A bronze equestrian statue of Czar Alexander II dominates the cobblestone square in front of the parliament building in Sofia. It was erected by grateful Bulgarians to commemorate Russian victories in 1877 and 1878 that ended five centuries of Turkish rule over the Slavic nation. Since the resignation of Stalinist dictator Todor Zhivkov last November, that statue has become the rallying point for a revived nationalist movement using the old hatred of the Turks to fight new political battles. Day after day, thousands of Bulgarians ignored sub-zero temperatures to gather around it. They shook their fists and cheered rabble-rousing speeches protesting a decision by the country's new reformist government to restore to 1.2 million ethnic Turks the civil and religious rights they lost in 1984. "Turks to Turkey!" they roared. "Bulgaria for the Bulgarians!"
At the same time that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is facing separatist challenges in several of his country's 15 republics, Eastern Europe is discovering that the ancient animosities suppressed for more than four decades by Moscow's harsh imperialism are rising again. These ethnic and nationalistic quarrels are the products of decades of wars, treaties and cynical deals between dictators that moved the borders of countries but often left their people behind. At the end of the 20th century, national minorities are everywhere. By some estimates, several hundred thousand ethnic Germans are still in Poland and 200,000 in Rumania. More than a million Poles find themselves inside the Soviet Union. About 1.7 million Hungarians live in Rumania, and a few hundred thousand more in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. There are 2 million Rumanians in Soviet Moldavia and an unknown number in the Ukraine.
In times of confusion and hardship, desperate politicians often cannot resist the temptation to use ethnic minorities as scapegoats. The sudden arrival of new freedoms in the Warsaw Pact states at the end of 1989 has brought with it a broadened right to be demagogic and irresponsible, threatening the region's proclaimed goals of democracy, cooperation and stability. "People are able to make decisions for themselves again, and they ) are starting at grade one," says Deyan Kyurianov, a leader of Bulgaria's opposition Union of Democratic Forces. "Nationalism is easy to understand and quick to arouse."
The Bulgarian turmoil is a classic of ethnic politics. Zhivkov tried to solve the minority problem by denying the Turks a separate existence and forcing them to assimilate or flee to Turkey. His successor, Petar Mladenov, reversed that policy. Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov told angry demonstrators, "If we Bulgarians want to be free, then all the people must be free." Last week the National Assembly approved measures that guarantee rights for the Turks, and set up a commission to review the issue.