Bulgaria’s taboo

Photo: UNDP Bulgara / http://undp.bg/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/18-11Miting01.jpg

Communism was only included as a mandatory topic in Bulgaria’s high school history textbooks in 2018 – a move criticised by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (a member of the Party of European Socialists and the largest opposition force) because the “benefits” of communism were not covered in the new curriculum. When asked to define these benefits, the party’s leader Kornelia Ninova pinpointed construction, healthcare, education and security.

During the communist period, Bulgaria built many roads and factories which have subsequently been closed down. Healthcare was free, but of poor quality. In fact, in 1986, the communist regime purposefully hid the news of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and did not take any measures to protect ordinary citizens from the radioactive cloud which passed over Bulgaria. May 1st (Labour Day) parades were held in major cities under the radioactive rain. Education was also free, but all subjects were heavily ideologised. The mass surveillance and torture of critics did not contribute to a feeling of security. Moreover, it was recently established that between 1960 and 1987 Bulgaria was bankrupted three times, which the regime hid by publicising false data. The future was bright only for the members of the inner circle of the communist party who enjoyed a luxurious life and diverse privileges. Yet this is not the main point of the article. What is more important is that generations of Bulgarians could only learn about communism by themselves and not everyone assumed this responsibility. In turn, political leaders can exploit this lack of knowledge. Why is communism such a taboo topic in Bulgaria and why do statements like Ninova’s pass without public outrage?

1989

The main problem is that we do not exactly know what happened in 1989. Other former communist states had their revolutions, but in Bulgaria the regime fell under its own weight. One wing of the omnipotent party trumped another and our communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov, was forced to step down on November 10th 1989 after an inner party coup. Zhivkov’s place was inherited by Petar Mladenov, a figure from the inner circle of the communist party. Anti-regime demonstrations quickly intensified. The first mass protest in Sofia took place on December 14th 1989. Between January and May 1990, round table talks on the country’s future were held between the communist party and the opposition. Almost one million citizens famously demonstrated in support of the opposition on June 7th 1990 – the biggest mass protest to date in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria had its first democratic elections in the summer of 1990. They were won by Bulgaria’s communist party which had reinvented itself as the Bulgarian Socialist Party. It is doubtful, however, how democratic these elections were since there was little privacy at the polling stations and local party leaders supervised the process. The spirit of communism lingered on. This may explain why Bulgaria’s transition to democracy was not fully possible and why the communist establishment was never really challenged. Bulgaria’s prosecutors brought a number of charges against Zhivkov in the early 1990s, but the trials were terminated because of his death in 1998. Communist leaders, heads of concentration camps and torturers were never convicted for their actions either, despite ample evidence, including witness statements. Meanwhile, because of the refusal to include communism in the mandatory curriculum for so long, many young people know of these crimes only vaguely, if they know of them at all.

It is striking that one of the first priorities of Ninova, when she was elected as leader of Bulgaria’s Socialist Party in 2016, was to organise a pilgrimage to the house of Todor Zhivkov. It is also shocking that in 2018 Boyko Borissov, who is serving as prime minister for the third time since 2009 and is the leader of the GERB Party, referred to Zhivkov as one of two “greatest universities” in his life. Borissov was Zhivkov’s personal bodyguard. In addition, one may wonder which political party – the socialist party or GERB (which labels itself as right-wing and is a member of the European People’s Party) – has more members.

The same pattern can be observed in Bulgaria’s institutions. One of the scariest organisations in communist Bulgaria was Darzhavna sigurnost – the secret services responsible for mass surveillance and the harassment of citizens who opposed the regime. Sadly, the same circles which controlled the institution of terror have an important influence on Bulgaria’s current intelligence. In 2013, Bulgaria was shaken by mass protests because of the appointment of Delyan Peevski, a controversial member of parliament, as head of DANS (Bulgaria’s national security agency). Vigilant civil society members subsequently uncovered that his grandfather was a colonel and an influential figure in Darzhavna sigurnost. Indeed, experts argue that the establishment of DANS in 2008, which was supposed to modernise Bulgarian intelligence, rehabilitated Darzhavna sigurnost because many of the hired employees had previously worked for the repressive institution.

Critical state

After the fall of communism, Bulgaria did not carry out a substantive reform of its constitution either, which means the country still has a “Soviet” prosecution – an entirely vertical structure without checks and balances which, in the words of the President of the Venice Commission, allows its misuse for political aims. Bulgaria has lost hundreds of cases in the European Court of Human Rights and is a leading violator of the European Convention on Human Rights because of the abuses of the prosecutor’s office. The Council of Europe has called for reform multiple times. Nevertheless, the Soviet model has remained intact to this day.

Moreover, since 2017 Borissov’s government has been enacting legislation which further increases its excessive powers. As stated by the president of Bulgaria’s Supreme Court of Cassation, which fights the corrupt status quo: “Woe befalls anyone who opposes the untouchable status of [Bulgaria’s] Chief Prosecutor.” One may add that the same fate awaits inconvenient opponents of the government – political persecutions are still common.

