In addition to being obligatory, military service is nearly universal, and it is difficult to evade. Service life is extolled in the media, and no widespread criticism, either of the forces as a whole or of individuals as servicemen, is aired. Military experience provides vocational training, much of which is beneficial to the individual and to the national economy.
Special social benefits are available to the forces' personnel. If their service results in unusual hardships for their dependents, the families are given extra consideration. Monthly benefit payments to wives or parents experiencing financial problems exceed those to nonmilitary families by 30 percent. Wives who remain behind get preferential treatment for prenatal or child care or while job hunting. As the men come to the end of their duty tours, they are assisted in their transition to civilian life, in their search for educational opportunities, or in job placement. If disabled in the service, a veteran gets a pension that is more liberal than usual for the same disability acquired elsewhere and continuing assistance that includes free transportation on public transport as well as medical treatment and care of such things as orthopedic apparatus.
Medicine
The medical service provides treatment and preventive medicine for military personnel and, in certain circumstances, for dependents and for persons employed by the military. Its services are also available to the public at large during individual emergencies, if they are the most immediately available, and on a larger scale during epidemics or natural disasters. Military personnel may also avail themselves of emergency facilities in nonmilitary hospitals or clinics.
Since about 1960 the medical service has been upgraded in several major respects. That year saw the formation of a higher military medical institute, located on the site of the army's general hospital, for advanced, specialized training of physicians. In addition to providing better training for military doctors, the objective was to establish a research center for in-depth study of the special military aspects of medical science. A more pragmatic objective was to initiate long-overdue improvement in medical services for the armed forces. In its first ten years the institute gave advanced instruction to 6,500 medical personnel and an additional specialty to some 200 medical officers.
After the formation of the higher medical institute, the medical services were given considerably broader authority over sanitation and hygienic conditions throughout the military establishment. They determine standards to be maintained and make inspections of living quarters, food services, water supplies, bathing and laundry facilities, and training and recreational areas; they give instruction in personal and group hygiene. They also participate in the planning and design of new barracks and any other buildings where troops work or train.
Appropriate to the enhanced status and authority of the medical service, its section of the ministry was upgraded and has become one of the dozen more important branches under the minister of national defense. Its chief has been a doctor, the only major staff member who has been neither a general officer of one of the armed services nor a high-ranking party official.
Military Justice
Military courts, or tribunals, are special courts but are part of the national judicial system and subject to the same codes as are the civilian courts. In the same kind of relationship, military crimes are a special category of crime but are listed within the overall Bulgarian criminal code. The separation of military justice from the rest of the judicial machinery is almost complete, however, although jurisdiction in a criminal situation could be in question and, in its early treatment, a case could be transferred from the jurisdiction of a military to a civil court or vice versa. Once tried before a military tribunal, the proceedings and sentence of a trial might be reviewed by a higher military court or might go to the Supreme Court, but it would be extremely rare for a case to be reviewed by a civil court. Within the Supreme Court a review would be accomplished only by a military panel of that court.
Military crimes are those committed on military installations or those that relate to the performance of military duty, to military property or personnel, to military honor, or to certain aspects of national security. Servicemen of all ranks, military reserves during their training or whenever they are under military control, personnel of the police or any of the other militarized security units, or any other persons involved in military crimes are liable to military justice. In general, sentences for military crimes are more severe than for equivalent crimes tried before civilian courts. For example, failing to carry out the order of a superior is punishable by up to two years' deprivation of freedom, and conviction for "clearly indicating dissatisfaction with an instruction" can result in a year's confinement. On the other hand, in many such crimes the perpetrator's fate is subject to the discretion of his commander. If the commander determines that the offense does not "substantially affect military discipline," he may administer some lesser punishment without a trial, or he may refer the case to a Komsomol or party cell in his unit and allow it to take whatever action it sees fit. In times of war or under combat conditions possible sentences are much more severe, and the death penalty may be handed down for many more crimes.