People's republic of Bulgaria

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I always see this image used, but I don't think I've ever actually seen the study. Does anyone have a link?

Comparative to socialist states such as East-Germany and Hungary or even Czechoslovakia Bulgaria was mostly abysmal in most factors and reliant on the USSR buying their goods at a markup

Their Brezhnev was also a huge opportunist who became a lib after 1990

Stockholm syndrome

commies btfo

Hmmm

Now that's what I call actually existing socialism

It's from a 2009 Pew study, if you put parts of the text into quotes in Google it'll come up.

Bulgarian here. Unfortunately you're painting a too rosy picture of the communist times. In reality our party was one of the most self serving and least competent ones, and caused a distaste for communism in many people, which led to the disgusting neoliberalism and mafia clans we have today.

I will try to describe the political and economic factors of why there exists a large amount of russophobia and anti-communism in Bulgaria. Keep in mind that this applies to after the 60s. Before that I heard from my grandfather that the party and society were less dysfunctional. Nevertheless, Bulgaria is an example of how not implement socialism in a country.

First, Anticommunism in Bulgaria comes from a large part due to russophobia. This russophobia comes from Russia generally always supporting Serbian interests rather than Bulgarian ones, and Serbia is one of our biggest enemies.

-Bulgarians were nationalists and still are, and wanted foreign policy focused on following Bulgarian territorial claims and, not internationalist platitudes.
TBF one of the few things the communist party did right was to try to assimilate our muslim population. This was a patriotic policy and was in line with the populace's interests.

-The communist party's recognition of the fake ethnicity of macedonia cause bulgarians to view it as traitorous and serving only foreign interests

The BCP was also one of the most nepotistic and had one of the most self interested and decadent nomenklature.

-During communism, bulgarians were far more restricted from traveling to other countries than other countries in the warsaw pact. For example, the communist government banned travel to yugoslavia and poland, while even soviet citizens were allowed to travel there. (my family had a soviet friend with no connections who traveled there).

Meanwhile, the nomenklature could travel wherever it wanted. Many beureaucrats sent their children to western universities, and as you can imagine, this demoralized the working class.
-To add insult to injury, possession of dollars was banned in communist bulgaria, yet there existed stores with western goods in which you could only pay with dollars. Even though officially it was for tourists, bulgarians with dollars could legally buy products there, and in most cases it was well connected individuals. This was a tacit admission that communist consumer goods were inferior and less desired, and that the government was ashamed to to force westerners to buy bulgarian consumer goods. It also exasberated the class divide between the workers and the nomeclature.

-There was generational punishment in communist Bulgaria. If you served in the Tzar's armed forces, regardless if your actually were counterrevolutionary or not, most of the time you would be forbidden from having a pension or work in jobs even if you're qualified for it. Family members wouldn't be admitted to universities or government positions if you had a family member who was labeled a counterrevolutionary.

-

Our economic planners were as far away from economists as it could be. Factory and infrastructure construction was ideologically driven rather than pragmatic.

-For example, factories were preferentially in areas based on birthplaces of communist partisans, instead of in accordance to efficiency.

-also, due to ideology, the party didnt invest and expand in the economic sectors which Bulgaria had expertise in(light industry and agriculture), but almost exclusively focused on heavy industry, regardless if it was profitable or efficient use of resources to do so. Many factories, like the steel plant of Kremikovsti, operated at a net loss due to the cost of transporting steel to it.

-Decisions were of arbitrary nature. For example, the planning comittee refused to license produce renault cars, even though it was estimated to be profitable, presumably due to ideological reasons, but imported machinery from capitalist japan routinely.

-In my city, Varna, throughout the communist period, there was a electricity shortage and people didnt have electricity from 7pm to 7 am, even though Bulgaria was an electricity exporter.

-Although our industry did produce many high quality consumer goods(clothes, textiles, electronics) and foodstuffs(meats, vegetables, bread), they were all for export. Ordinary bulgarians could only buy the poor quality goods. Ironically, capitalists today keep exporting their high quality goods to foreign markets, leaving the bulgarian market saturated with overpriced low quality foreign goods.

-IDK if its because of market reforms, but layoffs were quite common in enterprises. One of my grandfathers was layed off 5 times. Of course this is an anecdote, but such stuff which shouldnt exist in socialism existed. However, finding employment after getting layed off was generally easy, unlike during neoliberalism.

-Compared to the myth of ebul gulag death camps, socialist bulgaria actually did have 2 prisons which were de facto death camps: Belene and Skrevena. There, prisoners were starved and routinely abused by guards. Even people sympathetic to socialism confirm it.

These are just some of the contradictions during communist Bulgaria. Was it better than the current shithole? In many cases, sure, but it could've been so much better and more efficient.

Bulgaria was in need of maoist agrarian peasant focused theory, not marxist theory which was appropriate for industrial societies.

One last thing: Most Bulgarian anti-communists are genXers, since they lived in the decadent 70s and 80s. Boomers are generally pro-communists. Millenials and zoomers are in between but mostly politically ignorant.

they wanted Socialism just to not be part of the USSR government.
Russia invaded them to protect the warsaw pact.
it's imperialism