Bulgarians Recall Communist Dictator Zhivkov with a Smile

Alone in a double bed in his 400-square-metre flat in Bankya, he awoke each morning to a deafening silence, broken only by the occasional footsteps of the guards. To the left of the leader’s bedroom lay a spacious sunlit bathroom and to the right a terrace, commanding superb views of acres of meadows and forests. The apartment of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s communist ruler for several decades until 1989, 15 kilometres from Sofia, was his dream home. Constructed in imitation of a building he fell in love with on a visit to India, he had little time to enjoy it after construction was completed in 1981. Apart from showing it off to such fellow communist leaders as Leonid Brezhnev and Fidel Castro, the decade was increasingly consumed with the challenge imposed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s doctrine of “perestroika”, or openness, which threatened to erode the whole basis of Zhivkov’s own repressive rule in Bulgaria . Today the apartment bears remarkably few traces of its former occupier. Since its conversion some years ago into a hotel room, all his personal belongings have been removed. Rooms that once echoed to conversations between Zhivkov and Cuban, African and Soviet leaders now have a blank appearance. Compared to the contemporary houses or hotel apartments of the wealthy, they are not especially opulent, either. Just the opposite: a decorative clay wall is decked out with abstract figures, some ugly mosaics and a faulty fireplace, painted in a “rose” pink. It serves to remind visitors that ordinary Bulgarians were not the only victims of the regime’s poor taste in matters of interior design and architecture. The disappearance of Zhivkov’s personal effects from the apartment is symbolic of what has happened to his memory in Bulgaria in general. His image is fading fast, before political scientists have had either the time or the opportunity to analyse the real effects of his deeds on society. After communist officials destroyed many precious documents just after the regime fell, researchers have complained that more and more bits of information are being lost. The failure to document and record this important era in Bulgaria’s history and to preserve collective memories from that period have in the meantime fostered a simplistic, often benevolent, public idea of the late leader. Zhivkov led the country within the Soviet bloc for almost three decades from 1962 to 1989. His slavish loyalty to Moscow contrasted markedly with the independence displayed by his neighbour in Romania , Nicolae Ceausescu, earning Bulgaria a reputation as the Soviet Union ‘s closest satellite. However, Zhivkov’s autocratic regime was seen as relatively merciful – at least when compared to the boot camp of Ceaucescu’s Romania . But it had a dark side to it, nevertheless. Some 300,000 ethnic Turks were forced to leave their homes in the 1980s, after the regime attempted to Bulgarian-ise them by force. Information about the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the Ukraine of 1986 was concealed from the population, while debris charged with nuclear radiation rained on the country. Intellectuals were silenced, prosecuted, and in some cases murdered – a fate that befell exiled dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978. Yet the public reaction to Zhivkov after he lost his grip in 1989 was curiously meek. In 1990, he was arrested and indicted on five accounts – none of which included his persecution of dissidents or the flagrant suppression of democratic rights and norms. Instead, he was charged over the drive to force ethnic Turks to adopt Bulgarian names and with abuse of state powers. Confined to his house in that period, the prosecution opened another three cases against him in the early 1990s, for illegal distribution of state apartments, cars and money, for running “death camps” for political opponents, and for granting uncollectible loans to developing states and fellow communist parties But before his death in 1998, he was found guilty only on one count – for the illegal distribution of state assets. And after his death forced the courts to drop the remaining indictments, the final verdict has been left to historians and researchers. But they have less and less to go on. Apart from Zhivkov’s own memoirs and books, which he published after 1989, there has been little systematic research into his personal role in the communist system. Now, as the courts have fallen silent and the researchers belatedly try to document what they can, Zhivkov’s memory is increasingly blurred. He has no lack of fans on the street among those who remember only the stability, modest prosperity and relative equality of the old days. Walking around his hometown of Pravets, many recall Zhivkov as the great philanthropist and believe they owe him much. “It was much better in his time,” said one elderly man, voicing the opinion of many pensioners. “I am sorry I couldn’t live my retirement under socialism.” Pravets retains many of its acquisitions from the socialist era: tidy, paved squares, well-maintained greenery, an artificial lake, street lights, a highway to Sofia , and perhaps most significantly its status as a town, bestowed 25 years ago, which helped it leave behind the humiliating position of a mere village. All these assets Pravets owes to Zhivkov, who did not hesitate to spend state money on satisfying his personal emotional attachments – a fact that the local people clearly remember. The central square is still named after Zhivkov, the local council keeps up an exhibition home dedicated to the former leader, and grateful citizens even put up a monument to him – the only one in the country – after his death. The Zhivkov memorial home, built when he was in power, displays an extensive collection of presents that the former leader received from other countries. Visitors can admire a set of firearms donated by Brezhnev, a small copy of the Taj Mahal from the state of India , a porcelain vase with his image on it, presented by the “working people of Uzbekistan”, and several hundred other objects. His descendants think this is as it should be. “School textbooks contain little about what happened after September 9th [1944],” said Evgenia Zhivkova, his granddaughter and a socialist member of parliament. “They tell more of the negative sides and speak of Zhivkov as of a totalitarian dictator, but they never mention the cultural and economic development [of his times].” Most recent researchers into state archives think differently. “Zhivkov certainly was a dictator, as he ruled all on his own, in person,” said Tatyana Vaksberg, a journalist who has spent more than