y referred to
as the Komsomol), the Bulgarian Union for Physical Culture and Sports,
and the Bulgarian Union of Tourists. Their memberships range from about
1 million to approximately 2.5 million. The Bulgarian Agrarian Union,
the Bulgarian Hunting and Fishing Union, the Teachers Union, and the
Scientific and Technical Union are much smaller, having memberships
between 100,000 and 200,000. The Fatherland Front attracts nearly 4
million people; the party has 700,000 members.

Youth Programs

The first sizable leftist youth organization in the country, then called
the Union of Working Youth, was formed in 1926, and by 1940 it had a
membership of approximately 15,000. It and the party furnished most of
the partisan fighters that harassed the Germans and the pro-German
government of the country during World War II. Both the party and the
youth group grew stronger during the war, largely because the partisan
cause was more popular than that of the government.

The youth organization became the Dimitrov Communist Youth Union after
the war. The new name did not come about from a major reorganization or
reorientation of the group; transition to its postwar status was smooth,
but it saw fit to honor Georgi Dimitrov, who had by then become the most
powerful and famous of the party's leaders. Even after its renaming in
Dimitrov's honor, the organization has usually been referred to, in
official government communications as well as in conversation, as the
Komsomol, which is the name of the Soviet Union's youth organization.

The Komsomol became the organization through which the party reached the
nation's youth. Its responsibilities were expanded, and its membership
grew rapidly. In the ideal situation the entire youth segment of the
population of eligible age, both male and female, would be members of
the organization. In 1970 its 1.16 million members did include about 77
percent of those between fourteen and twenty-four years of age. Some of
the organization's leaders, instructors, and exceptionally active
members stay in the group beyond the upper age limit of twenty-four, but
their number is too small to alter the membership statistics
significantly. Male members outnumbered female members by a large
margin; 88 percent of the eligible males were members, only 66 percent
of the females. The disparity in membership by sex reflects the fact
that more of the organization's activities--sports and premilitary
training, for exam