solve its alliance
with Germany.

Established in 1942, the Fatherland Front operated underground under
communist leadership but also included other political parties.
Cooperation among these political parties, however, did not take place
without problems, mainly because each one espoused its own particular
interests and viewed the BKP with suspicion. Leaders of each party
worked as members of the National Committee (later known as the National
Council) of the Fatherland Front. It was from within the Fatherland
Front movement that the coup d'etat of September 1944 took place, the
result of which was a coalition government.

When the Communists took full control of the government and dissolved
the coalition, they retained the Fatherland Front as an umbrella
organization. The BKP, of course, is the leading force within the front,
which also includes the Bulgarian Agrarian Union and several other
organizations. In effect the Fatherland Front is an instrument of the
party through which most of the country's organized activities are
controlled and supervised. Some of the tasks relegated to the front
include the nomination and discussion of candidates for election to
central and local bodies of state authority; the right to supervise the
activities of enterprises, institutions, and organizations operating
public utilities and services; and the right to supervise activities of
workers and professionals to ensure conformance to party line and
policy.

In 1973 the Fatherland Front continued to be a large mass organization
working fully for and with the BKP. Available statistics showed a
membership of 3.86 million in July 1970, of which 3.1 million were
nonparty members. It included both individual members and collective
groups--mainly trade unions and youth organizations.

Central Council of Trade Unions

Trade unions are workers' and professionals' organizations--the
function, role, and responsibility of which echo the economic directives
and decrees of the BKP. With the abolition of capitalist ownership
declared by the Fifth Party Congress in December 1948, the structure and
activities of trade unions changed to conform to the party's management
of the economy as the vanguard of the state in its socialist
development. Since then the Bulgarian trade unions have been reliable
mainstays and faithful transmission belts of BKP policies among the
working masses. Thirteen individual trade unions unite to form the
Central Coun