Todor Zhivkov: Moscow’s Man in Sofia Since September igw, when the %berating” Red

Army crossed the Bulgarian borders and brought Bul- garia under communism, leadership among the Bul- garian Communists has been a matter determined by the men in command in Moscow. Having long sought to obtain a controlling position in Bulgaria, they moved behind the advancing Red Army to convert Bulgaria into a dependable Soviet satellite and to reshape Bul- garian life along the lines of Soviet Marxism. They had two sets of Bulgarian Communists to choose from for the tasks at hand.

Dimitrov Most Prominent of ‘Moscow’ Group The first was made up of exile who had trickled into

the Soviet Union in the igao’s and 1930’s, and par&u- larly after the unsuccessful Communist uprising in September 1923. Not all of the Bulgarian Communists who sought refuge in the “motherland of socialism” passed the tests of Stalinism and survived the Great Purge, but those who did had by 1gw proved them- selves reliable and competent through careers in the Comintem and its Bulgarian section, assignments in the Spanish Civil War, high and low positions in the Red &my, teaching in Soviet Party and academic institu- tions, etc.

The most prominent among them, indeed towering by virtue of his special relationship with Stalin, was Georgi Dbnitrov, the Secretary-General of the Comin- tern after 1935. Relatively obscure until 1933 and a functionary of the Comintem operating in Germany, Dimitrov (1882-1949) had been catapulted to inter- national prominence by the Leipzig trial in 1933, at which he and others were charged by the new Nazi regime with setting the Reichstag building on fire. Tried and tested, he had been brought back to the Soviet Union, following his acquittal, to run the Com- intern for Stalin.

In Dimitrov’s class and his senior in Party and Com- intern work was Vasil Kolarov (I 877-1g5o), who had first gone to the Soviet Union in 1921 and had been briefly (lgzz-lg24) Secretary-General of the Comin- tern. They and a small group of other Bulgarians em- ployed in Soviet security and propaganda work, includ- ing the brother-in-law of Dimitrov and his junior by 18 years, Vulko Chervenkov (igoo--), formed the nucleus of Bulgarian Communist leadership residing by the war’s end in Moscow.

The Younger, ‘Home-Grown’ Group Includes Zhivkov The other set of Bulgarian Communist leaders eager

to serve Stalin comprised a motley group. Few of those who led the uprising of 1923 had survived the recrim- inations for its failure, the tribulations of the ensuing period of underground life, and the frequent betrayals to the police. A younger generation of leaders, some of whom had spent brief periods of time in the Soviet Union for orientation and training, was also decimated

20

during the underground period or isolated in prisons and concentration camps. The few who had survived until the advancing Red Army and Bulgarian guerrillas freed them, returned to work, but their very survival in the hands of the police was apt to make their trust- worthiness suspect. A case in point was Traicho Kostov (1897-1949) who, after three sojourns in the Soviet Union in the 1930’s, had returned to Bulgaria to head the underground Party work inside the country. As a result of a betrayal in the Central Committee of the Party, he was serving a life sentence when freedom came.

The second set of “home-grown” leaders also included a substantial and potentially important group of men in their 30’s and early qo’s-Todor Zhivkov among them -who had risen in the ranks of the Bulgarian partisan movement by sheer ability to lead and to succeed against great odds. Whatever ideological training and grasp of Party issues these young men possessed was governed by the simple wartime formulae of support for the Soviet Union and defeat of domestic and international fascism. Their loyalty to the Soviet cause and accept- ance of Dimin-ov’s guidance from Moscow were un- questionable, but they had remained beyond direct Soviet supervision and control after the failure of Soviet wartime efforts to land emissaries by parachute and submarine. They also had their own pattern of relations with Tito’s partisan movement in Yugos1avia.l

This, in general outline, was where the matter of leadership among the Bulgarian Communists stood in September ~g&, as the old regime crumbled and they came to power. Where precisely was Zhivkov’s place in this tableau of actual and potential leaders of Bul- garian commtmism?

Zhivkov Emerges from Obscurity as Guerrilla leader

According to Zhivkov’s most detailed official biogra- phy, published in zg64,” he was at the head of the g-uer- rills detachments that converged on Sofia during the fast week of September IgM, for the fmal push to seize power. By decisions of the Party’s Politburo and Cen- tral Committee reached on Sept. 5 and 6, he was put in charge of the immediate preparation and execution of the coup cl’e’tat scheduled for the night of Sept. 8-g.a

1The portrait of the youthful, unsophisticated guerrilla leader from the Slavic parts of the Balkans, idealistically loyal to Russia and Stalin, emerges in M. Djilas’s largely autobiographical Con- uersations with Stalin (New York, ig6a). Djilas also provides some details on Yugoslav-Bulgarian relations in tbis period.

sKratkz BuZgarska Entsiklopediia [Concise Bulgarian Encyclope- dia], Vol. 2 (Sofia, ig64), pp. 360-361.

sMoimiali po istoriia M BuZgarskata Komunisticheska Partiia, 19254962 g. [Materials on the History of the Bulgarian Commu- nist Party, igz$ig69] (Sofia, 1g64), pp. 237~240. This official bis- tory of BCP, it may be noted, has been issued in nine substantially differing versions since igsa. Cf. Istoriia na BRP, 1885-1944. Bib- liografiia [History of the BCP, &85-1g++ Bibliography] (Sofia, 196d,pp. 31-39.

Ahead of him was success. Behind him were only 33 years, begun in humble circumstances and, until 1943, spent in obscurity and minor Party assignxnents.

Born Sept. 7, 1911, in a poor peasant family from Bulgaria’s heartland (the village of Pravets, District of Sofia), Zhivkov moved like many other country lads to Sofia in search of a better life. By 1929 he had become a printer’s apprentice in the State Printing Office in Sofia and completed his high school education as an external student. The following year he joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) of the outlawed Bulgarian Communist Party and soon became the secre- tary of its cell in the State Printing Office. In 1932, 21

years of age, he was admitted into the Party and made secretary of its unit in the printing office. The same year he was elected a member of the Party’s committee for the second urban district in Sofia. Two years later he was its secretary and a member of the Party’s com- mittee for the entire region of Sofia. He was also active in trade union affairs and neighborhood reading clubs. A career as a Party functionary had been started.

The next seven years, to 1941, however, were a period in which, if we are to believe the official biography, Zhivkov did nothing worth recording. The seven-year blank in the biography suggests a hiatus without ex- plaining it. Where he was and what he did in these years remain open questions. There is little basis for conjecturing that he spent some of them in the Soviet Union or fighting in the Spanish Civil War; if he had, the fact would have been stressed, for the biographies of Party functionaries as a rule make much of such training and experience. More plausible is the explana- tion that the intense police repression during this period, the crises in the Party, and the contradictions between the line coming from Moscow and the views of the local leaders induced inactivity. It is also likely that on occa- sion he had zigged where Traicho Kostov, then Secre- tary of the Central Committee and in charge of Party affairs in the country, had wished him to zag. Young and inexperienced, he may have been, in short, often confused and rejected.

long Struggle Between the Two Factions

For all functionaries, high and low, these were trying years. In the beginning of the period, the Party was still in the throes of a prolonged and fierce struggle for supremacy between its so-called Foreign Bureau in Moscow (consisting of Kolarov, Dimitrov, and Petur Iskrov, who was later purged) and leaders of the Party inside the country, labeled “left sectarians” by Rolarov and Dimitro~.~ The struggle had its roots in the fiascoes of 1923 and the resulting devastation of the Party.

Young militants, left to live with the aftermath of the uprising and the police hunts and tortures, rose in re- bellion against the senior leaders and others who had fled to the Soviet Union and were living secure and comfortable lives there. Since they had considerable appeal and a strong base in the Bulgarian Komsomol, the threat to the future direction of the Party, as

*Joseph Rothschild, The Communist Party of Bulga& Origins and DeueIopmcnt, 1883-1936 (Columbia University Press, lgsg), PP. 187~299.

Kolarov, Dimitrov, and others in Moscow saw it, was serious. For some years the struggle went on undecided, with the Soviet leaders and the Comintern taking no sides, but when Dimitrov returned to Moscow from his tour de force in Leipzig, his prestige and power were too much for the rebels to withstand. At the “behest of the Foreign Bureau,” Traicho Kostov, who had come for the second time to the Soviet Union in 1932, and two others --Star&e Dimitrov-Marek, (188g-ig+tJ and Georgi Damianov (1Sg2-1g58)-were sent to Bulgaria in 1934 and 1935 to enforce the “new Party line” and to “over- come the left sectarianism.“6

Purge of Home leaders, 1935-36; Other Setbacks The three purgers were effective. In the course of

1935-1936 the “left sectarians” were routed and, in the terminology of current Party historiography, the Party was “set on a Bolshevik course.“B However, the price paid in decimation of Party cadres and disorientation was heavy. The membership dwindled to 3,260’ (from 38,036 in ig22s) ; that of the Communist Youth League, to 2,970 (from some 20,000 in 1923). Some Party units, the important Sofia region committee among them, were wrecked in the struggle.” The new course was not understood or accepted everywhere throughout the Party. Its front organization, the Workers’ Party, es- tablished in 1927, and the Popular Front tactic pro- claimed by Dimitrov at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935 continued to be rejected.l”

Furthermore, a new government which took power on May 19, 1934, established an authoritarian regime which proscribed all existing parties and political ac- tivity. The following year it was displaced by King Boris who, mortally afraid of Bolshevism (Bulgarian Communists had made several attempts on his life), instituted a royal dictatorship that eventually aligned Bulgaria with Germany. The proscription of the Work- ers’ Party and the effective repression “further isolated the BCP from the masses.“ll

Party Closes Ranks Following Nazi Attack on U.S.S.R. The nadir of confusion and disorientation was reached

when Stalin made his pact with the spearhead of inter- national fascism, and Bulgarian Communists, like Com- munists everywhere, were told from Moscow to bend every effort for the success of the Soviet-Nazi partner- ship.

For those who remained confused until 1941, Hitler’s attack on his Soviet ally introduced a new clarity: what- ever Stalin’s motives had been in making common

BMateriali, pp. 46105; cf. Kostov’s biography and the article on “Left Sectarianism in the Bulgarian Communist Party” in Kratka Bulgarska Entsiklopediia, Vol. 3 (Sofia, lg66), pp. 151 end 304.

eMateriaIi, p. 108. ‘Ibid., p. I IO. See the article on the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) in

Kratka Bulgarska Entsiklopediia, Vol. I (Sofia, 1963), p. 410. %hivkov, it will be recalled, had become a member of the Party

committee for the Sofia redon in 1934. Whether he was purged as a “left sectarian” or an “‘&ra-left@ is not clear. His $io&aphy leaves the impression that he might have been.

10Materiali, p, I IO. ‘1Materiali (1960 edition), p. 309.

21 Iv 5 s- BER-OCTOBER

cause with Hitler, Germany was assaulting the “motherland of socialism.” In growing numbers Com- munists responded to the appeals from Moscow to or- ganize sabotage and partisan activities in Germany’s rear.la

Zhivkov Organizes Chavdar Brigade of Partisans

In lg4i-his official biography continues the chrono- logical account with 1941 immediately following 1934 -Zhivkov became Party secretary for the Iuchbunar district in Sofia, a working class neighborhood in the capital. The following year he resumed his membership in the Party’s committee for the Sofia region.18 As the Stalingrad victory infused new confidence in Commu- nist ranks, the Central Committee undertook to organize all guerrilla detachments in a united “People’s Libera- tion Insurgent &my” (Narodoosvododitelna Vusta- niche&a Armiia) to operate under a central command and in 12 “Insurgent Operation Zones,” each with its own command unit. In early 1943, the command of the First Zone (the Sofia region) dispatched Zhivkov with full powers to his native area (around the town of Botevgrad) to recruit and organize partisan detach- ments there.

His efforts produced the nucleus of a new detachment, called “Chavdar” after a i6th-century Bulgarian guer- rilla leader who fought the Turks and became a symbol of Bulgarian heroism in the popular epos. Within a year the detachment had 300 partisans in its ranks and on April 27, igu, it was declared the First Bulgarian Partisan Brigade.l’ Operating in several battalions throughout the Sofia region, the Chavdar Brigade be- came the principal guerrilla arm of the Party leadership in Sofia for sabotage, raids, and intimidation around the capital.16

Zhivkov, it would appear, shuttled between brigade headquarters and the central command in Sofia. Party documents of the time (May-June 1944) show him, under the guerrilla name of Ianko or Marko, as the full- powers agent (putnomoshtnik) of the Sofia region com- mittee instructing the Chavdar partisans on tasks and organizational problems and reporting to the First Zone

l*From June 1~41 to January 1943 these activities were admit- adly minor until the Soviet victory at Stalingrad stimulated the expectations of general victory. Cf. Nikifor Gornenski. L’uoru&r- nata borba rm butgarskiia God za osvobozhdenie ot ~tlmistkata okupatsiia i monarkho-fashistkata diktatura 0941-1944 P. 1 rThe armed struggle of the ‘Bulgarian people for’ liberation girn ‘II%: lerite occupation and monarcho-fascist dictatorship (ig4i-lQ&] (So% m81, PP. 134-137.

1sA brief Soviet biography of Zhivkov in Souefsknia Istorichesk& EntsikZopediia [Soviet Historical Encyclopedia], Vol. 5 (1~64) di- verges here from the Bulgarian source. After indicating that Zhiv- kov was a worker in the State Printing Office from 1~29 to 1939, it states that he was a member of the Party’s committee for the Sofia region from 1934 to 1936 and secretaxy of the Iuchbunar dis- trict committee from ig4o to 1943.

14Slavka Petrova, Borbata na BKP za ustanoviavam narodnw demokrati.scheskata vlmt, mui-septemvri 1944 [The struggle of the BCP for establishment of the people’s democratic government, May- September 19441 (Sofia, 1964), pp. 28-31.

1sSee map of partisan operations in IQ~I-19% in Kratka Bulgar- ska Entsiklopediia, Vol. I, facing p. 96.

22

command on conditions in the brigade.lB In obvious appreciation of his ability and performance, he was made deputy commander of the First Zone in July ig&. The following month the Red Army overran Romania, and units of its Third Ukrainian Front under Marshal F. I. Tolbukhin and General S. S. Biriuzov reached the Bulgarian border on Sept. 6.‘?

He Successfully Directs Coup d’Etat The previous day (Sept. 5) the Soviet government

declared a state of war with Bulgaria in preparation for the Red Army’s entry into the country and Bulgaria’s inclusion in the Soviet sphere of influence. During the evening of Sept. 5, after hearing the declaration of war broadcast over the Soviet radio stations, the Politburo of the Party and the central command of the Insurgent &my resolved to seize power during the night of Sept. 8-9 and agreed on a plan of action.‘8

The plan involved the concentration of the available partisan units in and around Sofia and a wave of strikes, demonstrations, and rallies in the capital before the final push. Central role among the partisan units naturally fell to the Chavdar Brigade. A committee of four headed by Zhivkov (the other three members were Stank0 Todorov, Vladimir Bonev, and Ivan Bonev) was ap- pointed to coordinate all preparations and activities. Zhivkov, recent Party historiography maintains, was entrusted by the Central Committee with preparing and carrying out the coup in Sofia; in the course of the coup, which was to begin at 2 a.m. on Sept. g, operational liaison was to be effected by Zhivkov and Petur Iliev, an army captain working for the partisans.‘g

The coup itself was a pushover. Isolated and demor- alized by the Soviet declaration of war, the government was on the verge of collapse and when the guerrillas moved to seize the government buildings and arrest their enemies, no resistance was encountered.

After the operation in Sofia was completed, Zhivkov took charge of the organization of the so-called people’s militia, made up of Party functionaries, security men arriving from the Soviet Union, and partisans. Under his direction the militia became the security arm of the new regime and rounded up thousands of avowed and alleged Fascists and enemies of communism in Bul- garia . 2o Within the Party, he became second secre-

isPetur Georgiev and others, eds., Vuoruzhenata borba M bul- garskiia narod protiv fashizma, 1941-1944. Dokumenti [The armed struggle of the Bulgarian people against fascism, iQ41-1Q+& Docu- merits] (Sofia, ig62), pp. 486-526. Commander of the brigade was Dobri M. Dzhurov, Zhivkods Minister of Defense since 1962; cf. Kratka BU~RU~ZZ Entsiklonediia. Vol. 2. D. 158. Dzhurov (1016-l comes horn-the same area &id was probibiy diawn into the’bhgade by Zhivkov.

*7Istoriia Velikoi Otechetivennoi voiny Sovetskngo Soium, 1941- 1945 [History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, w41-19~] Vol. IV (Moscow, 1962), p. 295.

Ybid., p. 301. *9MateriaZi (1964 edition), p. 237; Petrova, Borbota, p. 202. Iliev

(IQlO--), it may be noted, went on to become lieutenant general after graduating from the General Staff Academy of the Red Army.

*OSee his article on the militia and its tasks (originally published on Sept. ag, IQ++) in Todor Zhivkov, Speeches, Reports, Articles in three volumes (Sofia, 1964)~ Vol. I, pp. ig22. The bloodbath that followed involved untold thousands. The “people’s tribunals” alone

COMMUNIST APPAIRS

tary of the Party’s committee for the Sofia region. General Biriuzov, who remained in Bulgaria as supreme Soviet commander and chairman of the Allied Control Commission, remembers him as the political commissar of the Chavdar Brigade who directed the coup d’kat in September 1944, and, although only 33, was the focus of “seething activity.“21

Dimitrov Is the Stalin of the New Soviet Satellite

Within the constellation of the Bulgarian Communist leadership in 1944, however, Zhivkov was still a very junior luminary. When the gates of the prisons flung open, Traicho Kostov resumed his functions as Secretary of the Central Committee and organizational leader of the Party within the country. In Moscow, Dimitrov kept up his posture of undisputed leader and inspirer of the Bulgarian Communist Party with a stream of tele- grams, letters, and directives to the men in Sofia in preparation for his return to Bulgaria. Kolarov re- turned ahead of him, but the fact that Kolarov did not take charge also indicated that the top position was being held for Dimitrov. When Dimitrov finally re- turned (November 1g45), he was glorified as a Stalin- like vozhd (supreme leader), only slightly reduced to fit the Bulgarian scale of things.22

For a while, under Dimitrov’s authority the jealousies, personality clashes, and policy differences that develop in all politics, including those of the Communists, were kept submerged. Then the Stalin-Tit0 feud and Dimi- trov’s deteriorating health brought some of them to the surface.

Chervenkov-Kostov Conflict Develops

The most dramatic of the conflicts in the Party was that between Dimitrov’s brother-in-law, Vulko Cher- venkov, and Traicho Kostov. Chervenkov had fled to the Soviet Union in the wake of the 1923 uprising after serving briefly as head of the Bulgarian Komsomol. A young man of 25 when he arrived in 1925, he matured in the Soviet Union, married Dimitrov’s sister, and rose as “a hard Bolshevik and talented leader with a Stalinist style of work.“zs He studied hard and well, first at an OGPU school and then at the Lenin Comintern Academy (lg25-1g28); so well, in fact, that he was re- tained as an instructor (igz8-ig34) and even became

(operating in lga-45) sentenced to death 2,850 persons. Cf. Com- munist Takeover and Occupation of Bulgaria, Special report No. 7 of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Rep- resentatives, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, 1g54), p. g. This was probably the most thorough decimation of the leadership element in Bulgaria since the Turkish conquest. See J. F. Brown, The New Efustem Europe: The Khrushchev Era and After (New York, ig66), pp. 4-10. Brown provides in appendix (pp. 257-8) a brief biography of Zhivkov based on Radio Free Europe research.

%. S. Biriuzov, Souetskii soldat na Balkanakh [Soviet Soldier in the Balkans] (Moscow, 1963)) pp. 194, 288.

2*The Yugoslav leaders, who were convinced that Dimitrov was quite independent and friendly to them, thought Stalin was pre- venting Dimitrov’s return until Stalin’s emissaries were firmly in control in Bulgaria. Cf. Djilas, Conversations with StuZin, pp. 116- 117.

28Vulko Chervenbv; bio-bibliogrufiia, 1900-1950 (Sofia, ig5o), Pp. 5-20.

&he Academy’s director for a brief period in lg3pg38. He also worked in the Balkan section of the Comintem. From June 1941 until the takeover of Bulgaria in Sep- tember iga, he directed the broadcasts of the Bulgar- ian-language “Khristo Botev” radio station. (Khristo Botev, poet and national hero, was leader of Bulgarian guerrillas against the Turks in 1876.)

A member of the Foreign Bureau (and of the Soviet. Communist Party), upon his return to Bulgaria Cher- venkov was made a member of the Party Central Com- mittee and Politburo and secretary for agitation and propaganda under Traicho Kostov. His bailiwick being ideological affairs, he served as Bulgarian representative at the creation of the Cominform in September 1947 and at its subsequent meetings convened to condemn Tito. In December 1947 he became head of the agency for scientific, artistic, and cultural affairs and a member of Dimitrov’s Cabinet. When the Stalin-Tit0 feud broke out into the open in 1948, he turned into the chief ar- ticulator of Stalin’s line in Bulgaria. The most success- ful among the younger exiles who had made careers in the Soviet Union, Chervenkov became in effect their leader and mentor in Bulgaria.

Chervenkov liquidates Kostov, Purges Party

Kostov, on the other hand, was increasingly identified with a Bulgarian national viewpoint. After he resumed his position of Secretary of the Party, he turned to the economic problems of the country and became chairman of the government commission for economic and finan- cial affairs. From this vantage point he realized how dearly Bulgarians were paying for Soviet friendship. When he tried to protect Bulgarian interests, he became a marked man in Moscow, suspect, in the atmosphere of the Stalin-Tit0 clash, of actual or potential Titoism.

