INCOMPLETE TRANSITION, 1989–1997

Dismantling the apparatus of totalitarianism, November 1989–December 1990

Zhivkov's fall was the work of the party hierarchy; it was a palace coup rather than a revolution, and ‘people power’ in Bulgaria was to be more the consequence than the cause of the change of leadership.

Soon after 10 November a number of new political organisations appeared. Some of these had lived a shadowy, semi-legal half-life in the final years or months of the old regime and were now assuming a full and open existence; some were entirely new creations; and others were reborn versions of historic parties, amongst which were the social democrats, and the agrarians who, to distinguish themselves from the collaborators of the post-1947 years, reverted to the name of Petkov's agrarians: the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union – Nikola Petkov (BANU–NP). On 14 November fourteen of the non-communist political groups came together in a federation which called itself the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). As its leader the UDF chose Zheliu Zhelev, an academic philosopher who had incurred the displeasure of the old regime.

Meanwhile the new leader of the BCP, Mladenov, had arranged for a central committee plenum to meet from 11 to 13 December. It expressed contrition for the mistakes of the past and promised that in future there would be more party democracy, and that there would be real parliamentary life rather than the stage-managed show it had been since 1947.