From vegetables to dirty tricks, Bulgaria gives its all
Of all the deeds ascribed to the KGB, perhaps none has drawn more outrage than the allegation that the Soviet Union, acting through Bulgaria, was behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Over the decades, the U.S.S.R. has forged a special relationship with Bulgaria, relying on the tiny Balkan nation to perform myriad tasks, some nefarious, some merely fraternal. A report from that littlenoticed, little-understood country:
On a square just off Sofia's Ruski Boulevard facing the National Assembly stands a statue of Tsar Alexander II, ruler of Russia from 1855 to 1881. A prerevolutionary Tsar being honored in a Communist country? History provides the explanation: Alexander II freed the Bulgarians from five centuries of Turkish rule in 1878, at a cost of 200,000 Russian lives. Unlike most of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria regards the U.S.S.R. as its liberator, not its conqueror. The two countries share the Cyrillic alphabet and speak similar languages. Though it is difficult to measure the affection felt by the Bulgarian people toward the Soviet government, there is no doubt about the official devotion of Sofia toward Moscow. As Todor Zhivkov, 71, leader of the Balkan country for the past 39 years, once characterized the relationship, "We will act as a common organism that has common lungs and a common circulatory system." Moscow, in turn, is so confident of the fealty of the country's 8.9 million people that no Soviet troops are stationed on its soil. Says an official in the West German Foreign Ministry: "The relationship is Pavlovian. The Soviets flinch, and the Bulgarians snap to."
That reputation leads Westerners to think of Bulgaria, if they think of it at all, as a sort of 16th republic of the Soviet Union. The country's roots, in fact, lie elsewhere. Its name comes from the Bulgars, a people of Turkic origin that moved south of the Danube and into present-day Bulgaria in the 7th century. Conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1396, the Bulgarians spent the next 500 years under the yoke of Constantinople before being set free by the Tsar's forces. During both world wars the country sided with Germany, but it could never bring itself to declare war against the Soviet Union. In 1944, the regency of seven-year-old King Simeon II scrambled to forge a separate peace with the Allies, but to no avail. Stalin's troops marched through the country unopposed and a coalition government was installed, with the Communists gaining complete control by 1946.
With help from Moscow, postwar Bulgaria was transformed from a peasant nation of primitive farms into the Socialist version of agribusiness. At the end of World War II fewer than 2% of agricultural plots were larger than 50 acres; by 1970 the average collective or state farm covered more than 10,000 acres. Bulgaria is more than just a vegetable patch: it is the world's second largest exporter of cigarettes, with most of its Shipkas and Stewardesses going to the Soviet Union, and it provides nearly half the world's rose attar, an ingredient in perfumes.