Word: bulgarias
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...opinion in the West. In the U.S. alone, Poland reportedly can call on agents among some 200 trade representatives. Rumania has the crudest and largest secret police; some experts estimate that as many as one-third of all adults have served in the security service or cooperated with it. Bulgaria's secret police is especially valued for its loyalty. Explains an East European expert in London: "In Soviet eyes, the Bulgarian security service does not carry the same risk of defections as the Polish or Czechoslovak secret services?this is important in operations with a high risk of exposure...
...deeds ascribed to the KGB, perhaps none has drawn more outrage than the allegation that the Soviet Union, acting through Bulgaria, was behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Over the decades, the U.S.S.R. has forged a special relationship with Bulgaria, relying on the tiny Balkan nation to perform myriad tasks, some nefarious, some merely fraternal. A report from that littlenoticed, little-understood country...
From vegetables to dirty tricks, Bulgaria gives...
...Tsar Alexander II, ruler of Russia from 1855 to 1881. A prerevolutionary Tsar being honored in a Communist country? History provides the explanation: Alexander II freed the Bulgarians from five centuries of Turkish rule in 1878, at a cost of 200,000 Russian lives. Unlike most of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria regards the U.S.S.R. as its liberator, not its conqueror. The two countries share the Cyrillic alphabet and speak similar languages. Though it is difficult to measure the affection felt by the Bulgarian people toward the Soviet government, there is no doubt about the official devotion of Sofia toward Moscow...
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...