With Dimitrov dying and Kolarov too old to be of much use, Stalin turned to Chervenkov to destroy Kostov and secure the situation in Bulgaria for the Soviet Union. In a staged trial Kostov was charged with con- spiring with Tito and American diplomats, and exe- cuted. Chervenkov, his accuser and liquidator, became Secretary-General of the Party, as well as Prime Minister after Kolarov died in January 1950.

The alleged threat of “TraichoKostovism” gave Chervenkov and the former exiles around him the pre- text for unleashing a reign of terror over their actual or suspected opponents in the Party. A massive action of finding and rooting out “TraichoKostovites,” persons guilty of “nationalist deviations,” functionaries “not sufficiently vigilant and Stalin&” in their methods of work, etc., swept the Party in 1950. By official figures, 92,500 members of the Party were eliminated in the purge (one fifth of the total membership), among them 13 Central Committee members and 6 ministers.

Zhivkov Rises Fast As Chervenkov Prot6g6

How did Zhivkov fare during the crisis? Since 1945 his rise in the Sofia Communist Party machine had been steady. In that year he was rewarded with admis- sion to the Central Committee as a candidate-member; he was raised to full membership by the Fifth Congress

23

of the Party in 1948. In lg48-1g4g, when the Kostov affair was moving to a climax, he was in charge of the department of organizations and instruction of the Cen- tral Committee. In addition, he ran the Party’s com- mittee for the city of Sofia (as its first secretary), and headed the municipal council. In these positions he was in charge of Party cadres and in effect. the boss of Sofia, much in the same way as KhrushchGv had at one time been the boss of Moscow under Stalin.

Chervenkov found the younger man a proven Stalin- ist, loyal to Moscow and eager to please. While the purge decimated the older leadership for nationalist deviation or un-Stalin& laxity, Zhivkov became one of Chervenkov’s secretaries in the Party general Secre- tariat (January lgso), took complete charge of the Sofia city and region, and even was coopted candidate- member of the Politburo which Chervenkov picked.24 Feeling that he had nothing to fear from the pliant and inconspicuous young apparatchik (Zhivkov’s abilities as an inspiring leader and speaker are modest), Cherven- kov raised him in 1951 to full membership in the Politburo. His quick rise to the top as one of Cherven- kov’s prot6gks marked him in the agonized Party as a henchman of the new leader.2’

Stalin’s Death: Beginning of the End for Chervenkov

Events which began to unfold with the death of Stalin in March 1953 proved both Chervenkov’s and the Party’s assessments of Zhivkov wrong. The “New Course” pressed by the new leaders in Moscow in 1g53- 1954 provided the first tests of Chervenkov’s judgment and adaptability. He tried to adapt himself to the changing situation and even took the lead in attacking de “cult of personality” in Bulgaria and proposing the abolition of the post of Secretary-General in the Party, but his attitude-Party historians now say-was pro forma and two-faced.2e

When the separation of the government and Party functions could no longer be postponed, he made his first big mistake in agreeing to continue as Prime Minister and accepting Zhivkov’s appointment as the new Secretary-General (or First Secretary, in imitation of de change in Moscow) of the Party.27 Just as this separation of functions in the Soviet Union led to the downfall of Malenkov and the rise of Khrushchgv, in Bulgaria it made easier the removal of Chervenkov and the elevation of Zhivkov, his eventual accuser, to the job of Moscow’s man in Sofia.

24Zhivkov took part as a leading member of Chervenkov’e team in the Third Conference of the Party (June 1950) which Cherven- kov called to discuss the peril of TraichoKostovism and the first results of the purge. Cf. Treta Konferentsiia M Bulgarskata Komu- nisticheska Par&, 7-9 iuni 1950 (Stenografski protokol) [Third Conference of the Bulgarian Communist Party, June 7-g, 1950 (Stenographic Minutes) ] (Sofia, 1950).

s%own, The New Eastern Europe, p. 8. 2~Materiali (1964 edition), p. 353-

s%hivkov’s appointment as First Secretary was formalized at the Sixth Congress of the P~IQ in March 1954. Zhivkov’s historio- graphers now say that as early as January 1953 he had fought for a Bulgarian way of seeing the role of the Party and against “the mechanical adoption of the Soviet experience.” Cf. Materiali (1964 edition), PP. 354r355.

The process took two more years to complete. Cher- venkov’s cause was not helped by the intense dislike which he and KhrushchGv apparently had for each other,** but while the struggle for power was still unre- solved in Moscow he remained the leader in Sofia. With Khrushch&‘s emergence as the victor and his reconciliation with Tito in 1955, however, Chervenkov’s fate was sealed.

Party First Secretary Zhivkov Denounces Chervenkov

In a parallel development to the Soviet de-Staliniza- tion which Khrushchev launched at the 20th Congress in February 1956, opponents and victims of Chervenkov in the Bulgarian Party were instigated to carry out a local “de-Chervenkovization.” A plenary meeting of the Central Committee in April 1956 heard a report by Zhivkov28 on the 20th Congress and “the lessons from it for BCP.”

Chervenkov was removed as Prime Minister and his place was assumed by Anton Yugov (igo+-), the Minister of Internal Affairs in I 944-1949 whom Cher- venkov had castigated for laxity in the Kostov affair. Kostov, in turn, was exonerated posthumously of all charges and, in atonement, installed in the Party’s pantheon.

Chervenkov was blamed, by Zhivkov and other ac- cusers, for everything that had gone wrong after Dimi- trov’s death: the persecutions in and out of the Party, the Stalin-like cult of his own personality, the demoral- ization and paralysis in the country, the Party’s estrangement from the peasantry and other sectors of the population, the economic stagnations0

Factionalism Plagues Early Zhivkov Era

This co-called April Plenum has since been hailed as the opening of a new era, which was eventially to become the Zhivkov era. As in the Soviet Union, how- ever, what was opened at first was a Pandora’s box of grudges, feuds, and policy conflicts in the Party- some dating back to 1923, others from the coming of the Party to power in lg44-which Dimitrov’s prestige and Chervenkov’s repression had kept within bounds. They now broke out in general and bitter factionalism. Since neither Chervenkov’s removal nor Zhivkov’s triumph was complete, the two and their factions re- mained locked in a prolonged struggle.

A third faction grouped around Yugov, the new Prime Minister, who continued to see in Zhivkov a junior man and a former subordinate without experi- ence in a top government. position. (As Minister of In- ternal Affairs, Yugov had had charge of the militia and local government throughout the country, while Zhivkov had had subordinate responsibilities for the city

2*Brcmn, The New Eastern Europe, pp. 8-q.. 2sChervenkov was supposed to deliver the report as leader of the

BCP delegation to the 20th Congress, but “he stubbornly refused to do so and by various maneuvers tried to prevent inferences from being drawn as to the meaning of the decisions of the Congress for the life and activity of the Party and the country.” Mutedi (1964 edition), p. 386.

*‘Xhivkov, Speeches, Vol. I, pp. 113-119; Materiali (1964 edi- tion), PP. 333-368.

24 ~MIklUNI8TxblWl3S

and region of Sofia.) Yugov was also the natural spokesman for many Party functionaries, high and low, who had been hurt in the Kostov affair-concocted, as they saw it, in Bulgaria by Chervenkov with the help of men like Zhivkov and finally exposed as one of the crimes of the Stalin era.

The fourth faction to form in the fluid situation was led by Georgi Chankov ( agog--), a product of the Lenin Comintem Academy who had worked in Bulgaria after 1933 and had spent some years in jail. After lg~, Chankov became one of three secretaries of the Party (the other two were Kostov and Chervenkov) , with re- sponsibility for Party cadres, and as such preceded Zhivkov in this area of Party work. Chervenkov, who obviously knew him during his studies at the Comintem Academy, made him Deputy Prime Minister and his right-hand mane1 Like his former boss and Yugov, Chankov tended to regard Zhivkov as a junior apparat- chik who had much less basis than himself for high pre- tensions.

Beyond the four identifiable factions, there were- in the language of Party historiographers--“unstable petty bourgeois elements” whose “rudderless behavior” became “a principal menace to de unity of the Party.” In a number of places “revisionism” reared its head.** In plainer language, a substantial portion of the mem- bership of the Party hoped and demanded that the new era replace Stalinist dogmatism with liberalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat with democracy. One of the identifiable leaders of this “elemental force” was Dobri Terpenshev, an old Communist and wartime guerrilla leader who had been repeatedly slighted, hu- miliated and demoted by Chervenkov and his henchmen. He and others who had been similarly treated now saw a chance to “take over and to fulffl their sick ambi- tions.“88

The struggles inside the Party in the summ er and fall of 1956 released, as in Poland and Hungary, many inhibitions and stirred de intellectuals, long oppressed by Chervenkov’s paralyzing controls, to demand free- dom from Party dictates. A “writers’ rebellion” grew to such proportions that when the upheaval in Hungary turned into a revolution, the warring Bulgarian leaders closed ranks and even assigned Chervenkov (February 1957) to quell the agitation of the intellectuals.

With Khrushchfv’s Backing He Wins Out

Having weathered the storm, however, they resumed the infighting, and by July 1957 Zhivkov-increasingly enjoying the support of Khrushchev, who defeated his own opponents in the Soviet Communist Party in June

slFor Chanko+s biography see L. A. D. Dellin, ed., BuZgaria (New York, mz), PP. 386-387.

**MuteriaZi (1964 edition), pp. 390-391; Tsanka Nikolov, Rub+ tata na BKP sled Aprilskiia Plenum ZCL vuzpitahto na kmnunist- iste [The work of the BCP after the April Plenum in the education of the Gxamunists] (Sofia, lg64), pp. 76-78. The widespread Yn- stabiliw” and the fact that large numbers of Party members were swayed in the factional struggles are explained in retrospect by their “weak ideological and political preparation” and the ignor- ance in which they were kept during the period of Chervenkov’s colt. a8Ibid., p. 85.

*g57--scored a major victory. Like Khrushchev, he succeeded in isolating an “anti-Party group” consisting of Chankov, Terpeshev, and others and discrediting them with the aid of Yugov and Chervenkov. Holding Khrushchev’s confidence, Zhivkov became a steady visitor to Moscow and his dependable, if lackluster, sup- porter at international meetings and conferences.**

Khrushchev’s backing gave Zhivkov the strength to achieve complete domination of the Party and deal with his remaining competitors. Again as in previous situa- tions, however, he took his time. The Seventh Congress of the Party in June 1958, which he orchestrated, was a mild affair. Delivering the main report, Zhivkov fo- cused on the country’s economy and its perennial prob- lems under communism: exasperatingly slow rate of growth in terms of the Communist ideological commit- ments and ambitions, extreme centralization of plan- ning and management, lack of technology and raw ma- terials for “gigantomaniac ” schemes for total industrial- ization, low labor productivity, bureaucratization. “Ex- cessive centialism” had to go and labor productivity on all levels should be raised, he concluded.86

Sofia Adopts But Quickly Drops Peking Terminology

There was nothing surprising in Zhivkov’s findings and conclusions on the state of the Bulgarian economy. The surprise came after a visit which Chervenkov made to China in September 1958, in apparent response to the Chinese overtures throughout Eastern Europe.8B By the end of 1958, the Bulgarian press had referred several times to the desirability of a Bulgarian “great leap forward” and creation of Chinese- style “communes” in the countryside. Then in January 1959, Zhivkov came forward with a set of “Theses on the Accelerated Development of the National Economy” which in effect outlined a “great leap forward” program to pull the Bulgarian economy from baclrwardness into an advanced stage of development by the device of extraordinary effort.

