VOLUME 9 ISSUE 1

The International Journal of

Interdisciplinary
Global Studies
__________________________________________________________________________

State Authority in Bulgaria

A Post-Colonial Balkan National Community

BENEDICT E. DEDOMINICIS

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State Authority in Bulgaria: A Post-Colonial

Balkan National Community
Benedict E. DeDominicis, Catholic University of Korea, South Korea
Abstract: The state develops through a historical process of collective learning as community values evolve through
societal experience. Imperial control characterizes the context in which this learning has occurred in Bulgaria.
Bulgarian political behavioral attitudes toward official authority reflect this long history of external domination. Though
sovereign since 1989, Bulgarian attitudes regarding government official ability are likely to produce leaders that reflect
a dependent, patronage-focused political culture. It stands in contrast to European Union ideals that emphasize
obedience to the rule of law in the form of adherence to formal policies and procedures. Government authority
performance is therefore more likely to be seen as corrupt, particularly by strong Bulgarian EU self-identifiers. A
historical analysis of imperialism in Bulgaria provides insights into the relative lack of societal consensus on obeying
formal rules and procedures and instead engaging in clientelism. Bulgarian nationalism shapes the development of the
state in the context of this imperial legacy. This legacy includes elements of shared pan-Slavic Communist identity as well
as traditional ethno-sectarian Orthodox, Turkish, and Muslim identities of varying intensity. Developing a more effective
and efficient Bulgarian state requires a long-term political evolutionary process. This political course ideally will
contribute to cultural convergence promoting societal attitudinal consensus on the behavioral and emotive meaning of
being a good Bulgarian EU citizen. It will require generations. Corruption will therefore remain a notable challenge in
Bulgaria into the foreseeable future, as it has been in Italy.
Keywords: Bulgaria, Corruption, European Union, Imperialism, Nationalism, Social Movements

Introduction

ulgaria entered the European Union on January 1, 2007. Simeon Diankov was a deputy
prime minister and finance minister in the 2009-13 GERB (Citizens for the European
Development of Bulgaria) government under Boyko Borisov. (Gerb is also the
Bulgarian word for shield.1) Diankov had previously been a senior World Bank economist and
policy adviser. In the run-up to the July 2009 Bulgarian parliamentary election he stated, The
level of corruption here is mind-boggling. I have worked for the Bank in more than 90 countries
and I have never seen anything like it. 2 Societal disputes revolve around the perceived
trustworthiness of competing elite factions among mobilized segments of the public. The failure
to address the general publics social welfare expectations has encouraged charges of pervasive
corruption among these factions and their respective core constituencies. Disillusionment and
frustration is played out within the overarching framework of European Union integration.
Factions simultaneously contest and interact with the hegemonic European discourse frames used
by all political party contestants.3 Parties seek to harness Bulgarian nationalist public political
mobilization capacity to achieve their respective objectives. Oppositional discourses often
borrow from the language of those they oppose. They interact and mix with them to produce
unintended and contradictory consequences for social movement development (Steinberg 2002,
208). An emotive community consensus on the ideals of Bulgarian citizenship is comparatively
weak. This incoherence is due significantly to Bulgarias history of contention with its
1

The writer thanks Professor Emilia Zankina of the American University in Bulgaria for this insight.
Frustration at slow progress in EU, Financial Times, June 18, 2009, accessed October 10, 2009,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/df055168-5c20-11de-aea3-00144feabdc0.html.
3
e.g. The website of the militant Bulgarian nationalist xenophobic Attack party since at least 2009 has featured a
picture of French National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen either holding a copy of Attack, the daily newspaper of the
Attack party, or raising hands clenched with its leader, Volen Siderov (http://www.ataka.bg/) (Accessed July 19, 2014).
The message is clear: the Attack party is a legitimate party because it is part of a broader set of militant nationalist forces
in the European Union, including in France, a founding state of postwar European integration.
2

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dependent, colonial status within the Ottoman Empire. In the mid-twentieth century, Bulgarian
sovereignty was lost under the totalitarian Soviet Communist-dominated, informal/neo-colonial
development of the Bulgarian state. Manifestations today include a comparative absence of
strong state institutions and their underlying foundational social and legal norms. They are
necessary for protecting property rights as well as regulating market transactions (Tzvetkova
2008, 348). The roots of this weakness lie in the relative lack of societal consensus on the norms
of legitimate political behavior as a consequence of this history of dependent development
(Tudoriou 2011, 374, 76-78). The cause of this lack of consensus derives from the consequent
attitudinal polarization among the Bulgarian titular majority public (Giatzidis 2004, 435-37, 4750).
This analysis focuses on the Bulgarian case to highlight the contemporary policy process
implications of the historical relationship between ethnos and state in the colonial development
of a Balkan national community (iek 2009). Bulgaria is a small national people subject to
imperial control for most of its history since the late medieval period. Bulgarian political
behavioral attitudes today reflect this developmental environment of the state acting as a control
agent for an external other. Todays extensive corruption is a consequence due to the widespread
cultural habituation into clientelism (Bulanova 2008). It is an attitudinal consequence of
generations of circumventing formal policies and their rules and procedures traditionally imposed
by external imperial authorities. Corruption will remain a long term issue in Bulgaria because
political cultural change happens slowly (Lauth 2004).
This analysis aims to demonstrate that the problem of corruption in Bulgaria is due
significantly to political cultural facets of this national community that derive from the
circumstances of its colonial development. Reducing corruption therefore requires more than a
technocratic policy focus. It requires socialization of succeeding generations of Bulgarians into
new attitudes of political participation. The articulation of these new attitudes references
European Union ideals that have given prevailing symbolic substance to Bulgarian nationalism
since the end of the Cold War. Bulgarian social movements may exploit societal participatory
opportunities through European integration to internalize these ideals to slowly modify
Bulgarias political culture.
The analysis begins with a presentation of the relationship between political culture and state
authority and legitimacy. It then focuses on the political psychological consequences for the
Bulgarian national community of its centuries-long domination by external powers in various
forms. It explores the political attitudinal consequences of the great sacrifices and
disappointments that grew out of the nationalist phase of Bulgarian state policy beginning in the
late nineteenth century. It concludes with a focus on the collapse of the Communist regime and
the political cultural implications of the Europeanization of Bulgaria through integration into the
European Union.

