People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB). Bulgaria, People's Republic of Bulgaria, Republic of Belarus

As you know, at the time of its death, the USSR consisted of fifteen republics. However, the territory of the Soviet state could be much larger. One of the Bolshevik leaders, Leon Trotsky, for example, was confident that over time all European countries would become part of the USSR. However, these plans were not destined to come true.

Finland

It must be said that part of Finland in the form of the Karelo-Finnish SSR was one of the union republics of the Soviet Union from March 31, 1940 to July 16, 1956. This federal republic was created after Soviet troops occupied part of Finnish territory at the end of 1939. Joseph Stalin planned to build on his success over time and annex all of Finland to the USSR, but history made its own adjustments. In 1956, the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev downgraded the status of the Karelo-Finnish SSR to an autonomous republic and removed the word “Finnish” from the name. Thus, the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was born, which today we know as the Republic of Karelia.

Bulgaria

Unlike Finland, Bulgaria voluntarily tried to join the USSR. The initiative to join the country to the Soviet Union came from the then Bulgarian leader Todor Hristov Zhivkov. Moreover, Bulgaria was the only Eastern European country that not only negotiated, exploring the possibility of joining the USSR, but several times submitted official applications for such a union. The first time the head of Bulgaria addressed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was in 1963 during a visit to Moscow. However, Nikita Sergeevich joked in his characteristic manner: in response he stated literally the following: “Yeah, how cunning, do you want us to pay your reparations to the Greeks at our expense? We have no dollars! If you have it, pay it yourself!” The talk was about reparations following the Second World War, in which Bulgaria fought on the side of Hitler. Todor Zhivkov made his second attempt in the early 1970s, when Leonid Brezhnev was already the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. But here, according to legend, he ran into a joke. Allegedly, Leonid Ilyich snapped: “A chicken is not a bird, Bulgaria is not a foreign country.”

Mongolia

Few people know that Mongolia became the second official socialist state on the planet after Soviet Russia - already in 1921. Until the very end of the USSR, it was perceived as the unofficial “sixteenth republic.” But why was an “official marriage” never formalized with Mongolia? In the 1920s, the Soviet leadership did not agree to this for geopolitical reasons: Mongolia was left as a buffer state in case of conflict with China or Japan. And after World War II, this country was not included in the USSR, so as not to irritate the People's Republic of China. In 1990, when the Soviet Union had already lost its former influence, the Mongolian government officially announced the end of the construction of socialism. Thus ended the “civil marriage” of the two countries.

Iran

On August 25, 1941, at the height of the German occupation of the USSR, Soviet and British troops began joint military operations in Iran, codenamed Operation Countenance. In fact, the military action was the initiative of Joseph Stalin, who was very wary of the Germanophile sentiments of Shah Reza Pahlavi, as well as the possibility of Nazi Germany gaining access to Iranian oil. As a result of the operation, there was a change of monarchs, and the Germans never gained control over strategic raw materials.
After World War II, Stalin tried to expand Soviet influence in this country. The Soviet leadership demanded that Iran allow the USSR to develop oil in the northern part of this state. In fact, this became the main condition for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iran. The agreement was signed by the Iranian government in 1946. The USSR withdrew its troops, but the Majlis (parliament) never ratified the treaty. During this period, Stalin considered the option of occupying part of Iran with its possible inclusion in the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. But ultimately, the “great helmsman” did not take this step, so as not to completely ruin relations with Great Britain and the USA.

Türkiye

The Soviet Union made territorial claims to Turkey at the very end of the war. The Soviet leadership planned to punish this state for collaborating with Nazi Germany by annexing territories that once belonged to the Russian Empire. The creation of the Turkish Federal Socialist Republic was not even considered: the occupied lands simply had to be distributed between the Georgian SSR and the Armenian SSR. However, the USSR's plans provoked harsh resistance from the United States and Great Britain, and the Soviet leadership announced its renunciation of territorial claims in 1953, immediately after Stalin's death.

Poland

Relations with Poland, a former part of the Russian Empire, did not work out for the Bolsheviks almost immediately after seizing power in Russia. In 1919, the Soviet-Polish War of 1919 began, which continued until 1921. Soviet Russia planned to regain control of the western provinces of the former Russian Empire (Ukraine and Belarus). This was the minimum plan for the Red Army. The Bolsheviks considered the ideal outcome of the war to be the establishment of Soviet power throughout Poland and the further “export” of the socialist revolution to Western Europe. If Lenin and Trotsky ultimately failed to carry out the plan at least to the end, then Stalin did it for them, in 1939, annexing the former western provinces of Tsarist Russia to the USSR. Whether Joseph Vissarionovich had a maximum plan remains unknown.

