Word: bulgaria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...warnings, which do not amount to formal charges, stem from Agca's statements to an Italian magistrate last fall that he had accomplices in his attempt on the Pope's life. Not only had Sergei Ivanov Antonov, the head of Bulgaria's Balkan Airlines office in Rome, and two embassy officials plotted the shooting of the Pope in May, Agca reportedly told investigating Judge Ilario Martella, they had also plotted the murder of Walesa when he journeyed to Rome four months earlier for his meeting with the Pontiff. Agca said an Italian union official was involved...
...remarkable confirmation of Bulgaria's extensive clandestine network in Italy, Scricciolo's lawyer has told TIME that his client had frequent contact with Bulgarian officials, including one implicated in the shooting of the Pope. The Bulgarians, the lawyer added, quizzed Scricciolo about Walesa and about a number of sensitive military subjects. The Bulgarians also donated up to $7,200 to the newspaper of a left-wing Italian political party of which Scricciolo was a member. Scricciolo vehemently denies any part in a conspiracy to kill the Polish union leader and says he knows no military secrets. Dismissing...
That reputation leads Westerners to think of Bulgaria, if they think of it at all, as a sort of 16th republic of the Soviet Union. The country's roots, in fact, lie elsewhere. Its name comes from the Bulgars, a people of Turkic origin that moved south of the Danube and into present-day Bulgaria in the 7th century. Conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1396, the Bulgarians spent the next 500 years under the yoke of Constantinople before being set free by the Tsar's forces. During both world wars the country sided with Germany...
With help from Moscow, postwar Bulgaria was transformed from a peasant nation of primitive farms into the Socialist version of agribusiness. At the end of World War II fewer than 2% of agricultural plots were larger than 50 acres; by 1970 the average collective or state farm covered more than 10,000 acres. Bulgaria is more than just a vegetable patch: it is the world's second largest exporter of cigarettes, with most of its Shipkas and Stewardesses going to the Soviet Union, and it provides nearly half the world's rose attar, an ingredient in perfumes...
During the 1950s, Bulgaria shifted into industrial gear. Today its industries account for nearly half of the gross national product, while agricultural output makes up only 18%. A Bulgarian firm called Balkancar is one of the world's largest producers of forklifts. Economic growth in 1982 was about 2.5%, one of the highest among the Soviet satellites. Moscow is both a customer and a supplier: it buys about half of Bulgaria's exports and provides 90% of its oil. Consumer prices are relatively high for a Soviet-bloc country ($2 per Ib. for pork, $200 for a small...