Democracy and Legitimacy

No necessary link exists between democracy and legitimacy as the experience of Eastern
European states shows (Chen 2005, 9). In this context, widespread systemic corruption emerges.
The relative lack of societal consensus on public authority behavioral norms weakens the
enforcement power of the state. A result is the emergence of a rent-seeking nouveaux riche that
exploits networks of patronage amidst factions from among the old Communist nomenklatura
and its political leadership (Kudelia 2012, 151). The leading figures at the pinnacle of these
patronage structures within this new bourgeoisie in post-Communist Europe include the
wealthiest and empowered, e.g. so-called oligarchs. 4 In Bulgaria as well as in many former
4 Jack Ewing and Georgi Kantchev, Feud Between Oligarchs Seen as Cause of Bank Run in Bulgaria. New York
Times, June 30, 2014. Accessed July 11, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/business/international/feud-betweenoligarchs-seen-as-cause-of-bank-run-in-bulgaria.html; Bulgarian Oligarchs Richer than Russias. Standart, July 11,

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DEDOMINICIS: STATE AUTHORITY IN BULGARIA

Soviet states, a vibrant dissident intellectual movement did not exist prior to the collapse of
Communism. Such a dissident movement gives visionary leadership to an incipient social
movement (Ibid., 153). While this leadership was present in Poland, it was not present in
Bulgaria (Library of Congress 1992). Consequently, the power of the state today is more likely to
be seen as a resource to be exploited for parochial gain by governmental official patrons and their
clients and constituencies. Militant pro-Western elements of the Bulgarian public employ EU
ideals to legitimate their opposition to their adversary domestic societal factions and
constituencies.5 They tend to characterize the latters behavior and policies as the living legacy of
the Communist past, based on remnants of the old security apparatus becoming patronage
networks.6
Institutionalization of liberal democratic norms may require a sufficient degree of political
attitudinal behavior consensus that permits trust to permeate society. This social capital is
relatively lacking in many post-Soviet societies and Bulgaria in comparison with Central and
Eastern Europe (Kudelia 2012, 153). Focusing on post-Soviet states, Kudelia argues that the
sources of this relative weakness of civil society include the comparative absence of sustained
social mobilization. The latter is due to the absence of shared beliefs and a set of common longterm interests (Ibid.). The Peoples Republic of Bulgaria acquired the reputation as the closest
ally of the USSR in the Warsaw Pact (Katsikas 2012, 5-6). Understanding the Bulgarian case will
assist in Western policy strategy towards the post-Soviet states. Kudelia asserts that the
Eurasian imperial legacies express themselves in the culture of passive path-dependency,
tolerance for corruption and double standards, therefore making electoral revolutions an
aberration across post-Soviet space (2012, 153). This analysis aims to elucidate Eurasian
imperial legacies using selected social movement literature insights in combination with a
theory of stereotype formation. Thereby, it aims to explain the relative lack of societal norm
consensus during transitions that make institution of the rule of law a greater challenge.
For this study, political culture is the term for the aggregation of public political behavioral
norms. Richard D. Lewis describes a nations culture as its blueprint for survival and, hopefully,
success. It is an all-embracing pattern of a groups entire way of life, including a shared system
of values, social meanings, and agendas passed on from generation to generation (Lewis 2007,
xxiii). Hofstede and Hofstede define it as the collective programming of the mind that
distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others (2005, 4). Evaluation
of culture is relative and comparative. Corruption is an issue because evaluative standards of
behavior exist that deem other patterns to be illegitimate. These standards in Eastern Europe are
largely set by the heretofore Western Europe-dominated European Union. These standards do not
necessarily reflect the objective reality of Western Europe, but rather community ideals that have
been politically created. Western European societies (e.g. Italy and its organized crime challenge)
themselves may fall notably short of these same standards and criteria despite generations of
European integration (e.g. Duplat et al. 2012, 274). These EU standards/ideals create discourses
for regional and domestic politics. They provide an array of symbols for manipulation to attempt
to legitimate/delegitimate authority and policy and thereby to influence individual and group
behavior.

2014. Accessed July 11, 2014, http://paper.standartnews.com/en/article.php?article=37745; Frances Coppola, The

Bulgarian Game of Thrones. Forbes, July 15, 2014. Accessed July 16, 2014,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2014/07/15/the-bulgarian-game-of-thrones/.
5
Reinhard Veser, How to Get Sofia Back on Track? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 25, 2013. Accessed July 12,
2014, http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4002931-how-get-sofia-back-track (Translated from the German by
Anton Baer).
6
Toni Nikolov, Power Grasping in the Dark. Kultura. July 24, 2013. Accessed July 12, 2014, http://www.voxeurop.
eu/en/content/article/3998521-power-grasping-dark.;Europe, where are you? Bulgarian protesters appeal to the EU.
Euronews. July 18, 2013. Accessed mid-July 2013, www.euronews.com/2013/07/18/ europe-where-are-you-bulgarianprotesters-appeal-to-the-eu/