Hungary

In the period 1918-1919, in many European countries, thanks to armed uprisings inspired by the example of the October Revolution, self-proclaimed states with exotic names were formed and almost immediately liquidated: the Bavarian Soviet Republic, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Slovak Soviet Republic, the Alsatian Soviet Republic, the Bremen Soviet Republic , Soviet Limerick. Only the Hungarian Soviet Republic managed to survive the longest, which lasted 133 days. After seizing power, the Hungarian communists really counted on an alliance with Soviet Russia, but because of the civil war, it could not help. As a result, the army of the Kingdom of Romania ended the Hungarian experiment in August 1919. True, not for long...

I won’t say anything new here for most adults, however, there are already people who don’t know anything about this, but if they are interested, they can familiarize themselves with this topic in my summary. For a more in-depth look, you can follow the links and read there. In the future, I will add here links to other articles related to the topic. Everything stated below is the official history of the Republic of Bulgaria and the facts recognized by the majority. All information was taken by me from official open sources.

Now Bulgaria is officially called the Republic of Bulgaria ( Republic of Bulgaria), and until 1989 it was the People's Republic of Bulgaria ( People's Republic of Bulgaria).

It became a people's republic after the coup of September 9, 1944 ( Devetoseptemvriyskiyat turning), when the government of Konstantin Muraviev was overthrown by the new government "Fatherland Front" led by officer Kimon Georgiev.

Abolition of the monarchy in Bulgaria

Bulgaria had a monarchy until 1944 (officially abolished in 1946) * , and after that there is communism.

In 1946, Bulgaria was headed by Minister Chairman Georgi Dimitrov, whose position later stood for 50 years in the square in the center of Sofia.

On September 8, 1946, the monarchy was abolished by popular vote, and on September 15, 1946, the People's Republic of Bulgaria was proclaimed. And the young king, together with his mother and sister, left the country for many years. After the fall of the regime, Simeon returned to the country, served as prime minister and is now quietly suing for his property, living either in or somewhere else :)

Repression

After the communists seized power in Bulgaria, purges and repressions began in the country. Mainly the entire political and some creative intelligentsia were mowed down. Everyone who, in one way or another, could oppose the regime or lead the resistance.

“People's Courts” were held, 28,630 people were arrested, many of whom simply disappeared: no trial or investigation was carried out. About 3,000 people were sentenced to death and 305 received life sentences. The defender and savior of Bulgarian Jews, Dimitar Pashev, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “fascist activities and anti-Semitism.”

There were 44 concentration camps in the country, including Belene, Sunshine Bryag (), Saint Doctor (Sandanski), Bogdanov dol, Rositsa, Pernik mine Kutsiyan, uranium mines in Bobovdol, Nikolaev, Lieutenant Chunchevo, Nozharevo, Chernovo, Zelendol, Skraven. And the concentration camp Belene it was even reopened in 1984 to Bulgarian Turks who refused to change their names. According to data from the Bulgarian KGB (DS), 184,360 people passed through these camps in 1944-45.

There was a resistance movement in the country" Goryanskoto" - against the occupying communist regime. This movement numbered up to 350,000 people.

Constitution of the People's Republic of Bulgaria

On December 4, 1947, the so-called “Dimitrov Constitution” was adopted. Before this, there was the “Tarnovo Constitution” of 1879 - the constitution of the Bulgarian Principality.

New constitution before 1971 ** regulated social and economic relations for the transition to socialism, the rights and responsibilities of citizens and the state structure. In the NRB, the People's Assembly became the supreme legislative body, which was elected and worked in sessions; the permanent highest body of state power was the Presidium of the People's Assembly, and the Ministerial Council was the executive and administrative authority; local government was carried out through elected People's Councils, judicial power was exercised by a single judicial system headed by the Supreme Court.