five years looking at Politburo documents to research her documentary on the exodus of the ethnic Turks. She says the courts failed to reach more verdicts against Zhivkov because the prosecution had not been reformed enough to prepare strong indictments. “If he was sued by The Hague today he would be indicted on at least eight points, including unlawful imprisonment, torture, deportation and the plunder of public and private property,” added Vaksberg. While the younger generation has been left to work out its own image of the Zhivkov time, researchers complain that the public memory of Zhivkov has become superficial. “It seems the memory of Zhivkov has been frozen onto the level of jokes [about him] and there is no reflection,” said Diana Ivanova. A journalist and researcher, her project, named “I lived under socialism”, collects personal stories of Bulgarians from the era. “Now he is a mere decoration to their memory of socialism rather than a central part of it,” she added. Shkumbata, a comedian who was popular as an imitator of Zhivkov back in the communist era, agrees, “He is becoming more and more of a clown [in people’s minds], and that moves public attention away from the sadder side of his rule.” Jokes and plays on his virtual illiteracy were a great source of entertainment to Bulgarians during the period when he was in power. But while the laughter they provoked was bitter 20 years ago, now the enjoyment is more innocent, as times passes and the context becomes forgotten. A CD with the best jokes about – or by – Zhivkov was recently released and Shkumbata says his own Zhivkov jokes are still in demand. But as Ivanova’s collection of personal stories shows, when Bulgarians think of the bad side of the era, few mention Zhivkov in connection with it. Only two of more than 200 such stories mentions him, she said. The popular perception of Zhivkov as a clown appals Vaksberg, who insists he anticipated the rise of such deadly demagogues as Serbia ‘s Slobodan Milosevic. “It is difficult to say whether the first ideologist of ‘national’ communism was Milosevic or Zhivkov,” said Vaksberg. She said the surviving archives clearly show Zhivkov, alongside his interior minister, Dimitur Stoyanov, was responsible for the expulsion of 300,000 ethnic Turks. While both she and Zhivkov’s admirers think it is important to keep the memory of his rule alive, albeit for different reasons, the government remains indifferent. There are no plans to set up a museum to the communist era in Bulgaria along the lines of those founded in other post-communist countries. But while the state seems permanently uninterested in the matter, a group of scientists and researchers recently launched the first attempt at systematic research into the era, with the opening of an institute for the study of recent history. This aims to collect and analyse documents and stories and offer a more objective and definitive analysis of events. “I believe people have many things to say,” said Ivanova, who is working on the first project sponsored by the institute. “It is just that they were never actually asked.” This article was originally published on December 10, 2007. At the time of publication, Albena Shkodrova was BIRN Bulgaria’s country director. Today, the ease with which part of the Bulgarian population related to the Communist past two decades ago has hardened into a dividing line. Across it, no shots are fired. Yet the sense of being misunderstood, the feelings of rage and helplessness on both sides, split society into a stalemate without a solution in sight. The communist era itself – the lived reality of those decades – has long since faded into a thin line on the horizon of the rear-view mirror. And precisely because of that distance, it has become all the easier to repaint those years in the sugary hues of childhood memory – or worse, to stitch them into a patchwork of false clichés, brandished as a banner for destructive ends. In recent months, my research into the spread of ideas about “food autonomy” led me to the striking amalgam of half-truths and fabrications about the Communist past that has aggressively dominated social media in recent years. Russian trolls and Bulgarian far-right organisations, with their own economic and political agendas, exploit it together in interwoven networks of content production and reproduction. Some of these hundreds of platforms operate like media outlets, mixing user-generated memory-sharing with editorialised news-like posts. Others specialise in relentless reposting. Often managed by the same individuals or groups, they churn out dozens of posts daily, endlessly replicating one another and producing a dense echo chamber. They promote a paradoxical blend of nationalist, pro-Russian, and conservative ideas, offset by anti-European and anti-liberal discourses. A recurring theme is the portrayal of socialism as an era of carefree living and accessible, often free, pleasures. Evocations of factory banquets, cheap restaurants, and seaside hotels circulate widely, with no mention of the restricted access that governed them. Recently, these platforms revived a 2003 pop-folk song by Panko that romanticises the Zhivkov era as a time when Bulgarians supposedly lived “on just a few levs a year” while indulging in endless feasts and free treats. Such nostalgic tropes are used to distort the past, ignoring evidence that today’s average Bulgarian wage holds roughly 60 per cent greater purchasing power than in socialism’s so-called “golden years”. Equally unsubstantiated are myths of a thriving Communist industry – which in reality was underfunded, inefficient, slow to modernise, and plagued by chronic shortages. Research suggests nostalgia is rooted less in positive memories than in present-day frustrations. A 2019 survey by the National Center for Parliamentary Research found nearly one-third of Bulgarians considered life under Zhivkov better, with one-fifth willing to return to his rule, while only a similar share believed life had improved after 1989. In 2023, more than 32 per cent still preferred Zhivkov’s era over any other period in recent history. Nostalgia was strongest among older generations (53 per cent of those over 59), people with little education (60 per cent), and those in extreme poverty (57 per cent). It was also pronounced among rural residents (40 per cent) and inhabitants of small towns (36 per cent). The legacy of Zhivkov’s Bulgaria seems to have ensnared the country in a deadlock, in which one half denies the totalitarian aspects of the past, while the other disregards the harsh realities faced by their compatriots in the present. This social division serves well the far-right and pro-Putin factions, who do their best to perpetuate it.