Bulgaria: The Life of a Lap Dog

If fawning fidelity still counts for anything among Communists, Bulgaria must be Nikita Khrushchev’s favorite satellite. Even East Germany, which usually can toady just as well as Bulgaria, has caused Khrushchev some embarrassment with its insistence on the ugly Berlin Wall. Yet this month, when Bulgaria celebrated the 20th anniversary of Communist rule, Nikita did not bother to attend. Last week East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht was in Bulgaria commiserating with Premier Todor Zhivkov, 53, who certainly deserved better than a cold Khrushchevian snub.

But there are other compensations in the life of a Communist lap dog. Since 1947, Russia has pumped $1,920,000,000 in aid and loans into Bulgaria’s predominantly agricultural economy. As a result, Bulgarians have moved off the farms (where 70% of the 8,000,000 population lived just 20 years ago v. 50% today) and into a boomlet of industrialization. To the $838.3 million worth of vegetables, shiny apples, bursting grapes, jams, jellies, butter and milk that Bulgaria exported in 1963 was added a growing stream of batteries, machine tools, pumps, electric hoists, pharmaceuticals and steel products. One of Bulgaria’s biggest hard-currency earners is the booming Black Sea resort area at Varna known as “Golden Sands,” where Bulgars and bikini-clad outlanders this season completely booked the growing hotel complex.

Tape-Recorder Youth. In Sofia, nearly 6,000 colorful, balconied high-rise apartments stand in bright contrast to the peeling Soviet barracks of the past. And the crowds that throng the Boulevard Russki, though dressed for the most part in shoddy, overexpensive suits from the nightmarish ZUM department store, are clearly well fed on their beloved dobrudza—the white bread that provides 60% of the average Bulgarian’s caloric intake.

There are even a few “tape-recorder youth,” so named because they secretly tape Western jazz and popular music unavailable in Bulgaria. They affect trim Ivy League suits, drink “worker’s brandy” (cheap, sweet vermouth), read such Western authors as Hemingway and J. D. Salinger, and furtively swap anti-regime jokes—despite the fact that Bulgaria alone among the European satellites still jails such jokers.

Pilot Experiment. Indeed Bulgaria has been among the slowest of the satellites to “liberalize” in the vital area of personal and artistic freedom. Premier Zhivkov prides himself on the “social realism” of his painters and writers —party hacks in the main. Unlike Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Bulgarians remain vigilant and hard-handed in controlling public expression. But in one critical area, the economy, Bulgaria has proved as “liberal” as her neighbors.

Arguments in favor of increased reliance on the profit motive appear regularly in the party theoretical journal, Novo Vreme, and although the economy is still predominantly controlled by central authorities, a pilot experiment in decentralization proved outstandingly successful last year. The Liliana Dimitrova textile plant in Sofia was permitted to work out its own production plan, obtain its own materials and dispose of its own goods with a minimum of higher direction. Not only did the plant exceed its planned requirements, but by the year’s end it had enough of a profit margin to permit a 10% wage increase. This year 50 plants have adopted the new setup. Nonetheless, Bulgaria still has a long way to go before reaching self-sufficiency. This month Sofia authorities advised a knitwear firm in Northern Ireland that they would be interested in the immediate purchase of 240,000 pairs of socks—suggesting that there are still holes in the economy.