Within the assembly the presidium—consisting of a president, two vice presidents, a secretary, and fifteen members—was empowered with legislative-executive authority, and it exercised judicial power in the interpretation of laws that were binding on everyone. More importantly, the presidium assumed the powers and functions of the National Assembly when the latter was not in session. In effect, the small presidium exercised the legislative function most of the time.

Executive and administrative direction was vested in the Council of Ministers, a cabinet elected by the National Assembly. The council consisted of a chairman, several deputy chairmen, the heads of various commissions having ministerial rank, and the ministers. The council was assigned the tasks of directing and administering the various ministries that were concerned with the economy as well as with affairs of state; the State Planning Committee; the State Control Committee; and the Committee on Art and Culture; as well as the Committee on Science, Technical Progress and Higher Education. In practice, the council implemented policy decisions of the party leaders who were its high-ranking officers.

Following the Soviet model, the first secretary of the party was also the chairman of the Council of Ministers and, as such, was the country's premier. It became evident through the years that the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the National Assembly were the ultimate sources of governmental authority because legislation they proposed was usually implemented by decree and approved, after the fact, by the National Assembly.

The 1947 Constitution treated the economic and social structure of the country extensively. It subscribed to collective ownership of the means of production; defined rules of national economic planning and social welfare; empowered the government to nationalize trade, industry, and transportation; expropriated land where necessary; and restricted ownership of private property—all in the interest of the state. The constitution also gave the state the prerogative to establish monopolies over production and trade.

Below the apex of the governmental pyramid lay the wide base of local governments. These consisted of district and communal people's councils exercising authority through their executive committees, which sat in continuous session. The executive committees of the people's councils cooperated closely with local party groups, and personnel were often concurrently members of executive committees and local party committees. Although the organization of local government was revamped in 1949, in 1951, and in 1959, by the mid-1960s it was replaced by twenty-seven districts plus Sofia, which became a territorial administrative unit. The decentralizing of governmental authority to the local organs of state power was designed to bring about greater efficiency and better supervision in matters of political, economic, and cultural interests.

The Constitution of 1971

The Constitution of 1971 was the result of the work of the Tenth Bulgarian Communist Party Congress, which was held April 20-25, 1971, in Sofia. This congress also produced a new program for the BKP, made changes in statutes, elected the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and adopted "Directives on the Socio-Economic Development of the People's Republic of Bulgaria during the Sixth Five-Year Plan (1971-75)."

The draft of the new constitution was presented for nationwide discussion on March 30, 1971, just three weeks before the opening of the tenth BKP congress. The congress approved the draft in its entirety on the opening day of session. The constitution was approved through a popular referendum on May 16 and was proclaimed law two days later by the National Assembly. General elections under the new law took place on June 27, 1971.

The structure and functioning of the different organs of state power as outlined in the Dimitrov Constitution remained essentially the same except that the State Council became a more powerful governmental body than the Presidium of the National Assembly that it replaced and, in effect, overshadowed the Council of Ministers in authority. The new document continues to define Bulgaria as a people's republic but also refers to its socialist character and to its membership in the international community of socialist states. Two new features are the declaration of principles in the preamble and the sanction given to the leadership of the BKP, aided by the Bulgarian Agrarian Union (also called the Agrarian Party) within a united Fatherland Front (see ch. 9).

The Constitution of 1971 reflects the new changes in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic development of the country as viewed by the communist leadership. The first chapter consists of twelve articles that briefly define the political philosophy upon which the constitution is based and the direction in which the party expects the country to move under the new charter. Simply stated, the philosophy avows that Bulgaria is "a socialist state of the working people of town and country, headed by the working class," and "the guiding force in society and the state is the Bulgarian Communist Party." The direction of movement expected by the country's leadership is evidenced by the assertion that "the socialist state shall promote the evolution of the socialist society into a communist society." This chapter also affirms the Marxist-Leninist principles that underlie the functioning of the state and the society.