associated with the country's party.

Another reason for the close ties to the Soviet Union was pure
pragmatism on the part of the Bulgarian communist leaders. They were, in
effect, a minority leadership group faced with the task of imposing an
alien ideology on a reluctant majority at the same time that they were
trying to reorient the country's economy from an agricultural base to an
industrial base. The Bulgarian leaders needed the support of the Soviet
Union.

Beset by intraparty strife and lack of success in running the country
after the death of Georgi Dimitrov--the leading Bulgarian communist hero
and strong man of the early postwar years--the party leadership again
clung to Soviet support and totalitarian rigidity to perpetuate itself
in power. Even after the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the
later de-Stalinization program under Nikita Khrushchev, Bulgaria's
leaders retained Stalinism as a modus operandi until the early 1960s.

After Zhivkov became first secretary of the party in 1954, there was a
long power struggle, for a third time, and it was not until the early
1960s that Zhivkov managed to eliminate his major antagonists from the
party hierarchy and stabilize his regime. During all of those years and
on through the 1960s and into the 1970s, Zhivkov continued the policy of
absolute loyalty to the Soviet Union and to its leadership.
Consequently, Bulgarian foreign policy has been a mirror image of Soviet
policy.

Principles of Foreign Policy

Bulgaria's constitution, in describing how the state serves the people
in foreign affairs, mentions "developing and cementing friendship,
cooperation, and mutual assistance with the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics and the other socialist countries" and "pursuing a policy of
peace and understanding with all countries and peoples." Official
spokesmen proclaim that the country's international relations are
founded on the necessity for protecting national sovereignty and on the
creation of an overall attitude that would further the cause of all
nations in their development as modern states.

A quotation from the party program developed for the Tenth Party
Congress in 1971 indicates that, as far as Bulgaria's leaders are
concerned, the Soviet Union leads and Bulgaria follows. "For the
Bulgarian Communist Party and the Bulgarian people, Bulgarian-Soviet
friendship is like the sun and the air for every living creature, it is
a friendship of centuries