On 19 January 1989, a few months before the fall of the communist regime in Bulgaria, the recently re-elected French President François Mitterrand met at the French Embassy in Sofia with a group of Bulgarian intellectuals from dissident circles, including the future President Zhelyu Zhelev, the poet and soon-to-be Vice-President Blaga Dimitrova and the satirist Radoy Ralin. Later in the day, Mitterrand also held a discussion with students from the University of Sofia, whose freewheeling tone was noted by the French media. The French president's visit is part of a series of visits he has made to the turbulent Eastern bloc. 

To mark the anniversary of the meeting with Bulgarian dissident intellectuals known as the Breakfast with Mitterrand, the French Institute is organising a conference and debate on the evening of 18 January entitled "Past and Future of Dissidence: 35 years after Breakfast with President François Mitterrand". The French philosopher and essayist Michel Eltchaninoff, author of several monographs on contemporary ideologies and the history of ideas, including Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin and The New Dissidents, and the Bulgarian journalist Koprinka Chervenkova, one of the participants in the 1989 meeting with Mitterrandq , will take part in the conference.