Word: bulgarians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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SOFIA, Bulgaria--The Bulgarian Parliament yesterday ousted former Communist leader Todor Zhivkov as head of state and approved a series of government changes that forced out several Zhivkov supporters and put reformers into positions of power...
...crowd at the state-sponsored rally loudly cheered deputy Slavcho Trnski, who launched an unprecedented attack on Zhivkov during the parliament session. Marchers carrying banners for perestroika and waving Bulgarian flags chanted, "Zhivkov to court...
...first harsh public criticism of Zhivkov, 78, who gained power shortly after Josef Stalin's death with the aid of the Soviet dictator's supporters, and ran the country in a rigid, Stalinist fashion. The attack also came during the first-ever live television broadcast of a Bulgarian Parliament session...
...seemed a small thing, hardly ground for arrest. For two weeks a tiny group of Bulgarian environmentalists called Ecoglasnost manned a table in a Sofia park to gather signatures on a petition calling for public debate on two controversial river-diversion schemes. They had collected nearly 7,000 names, when police and militia units suddenly swooped down, scattered bystanders and arrested seven of the organizers...
...members of Ecoglasnost were later released, but the crackdown was a crude warning to Bulgarian political activists to watch their step. It was one more indication of just how nervous Eastern Europe's remaining hard-line regimes have become as a result of the year's dramatic political changes elsewhere in the bloc. The obdurate rulers in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Rumania refuse to imitate their reformist neighbors but can't help looking anxiously over their shoulder. "They are all worried about the fallout from change elsewhere," said a Western diplomat in the region. A Bulgarian proverb captures the fears: "When...