Name " Dimitrovsk"This constitution was received because it was drawn up under the leadership of Georgiy Dimitrov on the model of the USSR Constitution of 1936. It declared that every citizen is equal before the law, free from discrimination, has the right to social assistance and freedom of speech, but it prohibited any activity which could detract from the achievements of the “September Revolution” (coup). And this was the main problem of the NRB - the complete absence of such freedom, according to the famous Bulgarian dissident, there was and could not be any freedom of speech and personality in the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Because all the party bosses who seized power sacredly guarded their power and the well-being that depended on it: no criticism of their activities was categorically allowed.

Nationalization in Bulgaria

On December 23, 1947, a law was passed on the nationalization of private property and enterprises and two more laws that finally made everything around the state. A - the return of this property was carried out after 1991 and the fall of the regime. As a result of such activities, “restitutes” appeared in modern Bulgaria - people to whom property suddenly fell. Many of them did not know what to do with it and simply abandoned it, or sold it if they were lucky with buyers. Those restitutes who live best are those in whose real estate large banks, foreign firms or embassies are located - they are simply given a lot of money on a regular basis.

By the way, in 1956, Todor Zhivkov, like Nikita Khrushchev in his time, also exposed the cult of personality. He condemned his predecessor Vulko Chervenkov for this.

During his reign, Todor Zhivkov sold the USSR 22 tons of gold and 50 tons of silver for $23 million in order to pay off the NRB's debts to foreign banks, including the Moscow People's Bank in London. It is alleged that he performed similar operations more than once.

16th republic of the USSR

In December 1963, Todor Zhivokv, as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the BCP and Chairman of the Ministerial Council of Bulgaria at that time, personally made a proposal to send to the USSR (CPSU Central Committee) a proposal on a close rapprochement between the NRB and the USSR and the promising future of the NRB as the 16th republic of the USSR. Of course, the Plenum unanimously approved and supported :)

In 1971 it was adopted " Zhivkovskata constitution". It is believed that under Zhivkov a "thaw" began in Bulgaria. Despite the fact that it was he who introduced the forced change of names for the Bulgarian Turks (campaign " The process is infuriating"), supported with weapons the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring.

"The process is infuriating"was carried out in 1984 - 850,000 Bulgarians and Turks had to change their Arabic-Turkish names to Bulgarian ones, they were also prescribed secular clothing and a ban on Muslim rituals, as well as the use of the Turkish language.

In 1989, almost 360,000 Turkified Bulgarians (or Bulgarian Turks) were forced to move to Turkey. After the fall of communism, half of them returned back to Bulgaria. People called it "The Great Excursion".

The eviction happened in such a short time that people could only collect their personal belongings and were forced to abandon their homes and lands.

Fall of Communism in Bulgaria

With Mikhail Gorbachev coming to power in the USSR and the beginning of “Perestroika,” things went badly for Bulgaria. And not so much in the political sense, which is quite logical, but in the economic sense - the USSR stopped giving money and buying Bulgarian goods that could not withstand any competition in the Western market. The entire Bulgarian industry, built with the help of the USSR, was designed for subsidies, support from the USSR, and generally suffered from gigantomania. As a result, perestroika in the USSR collapsed the entire economy in the NRB and Todor Zhivkov already allowed the registration of private companies in the country from 1987-89. During this transition to a market economy, the same thing happened as in Russia - the seizure of national property worth millions of dollars.

On November 10, 1989, Todor Zhivkov resigned. Petar Mladenov was elected instead. And protests and unrest began.

On August 1, 1990, Zhelya Zhelev was elected instead of Mladenov, and on November 15 of the same year, the People's Republic of Bulgaria was renamed the Republic of Bulgaria. And its economic ordeals began until Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007. What a benefit.

In 2000, Bulgaria passed a law declaring the communist regime criminal, which came to power through a military coup and brought the country to a national catastrophe. Called " The law for declaring the communist regime in Bulgaria for crime". The historical period from 1947 to 1989 is usually called the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria.

The ruling party in the NRB was Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP), which was renamed in 1990 Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP)) and still exists today.

Bulgaria belonged to the Soviet bloc countries from September 15, 1946 to November 15, 1990 (Eastern Bloc).

