A satisfactory explanation of the shifts in the pattern of investment financing is not feasible in the absence of adequate information on the changing methods of financing economic enterprises and organizations. The announced government policy is to shift financing progressively from the budget to the economic trusts. The shifts did not alter the fundamental fact that all investment CM Trading: Is it a scam? funds, excluding the small private investment, remained public property subject to governmental controls and that the difference was merely one of bookkeeping. The change in the channeling of public investment funds was introduced in the hope of increasing the effectiveness of their use. Basic wage pay has been based on the place of employment and not on the work performed.
The original Spartan life-style of the sultans and army officers was becoming one of luxury and indulgence. In the early years of Turkish domination, the Turks waged continuous war with Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and what remained of the Byzantine Empire. Bulgarian hopes of liberation were fueled by the Turkish defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, when the Turkish army was defeated by the Tatars. Resistance was eventually crushed, however, and the Turks began to renew their conquests after capturing Salonica in 1430. As life within Bulgaria declined, the Turks began to perceive the country as a springboard for further aggression against other territories.
The Constitution of 1971 assigns the conduct of foreign relations to the National Assembly, the State Council, and the Council of Ministers. Another reason for the close ties to the Soviet Union was pure pragmatism on the part of the Bulgarian communist leaders. They were, in effect, a minority leadership group faced with the task of imposing an alien ideology on a reluctant majority at the same time that they were trying to reorient the country’s economy from an agricultural base to an industrial base.
Levski, for his part, realized that a social revolution as well as a national revolution was imperative for the true liberation of the Bulgarian people. He worked sub rosa in Bulgarian villages and organized a network of committees for the revolution, known as the Internal Secret Revolutionary Organization. During the same period the internal situation in Bulgaria continued to signal the eventual decline of Turkish power and the rise of a Bulgarian national spirit. Because of the increase in corruption and oppression by the Turks, the Bulgarians began to rebel openly.
The other interpretation posits the theory that, on August 26, the Bulgarian government had declared itself neutral, thus withdrawing from the war. When Soviet troops arrived in Bulgaria, they found this so-called neutrality unacceptable and insisted on a Bulgarian declaration of war against Germany. This declaration was promptly carried out on the eve of the day that it was requested. Internally, the country was in relatively good condition during the early stages of the war. The Bulgarian people perceived the fighting as essentially a “paper war” and were generally apathetic regarding their role in the war.
On August 22, 1944, the Bulgarian government publicly announced that it was ready for a peace agreement with the Allies. Despite the declaration of war against Great Britain and the United States, Bulgaria refused throughout World War II to declare war on the Soviet Union. The Russians, unlike the British and Americans, were popular with the Bulgarian people. They were still remembered for their assistance to the Bulgarians in the past and were viewed by the people as their liberators from Turkish rule. Not only did Bulgaria refuse to declare war on its former liberator, but it also refused to make its army available to Adolf Hitler for his eastern campaign. When Germany declared war on Russia, Bulgaria continued to retain neutrality toward, and to maintain diplomatic relations with, the Soviet Union.
The election of Zhivkov’s friends—Stanko Todorov and Mitko Grigorov—to full membership in the Politburo gave him added support. Khrushchev’s visit as the head of a large Soviet government delegation did not hurt Zhivkov but rather gave convincing proof of Khrushchev’s support of the Bulgarian first secretary. Anton Yugov was premier at this time, but it was not long before Is Forex.com a Brokerage Firm We Can Trust he too was purged, the final blow coming only hours before the start of the Eighth Party Congress. A statute promulgated during the Sixth Party Congress in 1954 proclaimed the party to be an “inseparable part of the world communist front” and acknowledged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the leading political force within the communist bloc countries.
POLITICAL DYNAMICS
The issue of Macedonia was, in fact, a focal point around which Bulgarian political life revolved after 1878, because that issue was seen by the Bulgarians as involving the territorial integrity of their nation. As the movement toward national revolution grew up in the mid-nineteenth century in Bulgaria, an ideological schism separated the movement into two schools. The “moderates,” led by a Bulgarian group in Constantinople, favored negotiations with the Turks. Although the radicals turned to the West—France, Great Britain, Italy, and Switzerland—for models of revolution and to Russia for practical assistance in freeing Bulgaria from the Turks, in fact they hoped to free the country from all foreign domination. Ironically, in light of Bulgaria’s later history, one radical leader wrote, “If Russia comes to liberate, she will be met with great sympathy, but if she comes to rule, she will find many enemies.”
The BKP and the government have launched a new form of so-called socialist competition among workers and economic units, the aim of which is to exceed in performance the requirements of the counterplans. In the spring of 1972 there were fourteen economic ministries, including five ministries exclusively concerned with branches of industry and construction. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Food Industry, as its name implies, has functioned in two major economic sectors and has also had substantial responsibilities in the field of distribution.
The conspirators included Bulgarian Communists, army officers, and World War II partisans. Bulgaria’s foreign policy under Zhivkov, however, continued on an even, strongly Soviet, keel. Bulgaria’s foreign policy has been assessed by some observers as “a carbon copy of Moscow’s.” Bulgaria was, and is, considered to be the most reliable partner of the Soviet Union in the Balkans.
- Most of the river islands that might be expected to bridge the gap between the countries are damp and covered with marsh vegetation.