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Prevailing societal attitudinal orientations towards Bulgarian authority evolve as in other

nation state polities. This evolution results partly as a byproduct of the ongoing process of
struggle for influence among competing elite factions and their constituencies. Facets of this
struggle include broader public appeals to Bulgarian national identity that today tends more to
associate with symbolic European/EU ideals and norms (Stoytchev 2008). It largely consists of
competing, dynamic patron-client constituency relationships centering to varying degrees on elite
leadership figures, party organizations and informal structures. These socio-political relationships
constitute competing social influence networks that constitute a clash of networks of meanings
(Diani 2003, 5). These networks of meanings may be a focus of strong emotional feeling, rooted
in strong communitarian affective ties by developing and reaffirming identity and solidarity
(Ibid., 8). This strong emotive substance is particularly evident in significant challenges to the
status quo which successfully emphasize symbolic appeals (Ibid., 9). Mario Diani highlights the
importance of taking this symbolic, cultural approach to the study of social networks and social
movements (2003). Intense self-identification with a particular national culture community
generates emotional sentiment that political entrepreneurs exploit through symbolic, stereotyped
appeals (e.g. Smith 2013, 34-35). A cultural approach requires inclusion of a conceptualization of
national stereotypes (Meardi 2011, 343-44). Nationalistic community predisposition affects the
political capabilities and challenges confronting social networks in movements in any Eastern
European case. An anti-corruption strategy should include promotion of transformational social
movements that build upon pro-European/EU national identity political self-identification
tendencies. Such tendencies exist to varying degrees of intensity among current and aspiring
political, cultural and economic elites and their respective constituencies. Promotion of these proEuropean/EU participatory networks of meaning can help promote the civil societal foundational
allies for implementation of the rule of law. Since the issue is one of cultural change, it will
require a long-term, generational perspective. EU integration has had a marginal impact on
Bulgarian political culture (Mitropolitski 2013, 378-89). Systematic corruption will remain a
long-term problem in Bulgaria as it has in Italy.

Bulgarian Images of Self and Other

Bulgarias European integration interacts with a collective historical legacy of domination by
others (Latcheva 2010, 188). Bulgarias history has led the polity collectively to tend to see
challenges from Great Power actors historically perceived as superior both in capability and
cultural level (Promitzer 2010, 48, 58-59). Using the political psychology framework developed
by Cottam and Cottam, this perceptual pattern is labeled as the imperial stereotype (2001).
Internalization through socialization of its concomitant, i.e. the inferior, colonial/client selfimage, can be the basis of a modern, neo-colonial relationship with an imperial power (Ibid., 9192, 111-16, 118-20, 273-74). Due to this historical legacy, according to prevalent Bulgarian
political attitudes, Bulgarias success requires alliance with a Great Power patron. This writer
taught at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) during 1994-2009, established in 1991
under the auspices of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). 7 The likelihood
that Russia or neighboring Serbia would accept such a US government-funded development
assistance project on their respective territory seems implausible (Landry 2011, 2-8, 20, 2-24).
This unlikelihood stems from differing Serbian and Russian political attitudes towards external
political involvement in their internal polities. After 500 years of Ottoman control, the Bulgarian
7

Estimates of the amount of US governmental financial support AUBG has received vary. The AUBG president in early
2008 stated that the total amount of financial grants AUBG had received from external sources was between $30 and $40
million (AUBG president email communication, January 8, 2008) (DeDominicis 2013). One former AUBG president
estimates that as of 2013, AUBG received an estimated more than $120 million from USAID and its subsidiarity
organizations alone (former AUBG president personal email communication, January 31, 2014) (DeDominicis 2014).
George Soros provided additional substantial scholarship funding.

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DEDOMINICIS: STATE AUTHORITY IN BULGARIA

state had much of its foundations laid under the Sultanism of the decades-long Soviet proxy
dictatorship of Todor Zhivkov (Eke and Kuzio 2000, 531). In sum, the state is seen in popular
attitudes as a distant, threatening, powerful entity serving its own interests. Gene Sharp is an
analyst of non-violent direct action challenging the status quo that characterizes critical social
movement reform activity. He portrays this stereotype as a monolithic or self-sufficient image of
the state and its power capabilities (1973). It stands in contrast to a popular consent-based image
of the state and its power (Ibid., 73-75; Ackerman and Kruegler 1994, 8-9). The immediate post1989 political cultural legacy of colonialism in Bulgaria prevalent among the public has been that
the authorities are to be circumvented or supplicated. They are less likely to seen as
representative of the nation as the legitimate, final arbiter in social relations. In this stereotype,
the authorities serve themselves and a small group of constituencies who seek personal
enrichment (Petrunov 2006, 298-304, 320-23). Individual and group advancement occurs through
cooptation into patron-client dependency relationships, with the top patron at the top of the
pyramid being the imperial power. These parochial power relationships determine outcomes, not
rights, rules and procedures for fair competition. In this Weberian ideal type dependent
development legacy worldview, corruption is common because law traditionally has ultimately
served an imperial other.
John Dyer, who taught journalism at the American University in Bulgaria, quotes Vessela
Tcherneva, an analyst at Sofia's Center for Liberal Strategies, There is still a very strong notion
the 10th of November [in 1989, the date of the collapse of the Communist regime (BD)] was a
coup engineered by the communist elite for the sake of holding on to their privileges The
Bulgarian transition has been perceived as something relatively unfair. And rightly so. People
dont really see 1989 as something they have ownership over. 8

