People ' s Republic of Bulgaria The People ' s Republic of Bulgaria ( PRB ; " Narodna republika Balgariya ( NRB ) " ) was the official name of the Bulgarian socialist republic that existed from 1946 to 1990 , when the Bulgarian Communist Party ( BCP ) was ruling together with its allegedly ' independent ' coalition partner National Agrarian Party . Bulgaria was viewed in the West as a satellite state of the Soviet Union , part of Comecon and an Eastern Bloc country , and a Soviet ally during the Cold War , a member of the Warsaw Pact . In 1989 , democratic reforms were initiated after some few years period of unspoken liberalization and after in the autumn of 1989 the long ruling Todor Zhivkov was removed from power in a BCP congress . In 1990 BCP changed its name to Bulgarian Socialist Party ( BSP ) and adopted a centre - left political ideology due to Georgi Parvanov , then political historian at the BCP Institute , in place of Marxism - Leninism . Following first free elections since 1931 were held ( won by the BSP ) , the country ' s name was changed to Republic of Bulgaria . History . Early years and Chervenkov era . Although the Kingdom of Bulgaria changed its alliance and declared war on Nazi Germany on September 7 , 1944 on September 9 a coup d ' état , backed by Red Army troops , installed a new government led by the Fatherland Front ( FF ) , which was dominated by the Bulgarian Communist Party . The next two years were accompanied by heavy - handed repression of the non - Communist opposition . This only increased when it became apparent that the United States and United Kingdom had largely disinterested themselves in Bulgaria . The tempo of repression ramped up even further in November 1945 , when Communist Party leader Georgi Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile . He made a truculent speech that made it apparent the party had no intentions of working with the opposition . Elections held a few weeks later resulted in a large majority for the Front . In September 1946 , a referendum on whether to retain the monarchy or make Bulgaria a republic resulted in an implausible 95 . 6 percent voting in favour of a republic . Almost immediately after that Bulgaria was declared a " people ' s republic " . The young Tsar Simeon II , his mother and sister were required to leave the country . Vasil Kolarov , the number - three man in the party , became acting head of state . This moment marked the onset of undisguised Communist rule in Bulgaria . Over the next year , the Communists consolidated their hold on power . Elections for a constituent assembly in October 1946 gave the Communists a majority . A month later , Dimitrov became prime minister . The constituent assembly , with the help of Soviet jurists , issued the so - called " Dimitrov Constitution " in December 1947 — a copy of the 1936 Soviet Constitution . By 1948 , the remaining opposition parties had been destroyed ; the Social Democrats had been forced to merge with the Communists , while the Agrarian Union converted itself into a loyal partner of the Communists . In 1948 - 49 , Orthodox , Muslim , Protestant and Roman Catholic religious organizations are restrained or banned . The Orthodox Church of Bulgaria somehow continued functioning but was restricted and later infiltrated with communist functionaries . Dimitrov died in 1949 . For a time , Bulgaria adopted collective leadership with Vulko Chervenkov becoming leader of the Communist Party and Vasil Kolarov becoming prime minister . This broke down a year later , when Kolarov died and Chervenkov was once again able to combine the posts of party boss and prime minister . Chervenkov started a process of rapid and forceful industrialization . Yet , Chervenkov ' s support base even in the Communist Party was too narrow for him to survive long once his patron , Stalin , was gone . In March 1954 , a year after Stalin ' s death , Chervenkov was deposed as Party Secretary with the approval of the new leadership in Moscow and replaced by the youthful Todor Zhivkov . Chervenkov stayed on as Prime Minister until April 1956 , when he was finally dismissed and replaced by Anton Yugov . Zhivkov era . Zhivkov ruled Bulgaria for the next 33 years , being completely loyal to the Soviets but pursuing a more moderate policy at home . Relations were restored with Yugoslavia and Greece , the trials and executions of Traicho Kostov and other " Titoists " ( though not of Nikola Petkov and other non - Communist victims of the 1947 purges ) were officially denounced . A limited degree of freedom of expression was restored and the persecution of the Church was ended . The upheavals in Poland and Hungary in 1956 did not spread to Bulgaria , but the Party placed firm limits and restraints on intellectual and literary freedom to prevent any such outbreaks . In the 1960s some economic reforms were adopted , which allowed the free sale of production that exceeded planned amounts . The country became the most popular tourist destination for the Eastern Bloc people . Bulgaria also had a large production basis for commodities