chairmen, the heads of various
commissions having ministerial rank, and the ministers. The council was
assigned the tasks of directing and administering the various ministries
that were concerned with the economy as well as with affairs of state;
the State Planning Committee; the State Control Committee; and the
Committee on Art and Culture; as well as the Committee on Science,
Technical Progress and Higher Education. In practice, the council
implemented policy decisions of the party leaders who were its
high-ranking officers.

Following the Soviet model, the first secretary of the party was also
the chairman of the Council of Ministers and, as such, was the country's
premier. It became evident through the years that the Council of
Ministers and the Presidium of the National Assembly were the ultimate
sources of governmental authority because legislation they proposed was
usually implemented by decree and approved, after the fact, by the
National Assembly.

The 1947 Constitution treated the economic and social structure of the
country extensively. It subscribed to collective ownership of the means
of production; defined rules of national economic planning and social
welfare; empowered the government to nationalize trade, industry, and
transportation; expropriated land where necessary; and restricted
ownership of private property--all in the interest of the state. The
constitution also gave the state the prerogative to establish monopolies
over production and trade.

Below the apex of the governmental pyramid lay the wide base of local
governments. These consisted of district and communal people's councils
exercising authority through their executive committees, which sat in
continuous session. The executive committees of the people's councils
cooperated closely with local party groups, and personnel were often
concurrently members of executive committees and local party committees.
Although the organization of local government was revamped in 1949, in
1951, and in 1959, by the mid-1960s it was replaced by twenty-seven
districts plus Sofia, which became a territorial administrative unit.
The decentralizing of governmental authority to the local organs of
state power was designed to bring about greater efficiency and better
supervision in matters of political, economic, and cultural interests.

The Constitution of 1971

The Constitution of 1971 was the result of the work of the Tenth
Bulgarian Communist Party Cong