Imperialism and Control

The polarizations, paradoxes and dilemmas in Bulgarian national identity significantly stem from
its largely dependent, colonial Balkan historical political evolution (Crampton 2006; Bickerton
2009, 742-45). A comprehensive understanding of Bulgaria contemporary political attitudes
towards formal state authority requires an understanding of Bulgarian politico-sociological
progression. It implanted the attitudes towards authority that generations of Bulgarians learned
and passed on as political culture to their offspring. Below is a table summarizing the Bulgarian
experience of imperialism, i.e. the historically dependent development experience of Bulgaria:

Direct

Indirect

Table 4: Imperialism in Bulgaria

Formal
Informal
1) Romans
2) Slavs
4) Byzantine Greeks
3) Proto-Bulgarians
5) Ottomans (14-19th century)
6) Russians (immediate
7) Russians/Soviets (1944-89)
post-liberation, 1878-88)

The legacies of these imperial experiences affect the process of national value formation and
behavioral attitude expression. These legacies include both the prevailing ethno-sectarian
community basis for Bulgarian nationalism as well as the prevailing political attitudes that
associate with it (e.g. Rock 2008, 49-51).

John Dyer, Bulgaria won't be celebrating 1989: Bulgarians never reconciled with their communist past, and they worry
about the present, November 5, 2009, Updated May 30, 2010. Accessed January 13, 2012,
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/091104/bulgaria-communism-wall-berlin?page=full.
8

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY GLOBAL STUDIES

In direct, formal colonial rule, the imperial power imposes its ultimate control through
placement of a supreme political authority publicly representing the sovereign authority of the
occupying state. This type of colonial experience has a greater potential to unify the native
political elite of different constituencies in the community in the course of resistance to it. This
form of imperial control is probably the least detrimental in terms of its legacy for state-society
relations. The nationalist, local population at least can more clearly identify who the enemy is. In
contrast, indirect-formal rule is in place when local, traditional elites rule in the community under
the direction of the imperial power in the form of advisors, security arrangements, etc. It
characterized immediate post-liberation Bulgaria. Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov expelled the
Russian military advisers stationed in the country until the late 1880s following Bulgarias
liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878.
Indirect-informal imperial control is maintained without the overt presence of imperial
personnel. Instead, the imperial power continues to exercise ultimate control through a local
proxy elite. During the postwar period, Moscow exercised control through its client elite in local
Communist parties and the respective security apparatus in each Warsaw Pact country. If these
control mechanisms collapsed, the USSR would directly intervene, as in East Berlin in 1953,
Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The USSR did not have ground troop bases in
Bulgaria, unlike in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Kristen Ghodsee notes
that Volen Siderov and his Bulgarian militant nationalist Attack party campaign in opposition
to Bulgarias NATO membership. Siderov reiterates that throughout its history Bulgaria has
never agreed to the long term stationing of foreign troops on its territory, not even Russian ones.
Yet, as a result of NATO membership, Bulgaria is preparing to host several thousand US troops.
Bulgaria is a more likely target of terrorist attacks as a result of such transparent support for US
military activities in the neighboring Middle East (2008, 36-37).9 However, Katsikas notes that
the Soviet navy did have permanent access to Bulgarian port facilities, stationing nuclear
weapons at these sites. The Bulgarian Communist authorities denied their presence (2012, 28).
Indirect imperial rule typically means that the imperial power does not acknowledge that it
has ultimate authority within the country. It has only an embassy and the imperial power works
through the local bureaucracy (Chandler 2010, 148-60). David Chandler (2006) argues that
imperial powers today do not admit that they control countries because it is no longer publicly
acceptable. Finally, in informal, direct imperial control, the imperial power invades and becomes
the ruling class (e.g. Arabs into Egypt, Normans into England, Slavs and then Proto-Bulgarians
into Illyria, Moesia, Macedonia and Thrace, Zionist Jews into Palestine, European settlers into
pre-1994 South Africa). For individual social mobility through assimilation during the Ottoman
period, conversion to Islam was beneficial. At the time of the 1878 beginning of the separation of
the Bulgarian lands from the Ottoman Empire, at least 50% of the population of this area was
Muslim (Brubaker 1995, 192).
The period from 1888-1944 was a period of sovereign independence. But this period of
independence also witnessed great national aspirations and great national defeats. 1888-1944 was
a 56-year period in which the national ideals were ever present as an intense, if not always
salient, foreign policy motivation not only among Bulgarians, but among all Balkan nations
(Sardamov 1998, 4).10 These ideals were the liberation and unification, through war if necessary,
of all of the Bulgarian lands into a sovereign Bulgarian nation state. It was briefly and
tantalizingly achieved with the Treaty of San Stefano, the first treaty ending the 1877-78 RussoTurkish War. This war was fought under the banner of humanitarian intervention to protect the
Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire who were in revolt. Russias intervention in support of
9

In July 2012, a suicide bombing of an Israeli tour bus in the Bulgarian port and resort city of Burgas killed seven (BBC,
Hezbollah linked to Burgas bus bombing in Bulgaria, February 5, 2013, accessed July 3, 2014,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21342192.)
10
The national ideals was a concept and phrase this writer first encountered among his Bulgarian students at the
American University in Bulgaria.

