On 1 March 1941, the
Kingdom of Bulgaria signed the
Tripartite Pact, and officially became a member of
the Axis. Following the
German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April, Bulgaria came to occupy large parts of those countries. In 1942, the anti-Axis resistance movement
Fatherland Front was formed from a mixture of Communists,
Socialists, left-wing
Agrarians and members of
Zveno. The estimate for the number of
partisans (armed guerrilla fighters) at any one time in Bulgaria is 18,000.
Communist coup In 1944, with the
entry of the
Red Army into Romania, the Kingdom of Bulgaria renounced the Axis and declared neutrality. On 5 September, the Soviet Union declared war on the kingdom and three days later the Red Army entered north-eastern Bulgaria, prompting the government to declare support in order to minimise military conflict. On 9 September, communist guerrillas launched a
coup d'état which
de facto ended the rule of the
Bulgarian monarchy and its administration, after which a new government assumed power led by the Fatherland Front, which itself was led by the
Bulgarian Communist Party.
Early years and Chervenkov era , leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1946 to 1949 After taking power, the Fatherland Front formed a coalition led by former Prime Minister
Kimon Georgiev, which included the Social Democrats and the Agrarians. Under the terms of the peace settlement, Bulgaria was allowed to keep
Southern Dobruja, but formally renounced all claims to Greek and Yugoslav territory. 150,000 Bulgarians settled during the occupation were expelled from
Western Thrace. The Communists deliberately took a minor role in the new government at first, though an all-Communist regency council was set up for the young
Tsar Simeon II. The Soviet representatives held the real power. A Communist-controlled People's Militia was set up, which
harassed and
intimidated non-Communist parties. On 1 February 1945,
Regent Prince Kiril, former Prime Minister
Bogdan Filov, and hundreds of other officials of the kingdom were arrested on charges of
war crimes. By June, Kirill and the other Regents, twenty-two former ministers, and many others had been executed. The new government began to arrest Nazi collaborators. Thousands of people were charged with treason or participating in counter-revolutionary conspiracy and sentenced to either death or life in prison. When the
army returned following the German surrender, the regime also purged the officer corps. As the war came to a halt, the government expanded its campaign of political revolution to attack economic elites in banking and private business. It is estimated that, between 1944 and 1989, between 5,000 and 10,000 people were killed in Bulgaria as part of agricultural collectivisation and political repression, although documentation is insufficient for a definitive judgement. Figures for fatalities in
forced labour camps also remain elusive. According to official sources, 2,730 people have been sentenced to death, but unofficial estimates suggested that as many as 20,000 people were reported killed under the regime between 1944 and 1989. These revolutionary attacks strengthened when it became apparent that the
United States and
United Kingdom had little interest in Bulgaria. In November 1945, Communist Party leader
Georgi Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile. He made a truculent speech that rejected cooperation with opposition groups.
Elections held a few weeks later resulted in a large majority for the Fatherland Front. In September 1946, the monarchy was abolished by
plebiscite, which resulted in 95.6 percent voting in favour of a republic, and Simeon was sent into
exile. The Communists openly took power, and Bulgaria was declared a ''
People's Republic''.
Vasil Kolarov, the number-three man in the party, became president. Over the next year, the Communists consolidated their hold on power.
Elections for a constituent assembly in October 1946 gave the Communists a majority. A month later, Dimitrov became prime minister. The Agrarians refused to co-operate with the authorities, and in June 1947 their leader
Nikola Petkov was arrested, despite strong international protests. The new Agrarian leader,
Georgi Traykov, repudiated his party's traditional ideology and defined a new role for it as the helpmate of the Bulgarian Communist Party. This marked the formation of a Communist establishment in Bulgaria. In December 1947, the constituent assembly ratified a new constitution for the republic, referred to as the "
Dimitrov Constitution". The constitution was drafted with the help of Soviet jurists using the
1936 Soviet Constitution as a model. By 1948, the remaining opposition parties were either realigned or dissolved; the
Social Democrats merged with the Communists, while the Agrarian Union became a loyal partner of the Communists. During 1948–1949,
Orthodox,
Muslim,
Protestant and
Roman Catholic religious organisations were restrained or banned. The
Orthodox Church of Bulgaria continued functioning but never regained the influence it held under the monarchy; many high roles within the church were assumed by communist functionaries. Dimitrov died in 1949 and for a time Bulgaria adopted collective leadership.
Vulko Chervenkov led the Communist Party and
Vasil Kolarov was prime minister. This broke down a year later, when Kolarov died and Chervenkov added prime minister to his titles. Chervenkov started a process of rapid
industrialization modeled after the
Soviet industrialisation led by
Stalin in the 1930s and agriculture was collectivised.
Stalin's death in 1953 had political repercussions in Bulgaria. In 1954, Chervenkov accepted the collective leadership, remained prime minister, but ceded his position as party leader to
Todor Zhivkov. The government also released a large number of political prisoners and focused on improving living standards rather than accelerating industrialization. Chervenkov stayed on as prime minister until April 1956, when he was finally dismissed and replaced by
Anton Yugov. With the official start of
de-Stalinization in 1955, censorship was relaxed somewhat and the victims of the Kostovite trials, including Kostov himself, began to be rehabilitated. By the mid-1950s, living standards rose significantly, and in 1957 collective farm workers benefited from the first agricultural pension and welfare system in
Eastern Europe. Bulgaria underwent rapid industrial development from the 1950s onwards. Starting with the 1960s, the country's economy appeared profoundly transformed. Despite the achievements of this modernisation, many difficulties remained, such as poor housing and inadequate urban infrastructure.
