Economically, Bulgaria still looks to the Soviet Union for foreign aid and preferential trade treatment. The rapid pace with which Bulgaria has moved toward industrialization is primarily owing to Soviet assistance. Raw materials critical to Bulgaria's economy are supplied by the Soviet Union and, with Soviet aid, the country has been able to construct many large industrial enterprises. Estimates in 1967 put the number of Soviet specialists in Bulgaria at 5,000, and the number has probably increased. The renewal of a five-year agreement for 1971 through 1975 would serve to increase further the Soviet share of trade in Bulgaria.
Relations with Other Communist States
Bulgaria's relations with Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania are largely governed by a series of bilateral and multilateral treaties of friendship and cultural cooperation and by military and economic alliances. The alliances are the Warsaw Pact and COMECON. Relations with the other two communist states of Eastern Europe, Albania and Yugoslavia, have usually followed Soviet initiatives toward those countries.
Quite naturally, Bulgaria's major concerns in foreign affairs have dealt with relations among the states of the Balkan Peninsula and particularly with adjacent states. Romania, its northern neighbor, is a member of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact but has often appeared to be a reluctant member and since the early 1960s has stressed nationalism rather than Marxist internationalism, causing Bulgaria, with its strong Soviet orientation, to tread lightly in bilateral relations for fear of offending the Soviets. Nevertheless, the Bulgarians and Romanians have drawn closer together, probably because both countries see benefits that might accrue from Balkan cooperation and believe that such cooperation should in no way disturb the Soviet Union. In the early 1970s relations appeared to be particularly good: there were frequent meetings between leaders and government ministers, and a plan to cooperate in the building of a huge hydroelectric project on the Danube River between the two countries was announced.
Relations with Yugoslavia have more often than not been troubled to the point of enmity. The problems existing between these two countries have deep historical roots that hinge primarily on the Bulgarian contention that Macedonia (since 1946 a federated republic of Yugoslavia) should be Bulgarian rather than Yugoslavian. After World War II, when both countries became communist, the Macedonian question was purposely deemphasized but, when the Soviet-Yugoslav split occurred in 1948, ideological differences paved the way for a renewal of the polemics on the Bulgarian irredentist claims. In the early 1970s the polemics were reduced to a minor level, and constructive talks leading to a rapprochement began to occur. The changed atmosphere was attributed to the state of relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia but, for whatever reason, the climate of relations between Bulgaria and its western neighbor was considerably improved, and Bulgarian irredentism was submerged.
Relations with Noncommunist States
The European Conference for Security and Cooperation held in Helsinki in the spring of 1973 discussed the possibility of a freer exchange of people and ideas as well as a freer flow of information between Western European and Eastern European societies. The intensity of ideological polemics had diminished with increasing contacts between East and West, and the gap between the two social systems seemed narrower, especially in regard to economic planning and development. Bulgaria, however, publicly expressed doubts about importing anti-communist theories that might accompany the freer exchanges of people, ideas, and information.
In a plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party in July 1973, the party leaders touched on issues of international relations. The leaders pledged to continue a new policy of building goodwill and enhancing relations with noncommunist European states as well as with other developed capitalist states in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, and other relations. Bulgaria also sought to continue cultivating and developing friendly relations with nonaligned friendly countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Consistent with this policy, it pledged to render assistance to these countries, especially where there were national liberation movements involved in active resistance to the established regimes.
Greece and Turkey
Greece is geographically contiguous to Bulgaria, and relations between the two countries have been alternately hot and cold depending on the political climate of the times. In 1964 both countries signed an accord relative to war reparations, which opened up some channels of communication, cultural exchanges, and relaxed travel restrictions. The move toward better relations was interrupted by the 1967 coup d'etat in Greece, but improvement began again in the early 1970s when officials of the two governments exchanged visits. By 1972 a newly created Bulgarian-Greek economic cooperation commission had met in Sofia.