 seats to the BSP's 106 but fell short of a majority in the 240 seat National Assembly. The Agrarians and various centrist parties did not gain the 4% of the popular vote needed to qualify for parliament, and the balance of 24 seats was held by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), which agreed to support a UDF government headed by Filip Dimitrov. Effective for a few months, when it passed laws on foreign investment and privatization, this government was increasingly paralysed by power struggles within the UDF. Eventually, after eleven months, the government was voted out of office in October 1992 after a no-confidence motion in parliament led by the MRF. In the ensuing political turmoil, a government of "independent experts" was formed in December, led by President Zhelev's economic adviser, Lyuben Berov who was nominated by the MRF and supported by the BSP and a breakaway faction of the UDF. The members of this government were mostly non-partisan, although two UDF renegades and one MRF member occupied key posts, and no BSP members were included. However, this government was basically a BSP creation and stayed in power only so long as the BSP supported them.

and he finally resigned in September 1994. Under international pressure he had managed to push through an austerity budget, legislation for a mass privatisation scheme, a bankruptcy law and the Brady debt deal in that year. However, privatisation of land and enterprises was close to paralysed at this time. Following vain attempts to put together a centrist government on the basis of the existing parliament, a caretaker cabinet under Reneta Indzhova was installed pending new elections in December 1994.

The elections resulted in an absolute majority in parliament for the Democratic Left, an electoral coalition between the BSP and the two minor parties. The remaining seats were split between four groups. A Democratic Left government, headed by the BSP leader, Zhan Videnov, was formed. This promised economic reform and growth but moved very slowly on the former (the privatisation effort was virtually at a standstill during 1995 and 1996), while early successes on the latter soon gave way to banking and foreign exchange crises in 1996, leading to hyperinflation and a huge drop in value of the lev by the end of the year. Beset by this, the inability to obtain much needed multilateral backing as a result of ideological hostility towards "the West" and the BSP's defeat in the November 1996 presidential election, Mr Videnov and his government resigned on December 21.

Reform

Since being in power, the government has been able to push through its legislative programme without opposition from inside the UDF or from the BSP. The new government's first act was to present a seven-point declaration on the principles for leading the country out of the economic crisis and submitted a four-year programme entitled 'Bulgaria 2001' setting out 135 tasks to be achieved before the end of the first semester in 1998. These include a series of far reaching reforms including an ambitious privatisation programme, radical changes to the banking act including the implementation of a currency board, a tougher stance on crime and an overhaul of the administrative system.

The government's commitment to this rapid market modernisation through foreign investment is backed and aided by the IMF and World Bank. This process is further supported by Bulgaria's associate membership of the European Union (EU). The incentives for continuing reform are strong as success in stabilising the economy and presiding over a gradual recovery would leave the UDF well placed to win a second term in the elections of 2001. Adherence to the reform programme would also put Bulgaria in a good position for inclusion in a second round of accession negotiations for the European Union, which Bulgaria has a genuine prospect of joining.

For further information, please contact Mr. Neytcho Iltchev, to whom you can send your remarks and recommendations. Telephone: +359 2 9842 7579 ; Fax: +359 2 981 1719.
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected];