Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The two major Bulgarian “revolutions” (or “regime changes”), the transition after the advent of the communist-controlled government of the Fatherland Front on September 9, 1944, and the post-communist transition after November 10, 1989, reveal the diverse and often contradictory influences of the country's civil movements through political uses of protest. The Defense of the People's Power Ordinance Statutory of January 16, 1945, other acts and decrees like that which created the Dwellings of Labor and Education (i.e., reeducation camps) for the regime's political adversaries, and the presence of the Red Army up to the end of 1947 minimized social protest. The Bulgarian Workers' Party (communists) tried to centralize and control mass movements and civil organizations, and organize and supervise demonstrations. As early as 1945 many trade unions merged into the General Workers Trade Union. Diverse youth organizations were merged into a Union of People's Youth in December 1947, which from 1949, like other mass organizations, took the name of leader Georgi Dimitrov. The communist regime exhibited internal contradictions: post-revolutionary violence and mobilization to reach a Utopia, through a large-scale voluntary labor movement for speeding up the country's modernization. The opposition Social Democratic Party was disbanded and its leaders and those of other leftist formations sent ... log in or subscribe to read full text