Bulgarian president Zheliu Zhelev (on the right) and the author of this Guide Prof. John Bell
Bulgarian president Zheliu Zhelev (on the right) and the author of this Guide Prof. John Bell
Bulgaria's president was its leading dissident under Communism. Expelled from the university and the Communist Party for refusing to alter sections of his dissertation critical of Lenin, he gained attention for his book Fascism. Ostensibly a study of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Falangist Spain, Fascism implicitly stated that the concept of totalitarianism also encompassed Communist societies. Unlike most Western advocates of the "totalitarian model," Zhelev emphasized its weaknesses - above all, its dependence on mediocrity and its inability to compete with free societies in any area demanding creativity - and predicted its collapse from internal causes. Arguing from the example of Spain, he stated that the totalitarian state would evolve into an authoritarian, military regime and then into parliamentary democracy, and he saw Poland in the 1980s as an example of this process in the Communist Bloc. Fascism circulated in manuscript from the time of its completion in 1967 and was published through an editor's midjedgment in 1981. Immediately upon its appearance, the government ordered it "arrested" and removed from circulation.
During the 1980s Zhelev was a central figure in Bulgaria's small dissident community. He publicly protested the persecution of the ethnic Turks and helped to form Ekoglasnost, Bulgaria's first dissident organization. With Zhivkov's fall, he inevitably was chosen leader of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), which united most of the country's emerging anticommunist groups.
As might be expected of the author of Fascism, Zhelev as leader of the UDF and then as president has focused on institutional change and ignored or opposed widespread demands for revenge against Communists or former Communists. During the critical roundtable negotiations in early 1990 and during the making of a new constitution, Zhelev promoted the fundamental institutions of democracy - elected government, freedom of speech and of the press - even though that meant accepting the legality of the Socialist (former Communist) Party and a continuing role for its members in the government.
An open break between Zhelev and the UDF occurred in 1992, when the president accused Filip Dimitrov's government of extremism and was in turn accused of working for the "recommunization" of the country. When Dimitrov's government fell, Zhelev was active in promoting the formation of its successor under Luben Berov and the later caretaker government of Reneta Inzhova. Zhelev has consistently advocated the formation of centrist parties and alliances committed to further economic and political reform within the framework of law.
