Bulgaria lurches into
International Viewpoint #193 • October 29, 1990
SOUTH AFRICA / BULGARIA conclusion remains narrow and precarious because South Africa remains an apartheid society — if for the moment popular revolution is not on the agenda, there is the other possibility of chaos through the operations of the extreme fascist right and the simmering ofethnic prejudices. De Klerk knows very well
UNTIL recently it seemed that Bulgaria's Communist Party, arguably that he must play it carefully. The editorithe strongest and most popular in Eastern Europe, had successfully al of Business Day of September 17 embraced perestroika and the demands of the Bulgarian democracy summed his situation up; "He will do movement, while keeping its power and massive bureaucracy intact.
these things or some reasonable variant
In fact, after its re-launch as the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), it of these things, or he will be thrown out of office. He must govern or abdicate".
even managed to take some credit for the liberalization and won an
What is going to happen then in the overall majority in the country's free elections in June. Yet Bulgaria's
SACP and the ANC? The world situation
Communists are now on borrowed time.
and the internal situation both weigh
In August, the BSP headquarters in the heart of Sofia was set heavily on the debates underway. In June, ablaze by demonstrators frustrated by the slow pace of reform. In in the course of a conference for trades
Jeremy Cronin, a member of
September, the BSP Congress dismayed reformers by re-electing as the CP leadership, explained that there leader Alexander Lilov, who had failed to break with the were two possibilities.
conservatives. In October the only thing still holding the
Either the ANC would move to the faction-riven party together was its fear of the opposition coalition, right under the pressure the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).
proletarian classes and in this case it would be necessary to reinforce strength of the party representing the working class. Or "after an earlier phase of national democratic transformation, there will be a fairly rapid progress towards socialism (...) In such a case one might find the evolution of the ANC into a broad mass socialist party, within which the party merges"23.
Collapse of Stalinist world
Things can no longer happen thus. But
Jeremy Cronin indicates to us perhaps that two positions already exist within the
SACP - one which wishes to take its distance from Mandela, and the other, following the
Communist Parties in the world, which ready to fuse with a "social democratic" project. The weeks to come will in any case confirm these tensions.
The SACP will not escape the crisis of identity striking all the CPs of the entire world, in relation to their past and their national political project.
Whatever the future between the SACP and the ANC, the current debate will give birth to tensions inside the Communist ranks. In this climate of setback and confusion it is not impossible that these militants will search for a different road - which is at least
The first elements of defeat have been put in place. How grave this is will depend on the eventual political recompositions which may result from the crisis of the majority forces. But for that to happen rapidly it is necessary that the revolutionary left presents itself as a credible pole of reference. Such is the challenge today if the memory of the tremendous struggles of the 1980s is not to be lost for
14 stong timo. *
KATHY LOWE
HE country, meanwhile, lurches into ever deeper political and economic turmoil employs its parliamentary weight the hope of precipitating its final down-
In under a year the political face of Bulgaria has changed beyond recognition. In November 1989, amidst the clamour of the rising democracy movement, a Gorbachev-backed central committee coup led by the then-foreign minister Petar Mladenov ended the 35-year rule of veteran Stalinist Todor Zhivkov.
Decades of corruption and mismanagement were acknowledged for the first time as the country embarked on a transition from a totalitarian Communist state to a multi-part system. Since then, the CP, the BSP, has been struggling to repair its tarnished image and to fend off internal splits while keeping at bay the dissident organizations of the Union of
In a country with extremely weak political traditions it proved possible for the BSP, pushed by its reformers, to keep an edge on the inexperienced opposition. The party emerged from the June elections with 211 out of 400 parliamentary seats. But political paralysis was not far off. Within weeks Mladenov was forced to resign when it became public that he had muttered in front of a jeering crowd last December: "The best thing is to let the tanks come".
A long wrangle followed about who should be put forward for President and in a concession designed to achieve some unity, the BSP finally dropped its own candidate in favour of that of the UDF leader Zhelyu Zhelev. After Zhelev was elected President in August, he invited the UDF to participate in a government of national consensus because of the crisis in the country. The UDF, however, refused. Says its new leader Petar Beron: "A majority of our coalition thinks we cannot trust the Communists - that they want to lure us into some trap."
After several attempts by Zhelev, a government was eventually formed in late September by the BSP aided by independents. But in reality the government is totally hamstrung as the UDF has used its 144 seats in the National Assembly to block all major decisions, which, under the Bulgarian system, require a two thirds
Lukewarm reformists
Petar Beron accuses the BSP of lukewarm commitment to reform. He points to the Communists' failure to dismantle the giant nomenklatura [reserved jobs for approved appointees], 216,000 bureaucrats out of a population of 9 million who dominate every sphere of political, economic and social life in Bulgaria. "The BSP's first concern", Beron insists, "is to hold onto all these red capitalists who have grabbed money which they are now trying to put into private enterprise and private property."
The UF's strategy, encouraged by the defeat of the reform wing at the recent BSP congress, is to let the BSP carry the can for the economic mess, to go all-out to win the local elections in November and then try to force another general election. The trouble is that the assortment of 16 political groups that make up the UDF -among them the revived Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Podkrepa
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turmoil
СПРЕ TE 18 Г ОДИЬМОТО РЕЛИС
October 29, 1990 • #193 International Viewpoint trade unions and the Ecoglasnost movement - appear to be united by little more than their hatred of the BSP. They offer no
BULGARIA ia's waged workers.