26

DEDOMINICIS: STATE AUTHORITY IN BULGARIA

a Bulgarian uprising initially enticed with the prospect of the creation of a new Bulgarian state
with territory substantially larger than the one that exists today:

Figure 1: Differences in the boundaries of Bulgaria according to the

Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano and the Berlin Treaty
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bulgaria-San_Stefano-Berlin_1878.jpg

British fears that Bulgaria would be a Russian satellite threatening British imperial interests in
the region led to a reduction in Bulgarias territory at the subsequent 1878 Congress of Berlin
(Haigh 1990, 266-67). A major focus of Bulgarian irredentist foreign policy and recurrent,
devastating wars until 1944 remained reestablishing the San Stefano borders. In two world wars,
Bulgaria allied with Germany against Serbia and Greece, the Balkan allies of France and the UK
that conquered most of Macedonia in 1912-13. The final result is todays borders (maps not to
scale):

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY GLOBAL STUDIES

Figure 2: Contemporary Bulgaria (postwar)

Source: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/bulgaria.jpg

The Legacy of Communism

Communist Bulgaria bordered on two NATO member states and traditional adversaries: Greece
and Turkey. To the west lay Titos Yugoslavia which laid claim to the Pirin region of
southwestern Bulgaria (the location of AUBG, in Blagoevgrad) as part of the historic region of
Macedonia. 11 Communist Bulgaria first attempted to accommodate this claim by forcibly
designating the indigenous population in the region as Macedonian in individual identity
documents. The policy generated hostility from Bulgarian national self-identifiers. Then it
rejected this same policy following the state of relations between Belgrade and Moscow, the
latter being Bulgarias superpower patron. After the 1948 Tito-Stalin split, Bulgaria withdrew
Blagoevgrad is the postwar name for Gorna Dzhumaya. The latter name combined Slavic elements (e.g. Gorna,
i.e. High, Top, Upper, Mountain) with old Turkish (Dzhumaya, i.e. ~ Friday, i.e. ~ Market). The
Communist authorities changed the name to commemorate Dimitar Blagoev, an Aegean Macedonian (i.e. from what is
today part of Greece) refugee and the founder of what became the Bulgarian Community Party at the turn of the century.
Unlike other Bulgarian cities, the post-1989 authorities decided not to revert to the pre-Communist era name. Gorna
Dzhumaya [GD, in Latin (not Bulgarian Cyrillic) letters as written] remains the name of a popular brand of cigarettes in
tobacco-producing Bulgaria, an economic occupation associated today with the Bulgarian Turkish minority (Neuberger
2013, 226-27).
11

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DEDOMINICIS: STATE AUTHORITY IN BULGARIA

from a Yugoslav plan to create a Balkan federal state including Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and
Albania. Romania and Greece would have joined later (Katsikas 2012, 25).
Immediately upon his arrival at AUBG as a new faculty member in 1994, a student
presented to this writer as a gift a 900+ page volume of documents. Translated into English, it is
entitled, Macedonia: Documents and Materials, compiled, edited and published by the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences in 1979. Originally published in Bulgarian in 1978, The documents in this
volume demonstrate not only the inseparable ties of the population in Macedonia with the
population in the rest of Bulgarias territory, but also its direct participation in the all-Bulgarian
historical process and in the entire political and cultural history of the Bulgarian people (5-6).
The totalitarian component of Soviet imperialism left a significantly different ideologicalattitudinal legacy in Bulgaria in comparison with Poland, for example. This legacy interacted
with the earlier collective memory of Slavic Orthodox Russias critical role in Slavic Orthodox
Bulgarian national liberation in 1877-78.12
According to Vodenicharov, the new Bulgarian Communist authorities succeeded in fusing
Communism with the prevailing, traditional parochial clan and patriarchal authority structures.
The imposition of de facto political caste privileges on the basis of the mythos of rank in the antifascist struggle was readily accommodated in Bulgaria. After centuries of feudal domination,
including five centuries within a Muslim empire, in the 1970s the Communist authorities sought
to reconstruct Bulgarian national identity. It was part of their legitimation formula. The focus
was on autochthonic themes: Bulgarian territory as a place of unique history and an indigenous
spiritual community with roots in Thracian civilization and Bogomil Christianity. The Bulgarian
Orthodox Church was relegated to a secondary status in this secular religion. The policy focused
on fusing the intelligentsia with the Communist nomenklatura to strengthen its control (2005, 8791). A Bulgarian counterpart to the role of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland as an
institutional shelter for dissidents and organized dissent did not exist (Kubik 1994).
Katsikas notes that Lyudmila Zhivkova, daughter of the Bulgarian Communist Party General
Secretary Todor Zhivkov, promoted Bulgarian nationalism beginning in the 1970s. Her campaign
intensified after the mid-1970s when she received far-reaching powers over television, radio and
the press. She aimed to promote a sense of Bulgarian separateness and to increase national selfconfidence. She opened many theatres and opera companies in the capital and supported
monumental preservation in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Moscow and Oxford-educated
(history PhD), Zhivkova died in July 1981 at age 39 from a cerebral hemorrhage, never
challenged despite widespread suspicion she was murdered. Her funeral witnessed the greatest
public outpouring of grief since the death of King Boris III in 1943 (2012, 19-20).13
Meznik and Theime assert that no counter elite existed in Communist Bulgaria claiming
moral entitlement, for example, as in Poland (2012, 198-99). The extent of this comparative lack
of intelligentsia dissident community experiential knowledge, for example, is indirectly evident
by comparing access to expatriate resources. Hundreds of thousands of Poles had left Poland
12
e.g. In downtown Sofia across from the national parliament building stands the turn-of-the century monument to the
Tsar Liberator. While the figure on a horse lacks a specific name, it is clearly Alexander II of Russia, who ruled during
1877-78 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Tsar_Liberator). The seat of Bulgarian Orthodox patriarch in
Sofia, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, is named after a heroic Russian medieval prince and Orthodox saint, with work
beginning immediately after 1878 to commemorate Russian war casualties. Its name was briefly changed during World
War I when Bulgaria and Russia were in opposing alliances, to Sts. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Nevsky_Cathedral,_Sofia). The latter referred to the 9th century Byzantine
(Greco-Slavic?) missionary brother saints traditionally credited with initiating the Cyrillic alphabet to translate the Bible
and proselytize Orthodox Christianity among the pagan Slavs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_and_Methodius).
Bulgarian nationalists often claim them as Bulgarian, while Macedonian nationalists claim them as Macedonian, while
their place of birth, Thessalonica, today is the second largest city in Greece.
13
e.g. During this writers tenure 1994-2009 in Bulgaria, Lyudmila Zhivkovas portrait remained in the wall mural in a
conference hall of the National Palace of Culture that opened in 1981, the largest multifunctional conference and
exhibition centre in south-eastern Europe. It was opened in 1981 in celebration of Bulgaria's 1300th anniversary [sic]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Palace_of_Culture).

