The rights of the individual citizen are defended in the 1971 Constitution and in the Criminal Code of 1968, which was not altered by the constitution. The latter states that a crime can only be an act so identified in the code and for which a punishment is prescribed. These principles can and have been abused—the state is set above the individual, and the judicial machinery is within an agency of the executive branch of the government—but those who exercise the machinery have become increasingly responsive to its guiding statutes. The limits on punishments that are set down in the code allow somewhat greater sentences to be handed down upon those committing crimes against the state or state property than upon individuals or private property.
INTERNAL SECURITY
State and Internal Security Forces
During the time of readjustment after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Bulgaria's police state period gradually came to a close. In the postwar period until then, the country had had police machinery modeled on that of Stalinist Soviet Union, with state security troops (secret police) and garrisoned interior troops equipped like mobile army infantry units. The state security troops, the garrisoned interior troops, and the regular police forces are estimated to have totaled about 200,000 men.
Although state and internal security organs have been shifted among ministries and renamed, and there has been an occasional move to abolish them, they continue to exist in Bulgaria. Although the organizational form is probably much the same as before, that is, an internal security force and a state security police, the security apparatus has only a fraction of its former personnel and has been shorn of its more arbitrary powers. According to some observers, Bulgaria has emerged from a police state, wherein security forces held arbitrary powers of arrest that instilled fear in the people, to a police bureaucracy in which the militia meddles in peoples' lives to the point of public frustration. People no longer have reason to fear the tyranny of a secret police, but they have developed a strong resentment of the petty militia regulations that affect their daily lives.
State security functions—those that deal with espionage, treason, and the group of so-called political crimes aimed at undermining or upsetting the system—have been performed by a separate secret police organization that was typical in communist systems, particularly during the Stalinist period. An overriding preoccupation with state security has not been as prevalent in Bulgaria as in many communist countries, because the communist government had established itself firmly in control of the country in a relatively short time. Nonetheless, a sizable secret police force existed for many years and, after a reign of terror lasting until 1948, the secret police contributed to a general atmosphere of repression that lasted until the mid-1950s. After that time most police functions were assumed by the People's Militia, and the secret police faded into the background, greatly reduced in size and importance but still functioning within one of the government ministries.
After the unsuccessful coup d'etat of April 1965, there was a resurgence of secret police activity with the creation of the new Committee of State Security. As the political situation stabilized in the late 1960s, the Committee of State Security was reabsorbed into the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the remaining units of state security police continue to operate. They are evidently considered necessary in order to take care of relations with foreigners, to collect some military intelligence at the governmental level, and to monitor any potential espionage or criminal activities that might pose a threat to the state. The day-to-day role of the small remnant of the internal security force is unknown. This elite, militarized unit, however, is probably held as a bulwark against any large-scale, organized dissension.
The People's Militia
The People's Militia (local police) deals with crime and maintains routine day-to-day contacts with the people. The militia operates under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and has intermediate administrative offices at the level of the okrug (district) and local police stations at the rayon (municipal) or obshtina (urban borough or village commune) level. Although the primary control descends from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, all militia organizations have a degree of responsibility to the people's councils at their levels.
Local militia forces ordinarily work only in the areas under the jurisdiction of their people's councils. In urgent circumstances they may be called upon the Ministry of Internal Affairs to assist the militia in neighboring areas, and they may even cross okrug lines. To operate outside their own areas on their own volition they must have the permission of an agency in the ministry.