Bulgaria under Communism 0815372795, 9780815372790

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: How should we write the history of communist Bulgaria?
The problem of distance: from close up and far away
Why the silence about communism?
Macrohistory; or, history from the “bottom up”
The trajectory of the regime: three provisionally differentiated periods
The regime and society in an interdisciplinary perspective
The People’s Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Bulgaria: continuity or a break?
Notes
Historical background: The Communist Party’s path to power
The building of the modern Bulgarian state
The upswing of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century
Bulgaria’s participation in wars from 1912 to 1918 and the subsequent catastrophe
The intense struggles of the interwar period
The initial phase of the war and Bulgarian neutrality (1939–1941)
Bulgaria in the orbit of the Third Reich (1941–1944)
Notes
Part I The times of high Stalinism
1 Bulgaria in the shadow of Stalin
Establishment of the Fatherland Front government in Bulgaria
The Moscow Truce and Bulgaria’s participation in the final stage of World War II
Conflicts within the Fatherland Front and the formation of a legal opposition to the regime
The intensification of social-political struggles within the country
Signing the peace treaty with Bulgaria
Convening a Grand National Assembly and the liquidation of the opposition
Notes
2 Georgi Dimitrov and “the people’s democracy”
Georgi Dimitrov and his diary
Dimitrov and Stalin
On the nature of “the people’s democracy”
Notes
3 Bulgaria in the years of classical Stalinism
The second major wave of repression
Vâlko Chervenkov: the new charismatic leader
Notes
4 Building the communist economy in Bulgaria
The postwar economic crisis and the beginning of deep transformations within the Bulgarian economy (1944–1947)
The economic dimensions of Bulgarian participation in the war
The scope of the economic and financial crisis
Changes in the management and structure of the Bulgarian economy
The sovietization of the Bulgarian economy (1948–1953)
The beginning of industrialization in Bulgaria
The roots of Bulgaria’s economic and financial dependence on the USSR
Disbalances in the communist economy
Ideas for Bulgaria’s economic development as a weapon in power struggles (1953–1956)
Notes
5 The Bulgarian village under communism: Collectivization, social change, and adaptation
At the crossroads between private and collective agriculture
Tools for imposing the Soviet kolkhoz model
The first stage of mass collectivization
The TKZSs and social change in the Bulgarian village
The villagers’ resistance
The temporary lull
The final push toward mass collectivization
The villagers’ strategies for adaptation
Notes
6 The goryani: Armed resistance against communist repression
Notes
7 The sovietization of Bulgaria: A basic resource for the new communist authorities
Objective factors in the sovietization of Bulgaria
Subjective factors in sovietization
Entanglement in the totalitarian web
Notes
8 State Security within the structure of the communist state: Ruling through violence
Building State Security
Political repression
Organizational principles
Intelligence departments
Domestic security and political police
Notes
9 Education and culture within the system of the communist state
The new government’s educational policy
The seizure and centralization of cultural institutes and independent organizations of intellectuals
Censorship institutions
The imposition of socialist realism in the literature and culture of communist Bulgaria
Notes
10 Communist Bulgaria’s foreign policy and the Cold War
The idea of a south Slavic federation and its failure
The signing of the peace treaty and the official establishment of Bulgaria’s status as a Soviet satellite
Bulgaria and international relations within the borders of the Eastern Bloc
Bulgaria’s relations with the United States and other Western countries during the Cold War
Bulgaria and bloc-internal crises
Bulgaria and the Third World
Notes
Part II From sheepish de-Stalinization toward the consolidation of the regime and its penetration into everyday life
11 After Stalin: Political processes within “real socialism”
A timid thaw in Bulgarian society
The 1956 April Plenum of the Central Committee of the BCP and its consequences
Todor Zhivkov’s seizure of absolute power
Factional struggles and conspiracies within the BCP during the 1960s and the early 1970s
The Zhivkov Constitution of 1971 and the leader’s new cult of personality
Old foreign policy with a new voice
Bulgaria and the end of the Cold War
Notes
12 The course toward accelerated economic development and reform of the economic model
In search of new economic priorities
Communist Bulgaria’s first debt crisis (1960–1964)
The first timid attempts at reforming the economic model (1963–1968)
Substitutes for reform (1968–1976)
The concentration of production
Attempts at a structural transformation of the economy
The scientific-technical revolution
The second foreign-debt crisis (1973–1978)
“The new economic mechanism” (1979–1980)
Economic or political restructuring: Zhivkov with/versus Gorbachev
Notes
13 Sovietization in the shadow of Khrushchev and the Brezhnev Doctrine
Notes
14 In search of a communist model of consumer society
Reasons for consensus instead of violence
The paths to constructing a feigned consensus
Disintegration of the feigned consensus
Notes
15 Processes within society: The division of the public and private spheres
Notes
16 The ghosts of national communism and pressure on Muslim communities
Pressure and survival during the 1960s and early 1970s
“The Revival Process” from the mid-1970s through the 1980s
Notes
17 The church on the periphery of society
Christian churches: a struggle to survive under Stalinism
Elevation of the international status of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
The isolation of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kiril (1953–1971) and Patriarch Maxim
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s international and ecumenical activities
Notes
18 Processes within the culture of “real socialism”
Lyudmila Zhivkova and the new cultural policy: unified long-term cultural programs
The historicization of culture and the transformation of classical ideological postulates
Crisis and mimicry in socialist realism: discursive tension
The alternatives: vacillation and acknowledgment
From the invisible turn during the 1970s and 1980s to the slow advance of alternatives
Notes
Part III The collapse and peaceful withdrawal of communism in Bulgaria
19 The deepening crises and the paralyzation of the regime
Reform fever to the bitter end: from the July Conception to Decree 56
The foreign-debt.trap
The collapse of the “Revival Process” and the intensification of Bulgaria’s international isolation
Perestroika-related processes in late-communist culture
Socialist realism as an abandoned fortress
Notes
20 The limits of the communist model and an evaluation of the regime’s social policy
A social policy “in service of the people”
Sources and uses of nostalgia
Justice and solidarity in the communist état-providence
Social benefits and the social corruption of the masses
Social rights and their internal erosion: an element of communist Bulgaria’s final crisis
Notes
21 Gorbachev’s perestroika and its influence on processes in Bulgaria
Gorbachev’s perestroika and Zhivkov’s perestruvka
The “grand era of the intelligentsia” and the late Bulgarian dissident movement
The November 10 coup and Todor Zhivkov’s removal from.power
Notes
22 The beginning of the Great Transition
Notes
Timeline of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria
Leading historical figures from the period
Bibliography
Index