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During the 1950s, Bulgaria shifted into industrial gear. Today its industries account for nearly half of the gross national product, while agricultural output makes up only 18%. A Bulgarian firm called Balkancar is one of the world's largest producers of forklifts. Economic growth in 1982 was about 2.5%, one of the highest among the Soviet satellites. Moscow is both a customer and a supplier: it buys about half of Bulgaria's exports and provides 90% of its oil. Consumer prices are relatively high for a Soviet-bloc country ($2 per Ib. for pork, $200 for a small TV set), but goods are widely available.
Given its reputation for Balkan intrigue, the country itself strikes visitors as remarkably serene. In Sofia, a charming if somewhat dowdy city of more than 1 million, main boulevards are lined with massive public edifices, and cobbled side streets are crammed with quaint but tumble-down houses of stucco and red tile. Although policemen can be seen directing traffic, the uniformed squadrons that patrol some other Soviet-bloc capitals are absent; if the police are out of sight, they can nonetheless appear on the scene when necessary. The coast along the Black Sea is dotted with hotels built to attract Western tourists (and their currency), but the mountains and high plains are sprinkled with villages that appear to have changed little since the days of Alexander II.
Zhivkov, who has been in power longer than any other Soviet-bloc leader, is a sprightly, plain-spoken man given to proferring glasses of yogurt to his guests. Though obedient to Moscow, he has cautiously attempted to create a Socialist state more attuned to Bulgarian needs. His economic program, while not as ambitious or as innovative as Hungary's, allows managers more flexibility than in the U.S.S.R. and encourages industrial workers to till plots of an acre or so.
With the appointment of his Oxford-educated daughter Lyudmila Zhivkova as head of the committee for culture in 1975, Zhivkov sought to bolster national identity and pride, reportedly to the displeasure of the Kremlin. It was Lyudmila, for instance, who was the guiding force behind the 1981 celebrations of the 1,300th anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian state. Halfway through the anniversary year, however, Lyudmila died at age 38 of a brain hemorrhage. Since her death, no one else has emerged as a staunch crusader for Bulgarian nationalism.