Macedonization in Pirin Macedonia In 1946,
Stalin sent the following order to the Bulgarian delegation: The government used force, threats and intimidation, branding opponents of the policy as fascists and chauvinists. Some were resettled as far as
Vojvodina after they had been resettled from Pirin to
SR Macedonia for unsuccessful Macedonization. Bulgaria adopted the Communist policy of closer rapprochement with Yugoslavia. Dimitrov then launched the initiative of a Balkan Federation that would range from
Pirin to the
Šar Mountains and reflect a Macedonian consciousness. For this purpose, he launched a policy of forced Macedonisation of the Bulgarian population in the Pirin region through conscious change of ethnic self-determination, held by means of administrative coercion and intensive propaganda. In December 1946, Dimitrov conducted a census in Pirin. State authorities instructed the local population in the Pirin region to mark administrative records such as "Macedonian", including
Pomaks, with the exception of those originating within the country. At its meeting on 21 December, the Regional Committee of the Workers' Party in Upper Cuma decided to accept a formula indicating 70% of residents were "Macedonians". As a result, among the 281,015 inhabitants, 169,444 were identified as ethnic Macedonians. In 1947, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed agreements whereby Pirin Macedonia became part of federal Yugoslavia, which proceeded to unify Pirin Macedonia with Vardar Macedonia and abolished visa regimes and removed customs services. Shortly thereafter in 1948, due to the rupture in relations between Tito and Stalin, the contract was dissolved. For a while, BCP and the Bulgarian state held contradictory, policy on the Macedonian issue. In 1963, at the March Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Zhivkov declared that the population in Pirin Macedonia was part of Bulgaria that was forced by the Communist Party.
1971–1989 According to declassified documents, Bulgaria planned on fomenting a crisis between Turkey and Greece in 1971. The operation was codenamed "
Cross" and the plan was that Bulgarian secret agents would set fire in the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and make it look like the work of Turks. The declassified documents state that "An intervention" in the religious entity would have "significantly damage[d]
Turkish-Greek relations and force[d] the United States to choose one side in the ensuing crisis". In addition, the Bulgarians also planned to boost the effect of its operation against Greece and Turkey by conducting "active measures" "for putting the enemy in a position of delusion". The plan was developed by the 7th Department of the First Main Directorate of the
DS (intelligence and secret police services of communist Bulgaria), and was affirmed by Deputy Head of the Directorate on 16 November 1970, and approved by its Head. The operation was supposed to be prepared by the middle of 1971 and then executed, but it was abandoned. In 1971, the new "Zhivkovskata" Constitution added "Article 1", which grants the PA as the sole ruling a "leading force of society and the state". Zhivkov was promoted to Head of State (Chairman of the State Council) and
Stanko Todorov became prime minister. Bulgaria signed the
Helsinki Accords in 1975, which guaranteed
human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of movement, contacts, information, culture and education, right to work, and the rights to education and medical care. However, subsequent events regarding Bulgarian Turks in the 1980s were a direct violation of these commitments. In 1978, Bulgaria attracted international attention when dissident writer
Georgi Markov was accosted on a
London street by a stranger who rammed his leg with the tip of an
umbrella. Markov died shortly afterwards of
ricin poisoning. He was the victim of the
Bulgarian secret service, as confirmed by KGB documents revealing that they had jointly planned the operation with Bulgaria. In 1981, Bulgaria celebrated the yearlong
1300th Anniversary of the Bulgarian State, in tribute to the establishment of the
first Bulgarian state. The
Bulgarian People's Army sided with the Soviet Union and the Afghan communists during the
Soviet–Afghan War in Afghanistan fighting the jihadist guerrillas from 1982 until its withdrawal in 1989.
End of the People's Republic By the 1980s, the conservatives controlled the government. Some social and cultural liberalization and progress was led by
Lyudmila Zhivkova, Todor's daughter, who became a source of strong disapproval and annoyance to the Communist Party due to her unorthodox lifestyle that included the practicing of Eastern religions. She died in 1981, approaching her 39th birthday. A campaign of forced assimilation was waged against the ethnic Turkish minority, who were forbidden to speak the Turkish language and were forced to adopt Bulgarian names took place in the winter of 1984. The issue strained Bulgaria's economic relations with the West. The
1989 expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria caused a significant drop in agricultural production in the southern regions due to the loss of around 300,000 workers. In the late 1980s, the Communists, like their leader, had grown too feeble to resist the demand for change. Liberal outcry at the breakup of an environmental demonstration in Sofia in October 1989 broadened into a general campaign for political reform. More moderate elements in the Communist leadership reacted by deposing Zhivkov and replacing him with foreign minister
Petar Mladenov on 10 November 1989. This move gained a short respite for the Communist Party and prevented revolutionary change. Mladenov promised to open up the regime, stating that he supported
multi-party elections. Demonstrations throughout the country led Mladenov to announce that the Communist Party would cede its monopoly over the political system. On 15 January 1990, the National Assembly formally amended the legal code to abolish the Communist Party's "leading role". In June 1990, the
first multi-party elections since 1939 were held. Finally on 15 November 1990, the seventh
Grand National Assembly voted to change the country's name to the
Republic of Bulgaria and removed the Communist state emblem from the national flag. A 2009 poll conducted by the
Pew Global Attitudes Project found that only 11% of Bulgarians believe ordinary people benefited from the 1989 transition. Sixteen percent say the state is run for the benefit of all people, down from 55% in 1991. However, a 2019 poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 55 percent of Bulgarians approved of the shift to a market economy and 54 percent approved of the shift to multiparty democracy. ==Government and politics==