Whether Zhivkov was pushed into this stance by his competition with Chervenkov is not clear, but it is evident that Khrushchev had not been consulted and he had not yet initiated Zhivkov into the difficulties with China. When Khrushchev took a skeptical and derisive view of the Chinese methods of economic progress, de Chinese terminology was dropped by the Bulgarian press.

Zhivkov Builds Up His ‘Apparat’

While blows continued to fall on Chervenkov, Zhivkov used every opportunity to build up his own apparat. Op ponents (“doubters,” as the Party press called some of them) were pressed out of the Politburo and high gov- ernment posts and replaced by men generally younger

s4He led the Bulgarian delegations to the Moscow wnferences of Communist parties in 1957 and 1960, the ~1st Congress of CPSU in 1959, and other meetings in Moscow, and accompanied Khrush- ch=% on his trip to the U.N. in 1960. Everywhere he echoed his mentor’s views.

Whivkov, +x&es, vol. 1, pp. 4&&Q.

SVast Europe (November ig58), p. 33.

Iv 5 Sm-0croBP.a 3$

than Zhivkov, loyal to him, and products of Bulgarian conditions. The funnel through which most of them ar- rived (Mitko Grigorov, Boris Velchev, Pencho Kubad- inski, Star&o Todorov, and others) was the Party Secretariat.

The final opportunity for Zhivkov to consolidate his dominant position again came from developments in Moscow. The zznd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in October 1961 was the stage of a renewed attack on Stalin and Stalinism by Khrushchev, at which the Chinese delegate, Chou En-lai, demonstratively left the proceedings. Chervenkov, a member of the Bulgarian delegation led by Zhivkov, apparently could not conceal similar feelings at the denigration of his old idol, for as soon as the delegation was back in Sofia he was removed from membership in the Politburo and from his govem- ment post as Deputy Prime Minister. Bulgaria’s “little Stalin” had at long last been felled.

Yugov, the last of the factional leaders to survive, presented little difficulty. Having none of Chervenkov’s appeal as a hard ideologist of classical Stalinism and only a minor following in the Party, Yugov was swept out by the Zhivkov machine at the Eighth Congress of the Party in November 1962. With him went Georgi Tsankov, Rusi Khristozov, and other unreconstructed survivors of the Stalin era. Chervenkov, who had con- tinued his “anti-Party activity,” as well as Yugov were thrown out of the Party. sT Zhivkov, already in control of the Party, took, as the new Prime Minister, direct control of the government as well.

Zhivkov an Effective Party and Government leader

In the four years since he took complete charge Zhivkov has sought to build a broad base of support among the cadres and the population at large by appeal- ing to the widespread desire for moderation and normal- ization. While his mentor was in control in Moscow, he simply followed the Khrushchev line. Since October 1964, however, he has had to adapt to the new leader- ship situation in Moscow, to anticipate the new line, and to rely more on his own experience and sense of direction.

Steering a course between “revisionism” (which in Bulgaria signifies the Yugoslav approach to the doc- tie) and “dogmatism” (meaning the Chinese ap- proach), the Scylla and Charybdis for Comm~~.&ts today, Zhivkov has reserved much harsher words for dogmatism, doctrintim, and schematicism as “harm- ful consequences of the cult of personality.” He likes to think that he is at the head of “the healthy forces” in the Bulgarian Party and in international communism which are dedicated to Leninist realism and to the “triumph of the Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence.” This has produced in foreign affairs a conciliatory atti- tude toward the “capitalist” countries in the Balkans (Greece in particular) and elsewhere, interest in trade and cultural relations, and an emphasis on Balkan un- derstanding and cooperation. Demonstrating an in-

creasing freedom of action and initiative, Zhivkov is slated to be the first East European leader to visit France.

In domestic affairs, Zhivkov, having castigated Cher- venkov for being a doctrinaire ideologist with no taste for economics, has turned to the country’s economic problems with greater resourcefulness and an empirical approach which favors material incentives to stimulate personal effort. In need of hard foreign currency for further economic development, he has opened the country to international tourism on a vast scale; and since a tense and frightened country is not attractive to Western tourists, much has been done to relieve the pervasive fear of police and Party repression.

Reconciliation with repressed segments of the popu- lation, especially the peasantry, has been sought; as a move in that direction, Zhivkov recently appointed Mrs. Svetla Daskalova, an Agrarian leader, as Minister of Justice. The paralysis of intellectual and artistic life has been alleviated; leadership of the writers’ union has been taken out of the hands of Party hacks and turned over to the more liberal elements; and with the dog- matic interpretation of the principle of partiinost (sub- ordination to the interests of the Party) under general attack, historians and others have won some freedom from the close Party supervision of the past.

The powers of the National Assembly and other %- stitutions of democracy” are being stressed. Although he has not retreated from the doctrine of the dictator- ship of the proletariat-“the main thing in Marxism- Leninism”-Zhivkov has preferred to talk of the cre- ation of a “socialist state of all the people.”