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during and after the Second World War to live and work in western countries (Pacyga 2004, 26062). Many Poles with higher education returned to post-1989 Poland to contribute with varying
degrees of commitment, and for varying degrees of time (Grny and Osipovi 2006, 44-101).
Some western-educated offspring of senior Bulgarian Communist nomenklatura did the same,
along with the return to Bulgaria of Simeon Saxecoburgotski, the son of Boris III. The
Communist-era numbers of Western-educated Bulgarian elite offspring were comparatively quite
small (Rossi 2010, 14). Some had a high profile during the transition particularly under the
patronage of Simeon Saxecoburgotski, prime minister during 2001-5. 14 This difference was
partly due to the fact that previous generational outward migration by the Bulgarian Orthodox
Slav ethnic majority was comparatively low (Markova 2010, 2-6).
Migration of a more tragic form involved resistance to forced assimilation of the Bulgarian
Turkish and Muslim minorities. These forced assimilation policies happened regularly
throughout Bulgarian post-liberation history since 1878, most recently in the 1980s. At the time
of liberation of what is now Bulgaria, the Muslim population at least equaled in size the
Orthodox, but subsequent violence drastically reduced the former to ~ 10% today (US Marine
military training manual 1993, 81). Dr. Krassen Stanchev, the Director of the Sofia-based
Institute for Market Economics, notes that in the most recent case, up to 300,000 Bulgarian Turks
and Muslims resisted by moving to Turkey. Bulgaria at the time had a population of 8.5 million.
They left their possessions and real estate, which were expropriated [Stanchev 2011, 6; Stanchev
2004, 6 (ft 1)]. These periodic expulsions had the effect of providing an economic plunder
windfall for a significant number of beneficiaries among the remaining inhabitants.
Comparatively, pre-1919 Versailles Treaty Poland experienced German, Austrian and Russian
occupation since the late eighteenth century partition along with steady outward migration.
Unlike the Poles, the post-1989 Bulgarian regime had neither the diaspora numbers nor a
pro-Western, anti-Russian/anti-Soviet elite motivational mindset of comparable intensity to help
drive reforms. The Bulgarian intelligentsia generally has been more likely to recognize the
Communist period as one historical stage in the development of their nation. 15 The Polish
intelligentsia, in contrast, has a more internally divisive, contested relationship to the Polish
Peoples Republic. The latter is more likely to be perceived as a manifestation of foreign,
imperial occupation, particularly among the migr population (Grny and Osipovi 2006, 32).
Most convincing is the standard contemporary Polish discourse reference to the First (pre-18th
century partition), Second (interwar Poland), and Third (1989-present) republics of Poland. The
Communist Peoples Republic of Poland is thereby marked as an alien regime (Chwalisz).
Developments during this time are more likely to be contested rather than consensually accepted
as national achievements.
In sum, Meznik and Theime conclude that in Bulgaria right wing militant nationalist parties
cannot ignore the Communist era. National Communism is part of a chain linking with the pre1918 and interwar periods in terms of being a nationalist spiritual community. Consequently,

For a description of the most prominent with Western business pedigrees, see Tom Buerkle, All the kings men,
Institutional Investor Magazine, September 1, 2002. Accessed July 18, 2013 at http://www.institutionalinvestor.
com/Popups/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=1027272.
15
e.g. This writer purchased a 70 page large, illustrated childrens book published in 2003 in Bulgaria for adolescents
entitled : , , [Rulers of Bulgaria: Khans, Kings, Statesmen (BD)]
. - , .- [Prof. dr. Milcho Lalkov, with the
collaboration of Prof. dr. Dragomir Draganov (BD)] includes book cover and internal picture illustrations and
descriptions of Georgi Dimitrov (the first postwar Communist leader) and Todor Zhivkov (the Communist ruler of
Bulgaria for 35 years). http://www.bookpoint.bg/ (Accessed July 19, 2013) ISBN: 9544743332, : ,
: 2003. The book description: : , ,
.
, . [Thirty-two historical personages: khans, princes,
kings, and statesmen with demonstrated power and influence from the time of Khan Kybrat to our day. The glory and
drama in the governance of one state, recognized to be the promised land of the Bulgarians. (BD)]
14

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DEDOMINICIS: STATE AUTHORITY IN BULGARIA

neither in Bulgaria nor in the academic literature is there a consensus on what kind of political
extremism exists today in Bulgaria (Meznik and Theime 2012, 198-99).