30 years after 1989, and despite the fact Bulgaria is a member of the EU, its democracy is in a critical state; this should not come as a surprise in light of the above considerations. The 2019 World Justice Project’s “Rule of Law Index” ranked Bulgaria 54th in the world, just after Mongolia. The latest Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International ranked Bulgaria as the most corrupt EU member­. In 2018 the authoritative Nations in Transit report, by Freedom House, downgraded Bulgaria to a semi-consolidated democracy – the decline started when Borissov first came to power in 2009.

Missed opportunities

The year 1989 symbolises hope for democracy and a better future in post-communist states. In Bulgaria, however, it stands for missed opportunities. Society is profoundly divided: an opinion poll carried out in November 2017, in commemoration of 1989, showed that 41 per cent of Bulgarians would rather live under communism while 41 per cent would rather live in the current “democratic” period. Many citizens are nostalgic for communism because they are misinformed due to years of censorship and propaganda. Poverty and economic decline have not helped either. Bulgaria has the lowest GDP per capita in the EU as well as the lowest median earnings, which has caused a huge wave of emigration. This may shed further light on why some people are tempted to romanticise the past: in communism, the regime provided jobs.

Sadly, communist nostalgia is also the perspective that key political parties promote. After all, their leaders are products of that system, so they have an interest in glorifying it. When mainstream media reports on the commemoration of November 10th 1989, their messages are succinct and vague. In stark contrast, there are Bulgarians and friends of Bulgaria looking for answers and trying to gather the pieces of the 1989 puzzle. In the 1990s and 2000s, there were noteworthy research outputs on the history of Bulgaria’s communism, but they were printed by small publishers and in limited volumes. In the past decade, however, the internet has opened new opportunities for ordinary people and researchers to share their testimonies and archival materials. For instance, Pametbg.com and Desebg.com are two online projects aimed at ensuring more transparency about Bulgaria’s communist past.

In parallel, more established publishers have supported the effort of researchers, thus bringing their work to a broader audience. Recently, Tomasz Kamusella’s Ethnic Cleansing During the Cold War: The Forgotten 1989 Expulsion of Turks from Communist Bulgaria (2018) has raised further awareness of one of the largest ethnic cleansings in Europe, which escalated in 1989 and has been largely ignored to this day. Almost 60,000 Muslims went on strike against Bulgaria’s regime in the spring of 1989. In the same year, the regime expelled approximately 360,000 Muslims.

In turn, Borislav Skorchev’s The Belene Concentration Camp: 1949-1987, also published in 2018, is the first large-scale study of the horrifying abuses that took place in this facility. It is the result of ten years of archival research and is longer than 900 pages. Vili Lilkov and Hristo Hristov’s Former People (2017) sheds light on how the totalitarian regime exterminated members of Bulgaria’s intelligentsia who resisted communism. The inquiry relies on the archives of Darzhavna sigurnost.

To be sure, one should not forget there is a third group which recognises the damages of communism but advocates for closing the chapter by declaring Bulgaria’s transition period completed. This is most visible in the activities of the Millennium Club, an NGO mostly consisting of young people born after 1981, which organises conferences and occasionally engages in research activities. They argue that millennials – roughly those who were born between 1980 and 1996 – are much more concerned about the future than about the past, and that Bulgaria needs to focus on a different debate.

Challenging the taboo

In recent years, more Bulgarians have gained better clarity about what happened during the communist period because of the efforts of scholars and researchers who dared dig up the dirt and make their findings available to a broader audience. It is only now that the crimes of communism have been included in the mandatory school curriculum.  Transparency is essential for understanding the political processes post-1989. Meanwhile, the parallels between communism and Bulgaria’s current regime are inevitable – not only are some of the actors the same, they have also revived the repressive practices of the past.

Hence, it is difficult to close a chapter that has not been read to the end. To reconcile with the past we need patience and an inquisitive mind. Maybe when we have a clearer idea of the extent of violence during the communist period we will know why dissidents were not as vocal in Bulgaria as in other countries, and why Bulgaria never faced a revolution. Maybe then we will be more equipped for an appraisal of what followed, including the current deplorable state of Bulgaria’s democracy. Maybe then we will be better placed to understand what needs to be done to ensure a more prosperous future. While a millennial myself, I do not subscribe to the views of some members of my generation mentioned above. I am convinced that it will take a long while before a true transition to democracy is completed. One thing seems certain, however: the taboo of identifying and calling the crimes of communism by their real names is currently being challenged on a grander scale. This is a development which could be refreshing for Bulgaria since it can be the foundation of a more substantive debate and, maybe, more sober decisions.

Radosveta Vassileva teaches law at University College London. Her research interests encompass comparative public and private law and EU law. She maintains a personal blog dedicated to the rule of law in Bulgaria.

1989, Bulgaria