Unlike other socialist countries, the dissident movement in Bulgaria was conceived not as political, but as a movement for environmental and religious rights. Bulgarian dissidents organized informal organizations only a year or two before the actual collapse of socialism and the totalitarian state led by Todor Zhivkov.
Formally, the so-called “July 1987 concept” was developed and adopted by the Communist Party and empowered citizens to establish informal organizations. This enabled the first Bulgarian dissident organizations to be established for non-political activities such as environmental protection and respect for religious and ethnic rights.
Dissidence in Bulgaria did not have a clear, ideological basis. Unlike countries such as Poland or Czechoslovakia where the idea to remove the totalitarian socialist system altogether stood at the core of most informal professional or political organizations dissidence in Bulgaria was fractured.
There were two main ideological camps. The first was formed by people linked to the Communist Party who, for various reasons, had been repressed by the government. This group of people was known for its position in society and its intermittent opposition to the rulers at one time or another. It had completely different ideas about the kind of changes required compared to the powerful dissident groups in other central European countries. In most cases, these opponents of Zhivkov’s type of communist leadership were not in search of radical change but favored a vaguer kind of ‘humanization’ of the system along the lines of Gorbachev’s ‘perestroika’ in the Soviet Union.
The second group was that of ideological opposition to communism and the existing socialist system in the country. Most of its members were former political prisoners and people severely persecuted and oppressed by the system. They were, however, relatively less known in Bulgaria and thus formed organizations that remained on the outskirts of society with only a few members and were relatively excluded.
There are some examples of such organizations. In January 1988 the Independent Society for Protection of Human Rights in Bulgaria was established and headed by Ilia Minev. About a year later the Committee for Protection of Religious Freedom, Freedom of Conscience and Religious Values was formed and led by Christopher Subev who was a priest. At the beginning of 1989 the first independent trade union named “Support” was created by Dr. Constantine Trentchev. Among the most popular dissident movements of the late eighties was the environmental organization founded to protect the population of Rousse, which had periodically been flooded with chlorine from the Romanian chemical plant in Giurgiu, on the opposite bank of the Danube. The protests were led by distressed mothers in the autumn of 1987. Their protests were officially supported by people who wished to change socialism; to make it more humane; a real “perestroika” of the old Soviet model. National press reacted with a series of publications which raised awareness of the issue of high pollution levels in Rouse’s air.
In March 1988 a documentary was shown dedicated to the mothers and children of Rousse, entitled “Breathe” by director Yuri Zhirov. Following the screening the first informal organization in Bulgaria called Public Committee for Environmental Protection of Rousse was established on 8 of March 1988. Its leadership included popular personalities of the time - writers, actors, artists, journalists, and athletes - nonetheless all accrued from the Communist party itself. After this first act however, the Rouse Committee did not pursue any further action. Party structures and security forces compelled the founders to cease.
A major challenge to the government’s power was set up in November, 1988. It was a club called ‘Glasnost and Perestroika in Bulgaria’. While its aims were proclaimed political, calling for change in the management of the country, they did not affect the foundations of the political system. The reason for this was, again, that the club was created by members of the existing communist system. Headquartered at the University of Sofia around 81 members of the club would gather and discuss their vision for change. Prominent communist intellectuals like the poet Hristo Radevski, film director Ducho Mundrov, philosopher Professor Kiril Vasilev, the chemist academician Alexei Sheludko, the poet Radoy Ralin, etc. were among them. Among its founders, however, there were also intellectuals were prominent opponents of the ruling party. These included the poet Blaga Dimitrova, the philosopher Zhelyu Zhelev, etc. The founders claimed the club’s program went beyond mere demonstration of dissent and offered a concrete solution to the problems faced by the country. It addressed six topics: 1. The current state of the economy; 2. Human rights and civil liberties; 3. Demographic concerns; 4. Ecological concerns; 5. Problems within Bulgarian culture; and 6. Unresolved issues regarding the history of Bulgaria. Although this organization claimed to support a radical political change, its program was bound by existing socialist protocols and its agenda did not carry more than a plan for ‘humanization,’ something achieved in Hungary much earlier, in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The club aimed to prepare Bulgarian society for regime change (replacing Zhivkov) and democratization of socialism but would fall much shorter of an actual uprooting of the current political system.
On April 11 another informal association, the Independent Association “Ecoglasnost,” was officially created building on the basis of the already popular ‘Rousse Committee’. It called for ‘humanization and democratization of socialism” but did not carry a concrete political agenda. Evidence seems to point to the fact Bulgarian dissidents were relatively weak and divided. They looked for moral and ideological support from creators of the “perestroika” movement in the Soviet Union and indeed received (though not obvious) political support from the management of Gorbachev.
Thus, informal groups created in the late eighties remained popular only among intellectuals in the bigger cities and had virtually no influence on society. They were recognized only as opposition to Todor Zhivkov and his regime but not to socialism as a political system. This created a visible contrast between dissident movements in Bulgaria and those in countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The relatively short life span of the movements in Bulgaria meant they failed to generate true opposition to the system and a real shift in political ideology. This proved to be a decisive weakness of the Bulgarian transition. The lack of trained professionals with a concrete vision to replace the outgoing socialist system bolstered groups like the secret services and undermined the path to transition, leaving visible scars in the nation’s more recent history.
Despite surviving barely a year, the dissident movements in Bulgaria became the basis for the formation of a political alliance of democratic forces known as UDF. It was this coalition that initiated a pluralistic political system in the country. Even as a political movement, however, the early UDF and its leaders made it clear they wanted neither radical change nor actual power for themselves. It took months before the party altered its agenda and began discussing the possibility of an overthrow and alternative program. Although they often engaged in foreign and pre-planned scenarios, the political parties created by the dissident movements nonetheless pushed forward several changes in the Bulgarian political system. Though it was a difficult and painful process, the UDF came to denounce socialism in the early nineties, which ultimately positioned the organization on the right hand side of the political spectrum. The form of its dissident movement, however, was the root cause of the UDF being an unstable and ideologically inhomogeneous organization, which ultimately led to its gradual withering away and near extinction today. In any case the biggest merit of the dissident movement was its role in the formation of a pluralistic party system in the early nineties of the last century.