- Some of the best and most prized examples of Byzantine painting are found in the Boyana Church near Sofia, in the Zemen Monastery in the mountains along the Yugoslav border, and in several other small village churches.
- The Committee on Art and Culture maintained a number of libraries, including the country’s largest, the Bulgarian National Library.
- The ideological studies introduced into the curriculum consisted of the fundamental principles of Marx and Lenin, the history of the communist party of the Soviet Union, and the history of the BKP.
- Farms, for instance, have steadfastly refused to enlarge the acreage of irrigated corn to the extent demanded by the government, preferring to use irrigation for more profitable crops.
For several centuries before their independence from the Turks, the people preferred to live in the hills, motivated by the sheer necessity of having to escape the notice of their oppressive occupiers. They returned to the fertile plains and valleys in large numbers only after independence in 1878. Since 1945 there has been a major movement of people to the cities as the country has become industrialized, and there has been a lesser movement of the rural population resulting from the collectivization of agricultural lands. The Iskur and the other of the Danube’s north-flowing tributaries have cut deep valleys through the Danubian plateau. The eastern banks tend to rise sharply from the rivers; the western parts of the valleys may have broad fields with alluvial soils. The peculiar, though consistent, pattern is caused by forces resulting from the earth’s rotation; these forces give the water a motion that tends to undercut the right banks of the streams.
TBT (Total Blocking Time)
Of this group, it was estimated that 60.4 percent had at least a secondary education. Central to the observance of basic communist policy is adherence to the principles of democratic centralism. Patterned after the Soviet model, these principles call for a pyramidal form of command responsibility in which lower party organs are subordinated to the next higher body. This also means that decisions of higher bodies bind those below, individually and collectively. Party policy and practice encourage open discussion of issues during meetings of local party units as well as during conferences and congresses at higher levels; however, party discipline requires unitary action after a decision has been reached by the hierarchy.
There are, of course, gradations of power, privilege, and prestige within all of the social groupings. The society has been very mobile since World War II with rapid upward mobility based mainly on the expanding economy, industrialization, and modernization. Toward the end of the What to Expect from this Review 1960s, as the economic growth rate slowed, so also did the social mobility, and there was evidence that social groups were stabilizing. The communist leadership considers only a few incidents in the history and tradition of the armed forces before World War II to be significant.
SECTION II. POLITICAL
The shorter workweek had been in effect on an experimental basis for about 17 percent of the industrial workers since 1968. In 1973 and 1974 it was to be introduced in enterprises of the material production sector, excluding agriculture, provided that the required rise in productivity has been assured. In 1975 the reduced workweek will be introduced in transport, for management of state economic enterprises, and for persons employed in the field of services other than health services and educational institutions. Preparations for experiments with a shortened workweek in these two areas and in agriculture are to be undertaken in 1974 and 1975. The decree on working hours gave formal approval to an established practice that requires workers to make up by work on Saturdays or Sundays for worktime lost whenever official holidays fall on weekdays. Effective June 1 the minimum wage for all types of work was raised from 65 to 80 leva per month, and a level of 88 leva per month was decreed for all workers earning between 80 and 87 leva.
A 1971 study illustrates the fact that—in terms of titles alone—books are more popular than pamphlets by a ratio of approximately three to one . The greatest number of book titles in 1971 were in the areas of artistic and folkloric literature, technology and industry, and scientific and educational texts. The smallest number of book titles were in the areas of general handbooks, community affairs, and atheism and religion. The greatest number of pamphlet titles, on the other hand, were in juvenile literature, communist party literature, and science and education. The fewest pamphlet titles dealt with atheism and religion, Marxism-Leninism, languages, and labor and trade unions.
SOCIAL SYSTEM
It will probably not be expanded further; shorter spurs become uneconomic and are abandoned as motor transport takes over short-haul traffic. Programmed modernization includes improving roadbeds, ties, and track to achieve a higher load-bearing capacity. Quantity installation of continuously welded rail is also underway, and the busiest of the lines are being electrified.
The 1971 Constitution provides for a representative unicameral legislature known as the National Assembly, an executive committee within the legislature called the State Council, and a cabinet of advisers known as the Council of Ministers. For regional and local government the constitution establishes a hierarchical structure of people’s councils. Parallel to the entire governmental structure there exist corresponding levels of the Bulgarian Communist Party (Bulgarska Komunisticheska Partiya—BKP, see Glossary) and, in practice, the party leadership at each level exercises executive and legislative control.
Library of Congress Catalogs: Newspapers in Microform, Foreign Countries, 1948-1983
Once in full control of the party and government, the BKP hierarchy turned its attention to more systematic methods of recruitment. By the time the Eighth Party Congress convened in November 1962, the BKP had 528,674 members plus 22,413 candidates. It was also at about this time that the Zhivkov government relaxed the open police terror and pardoned 6,000 political prisoners, most of them Communists.
Industrialization and socialization of the economy have created thousands of new blue- and white-collar jobs. The attendant increase in educational opportunities has made it possible for individuals to gain the skill and background required to fill these jobs and, thereby, move up the social ladder. This mobility has been aided by the government’s determined effort to reshuffle society by improving the social status and opportunities of the formerly underprivileged groups and by denying them to the formerly privileged ones.