Says Krustyo Petkov: "We are not revolutionaries. But we believe that organizations like
ВАНЕ НА СТЧИЧЕСКИТЕ ТУРЦИ answers for the crisis and cannot agree on overall policies on which to campaign and give a lead, whether as part of an emergency coalition government or from outside.
The UD's decision to use wrecking tactics and to restrict themselves to saying that the BSP has not really changed only serves to squander the possibilities for independent mobilizademocracy movement and the changed if you remove the top leadership, if you cut the links support from the base, You get
Under Petkov's leadership, the posts of 50% of the old union officials have been abolished. Gone, too, are the partycontrolled regional and municipal trade union Instead, local union branches have been formed on a trades,
Turkish group demonstrating in Sofia, Bulgaria: Banner reads "Stop the 18 years of repression of ethnic Turks" - photo:
The political stalemate is compounding the already monumental problems bequeathed by the old Zhivkov regime. The break-up of the Comecon trading bloc as well as the reduction of Soviet oil supplies has knocked Bulgaria sideways. The Gulf crisis, too, has had a profound impact, increasing energy costs and, most disastrously, freezing some $1.3 billion owed to Bulgaria by Iraq.
In March the government took a step unique in the Eastern bloc countries, declaring a moratorium on repayments of principal on its huge $12.5 billion foreign debt. But industrial productivity continued to fall as enterprises remained starved of capital investment due to the moratorium and the huge budget deficit. Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has given its blessing to Bulgaria's membership, opening the door for other Western institutions to offer loans and investment packages.
Forlorn queues for food
The people's high post-Zhivkov political expectations, have been rewarded with unemployment, galloping inflation and rationing of all basic foodstuffs. Forlorn queues outside Sofia's foodstores have begun to mirror those on the streets of Moscow. Youth, students and workers are increasingly venting their frustration on the streets — as on August 27, when the BSP offices were set alight.
The BSP-UDF power struggle presents a false political choice to the population at large. In fact, both see the free enterprise treatment as the only solution for the ailing Bulgarian economy, albeit with different emphases, modifications and attitudes to social safeguards. Both include groups of right-wingers who would be happy with a piece of the free market action and who are hostile to the independent organization of workers. The leaders of both, for fear of jeopardizing political popularity with the Bulgarian nationalists, have also been reluctant to publicly support the Turkish minority in its struggle to recover the rights it lost at the hands of the Zhiv-
If there is a deadlock between the two political blocs on the parliamentary front, it is in the workers' movement where the fastest and most far-reaching changes are
Following the fall of Zhivkov and the Bulgarian Communist Party's proposal to end its monopoly of power, a wave of strikes swept the country, many of them in pursuit of pay claims, many spontaneous and many demanding the removal of corrupt Communist officials. December 1989 and March 1990 alone there were some 300 strikes. One, at the Radomir steel plant, 25 miles from Sofia, was led by women who drove the cranes carrying molten steel rods. They were not asking for higher wages but for improvements in their unsafe working conditions - plus the sacking of the director who had ignored these dangers.
The new independent labour confederation, Podkrepa ("Support"), successfully supported and recruited from a number of these strikes. Founded in February 1989, before the liberalization, by a group of Sofia intellectuals, Podkrepa has enjoyed a meteoric growth, now organizing some Podkrepa was also one of the founder organizations of the UDF where its leaders have established a reputation as the most staunchly anti-Communist, pro-free marketeers in the coalition.
Reform of official union
Meanwhile reformers from the ranks of the rapidly disintegrating official trade union federation astonished sceptics by voting out the old guard, breaking all links with the BSP and re-launching in February this year as the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB). Headed by former sociology professor and dissident Krusty Petkov, the Confederation is unique in Eastern Europe in having severed all connections with the state and democratized its structures, at the same time holding on to some three million of the old federation's 3.5 million members — over 80% of Bulgarrather than geographical, basis, with CITUB representatives acting as co-ordinators between the branches in a given area.
A recent innovation in 30 towns are the Confederation's Centres for Trade Union Protection. Each centre is staffed by a small team — a lawyer, sociologist, economist, health and safety officer — who advise individual workers and provide back-up for branches in their negotiations with the managers of their enterprises. Delegates to the Confederation's first annual conference at the end of this year will be elected directly from the local
Bargaining agreement
Asked what concrete gains have been won, Krustyo Petkov points to a national collective bargaining agreement signed in March, followed by similar agreements in of plants and factories. Although there are tensions between their leaderships, CITUB and Podkrepa jointly negotiated with the government and the Union of Economic Managers increases in minimum pensions (January) and in minimum wages (April), together with an indexation due to be introduced this month which links levels of wages, pensions and unemployment benefit to infla-
From the unions' standpoint, indexation still left a lot to be desired because it is graded to give those on higher incomes lower benefits. And even if the agreement is honoured by subsequent governments, it is questionable whether indexation will actually keep pace with soaring inflation. Nevertheless, all the accords represent a breakthrough for workers and show the strength of their independent
In July the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions published its Alternative Economic Programme. This rejects "total and rapid privatization" in favour of a transition to a mixed economy "in which a minimum state sector coexists with other forms of property: cooperative, municipal and private." Other proi 15 posals in the programme include a special
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БИВШиЯ
International Viewpoint #193 • October 29, 1990