ABSTRACT
The increasingly confused and contradictory measures taken by the Zhivkov regime turned out to be insufficient to reverse the worrying trends, and actually worsened the domestic situation. On 23 October 1989 the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Petur Mladenov (1936–2000), met with the US Ambassador Sol Polansky to protest against Washington’s meddling in Bulgarian domestic affairs. However, the following day, Mladenov resigned from the post and his membership in the Politburo of the BCP’s Central Committee, apparently in preparation for ousting Zhivkov (Tzvetkov 1993: 422). On 25 October 1989 during the two-week (16 October – 3 November) international environment conference organized by the CSCE in Sofia, representatives from Western and Eastern countries witnessed the dissident Ecoglasnost group’s demonstration for a clean environment and for softening the regime’s hardline policies against both pro-democratic forces, and Turks and Muslims (Searle 1989). The demonstration was brutally broken up and its participants manhandled and beaten up by militiamen in full view of foreign journalists and delegates (Searle and Power 1989a; Tzvetkov 1993: 422). Swift repressions failed to turn the tide and since that moment power was gradually taken by the camp of reformist communists, who subscribed to Gorbachev’s program of glasnost and perestroika. On 3 November, when about a thousand demonstrators gathered in front of Parliament, chanting ‘Democracy!’ the authorities, quite tellingly, refrained from using violence, letting this demonstration go its course unhindered (Tzvetkov 1993: 424). Then, after 35 years in power, Zhivkov was finally removed from his post on 10 November 1 (Jivkov 1989). In his stead, one of the reformists, Petur Mladenov, was made General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party (Crampton 2010a: 211). Four days later, on 14 November, in one of his very first public statements, Mladenov stressed the necessity to terminate the assimilationist policy directed at Bulgarian Turks and Muslims (Poulton 1991: 163). However, from the global perspective, all the changes in Bulgaria fell under the proverbial radar, overshadowed by the news of the fall of the Berlin War on 9 November 1989, and the international repercussions (Tzvetkov 1993: 427).