State leaders of the NRB (1947 - 1992)

Vasil Kolarov (September 15, 1946 - December 9, 1947)
Mincho Neychev (December 9, 1947 – May 27, 1950)
Georgi Damyanov (May 27, 1950 – November 27, 1958)
Dimitar Ganev (November 30, 1958 - April 20, 1964)
Georgi Traikov (23 April 1964 – 6 July 1971)
Todor Zhivkov (8 July 1971 – 17 November 1989)
Petr Mladenov November 17, 1989 - July 6, 1990)
Stanko Todorov (July 6, 1990 – July 17, 1990)
Nikolai Todorov (July 17, 1990 - August 1, 1990)
Zhelyu Zhelev (August 1, 1990 - January 22, 1992)

* The third Bulgarian state (third Bulgarian kingdom) consists of the Principality of Bulgaria (1879 - 1908) and the Kingdom of Bulgaria (1908 - 1946). In both cases the capital was Sofia.
** After 1971, the Zhivkov constitution was in force in Bulgaria. Until 1991. And then the modern one - " Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria".

FINLAND

In 1956, the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev downgraded the status of the Karelo-Finnish SSR to an autonomous republic and removed the word “Finnish” from the name. Thus, the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was born, which today we know as the Republic of Karelia.

BULGARIA

The talk was about reparations following the Second World War, in which Bulgaria fought on the side of Hitler. Todor Zhivkov made a second attempt in the early 1970s, when Leonid Brezhnev was already the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. But here, according to legend, he ran into a joke. Allegedly, Leonid Ilyich snapped: “A chicken is not a bird, Bulgaria is not a foreign country.”

MONGOLIA

In 1990, when the Soviet Union had already lost its former influence, the Mongolian government officially announced the end of the construction of socialism. Thus ended the “civil marriage” of the two countries.

After World War II, Stalin tried to expand Soviet influence in this country. The Soviet leadership demanded that Iran allow the USSR to develop oil in the northern part of this state. In fact, this became the main condition for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iran. The agreement was signed by the Iranian government in 1946. The USSR withdrew its troops, but the Majlis (parliament) never ratified the treaty. During this period, Stalin considered the option of occupying part of Iran with its possible inclusion in the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. But ultimately, the “great helmsman” did not take this step, so as not to completely ruin relations with Great Britain and the USA.

Türkiye

However, the USSR's plans provoked harsh resistance from the United States and Great Britain, and the Soviet leadership announced its renunciation of territorial claims in 1953, immediately after Stalin's death.

POLAND

If Lenin and Trotsky ultimately failed to carry out the plan at least to the end, then Stalin did it for them, in 1939, annexing the former western provinces of Tsarist Russia to the USSR. Whether Joseph Vissarionovich had a maximum plan remains unknown.

Only the Hungarian Soviet Republic managed to survive the longest, which lasted 133 days. After seizing power, the Hungarian communists really counted on an alliance with Soviet Russia, but because of the civil war, it could not help. As a result, the army of the Kingdom of Romania ended the Hungarian experiment in August 1919. True, not for long...

The infamous website of Australian Julian Assange has made public American intelligence documents from forty years ago. It is unlikely that these papers will become a big discovery, but, at a minimum, they should be of interest to specialists in modern history. Political intrigues and rumors that once worried millions of people are discussed there.

America studied rumors about the merger of Bulgaria and the USSR

This time the WikiLeaks website presented a historical excursion into the ins and outs of American intelligence and diplomacy. A message dated May 1974 caught my attention. It discussed persistent rumors that were being spread by one of the sources in Bucharest. A Romanian source reported that the Bulgarian authorities were allegedly seriously considering the issue of voluntarily becoming one of the republics of the USSR.

However, the same telegram notes that this data is most likely just plain misinformation. The fact that the US authorities were studying this possibility and their actions as a result of such transformations is evidenced by documents published on the Bulgarian resource Bivol.bg, which is in contact with WikiLeaks. Of course, for the Bulgarians themselves, this data is interesting, since it is directly related to their history.

A few days later, the American ambassador in Sofia sent a telegram in response. It quoted the response of the Romanian ambassador to the question of whether it was in principle possible for Bulgaria to join the Soviet Union. It literally says that the Bulgarians are worthy of all admiration. In external activity they are at one with the USSR, but in fact it is the most nationalist country on the planet. The published documents are not very interesting from the point of view of relevance, but it seems that the site has once again managed to shed some light on what is happening in the world, even if we are talking about fairly long-standing events.

Whoseriouslythought about Bulgaria as the 16th republic of the USSR?