The Bulgarian Transition

The Bulgarian 1989 transition was surprisingly non-violent despite the systematic, stateauthorized violence against the Bulgarian Turks occurring so recently in the 1980s. The so-called
Regeneration process of the Communist authorities aimed to force the Bulgarian Turks to
Christianize their names and the names of their ancestors on all official documents. According to
Amnesty International, hundreds of people died in resistance (Turks of Bulgaria).
The Regeneration process was a futile appeal to Bulgarian ethno-chauvinism against
minorities to stabilize the disintegrating Communist regime. This failure problematized
subsequent appeals to Bulgarian ethno-sectarian nationalism for framing political reform and
democratization entreaties (Kolev). This situation stands in contrast, for example, to the rise of
Slobodan Milosevic who emerged on appeals to Serbian unity and irredentism. These appeals
were first framed in terms of an anti-bureaucratic revolution against the pan-Yugoslav
Communist party apparat, disintegrating under nationalist attacks (Silber and Little 1997, 58-69).
In the Bulgarian case mass appeals employing ethno-sectarian romantic nationalist symbols are
more likely to generate a more problematic response. These appeals include use of nostalgia for
the romanticized positive aspects of the Communist period (Todorova and Gille, eds. 2010;
Todorova, ed. 2010).
Soviet aid to Bulgaria included large economic subsidies from Moscow and favored
treatment within the old Communist regional Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
Bulgaria acquired, for example, designation as the Eastern blocs center for computer technology
development (Katsikas 2012, 19). This designation continues to pay off today in Bulgaria. It
continues to attract capitalist foreign direct investment in the computer software development
sector because of its personnel resources in this area. 16 Bulgaria also attained another badge of
modernity and national development during the Communist period. It acquired nuclear
technology with the construction of the Soviet-designed Kozlodoj nuclear reactor complex.
Mastery of nuclear technology is a globally recognized marker of achievement of national
development (Sabato and Ramesh 1980). This infrastructure allowed Bulgaria to be a high-tech
regional energy exporter until the European Union required closure of the older, Chernobyl-type
reactors. Doing so was a prerequisite for EU accession, to the discontent of many in Bulgaria. 17
In early 2008, the Bulgarian Socialist (i.e. post-Communist) Party government under Sergei
Stanishev agreed to accept Russian economic loans and terms as part of an energy package. It
included construction of new, Russian-designed nuclear reactors at Belene. Belene had been the
site of a notorious forced labor camp under the Communist regime. 18 Russian participation in the
nuclear reactor project was part of a broader set of energy agreements between Moscow and
Sofia under the Bulgarian BSP government. It included Bulgarian participation in the Gazpromled South Stream gas pipeline plan to supply the rest of Europe. 19 Under domestic and
international pressure, the successor GERB-led Borisov government then prevaricated on how to
proceed with the nuclear project. The role of Russian economic actors was a major topic of

US Embassy Sofia, 2006 Press Releases, AES and Hewlett Packard Launch Major Investments in Bulgaria, June 6,
2006. Accessed May 30, 2009, http://bulgaria.usembassy.gov/aes.html.
Bulgaria faces a challenging year, SETimes.com, February 16, 2009. Accessed May 29, 2009,
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/articles/2009/02/16/reportage-01.
18
Anna Mudeva, Bulgaria opposition urges freeze of nuclear project, Reuters, April 21, 2009. Accessed May 29, 2009,
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSLL62127720090421.
19
Theodor Troev in Sofia and Ed Crooks, Putin strikes deal with Sofia on South Stream. Financial Times, January 18
2008, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba220f5a-c5bb-11dc-8378-0000779fd2ac.html
16

17

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY GLOBAL STUDIES

dispute.20 Amidst the turmoil over Ukraine, this $45 billion South Stream gas pipeline has been
blocked due to EU pressure on this poorest EU member state. It led to the resignation of the
Socialist Party-led Oresharski government and calling new elections three years ahead of
schedule in mid-2014.21 In early December 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced
that the South Stream project to deliver natural gas to Europe by a new pipeline through Bulgaria
had been scrapped. Putin claimed that in bowing to EU pressure to halt construction in June,
Bulgaria had forsaken up to $500 million in annual transit fees by being "deprived of the
opportunity to act as a sovereign state." 22
This resignation occurred after many months of continuous protests starting against the
earlier, GERB government of Boyko Borisov. 23 The instigator was alleged to have been involved
in corruption and kleptocracy in electrical utility privatization deals with foreign partners leading
to large rate increases. 24 Borisovs resignation led to elections and the formation of the BSP
Oresharski government. The latter was also quickly condemned in daily demonstrations for
oligarchical corruption and kleptocracy focusing on exploitation of the internal security and
intelligence ministries.25

Conclusion: Europeanization of Post-Colonial Bulgaria

Media reports highlight EU leadership warnings of failure to improve Bulgaria-EU relations
because of Bulgarian governmental inefficacy in combating official corruption. Specifically, the
concern is that it may result in a strengthening of Russian influence in Bulgaria. 26 The Financial
Times quotes from the report on the work of a panel of EU experts advising the Bulgarian
government on combating corruption: A close consideration of Bulgarias social and political
situation leads one to think that there are risks for the nations stability. It seems important for the
EU to acknowledge these risks and avoid any action that could lead to radicalisation. 27 Russian
displeasure over NATO-promoted regime change in Libya and elsewhere helped instigate its
suspicion of EU partnerships with former Soviet republics including Ukraine. 28
The high public expectations deriving from the prospect of Bulgarias accession to the EU in
January 2007 have given way to widespread frustration and anger. They derive from the
perceived failure of the Bulgarian authorities to exploit the opportunities available for improving
the lives of Bulgarias citizens (Vassilev 2008). These failures include corruption, which of
course the political opposition fiercely exploits against their governing opponents. Bulgaria, a
country today of 7.6 million has the reputation of being the poorest and most corrupt member of

