with irredentism and fought wars over the so-called lost territories until World War II, from which it emerged with a communist-dominated coalition government but confined to almost the same boundaries. After the Communists took complete control, irredentism was overshadowed by Marxist ideas of internationalism; but the dream of a greater Bulgaria did not die, and irredentist opinions were commonly expressed until 1972, when they were muted, probably on the insistence of the Soviet Union.

The original Bulgars were of an Asian tribe that moved into the Balkan Peninsula as conquerors during the seventh century A.D. The occupants of the area at the time were mostly Slavs who had been migrating to that region for more than a century, absorbing former inhabitants as they settled. Within about two centuries of their conquest, the Bulgars also had been completely absorbed by the much more numerous Slavs, leaving only their name to mark the land they had conquered. From the ninth century A.D. on, Bulgarian history is the story of this amalgamated nation of Bulgar-Slavs who enjoyed two different epochs of independent glory under medieval Bulgarian kingdoms but who also suffered invasion and defeat and, eventually, 500 years of domination by Ottoman Turks. In 1878 Turkish rule was finally ended, and a truncated Bulgaria reappeared on the map of Europe. After five centuries of foreign domination, Bulgaria was backward, underdeveloped, and poor.

The descendants of the Bulgar-Slavs made up the majority of the approximately 8.7 million people living in Bulgaria in 1973. The largest minority group, which numbered about 0.7 million people, was Turkish. The few Greeks, Romanians, Armenians, and Jews in the population collectively accounted for only about 1 percent of the total. These modern Bulgarians live in a country that is almost rectangular in shape and covers roughly 42,800 square miles of the lower Balkan Peninsula. Their country is bounded on the east by the Black Sea, on the south by Greece and the part of Turkey that is in Europe, on the west by Yugoslavia, and on the north by Romania.

The most prominent communist leader of Bulgaria was Georgi Dimitrov, a native-born Bulgarian who had lived in exile during most of the period between the two world wars and had become a Soviet citizen in 1935. Dimitrov was prominent in the international communist movement and, while resident in Moscow, had served as secretary general of the Comintern (Communist International), founded under Lenin's guidance in 1919. Dimitrov returned to his homeland in late 1945, resumed his Bulgarian citizenship, and took over the leadership of the BKP and the government. He was instrumental in developing the 1947 Constitution (usually referred to as the Dimitrov Constitution) and set about remaking his country's economic, political, and social structures in the Soviet image. Nationalization of all means of production, collectivization of agriculture, and an ambitious program of industrialization all commenced under Dimitrov.

Dimitrov died in 1949 but, before he died, his programs were well under way, the Moscow-oriented BKP was in complete control, and the country was firmly in the Soviet orbit. Several years later, even though the term satellite was no longer used to describe the Eastern European countries aligned with the Soviet Union, Bulgaria was considered to be the most rigidly loyal of all former Soviet satellites. Shortly after the death of Dimitrov, the top position of leadership was secured by Vulko Chervenkov who, over the next few years, earned a reputation as Bulgaria's version of Stalin. After Stalin died, Chervenkov's power base eroded to the point that he was forced to give up the top party post in favor of Zhivkov; Chervenkov retained the top position in the government, however, and remained on the scene as an opposing locus of political power. The intraparty factional strife that ensued lasted into the 1960s, but Zhivkov, who had established a close relationship with Soviet party leader Nikita Khrushchev, eventually overcame the opposition and stabilized his regime. Zhivkov also managed to establish close relations with the Soviet leaders who ousted Khrushchev and has apparently maintained good rapport with Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Soviet party.

The BKP in 1973 was structured very much like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The structure is pyramidal in form, the general membership making up the base and the office of first secretary occupying the apex. Between the two extremes the most important bodies from bottom to top are the Party Congress, the Central Committee, the Secretariat, and the Politburo. The Party Congress is a large gathering of delegates, representing the rank and file, that meets every five years, theoretically, to make party policy, amend party statutes if necessary, and determine the party program for the ensuing five-year period. Actually the congress is a large, unwieldy body (over 1,500 delegates at the 1971 congress), which meets to demonstrate solidarity rather than to make policy. The congress, by party statute, elects the Central Committee, which is a permanently sitting body that acts in the name of the congress during the long intervals when the larger body is not in session. The so-called election of the Central Committee is, in fact, a ratification of preselected members. The same holds true for the election of the Politburo and the Secretariat by the Central Committee—in effect, the Politburo has already determined its own membership and that of the Secretariat, and the election process by the Central Committee is unanimous confirmation rather than election, making the Politburo a self-perpetuating body.

The Politburo for policymaking and the Secretariat for policy implementation are the true centers of power in the overall party-government system. The Central Committee is an operating body and is made up of important members of the party, although they rank below the small group that has reached the top echelons of the structure. It is the interlocking of various party and government positions that really concentrates power in the hands of a few individuals and permits the ultimate leader, Zhivkov, to control the entire apparatus. Zhivkov himself is an example of the interlocking in that, since 1971, he has been the first secretary of the party and a member of the Politburo at the same time that he was the president of the governmental State Council. Only one other individual in 1973 combined membership in the party's most prestigious bodies—Politburo and Secretariat—with membership in the government's leading body—the State Council. Two other party secretaries were candidate (nonvoting) members of the Politburo, but they did not concurrently hold any high government office.

The government established under the Dimitrov Constitution, as changed by the Constitution of 1971, is the instrument through which the party administers the country. The central government consists, essentially, of the National Assembly, the State Council, and the Council of Ministers. The unicameral National Assembly is described in the constitution as "a supreme body of state power," whereas the State Council is described as "a supreme constantly functioning body of state power." In practice, if one or the other were to be described as the single supreme body of state power, it would be the State Council, the membership of which in 1973 included seven (out of twenty-four) members or candidate members of the party Politburo and the operations of which, during its first two years of existence, have stamped it with the mark of supreme authority.

The role of the National Assembly as a legislative body is circumscribed by the infrequency of its meetings. The assembly is popularly elected from a single list of nominees at five-year intervals, but it is required to meet only three times annually. The sessions of the assembly are usually so brief