the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (Bulgarska
Telegrafna Agentsiya--BTA)--the official news agency of the
country--are allowed to be revised. No criticism of government policies
is tolerated. Dissident individuals and groups are singled out for
criticism by the Politburo. In 1972 a Politburo member, Todor Pavlov,
accused certain writers of rejecting Socialist Realism in favor of more
bourgeois literature and art. Other writers were criticized for their
so-called subjectivistic interpretation of Bulgarian literature and were
branded as pseudoscientists.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE MASS COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

Administrative Units

As the system has evolved, the broad outlines of propaganda have been
dictated from the Politburo, the party's chief policymaking unit. From
there policy is transmitted to the Agitation and Propaganda Department
(Agitprop), which is a major operational unit of the Central Committee.
Agitprop, in turn, is responsible for the transmission of guidelines
down to the lowest levels of party organization. Simultaneously, the
same dictates are transmitted throughout all cultural institutions by
the Ministry of Information and Communications. Under this ministry's
jurisdiction are the arts, the film industry, radiobroadcasting,
television, book and pamphlet publishing, printing, all cultural or
educational institutions, and all so-called independent artists. Still a
third channel for the transmission of the original propaganda are the
mass organizations that function in the propaganda field under direction
of either Agitprop or the Ministry of Information and Communications
(see ch. 9).

The administrative center for all media is Sofia, the capital. Eight
daily newspapers are published in Sofia and distributed throughout the
country; there are also seventeen major publishing houses in Sofia. The
National Film Board, which oversees all aspects of film production, is
in Sofia, as is Radio Sofia, which is the radio station for the entire
country. The Cyril and Methodius Library--also known as the Bulgarian
National Library--is within the confines of the city, as are the Union
of Bulgarian Writers; the Union of Bulgarian Artists; and the Union of
Composers, Musicologists, and Performing Musicians (see ch. 7).

The exportation of propaganda is under the auspices of the Sofia Press
Agency. This agency was founded in 1967 with the express purpose of
disseminating Bulgarian propaganda to other countries. Its three