Word: bulgarias
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...very secret approach to Hitler during the war. I think it was in 1942. Stalin wanted to reach an agreement that would let the Germans keep the territory they occupied in the Ukraine, Belorussia and even certain areas of the Russian Federation. One of our people was sent to Bulgaria and instructed to inform a German contact there that the Soviet Union was willing to make some territorial concessions. There was never any answer from Hitler. Apparently, he felt the Soviet Union's days were numbered. Why enter into negotiations when everything was practically his anyway...
...their lives. For the first time in decades, they will have to pay the market price for energy instead of relying on subsidized oil from the Soviet Union; they must also make do with a 30% cut in Soviet supplies. Even with oil at only $20 per bbl., Bulgaria would be forced to use 80% and Czechoslovakia 60% of hard-currency reserves to pay for supplies. Though the Soviet Union stands to gain an additional $7.5 billion in hard-currency earnings as a result of the price run-up, Moscow cannot expect a bonanza: its oil industry is so inefficient...
Soviet officials blame factory breakdowns, hoarding by black marketeers and reduced imports from Bulgaria for the cigarette shortage. The protests are regarded as a real threat to perestroika. Moscow's city council announced last week that it would immediately begin rationing cigarettes, limiting consumption to five packs a month. President Gorbachev fired Vladilen Nikitin, his appropriately named head of state procurement, after finding his explanation for the shortage "unconvincing and unsound." Soviet smokers seem to agree. "It was bad enough when they took our vodka away," grumbled a man in a tobacco line. "There was eau de cologne or home...
Although they won more than half the seats in the 400-member parliament in June's elections, Bulgaria's former Communist leaders have been struggling to keep a grip on power and hold their newly renamed Bulgarian Socialist Party together. The internal crisis was triggered early last month when President Petar Mladenov, who deposed longtime Stalinist leader Todor Zhivkov in November 1989, stepped down under pressure. Mladenov had angered opposition groups and liberal members of his party by suggesting that tanks be used to break up a pro-democracy demonstration last December...
Washington hailed the election as a sign of the Mongolian people's commitment to a democratic system. "The Communists won in Bulgaria too," said Secretary of State James Baker, who is to arrive in Mongolia Thursday for a four-day visit. "So you shouldn't test a democracy by whether or not your favorite might...