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Browse Items: Communist Party
Rewriting Article 1 of the Bulgarian Constitution
In Bulgaria, the Communist Party led the movement toward democratic change. Following the legalization of several other political parties, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) introduced legal reforms to the Bulgarian government. One of the most significant and notable of these changes was rewriting Article 1 of the Bulgarian constitution, which guaranteed a "leading role" for the Communist….
Romanian Assessment of Recent Events in Eastern Europe
In this December 22 telegram, Romanian ambassador to Moscow Ion Bucur reported to Deputy Foreign Minister Constantin Oancea in Bucharest on his discussions with Soviet officials concerning the situation in Eastern Europe, particularly the backlash against communist authorities. Interestingly, Bucur writes that the Soviets were aware of the growing hostility towards the former leaders in the….
Assessing the Future of the Bulgarian Communist Party
On November 10, 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading figures in the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) forced Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s leader for more than 35 years, to resign. A coalition of opposition groups formed the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) on December 7, to coordinate efforts to “speed up the processes of democratization,” the group asserted in a statement….
U.S. Embassy Assessment of Political Change in Bulgaria
On November 10, 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading figures in the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) forced Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s leader for more than 35 years, to resign. A coalition of opposition groups formed the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) on December 7, to coordinate efforts to “speed up the processes of democratization,” the group asserted in a statement….
Soviet Plan to respond to the Political Crises in the Soviet Republics
As Gorbachev’s reforms began to take hold across the Soviet Union, various Soviet Republics became hotbeds of nationalist, anti-Soviet movements The Georgian SSR was one of the centers of such acitivties with protests in Georgia reaching their peak on April 4, 1989, when tens of thousands of Georgians gathered in the city of Tbilisi. Local Soviet authorities lost control over the situation….
Mikhail Gorbachev Reports on the Trilateral Commission
During the significant changes that were brewing in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev (leader of the Soviet Union) met with members of the Trilateral Commission, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, North America, and Europe to foster mutual understanding and cooperation. In these notes from a Politburo meeting in January….
The Strategy of Relations with European Socialist Countries
In the following memorandum to Alexander Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev's chief advisors, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) analyzes the effects of Gorbachev's reform program in Eastern Europe. The document reflects the complexity of the issues raised by the new Soviet policy. In the excerpt below, the CPSU assesses the current situation and identifies some of….