wh y w e l o s t
14
T
he 10
th
of November, 1989 is widely considered as the beginning of a new era in Bul-
garian political life. On that date the Politburo of the Bulgarian Communist Party
(BCP) forced the long-time Communist head of state, Todor Zhivkov, to resign.
is sudden change, later called “a peaceful
coup d’etat
,” opened a new chapter in Bulgarian
history and was followed by an outburst of political activity. Taking advantage of the altered
political climate, Bulgarian citizens quickly organized themselves into parties, civic move-
ments, committees, discussion clubs and trade unions. On 7 December, less than a month
after the ousting of Zhivkov from power, ten organizations met at the Institute of Sociology
of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and created the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF)
coalition. After 45 years of totalitarian, Communist rule there was again organized political
opposition in Bulgaria. Starting in 1989 as an amorphous anti-Communist coalition, the
Union was consolidated in 1997 into a single party with a Christian democratic ideology.
The history of the Bulgarian center right in the last 15 years almost completely coincides
with the history of the UDF. It is full of numerous splits and personal conflicts, falls and
triumphs, unexpected turns and controversial politicians, achievements and failures, his-
toric victories and everyday petty squabbling. Historical analyses of the center right, as well
as of the Bulgarian political and economic transition since 1989, are in their initial stages.
There are no authorities to be challenged, no established “right” or “left” interpretations, no
periodization to be questioned. There is only a general agreement among political scientists
today that the Bulgarian party system is not consolidated, and that the processes affecting its
centrist and center-right components are too dynamic to allow any prediction.
Although the future is unclear, the recent past of the center right is now relatively clear.
The protests in the winter of 1996-97 against the government of the Bulgarian Social-
ist Party (BSP) opened the way for the radical reforms which the ex-Communists quite
successfully had blocked until then. And no one would argue against the evaluation that
under the leadership of Prime Minister Ivan Kostov (1997-2001) the democratic forces
realized their two major goals – creating the foundation of a free-market economy and
pulling the country out of the Russian sphere of influence. However only twelve months
before the reformers came to power, the Bulgarian center right was weak and divided
while the strong and united left seemed invincible.
I. The Conflict Within the Center Right
The parliamentary elections at the end of 1994 were won convincingly by the BSP. Having
an absolute majority in parliament, the Socialists easily formed the new cabinet with their
leader, Zhan Videnov, as prime minister. Exhausted by change and disappointed by the
inability of the democrats to hold power and govern effectively, the majority of Bulgar-
ian citizens was seduced by the populist messages of the left about security, new jobs and
higher salaries. In 1994, nostalgia for the “good old days” of Communism was still strong,
and the democrats were too weak to stop the “left wave.”
The next year, the BSP confirmed its superiority in the local elections, winning a solid ma-
jority of the votes and losing only in a few big cities. After the debacle in the local elections,
the Bulgarian opposition faced a formidable BSP dominating all major institutions of state
power but one. President Zhelyu Zhelev occupied the only position that was still not in the
