Bulgaria emerged from World War II under the control of a coalition government dominated by the BKP, which by 1947 had arrogated unto itself complete power in the country. In the immediate postwar years policy and direction concerning how the BKP should run the country was dictated from Moscow, as was the case throughout most of the countries of Eastern Europe. Between 1944 and 1948 eight countries had been taken over by communist parties and had aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, which exerted varying degrees of influence in the internal and international affairs of all of them. Over the next twenty years Yugoslavia and Albania broke out of the Soviet orbit completely; the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia experienced uprisings or civil disorders—in most cases suppressed by Soviet force—and Romania asserted its right to national self-determination on numerous occasions. Bulgaria alone remained unwavering in its absolute allegiance to the Soviet Union.
Bulgaria chose not to follow the examples of other Eastern European countries in seeking some degree of autonomy during the 1950s and 1960s for many reasons. Not least among these were the historic traditions of friendship between Bulgarians and Russians dating back to the Russo-Turkish war that freed Bulgaria from Turkish rule in 1878. Bulgarians are also close to the Russians in language, religion, and cultural traditions. Additionally, having assumed power, the Bulgarian Communists quite naturally looked toward Moscow—then the center of world communism—for guidance and support. Many of the early postwar leaders had spent several years as residents of the Soviet Union, where they had been closely associated with the country's party.
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. The Bulgarian leaders needed the support of the Soviet Union.
Beset by intraparty strife and lack of success in running the country after the death of Georgi Dimitrov—the leading Bulgarian communist hero and strong man of the early postwar years—the party leadership again clung to Soviet support and totalitarian rigidity to perpetuate itself in power. Even after the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the later de-Stalinization program under Nikita Khrushchev, Bulgaria's leaders retained Stalinism as a modus operandi until the early 1960s.
After Zhivkov became first secretary of the party in 1954, there was a long power struggle, for a third time, and it was not until the early 1960s that Zhivkov managed to eliminate his major antagonists from the party hierarchy and stabilize his regime. During all of those years and on through the 1960s and into the 1970s, Zhivkov continued the policy of absolute loyalty to the Soviet Union and to its leadership. Consequently, Bulgarian foreign policy has been a mirror image of Soviet policy.
Principles of Foreign Policy
Bulgaria's constitution, in describing how the state serves the people in foreign affairs, mentions "developing and cementing friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the other socialist countries" and "pursuing a policy of peace and understanding with all countries and peoples." Official spokesmen proclaim that the country's international relations are founded on the necessity for protecting national sovereignty and on the creation of an overall attitude that would further the cause of all nations in their development as modern states.
A quotation from the party program developed for the Tenth Party Congress in 1971 indicates that, as far as Bulgaria's leaders are concerned, the Soviet Union leads and Bulgaria follows. "For the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Bulgarian people, Bulgarian-Soviet friendship is like the sun and the air for every living creature, it is a friendship of centuries and for centuries, one of the main driving forces of our development, a condition and guarantee for the future progress of our socialist fatherland and its tomorrow."
CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The Constitution of 1971 assigns the conduct of foreign relations to the National Assembly, the State Council, and the Council of Ministers. Formulation of foreign policy, however, remains a prerogative of the BKP. The constitution states that the National Assembly implements foreign policy but, because the assembly meets only three times each year in short sessions, the implementation function is passed on to the State Council during the long interim periods between assembly meetings. Primary responsibilities of the State Council in foreign affairs (as opposed to those limited to the periods between National Assembly meetings) include representation of the country in its international relations; the appointment, recall, or release from duty of diplomats and consular officials; the ratification or denunciation of international agreements; and the establishment of diplomatic and consular ranks.