was the _Otechestven Front_, the organ of the government. This
publication was initiated as an underground newspaper in 1942. As of
1972 it claimed a daily circulation of 247,000.

The other Sofia dailies and their circulations were: _Zemedelsko Zname_,
168,000; _Narodna Mladez_, the newspaper for youth, 225,000; _Trud_, the
organ of the trade unions, 200,000; _Narodna Armiya_, an organ of the
Ministry of National Defense, 50,000; _Vecherni Novini_, founded in
1951, an evening newspaper, 40,000; and _Kooperativno Selo_, the organ
of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry, 230,000. The major
provincial dailies were _Otechestven Glas_ (in Plovdiv), _Narodno Delo_
(in Varna), _Chernomorski Front_ (in Burgas), _Dunavska Pravda_ (in
Ruse), and _Pirinsklo Delo_ (in Blagoevgrad) (see table 11).

_Table 11. Bulgaria, Circulation of Newspapers and Periodicals, Selected
Years, 1939-71_

-----------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------
| 1939 | 1948 | 1960 | 1971
-----------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------
_Newspapers_: | | | |
Annual circulation* | 130,297 | 345,905 | 602,813 | 837,494
Annual circulation | | | |
per capita | 20.7 | 48.5 | 76.6 | 98.1
_Periodicals_: | | | |
Number | 393 | 246 | 151 | 963
Annual circulation* | 11,208 | 10,421 | 20,923 | 48,605
Average annual | | | |
issues per capita | 1.8 | 1.5 | 2.7 | 5.7
-----------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------
* In thousands.

Periodicals

By 1971 there were 963 periodicals with an annual circulation of 48.6
million, roughly tripling the pre-World War II figures. Periodicals were
an extremely popular form of reading material.

Among the leading periodicals of Bulgaria are: _Novo Vreme_, a monthly
journal of the Central Committee; _Ikonomicheska Misal_, the organ of
the Institute of Economics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; _Puls_,
a publication of the Central Committee of the Komsomol; _Slavyani_, the
monthly journal of the Slav Committee in Bulgaria; _Bulgarski Voin_, the
monthly journal of the chief political department of the Bulgarian
People's Army (Bu