such as cigarettes and chocolate , which were hard to obtain in other socialist countries . Yugov retired in 1962 , and Zhivkov then became Prime Minister as well as Party Secretary . He survived the Soviet leadership ' s transition from Khrushchev to Brezhnev in 1964 , and in 1968 again demonstrated his loyalty to the Soviet Union by taking a formal part in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 ; that is , he sent a limited number of troops for attendance but not for actually taking part in the bringing down of the Prague Spring . At this point Bulgaria became generally regarded as the Soviet Union ' s most loyal Eastern European ally . In 1971 , with the adoption of a new Constitution , Zhivkov promoted himself to Head of State ( Chairman of the State Council ) and made Stanko Todorov Prime Minister . Fall of the Communist regime . Although Zhivkov was never in the Stalinist mould , by 1981 , when he turned 70 , his regime was very autocratic but brought also some social and cultural liberalisation and progress led by his daughter Lyudmila Zhivkova who unlike her father didn ' t receive approval of communist functionaries because of her pro - Western attitudes . Before the fall of communism this autocracy was shown most notably in a campaign of forced assimilation against the ethnic Turkish minority , who were forbidden to speak the Turkish language and were forced to adopt Bulgarian names in the winter of 1984 . The issue strained Bulgaria ' s economic relations with the West . The expelling of 300 , 000 Turks caused a significant drop in agricultural production in the southern regions due to the loss of labour force . By the time the impact of Mikhail Gorbachev ' s reform program in the Soviet Union was felt in Bulgaria in the late 1980s , the Communists , like their leader , had grown too feeble to resist the demand for change for long . Liberal outcry at the breakup of an environmental demonstration in Sofia in October 1989 broadened into a general campaign for political reform . More moderate elements in the Communist leadership reacted promptly by deposing Zhivkov and replacing him with foreign minister Petar Mladenov on November 10 , 1989 . This swift move , however , gained only a short respite for the Communist Party and prevented revolutionary change . Mladenov promised to open up the regime , even going as far as to say that he supported free elections . However , demonstrations throughout the country brought the situation to a head . On December 11 , Mladenov went on national television to announce the Communist Party had abandoned power . On January 15 , 1990 , the National Assembly formally abolished the Communist Party ' s " leading role . " In June 1990 , the first free elections since 1939 were held , thus paving Bulgaria ' s way to multiparty democracy . Finally in mid - November 1990 , the National Assembly voted to change the country ' s name to the Republic of Bulgaria and removed the Communist state emblem from the national flag . Legacy . Immediately after the fall of the socialist regime in Bulgaria , an era of demonization of socialism and of all of its aspects began . Today , after more than two decades of capitalism , there is a certain feeling of nostalgia for the People ' s Republic , with some Bulgarians stating that the stability , safety and social services that they had are now lost . Government and politics . The People ' s Republic of Bulgaria was a single - party Communist state . The Bulgarian Communist Party created an extensive nomenklatura on each organizational level . The constitution was changed several times , with the Zhivkov Constitution being the longest - lived . According to article 1 , " The People ' s Republic of Bulgaria is a socialist state , headed by the working people of the village and the city . The leading force in society and politics is the Bulgarian Communist Party . " The PRB functioned as a one - party people ' s republic , with the People ' s Committees representing local self - governing . Their role was to exercise Party decisions in their respective areas , and in the meantime to rely on popular opinion in decision - making . In the late 1980s , the BCP had an estimated peak of 1 , 000 , 000 members — more than 10 % of the population . Military . After Bulgaria was proclaimed a people ' s republic in 1946 , the military rapidly adopted a Soviet military doctrine and organization . The country received large amounts of Soviet weaponry , and eventually established a domestic military vehicle production capability . By the year 1988 , the Bulgarian People ' s Army ( " Българска народна армия " ) numbered 152 , 000 men , serving in four different branches - Land Forces , Navy , Air and Air Defense Forces , and Missile Forces . The BPA operated an impressive amount of equipment for the country ' s size - 3 , 000 tank s , 2 , 000 armored vehicles , 2 , 500 large caliber artillery systems , over 500 combat aircraft , 33 combat vessels , as well as 67 Scud missile launchers , 24 SS - 23 launchers and dozens of FROG - 7 artillery rocket launchers . Economy . The economy of the PRB was a centrally planned economy , similar to those in other COMECON states . In the mid - 1940s , when the collectivisation process began , Bulgaria was a primarily agrarian state , with some 80 % of its population located in rural areas . Production facilities of all sectors were nationalised , although it was not until Vulko Chervenkov that private economic activity was completely scrapped . Despite negative effects in some other countries , the productivity of Bulgarian agriculture increased rapidly after collectivisation . Large - scale mechanisation resulted in an immense growth in labour productivity . A vast amount of government subsidies were spent each year to cover the losses from the artificially lowered consumer prices . Chervenkov ' s Stalinist policy led to a massive industrialisation and development of the energy sector , which is one of Bulgaria ' s most advanced economic sectors to date . His rule lasted from 1950 to 1956 , and saw the construction of dozens of dams and hydroelectric powerplants , chemical works , Elatsite gold and copper mine , and many others . The war - time coupon system was abolished , healthcare and education were made free . All this was achieved with strict government control and organization , prisoner brigades from the labor camps and the Bulgarian Brigadier Movement - a youth labor movement where young people worked voluntarily on construction projects . In the 1960s , Todor Zhivkov introduced a number of reforms which had a positive effect on the country ' s economy . He preserved the planned economy , but also put emphasis on light industry , agriculture , tourism , as well as on Information Technology in the 1970s and the 1980s . Surplus agricultural production could be sold freely , prices were lowered even more , and new equipment for light industrial production was imported . Bulgaria also became the first Communist country to purchase a license from Coca - Cola in 1965 , the product had the trademark logo in Cyrillic . Despite being very stable , the economy shared the same drawbacks of other countries from Eastern Europe - it traded almost entirely with the Soviet Union ( more than 60 % ) and planners did not take into account whether there were markets for some of the goods produced . This resulted in surpluses of certain products , while other commodities were in deficit . Apart from the Soviet Union , other main trade partners were East Germany and Czechoslovakia , but non - European countries such as Mongolia and various African countries were also large - scale importers of Bulgarian goods . The country also enjoyed good trade relations with various non - Communist developed countries , most notably West Germany and Italy . In order to combat the low quality of many goods , a comprehensive State standard system was introduced in 1970 , which included precise and strict quality requirements for all sorts of products , machines and buildings . The People ' s Republic of Bulgaria had an average GDP per capita for an Eastern Bloc country . A comparative table is given below . At least on paper , average purchasing power was one of the lowest in the Eastern Bloc , mostly due to the larger availability of commodities than in other socialist countries . Workers employed abroad often received higher payments , thus could afford a wider range of goods to purchase . According to official figures , in 1988 100 out of 100 households had a television set , 95 out of 100 had a radio , 96 out of 100 had a refrigerator , and 40 out of 100 had an automobile . Automobile industry . Since 1965 in People ` s Republic of Bulgaria many companies from Western Europe choose Bulgaria to build their factories to sell their automobiles in the countries which were in the eastern bloc . Renault and Citroen from France , Fiat and Alfa Romeo from Italy tried to convince Bulgaria for a partnership , but People ` s Republic of Bulgaria made deals only with Renault and Fiat . Culture . Culture in the People ' s Republic of Bulgaria was strictly controlled and regulated by the government , although there have been some periods of liberalization ( meaning entrance in Bulgaria of Western literature , music , etc . ) . The thaw in intellectual life had continued from 1951 until the middle of the decade . Vulko Chervenkov ' s resignation and the literary and cultural flowering in the Soviet Union created expectations that the process would continue , but the Hungarian revolution of fall 1956 frightened the Bulgarian leadership away from encouragement of dissident intellectual activity . In response to events in Hungary , Chervenkov was appointed minister of education and culture ; in 1957 and 1958 , he purged the leadership of the Bulgarian Writers ' Union and dismissed liberal journalists and editors from their positions . His crackdowns effectively ended the " Bulgarian thaw " of independent writers and artists inspired by Khrushchev ' s 1956 speech against Stalinism . During the later years of communist rule , nationalism became a doctrine that the ruling party promoted .