Any schoolchild a couple of decades ago knew how many republics there were in the USSR - fifteen, of course. But no! There were one more republic, but over time the Karelo-Finnish SSR was transformed into the Karelian Autonomous Republic, which became part of the RSFSR. There were many reasons for this. Officially, it was about reducing the cost of spending on the state apparatus, and also about the fact that there are very few Karelian-Finns left to live in this territory: after the Finnish War, they slowly moved to Finland, and in percentage terms there are now not enough of them. And there was no political expediency to keep this republic under the Finnish border at the height of the thaw.

How serious was the possibility of Bulgaria emerging as the 16th Soviet republic? In Soviet times, rumors about the absorption of Bulgaria by the Soviet Union were not taken particularly seriously by anyone. However, telegrams from the American diplomatic and/or intelligence services also clarify that these are just conversations.

What really happened? The book by Bulgarian President Zh. Zhelev, “In Big Politics,” describes in detail how the Bulgarian Communist Party (without wide publicity, at the plenum of the party’s Central Committee) twice, in 1963 and ten years later, discussed the gradual entry of its country into the Soviet Union. It is difficult to say what attracted the Bulgarian leadership in such a decision, and why they so diligently hid their plans from the citizens of their country, but the fact remains that the matter did not go beyond talk. Bulgaria and Russia, and until recently the Soviet Union, have always had strong political and economic ties, and the fact that after World War II the country entered the socialist camp, given the powerful partisan movement in Bulgaria during the war, as well as its liberation by Soviet troops, was quite natural.

Any Russian who has visited Bulgaria feels how friendly this people remains towards Russia. In Sofia, the name of the street has been preserved - Tsar Liberator (meaning Alexander II), which neither the communists nor the current rulers could rename. But still, the capital of Bulgaria is located on the western borders of the state, and in the turbulent nineties, the right-heir to the Soviet Union had absolutely no time for the small Black Sea country, which quietly and without loud statements switched to pro-Western development.

At the same time, Bulgarian social reforms had their own specifics: the communist regime in the country was a pronounced gerontocracy, and young people were completely uncomfortable in it. It was the younger generation that actively broke into the reforms that brought Bulgaria into the ranks of the EU countries. Today's Bulgaria still strongly resembles our country, including a fairly widespread nostalgia for the positive aspects of socialism.

It is now difficult to simulate what Europe would look like if one of the former Soviet republics were built into it. It is likely that in this case, Bulgaria would now have closer ties with Russia, and our Western partners in the form of NATO countries, striving to endlessly expand their influence to the east, would have to take this into account. In turn, the economic and political assistance of the “big brother” in the person of Russia would now help Bulgaria to stand more firmly on its feet in the era of the economic crisis raging in Europe...

America doesn't like it when its secrets are revealed.

Today, 1.7 (!) million samples of classified documentation from the correspondence of representatives of the American diplomatic service and intelligence agencies in the period 1973-1976 have been published. The release of documentation that was “leaked” to the public almost forty years later was commented on by the site’s founder, J. Assange. He said that the published documents could shed light on a huge range of US activities, which had a truly irreversible impact on world history and especially politics.

It is interesting that many of the published documents were personally in the hands of Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State of the United States (from 1973 to 1977), he either wrote these documents or accepted them as the addressee. The creators of the Bulgarian resource Bivol.bg, which took part in the publication of the documents, also joined Assange’s comments. According to them, not an ounce of sensationalism can be found in the correspondence, but it is of great value for historians.

What is a multi-million dollar base? On Assange’s resource it was called the “American Public Library of Diplomacy.” Naturally, most published documents are marked “Not for distribution.” And some of the documents generally had the original status of secret. Now telegrams, intelligence reports, correspondence of Congressional representatives and some other documents declassified by the US authorities themselves and posted for public viewing are publicly available.

Let us recall that the epicenter of the high-profile scandal surrounding the WikiLeaks resource occurred in the fall of 2010, when the site published documents from the American diplomatic service. As one would expect, the very next month the MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal systems stopped accepting user donations to the site, under the official pretext of involving the resource in clearly illegal activities. J. Assange himself is currently taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Great Britain. All this time, a ruling from the British Supreme Court on extradition to Sweden hangs over him. There he will have to answer to charges of sex crimes. For obvious reasons, the founder of WikiLeaks does not want to go to Scandinavia. He fears, not without reason, that he will be handed over to US authorities. And then he could be sentenced to death.