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In February 1947 the peace treaty formally ending Bulgarian participation in World War II was signed in Paris. It provided for reparations to be paid to Greece in the amount of $45 million and to Yugoslavia in the amount of $25 million; severe limitation of military strength, with partial demilitarization along the Greek frontier; and the retention of southern Dobruja. (The borders with Greece were returned to their status as of 1941.) In December 1947 the National Assembly adopted a new constitution modelled on that of the USSR; this document replaced the presidency with the presidium, an executive committee. That September, Nikola Dimitrov Petkov, leader of the opposition to the Fatherland Front, had been executed after being convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. During the two year period between 1947 and 1949 as many as 20,000 "bourgeois" Bulgarians were executed or imprisoned by the Communist People's Court.

Under pressure from the USSR, Bulgaria renounced its treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia after the Soviet-Yugoslavian rift in 1948; relations with the country and its successor states have since continued to fluctuate, as have those with neighbouring Greece and Turkey. Diplomatic ties with the United States, broken in 1950 but restored in 1959, have frequently been marred by Bulgarian accusations of U.S. espionage activities. The U.S. ministry was raised to the status of an embassy in 1966.

During most of the Communist period, under the leadership of Todor Zhivkov-secretary of the Communist Party from 1954, the country's premier from 1964 to 1971, and head of state from 1971 to late 1989-Bulgaria was one of the most restrictive societies among the former Soviet satellites. As a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and the Warsaw Pact, Bulgaria long remained among the USSR's most dependable allies. During the 1970s the country received substantial financial aid from the USSR, which was used for industrialization.

During the mid-1980s the Zhivkov government launched a campaign to assimilate members of Bulgaria's Turkish minority by forcing them to take Slavic names, prohibiting them from speaking Turkish in public, and subjecting them to other forms of harassment; during 1989 alone, more than 300,000 Bulgarian Turks crossed the border into Turkey to escape persecution. Late in 1989, Zhivkov was ousted from power and expelled from the Communist Party; replacing him as general secretary was the foreign minister, Peter T. Mladenov. Under Mladenov's leadership, Bulgaria restored the civil rights of Bulgarian Turks and began to institute a multiparty system. Bulgaria had now joined the rest of Eastern Europe in removing the old communist guard and embarking on the road to democracy.

For further information, please contact Mr. Neytcho Iltchev, to whom you can send your remarks and recommendations. Telephone: +359 2 9842 7579 ; Fax: +359 2 981 1719, E-mail: neylegrand@ifrance.com; nbulgaria@yahoo.com;

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