Forced Labour Camps In Communist Bulgaria
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Forced Labour Camps In Communist Bulgaria
As in other Eastern Bloc states, Communist Bulgaria operated a network of forced labour camps between 1944 and 1989, with particular intensity until 1962. Tens of thousands of prisoners were sent to these institutions, often without trial. Background The Red Army entered Bulgaria in September 1944 and immediately, partisans exacted reprisals. Tens of thousands were executed, including active fascists and members of the political police, but also people who were simply of the non-Communist intelligentsia, members of the professional and bourgeois classes. Merely displeasing a Communist cadre could lead to execution. These massacres were actively encouraged by Georgi Dimitrov, who sent a telegram from Moscow a week after the Soviets' arrival in Sofia calling for the "torching of all signs of Bulgarian jingoism, nationalism, or anti-Communism". On 20 September, the Central Committee called for "anti-Communist resistance" and "counterrevolutionaries" to be exterminated. A People's ...
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Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the Capitalism, capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the Second World, whereas the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the Non-Aligned Movement, non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former Tito–Stalin split, pre-1948 Soviet ally SFR Yugoslavia, which was located in Europe. In Western Europe, the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon (East Germany, Polish People's Republic, Poland, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungarian ...
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Konstantin Muraviev
Konstantin Vladov Muraviev ( bg, Константин Владов Муравиев) (5 March 1893, Pazardzhik – 31 January 1965) was a leading member of the Agrarian People's Union who briefly served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria near the end of Bulgaria's involvement in the Second World War on the side of Germany. Muraviev was educated at Robert College of Istanbul, just like Todor Ivanchov, Konstantin Stoilov and many other Bulgarians were at the time. Early career The nephew of Aleksandar Stamboliyski, he was appointed Minister of War under his uncle when aged only 29, although he proved unsuccessful in the post, with his refusal to acknowledge threats of a coup a major factor in the collapse of Stamboliyski's government in 1923. He would hold several other cabinet posts in coalition governments between 1931 and 1934 and his assured performances in these role rehabilitated his political reputation.Marshall Lee Miller, ''Bulgaria During the Second World War'', Stanford U ...
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Political Repression
Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby reducing their standing among their fellow citizens. It is often manifested through policies such as human rights violations, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, lustration, and violent action or terror such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance, and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. Political repression can also be reinforced by means outside of written policy, such as by public and private media ownership and by self-censorship within the public. Where political repression is sanctioned and organised by the state, it may constitute state terrorism, genocide, politicide or cr ...
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History Of The Bulgarian Communist Party
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ...
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Communism In Bulgaria
The People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB; bg, Народна Република България (НРБ), ''Narodna Republika Balgariya, NRB'') was the official name of Bulgaria, when it was a socialist republic from 1946 to 1990, ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) together with its coalition partner, the Bulgarian Agrarian People's Union. Bulgaria was closely allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, being part of Comecon as well as a member of the Warsaw Pact. The Bulgarian resistance movement during World War II deposed the Kingdom of Bulgaria administration in the Bulgarian coup d'état of 1944 which ended the country's alliance with the Axis powers and led to the People's Republic in 1946. The BCP modelled its policies after those of the Soviet Union, transforming the country over the course of a decade from an agrarian peasant society into an industrialized socialist society. In the mid-1950s and after the death of Stalin, the party's hardliners lost ...
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Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; bg, Българска Комунистическа Партия (БКП), Balgarska komunisticheska partiya (BKP)) was the founding and ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1989, when the country ceased to be a socialist state. The party had dominated the Fatherland Front, a coalition that took power in 1944, late in World War II, after it led a coup against Bulgaria's tsarist regime in conjunction with the Red Army's crossing the border. It controlled its armed forces, the Bulgarian People's Army. The BCP was organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle introduced by the Russian Marxist scholar and leader Vladimir Lenin, which entails democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding the agreed upon policies. The highest body of the BCP was the Party Congress, convened every fifth year. When the Party Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the hig ...
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Anton Yugov
Anton Tanev (Dontcho) Yugov ( bg, Антон Танев Югов) (28 August 1904 – 6 July 1991) was a Bulgarian politician who was a leading member of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), and served as Prime Minister of the country from 1956 to 1962. He was an Honorary Citizen of Tirana, Albania. Yugov was born to a Bulgarian family in Karasuli (Rugunovets), Ottoman Macedonia (today Polykastro, Greece).His family moved to Plovdiv after World War I. War years and Ministry Yugov was a prominent figure in the BCP during the Second World War and attempted to reach a settlement with Marshal Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia regarding co-operation between both countries' communists. This 1941 initiative was aborted however as Tito would not accept the sacrifice of Macedonia, something upon which Yugov insisted. The two would revisit the issue in 1945 when they discussed the possibility of a Bulgarian-Yugoslav confederation to solve the issue although the United States and United ...
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Todor Zhivkov
Todor Hristov Zhivkov ( bg, Тодор Христов Живков ; 7 September 1911 – 5 August 1998) was a Bulgarian communist statesman who served as the ''de facto'' leader of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB) from 1954 until 1989 as General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party. He was the second longest-serving leader in the Eastern Bloc after Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, the longest-serving leader within the Warsaw Pact and the longest-serving non-royal ruler in Bulgarian history. He became First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) in 1954 (General Secretary from April 1981), served as List of Prime Ministers of Bulgaria, Prime Minister from 1962 to 1971 and from 1971 onwards as List of heads of state of Bulgaria, Chairman of the State Council, concurrently with his post as First Secretary. He remained in these positions for 35 years, until 1989, thus becoming the second longest-serving leader of any European Eastern Bloc nation after World War II, and ...
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Turks In Bulgaria
Bulgarian Turks ( bg, български турци, bŭlgarski turtsi, tr, Bulgaristan Türkleri) are a Turkish people, Turkish ethnic group from Bulgaria. According to the 2021 census, there were 508,375 Bulgarians of Turkish descent, roughly 8.4% of the population, making them the country's largest ethnic minority. Bulgarian Turks also comprise the largest single population of Turks in the Balkans. They primarily live in the southern province of Kardzhali Province, Kardzhali and the northeastern provinces of Shumen Province, Shumen, Silistra Province, Silistra, Razgrad Province, Razgrad and Targovishte Province, Targovishte. There is also a diaspora outside Bulgaria in countries such as Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Romania, the most significant of which are the Bulgarian Turks in Turkey. Bulgarian Turks are the descendants of Turkish people, Turkish settlers who entered the region after the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the la ...
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Parasitism (social Offense)
Social parasitism was a political crime in the Soviet Union in which the perpetrator was accused of living at the expense of other people or society. A number of Soviet intellectuals and dissidents were accused of the crime of parasitism, including Joseph Brodsky, Iosif Begun, Vladimir Voinovich, Lev Kopelev and Andrei Amalrik. Soviet Union In the Soviet Union, which declared itself a workers' state, every adult able-bodied person was expected to work until official retirement. Thus unemployment was officially and theoretically eliminated. Those who refused to work, study or serve in another way risked being criminally charged with ''social parasitism'' (russian: тунеядство ''tuneyadstvo'', тунеядцы 'tuneyadets/tuneyadtsy"''), in accordance with the socialist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution." In 1961, 130,000 people were identified as leading the "Anti-social behaviour">anti-social, parasitic way of li ...
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Vulko Chervenkov
Valko Velyov ChervenkovBulgaria: Stalinism and de-Stalinization
Encyclopædia Britannica Online
() (6 September 1900 – 21 October 1980) was a n politician. He served as leader of the between 1949 and 1954, and