Since the days of Dimitur Blagoev, a member of the first Marxist group in Russia and a founder of Bulgarian communism, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) was closely identified with its Russian counterpart. In the waning days of the Soviet Bloc, the best-known fact about Bulgaria was that it modeled itself closely on the USSR and was allegedly linked to KGB terrorist activities. Those similarities were more than superficial. The internal factions in the early history of the party, the emp...

Since the forced resignation of Todor Zhivkov in November of 1989, Bulgaria's transition to democracy has been marked by good beginnings ending in frustration or disappointment. It has avoided the violent ethnic confrontations that have characterized much of the "post-Communist" Balkans, but has also seen the development of an influential criminal