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Masaryk University Faculty of Social Studies MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL STUDIES Department of International Relations and European Studies The special transition of Bulgaria from communist regime to democracy Master„s Thesis Martin Marinov Supervisor: PhDr. Vit Hlousek, Ph.D. UČO: 272568 Study Field: PL – EUP Year of Enrollment: 2008 Brno, 2010 1 I hereby declare that this thesis I submit for assessment is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Date: Signature 2 I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my family, who did not stop supporting me even in the hardest of times, my beloved Izabela, all people, who were behind me when I needed them and the personnel of the Masaryk University, who were very helpful. Without you I would not be what I am. 3 Content Introduction…………………………………………………………………….. 6 1. The paradigm “transition”………..………………………………………… 11 2. Retrospection of the Bulgarian transitions in the history……..……………. 22 3. How justifiable is to use the term “transition” in the particular (Bulgarian) condition? Is the transition the right one towards democracy and market economy? 3.1 The philosophy of the transition…………………………………………... 27 3.2 The Bulgarian direction in the transition………………………………...... 32 3.3 Culturally-pluralistic approach……………………………………………. 41 4. The “street” as a factor, the role of the media and the post-socialist way of communications in Bulgaria…………………………………………………... 43 5. Analysis of the Bulgarian faith, in the past, present and future…….……... 48 6. State capitalism and state socialism in Bulgaria……………………..…….. 54 7. Bulgaria and the diversity of the Central East Europe……………….……. 63 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...... 70 4 Reference……………………………………………………………………… 74 Appendix……………………………………………………………………… 80 5 Introduction “What a fantastic year this has been for freedom! 1989 will be remembered for decades to come as the year when the people of half our continent began to throw off their chains” Margaret Thatcher (Giatzidis 2002) The topic of the transition from communist system to democratic one with well-integrated market economy of the countries behind the “iron curtain” was a little bit forgotten on the background of the other events in last years. The recent 20 years anniversary (end of 2009) turned the public of those countries back to the issue and made them try to analyze and summarize the last two decades, but already not from the point of view of citizens from post-communist country, but from the point of view of citizens of developing countries with stable economies, even more stable democratic systems and also members of the biggest economic union of the world (European Union) for some of them. In this relation the aim I put forwards in this work is an attempt for analysis of the transition in one of those former communist countries – Bulgaria. By more philosophical and theoretical analysis I would like to go through the most important for me aspects of the Bulgarian transition like: historical, the cultural specificities, the theories of transition and also the economic aspects, which would help present a full picture of the special Bulgarian transition, not comprehend by many. Following the above mentioned aims I would like to structure my thesis with introduction, seven chapters and conclusion. In the first chapter I would like to introduce the term in general, explain what it means to me and connect it to the Bulgarian reality. In the second one I would like to examine the historical features of the Bulgarian transition by comparing the recent transition with the previous once. As a third section I would like to focus on the theoretical analyses of the Bulgarian transitions with: first analyze the transition and answer the question - How justifiable is to use the term “transition” in the particular (Bulgarian) condition?, second discuss the main theories stage-linear, cultural-pluralistic, and value- civilizational, and then talk about the anti-thesis of the previously described theories, the Culturally-pluralistic approach. 6 As in the fourth part I would like to put spotlight on the factor the “street”, to discuss the role of the “forth power” (the media) and to explain the special features of the relation of the national psychology and the way people in Bulgaria communicate between each other. In the fifth chapter I would like talk about the possible development of the country especially in the economic aspects on the background of the fall of the “iron curtain”, to present and confer the idea of the imitative “Xerox thinking” and explicate ideas like “the end of history” of Francis Fukuyama, divergence-convergence model, Franco-German type capitalism, the capitalism of the Anglo-Saxon type and the state capitalism of east Europe. Following the previous chapter in this one, I would like to focus the attention on the state capitalism of Bulgaria, which was the system used right after our freedom from Ottoman “yoke” up to the end of the World War II and the appearance of the Communist regime. I would like to discuss the special elements, which made Bulgaria choose that particular system, how it managed to develop in the Bulgarian weak economic and unstable political system and how (ir)relevant it was for the future communist Bulgaria. In the last section I would like to concentrate on research connected with the last years of the communist regime in the time of “perestroika”, what road Bulgaria decided to follow in its economic development in comparison with the former communist central Europe and China, the change it experienced in the mid 1990s and conclude by giving two possible alternatives of development of Bulgaria in the new century. For making this research I used diversity of sources (mainly Bulgarian and English) in forms of books, textbooks, analyses, reports, statistics, interviews, internet pages and variety of different other sources. There are number of reasons why this topic presents particular interest for me. The first and biggest of those reasons is a personal one. As a student of political science I am generally interested in the transition of the central-east Europe from communist regime to democracy. As a Bulgarian national and person who live under the communist regime in 1980s, but felt the influences of that regime till the end of the century, I was curious to build a picture which would help me understand better and answer many unanswered question, I have about the Bulgarian transition. Deriving from the previous point is my next reason, connected with the limited material person can find on this particular topic. Here I would like to underline 7 that there are innumerable book devoted to the transition as such, but: first they are too general, paying attention on the comparison between the countries in the central-east Europe and usually not focused on single country or at least small number of countries and second in many of the books handling the topic of transition are centered on the central European one, and even if those books have part dealing with the transition of east Europe or the Balkans, they very often identify east Europe as east Poland and Russia and the Balkans as former Yugoslavia and neglect countries like Bulgaria, Romania, which could be easily put in both divisions. Coming out of the first two arguments is the third and last contemplation. It is connected to the statistical data of the economic performance in Bulgaria and is expressed very well by Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, where the authors articulate the idea that “Bulgaria in the late 1980s was already an industrial state with a large educated urban middle class“ (Dawisha and Parrott 1997), but John Bell and Veselin Ganev explain the situation only couple of years later as “Economic reforms have been glacially slow and have been stained by corruption and rice of criminal activity. Disarray among the political opposition has so far kept the state in the hands of the heirs of the Communist Party” (Bell 2001) and “why did Bulgaria under Videnov earn the dubious distinction of being „the worst managed state in Europe‟? … political institutions were successfully installed and do function in accord with pre-fixed rules, and yet Bulgarian society proved vulnerable to a series of excruciating crises” (Ganev 2002), which I consider as to be implausible. So in relation to these economic result and the problems in understanding why all those critiques and myself do not have any explanation is my third main reason for writing this thesis. As a person with good knowledge of the Bulgarian history and culture I believe that if we want to answer those questions and generally the agonizing faith of the Bulgarian nation, we have to go back in time until 1396, when the second Bulgarian kingdom falls into the hands of the Ottomans, because this struggle for freedom, the followed from it “Eastern Question” and the involvement of the Russian Empire (which ideas that freedom is only possible with the help of our brothers “братушки” got into the culture and national psychology of the people for centuries) and the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 was the prove, which let Bulgarians feel psychologically attached to their liberator. The lingering “Eastern Question” let us to two national catastrophes (the Balkan wars 1912-1913 and the World War I 1915-1918) and also to the misfortunes of the World War II and the national psychological attachment to our Russian brother 8 made the adoption of their communist ideas
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