The Pressures on His leadership

Effective though it is, Zhivkov’s leadership has not remained unchallenged. The men who were eliminated in the factional struggles since 1956 are still alive and, although officially discredited and ostracized, they con- tinue to be alternatives to his rule in Bulgaria. Pressures are brought to bear on him from both sides of the Com- munist spectrum: from the “dogmatists,” whose ranks include Russia-oriented Stalinists as well as Maoists, and from the LLrevisionists,” whose program is simply the change that has taken place in Yugoslavia since 1948. The Yugoslav example of independence from Moscow (and Washington), economic wellbeing, easy relations with the West, and a relaxed type of communism, has a great appeal among Bulgarians, Communists and non- Communists alike, and is undoubtedly a source of great- er pressure for change than the example of China.

A convincing manifestation of these pressures was revealed in April 1965, when the Bulgarian press an- nounced the discovery of a conspiracy against the gov- ernment involving high-ranking army officers and second-echelon Communist leaders with wartime guer- rilla records and centering in the Sofia garrison88

(Continued on Page 27)

87MateSali (1964 edition), pp. 4~44.495; Brown, The New East- ern Eumpe, p. 16.

88Norbex-t Bornemann, “Die Verschwijrung in Bulgarien” [The Plot in Bulgaria], Osteuropu (September ig65), pp. 616-619.

26 COMM~JN-IST Ammos

Book Revr’ew: The U.S. S. R. THE U.S.S.R., by Frederick C. Barghoorn (Boston and

Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1966. 418 pp.)

The almost staggering amount of publications on Soviet government and politics in the past two decades impressively demonstrates the interest and involvement of American political scientists in the politics of the U.S.S.R. Although this literature includes a respectable number of truly perceptive and scholarly studies, it has been regrettably lacking in systematic analyses within general comparative frameworks. As a result, most studies of Soviet politics have not been conducive to comparisons with other types of political systems. For the most part, the conceptual frameworks and analytic categories suggested by such scholars as Almond, Easton, Pye and Verba have not been applied to the study of Soviet politics. This has not only seriously impeded the further refinement of such general analytic ap- proaches, but has also limited the understanding of the Soviet system.

For this reason, Professor Barghoorn’s book repre- senting the “first full-length functional analysis of Soviet politics” should be an especially welcome addi- tion to the literature. His volume is expressly dedicated to the organization of the material “around a common set of functional topics in the interest of furthering comparisons.” In the words of the editors of the Series, this volume “takes a long step toward bringing Soviet political studies within the framework of comparative analysis.”

The application of such conceptual categories as poli- tical culture and socialization, social structure and poli- tical subcultures, interest articulation and aggregation, elite recruitment and organization, policy making and implementation should help to rescue Soviet studies from the traditional ills of historical-descriptive and

(Continued from Page 26)

[See Communist Aflairs, III/2, March-April 1965, p. 22, and III/s, May-June 1965, p. 15.1 While the plot- the first of its kind against a Communist regime-still remains a mystery, in an interview with Austrian jour- nalists, Zhivkov attributed it to a pro-Chinese faction.s8

Whether a pro-Chinese or a pro-Yugoslav faction was involved, it seems unlikely that military coups will unseat Zhivkov; the armed forces are, at the top eche- lons, in the hands of officers who have received their training in the Red Army or in Soviet military academies since World War II. More probably his fate, like that of his predecessors, will be determined by what happens in Moscow.

-M.P.

3”Ea.st Europe (September 1965). pp. 37-38, quoting Neues Os- terreich, July 17, 1965.

ideologically tainted approaches that have generally managed to convey the impression (especially in intro- ductory textbooks) that Soviet political processes are so fundamentally different from those in other types of political systems as to prevent meaningful comparisons. Such an analytic approach should help to focus atten- tion on the basic processes that characterize all political systems, and present the particular manifestations of the Soviet system within the framework of common functional requisites.

Although Professor Barghoorn has made a significant contribution in utilizing the comparative approach to Soviet politics, his book still bears traces of the old orientation. In his discussion of political culture, for instance, he fails to point out that the seemingly unique manifestations of Soviet political culture and behavior should be viewed as variants of similar behavior pat- terns in other types of political systems. Thus, when he states that “most Soviet citizens will continue to protect their peace of mind by rejecting information that sharply differs from the picture of reality that the party’s socialization and communication programs press upon them,” he should also have pointed to similar be- havior patterns of non-Soviet populations. Or, when h e points out that “The Soviet leaders seek to shape communication and personal relationships in school, family, and other attitude-forming institutions so as to inculcate the maximum possible devotion to the policy,” he should have made it clear that in this respect Soviet leaders’ policies differ in degree, not in kind, from those of other types of political systems. Similar comments would be in order with respect to such statements as: Russian revolutionary leaders were forced “to present their policies in terms of images understandable to their subjects”; a characteristic of Russian political culture is fearfulness of “alien” influences which “inspires an urge to control the world whence these disturbing forces spring”; “Continued Soviet concern about excessive ex- posure of Soviet citizens to ‘bourgeois’ influences . . . may justify speculation about the effectiveness of the Soviet political socialization and communication pro- grams" (PP. 374, 84, 6, 12, 33-34).

It appears to this reviewer that the objective of “bringing Soviet political studies within the frame- work of comparative political analysis” would have been better implemented had the author taken pains to suggest the commonality as well as the particular characteristics of Soviet political culture and behavior. However, this criticism should not obscure the fact that Professor Barghoorn’s book is a pioneering and exciting venture and represents an important step toward the comparative study of Soviet politics.

JOSEPH NYOMARKAY, AssociateProfessor Department of Political Science, USC

I&' 5 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 21