very little. Moreover, a major portion of the products are for
export, and much of the industry's local impact is as a production,
rather than as a transportation, enterprise. Nonetheless, the country's
capability for sea shipment increased by more than five times during the
1960s. There are no large passenger vessels in the fleet, but several
hydrofoils, some having capacities to carry more than 100 passengers,
operate between the Danube River ports.

By 1972 the merchant marine consisted of more than 100 ships, having a
total of nearly 1 million deadweight tons. It has increased at an
average rate of about 6 percent a year between 1967 and 1971, the rates
of increase accelerating in the latter part of the period.

Airways

Civil aviation was carried on by Bulgarian Civil Air Transport before
1970, when that entity was reorganized as Balkan-Bulgarian Airlines
(BALKAN). Its airplanes, all of Soviet manufacture, are identified by
BALKAN inset within a five-pointed star that is elongated to give the
impression of flight. BALKAN operates under the Ministry of Transport.

Sofia is the center of all the air operations. International routes stop
at the capitals of the six other Warsaw Pact countries and at sixteen
other cities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The 1973
scheduled flights also connected Sofia with eleven other cities within
Bulgaria, most of them on a daily basis.

Percentages of total cargo and passenger traffic carried by air are
insignificant, and the rates of increase in the utilization of air
transportation have been erratic. Air cargo shipments, for example,
increased by a factor of seven between 1960 and 1967 but increased
little the following year and decreased for the remainder of the
decade.

CHAPTER 4

SOCIAL SYSTEM

In 1878 Bulgaria emerged from Turkish rule as a homogeneous, egalitarian
peasant society centered in the family and the community. Through the
introduction of foreign economic and social ideas and institutions, the
society gradually changed during the period between the two world wars.
At the time of World War II Bulgaria actually had two social systems:
the traditional peasant society, changing but still focused on the
family and the community, and a growing urban society that focused on
the economy and the state. When the Communists took power in 1944, they
set out to destroy the old social order and replace it with one that
would reflect communist ideol