s a political officer was placed alongside the commanding
officer of all units to ensure the reliability of the forces. The
political officer was in many ways equal in authority to, and
independent of, the commander. The unit commander has allegedly
reassumed a position where he is described as the central figure,
leader, planner, and organizer; he is responsible for the discipline and
combat effectiveness of his unit and for fulfilling its party tasks. The
unit commander's deputy is still a political officer in most units and,
although there is no question of his subordinate position, the political
officer is still responsible in part directly to the Main Political
Administration of the army.

ORGANIZATION AND MISSION

The several military forces under the Ministry of National Defense are
referred to collectively as the Bulgarian People's Army. The army
includes the ground, naval, and air and air defense forces and also the
Border Troops (see ch. 15). Tradition prevails in common usage and even
in official pronouncements, so that when the term _army_ is used alone,
it invariably refers to the ground forces or the directorates and
service organizations that are common to all of the forces. Naval and
air forces are frequently referred to as though they were separate
service branches.

Uniformed military personnel permeate the Ministry of National Defense.
All deputy ministers and, with the exception of the medical branch, all
major administrative chiefs are military officers. During the early
1970s the first deputy minister of national defense was also chairman of
the General Staff and chief of the ground forces. One of the deputies
was chief of the air and air defense forces, and all of the others were
generals. Following the pattern of other Warsaw Pact armed forces
organizations, the political, rear services (logistics), training,
armor, artillery, communications, engineering, and chemical sections are
directorates, administrations, or branches responsible to the minister
of national defense. This is the case in spite of the facts that such
branches as armor and artillery are concerned primarily with the ground
forces and that others--training, for example--must be tailored to
widely different kinds of operations of all the individual services.

Bulgaria is the point of contact between the Warsaw Pact nations and
Greece and Turkey, which are the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) countries on the southern