25 years ago, on 10 November, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party released Todor Zhivkov from the post of Secretary General of the Party. A whole era in the history of Bulgaria ended as this day saw the start of the transition to democracy and market economy. What were the internal and external reasons for the changes in Eastern Europe a quarter of a century ago?

"The changes are related to the relationship between the two large blocs that existed at the time and their leaders the United States and the Soviet Union. They stemmed from the defeat of the Soviet Union in the race called the Cold War. For the countries of Eastern Europe these changes were caused by crises that occurred in the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. But also in the relations between the new Soviet leader Gorbachev and the old leaders of these countries," says Prof. Dr. Iliana Marcheva from the Institute of Historical Research with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. According to her, although the political reasons appear to be the strongest on the surface, the changes were driven by other factors, as well. After World War II mass industrialization and urbanization started, which gave birth to the new middle class. It now lived in cities. For comparison - back in 1939, 80% of Bulgaria' population was rural, and in the 1989 already 67 per cent of Bulgarians lived in towns and cities.

"In 1944, there were 8 universities with 15,000 students and in 1989 the number of universities was already 30 with 133,000 students”, notes Assoc. Prof. Marcheva. “A policy for scientific and technical progress and intellectualization of labour was under way. All this was reflected in the social structure of Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries. The emergence of the new middle class was typical for Western Europe at that time. But while there was a pluralistic society in the West, in Eastern European countries there was the dictatorship of an ideology. Usually it was about communist or socialist parties with their allied organizations. But, in general, a single-party government was dominant. For this reason, in the late 1980's, this great new middle class which incorporated clerks, teachers, the scientific, technical and artistic intelligentsia, and the military, was seeking more individual freedoms that were not to be found in the system then."

One example - university graduates were sent to compulsory work for three years in the countryside. On the other hand, the ruling political class in the 1970's and especially in the 1980's, was trying to reproduce itself - to allow its successors to stand without any effort at the helm. Higher education was not enough for a person to prosper, which is the natural desire of the middle class. So the roads forward for the middle class in the 1980s were narrower than it was wishing for. It felt injured and was seeking opportunities for social and political advancement. Therefore, among the intelligentsia, especially the humanitarian one, the sentiment of freedom was starting to emerge. All this happened in a time of intense urbanization.

"From 106 cities in 1946, we had 220 in 1989. If in 1946 Bulgaria had 4 cities with over 50,000 residents, in 1985 their number was 27. And the big city implies meeting the growing and more specialized needs of the population. At one point, it appeared that the economic system was no longer able to satisfy these needs. It controlled the consumption by retaining the prices at a certain level and by subsidizing production. So the so-called "equality in poverty" was kept as a trend in the late 1980s. At the same time, in the West the scientific and technological revolution was bearing fruit, the information revolution kicked off, consumption increased, and all those processes were making the jobs and daily lives of people easier."

The democratic changes were taking place in Eastern Europe in different ways - via the so-called “velvet revolutions”, but also via the bloody revolution in Romania. As noted by Iliana Marcheva, in Bulgaria we can talk of kind of a belated dissident movement - i.e. albeit more slowly than in other countries, part of the intelligentsia organized itself and in 1988 it put forward its political and moral claims to the ruling communists. But the change took place in the form of a "palace coup d'état," she says.

"Actually the concept was materialized of Gorbachev, his people in Politburo in the face of Petar Mladenov and Andrey Lukanov, and of almost all of the surroundings of Todor Zhivkov, to bring him down at the plenum on 10 November and thereby ensure their legitimacy in power. It turns out that the Communist Party in Bulgaria was quite strong and influential during the transition. It won an absolute majority at the first free elections of June 1990 for the Grand National Assembly. Suddenly, the party had to combine its left rhetoric with the requirements of the right-wing transition. And this led to lengthy processes associated with the overcoming of the single-party model, the establishment of democratic pluralism, the eradication of the state economy and the creation of a private market economy. "

The Bulgarian Socialist Party and Andrey Lukanov's government ordered the drawing up of a so-called “shock therapy" program to American economists Richard Rahn and Ronald Utt. But they were afraid to implement it because this was to cause a conflict with their electorate and its attitudes. On the other hand, according to Prof. Marcheva, the Bulgarian dissent movement, which formed as an anti-communist opposition in the face of the UDF coalition of 7 December 1989, appeared to lack the confidence of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Polish events, and of the Prague Spring of 1968. So it stuck to the ideological prescriptions of the neoliberal transition to a market economy, without enough consideration of the specific conditions in Bulgaria. Broadly speaking, it was a "shock therapy" in the form of rapid liberalization, privatization, and democratization. Another peculiarity of the transition period in Bulgaria was that in seeking its social foundations, the anti-communist opposition agreed to restitution of land and urban property in its real limits, which preceded privatization. And as Prof. Marcheva explains, this affected the economic situation of the Bulgarian society as it resulted in disorganization in agriculture and de-industrialization. And this was the reason for Bulgaria's late joining the Euro-Atlantic structures compared to other Eastern European countries. Bulgaria was admitted to NATO in 2004 and the EU - in 2007. What did we gain and what did we lose after November 10?

"In my opinion, we have gained a lot, in the sense that that ideas of democracy, pluralism, respect for the individual, regardless of race, gender, and status, became the norm in the public consciousness. In addition, we have become more mobile. No one is afraid of the wide world now. Environmental awareness encompasses more and more social layers. I see that especially young people actively preach a healthy lifestyle. These are indisputable benefits of the transition. And what have we lost? As a historian, I can say that, in my opinion, we have lost the idea of the value of community, family, neighbours. Denying that form of society which was forcibly collectivist, we came to the other extreme - that of radical individualism. But history shows that the individual can hardly survive outside the community."

English: Rossitsa Petcova