20
Sofia News Agency, Bulgaria Ex Envoy in Moscow: Borisov, Exit Belene in Peace!. August 13, 2011. Accessed
January 1, 2012, http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=131108.
21
Kit Gillet, How Bulgaria fell victim to the tug of war over Ukraine. Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 2014.
Accessed July 3, 2014, at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2014/0702/How-Bulgaria-fell-victim-to-the-tug-ofwar-over-Ukraine
22
Andrew Roth, "Putin, in Defeat, Diverts Pipeline." New York Times, December 2, 2014, http://search.proquest.
com/docview/1629138674?accountid=10373.
23
Bulgarian government resigns, early elections looming. IntelliNews Today, February 21, 2013. Accessed mid-July
2013. Emerging Markets Information Service
24
Bulgarian PM seeks to calm protests. Agence France-Presse. February 19, 2013. Accessed mid-July 2013. Emerging
Markets Information Service.
25
Diana Simeonova, Shaky start for Bulgaria's new government. Agence France-Presse, June 18, 2013. Accessed midJuly 2013. Emerging Markets Information Service.
26
Tony Barber, Bulgaria risks falling under Russias influence, Financial Times, July 20, 2009. Accessed October 30,
2009 at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fb8436e-7519-11de-9ed5-00144feabdc0.html.
27
Ibid.
28
Text of report "Speech by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the III Moscow International Security
Conference, Moscow, 23 May 2014" published in English on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website on 26 May,
Russian foreign minister addresses Moscow security conference transcript,BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union,
May 27, 2014. Accessed July 4, 2014 at http://search.proquest.com/docview/1528475524?accountid=14872.

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DEDOMINICIS: STATE AUTHORITY IN BULGARIA

the EU. 29 It lost 520 million Euros in EU development funds because of EU Commission
concerns about failures to act more forcefully and effectively against official fraud and
corruption.30 Bulgaria is the first EU country ever to undergo such a sanction. 31 The humiliation
from this invidious comparison with other European countries generates support for the political
opposition against whoever is in power. They of course promise to expunge corruption involving
organized crime from among the elite. The emotional intensity of the issue is reinforced by the
universal Bulgarian awareness that 1 million people, disproportionately the young and most
educated, have left Bulgaria since 1989. They did so because of the comparatively dire and
frustrating economic and political conditions in the country (Vassilev 2008, 2).
Bulgaria already had the reputation of being tardy in implementing the benchmark panoply
of necessary economic reform transition policies. Ghodsee notes that these policies were familiar
from very recent experience in other East European states for moving from a command to a
market economy after 1989. Finally, 1997 was the year when new Bulgarian governments
proceeded with these necessary economic changes following hyperinflation due to previous halfhearted economic reforms (2007, 32). Midway through its electoral mandate the Bulgarian
Socialist Party government under Zhan Videnov resigned as a result of direct action throughout
Bulgaria. The significance of these events included the use of repertoires of contention
inherited from the Communist eras educational system (Tarrow 2011, 39-41). Demonstrators in
southwestern Bulgaria in Dupnitsa (40 kilometers north of Blagoevgrad), for example, blockaded
transport routes to Greece from Sofia. In taking the national lead in action, they drew upon
Bulgarian Communist education in which Dupnitsa was portrayed as an interwar national leader
in revolutionary activity (USAID, 17). Indeed, at Dupnitsa along the Dupnitsa-Kulata road to
Greece, stands a Communist-era monument to the Dupnitsa Commune established in the
municipality in the early 1920s. The post-1989 authorities saw fit to allow it to continue to stand,
albeit with no maintenance or upkeep as of 2009. 32 It symbolizes the generational challenge
confronting Bulgaria, twenty-five years since the end of Communism, to reform the state on the
foundation of a new national political culture.

Acknowledgement
This article was produced through the support of the Catholic University of Korea research fund
and with the support of the University of Illinois Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, East
Europe and Eurasia. The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their
thoughtful evaluations. The author would also like to thank the students at the American
University in Bulgaria and the Catholic University of Korea whom the author had the privilege to
teach for their insights and comments. Any errors are solely the authors.

Doreen Carvajal and Stephen Castle, Bulgarian corruption troubling EU. New York Times, October 15, 2008.
Accessed June 23, 2009 at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/world/europe/15iht-bulgaria.4.16989483.html?
pagewanted=4&_r= 1; Stephen Castle, "SOFIA JOURNAL: 'Batman' Sets His Sights On Bulgaria's Godfathers." New
York Times, July 21, 2011. Accessed August 3, 2011 at
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E0D9133CF932A15754C0A9679D8B63&ref=stephencastle.
30
Kerin Hope and Theodor Troev, Bulgaria loses 520m EU funds, Financial Times, November 26, 2008. Accessed
June 2, 2009 at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b297b0f6-bb14-11dd-bc6c-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=62398742-53ce-11db8a2a-0000779e2340.html.
31
Ibid.
32
e.g. Alison Furuto, Forgotten Monuments From the Communist Era in Bulgaria. arch daily. (January 10). Accessed
July 5, 2014, at http://www.archdaily.com/101626/forgotten-monuments-from-the-communist-era-in-bulgaria/.
29

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benedict E. DeDominicis: Assistant Professor, Political Science, International Studies
Department, Catholic University of Korea, South Korea

37

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global

Studies is one of eight thematically focused journals in
the collection of journals that support the
Interdisciplinary Social Sciences knowledge
communityits journals, book series, conference and
online community.
The journal investigates the dynamics of globalization
and the transformation of the local.
As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this
journal invites case studies that take the form of
presentations of practiceincluding documentation of
socially-engaged practices and exegeses analyzing the
effects of those practices.
The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global
Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2324-755X