Forever loyal to the people

This is a review originally posted at another site, since removed, which I repost here. I admit that I find reviewing this kind of material extremely entertaining! 

Peter Tanchev was a high-ranking official of the People´s Republic of Bulgaria, the Communist-dominated regime which governed the Balkan nation during the Cold War. When this book was published, Tanchev occupied the post as First Deputy President of the State Council. This made Tanchev “number two” in the state hierarchy, after President and Communist Party General Secretary Todor Zhivkov. The People´s Republic had a peculiar “two party system” with the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) occupying the leading role and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU, here called BZNS) playing second fiddle. Tanchev was the Secretary of the BZNS and hence nominally not a “Communist” in the strict sense. Of course, the BZNS was an integrated part of the regime structure and acted as a pro-Communist front organization among the peasantry. The Agrarians had no real independence from the Communists.

It wasn´t always so. Before the Communists took power, the BANU had been a genuinely independent party with a radical left-populist orientation. From 1919 to 1923, the BANU governed Bulgaria under the leadership of Alexander Stamboliski. Overthrown by the military and brutally murdered, Stamboliski became a revolutionary martyr to many Bulgarians. BANU was a strong force even after Stamboliski´s fall and was therefore fêted by the Communists as part of the latter´s united front/popular front strategy. During Stamboliski´s actual premiership, the Communists had opposed the BANU and had therefore remained neutral during the coup which toppled the populist government. Cooperation between the two parties didn´t begin until it was already too late, with some Communists taking part in BANU´s 1923 June Uprising against the military regime, and some Agrarians supporting the BCP´s September Uprising later the same year. During World War II, when Bulgaria supported Nazi Germany, the “left” wing of the BANU joined the Communist-dominated resistance coalition known as the Fatherland Front, which took power on September 9, 1944 by deposing a short-lived cabinet of the BANU “right” wing. The BCP, headed by Stalin´s close collaborator Georgi Dimitrov, gradually consolidated its power 1944-48. Within BANU, the chief pro-Communist influence agent was Georgi Traikov. As already mentioned, this process eventually transformed the BANU (or what was left of it) to a BCP junior partner. I suppose Tanchev can be seen as a “worthy” continuator of Traikov´s politics. He was to Zhivkov what Traikov had been to Dimitrov.

This extremely obscure book, “The Bulgarian Agrarian Party (BZNS) – forever loyal to the people, to democracy, to social progress” is a collection of articles and speeches by Peter Tanchev. The English translation is relatively good. Tanchev expounds at some length on the history of the BCP and the BANU, skillfully avoiding all the potential political pitfalls. It´s obvious that the Bulgarian Communist regime wanted to claim Stamboliski´s legacy in retrospect. While Tanchev does criticize Stamboliski on a number of points, the criticisms is pretty muted. The Agrarian-populist leader is treated as one of the greatest Bulgarians who ever lived. Tanchev admits that Agrarians and Communists didn´t cooperate until after the 1923 coup, but this admission also feels like “fine print”, whereas the significance of the collaborative efforts during the June and September uprisings are exaggerated. The September Uprising is treated almost uncritically, being an important part of Bulgarian Communist mythology. More dispassionate observers consider the revolt to have been adventurist and doomed to failure from the start. It was launched by the BCP under direct orders from Moscow, and the abject way in which the Bulgarian Communists went to their slaughter became a mark of their complete loyalty to the Soviet Communist party.

Georgi Dimitrov, Todor Zhivkov and Georgi Traikov play important roles in Tanchev´s historiography. Ironically, Stalin is never mentioned by name, presumably because he had become a quasi-nonperson in the Soviet bloc after the Khrushchev “thaw”. Thus, it´s “the Soviet Union”, “the Red Army” or the “Soviet peoples” which come to Bulgaria´s aid, never “Stalin”. The Popular Front strategy is solely attributed to Dimitrov! Another nonperson is Valko Chervenkov, Zhivkov´s predecessor as Communist Party leader, who was deposed by Zhivkov in 1956.

Since the BANU was a pro-Communist organization during the People´s Republic, Tanchev has obvious problems explaining what specific role the Agrarians really are supposed to be playing. For instance, the pro-Communist BANU supported the collectivization of agriculture, falsely calling the kolkhozes “cooperatives”. They also supported the establishment of sovkhozes. Many of Tanchev´s speeches simply express support for Communist Bulgaria´s foreign policy. The book contains photos of Tanchev together with various foreign dignitaries, including Salvador Allende, Konstantin Karamanlis and Urho Kekkonen. Tanchev claims that the Communist-Agrarian alliance in Bulgaria shows the way forward for the Third World peasantry. He also compares the coup which overthrew Stamboliski with military coups in Latin America and elsewhere.

Otherwise, I was struck by the strong “nationalism” of the articles, with references to Bulgarian national heroes and Bulgaria´s supposedly world historical importance. In one article, the Bulgarian state is said to be 1,300 years old! “The world´s first anti-feudal peasant uprising” took place in Bulgaria, which was also “the cradle of the Bogomils”. The two famous Byzantine churchmen Cyril and Methodius are said to have been “anti-feudal”, “deeply democratic and revolutionary” and, above all, Bulgarian! There is also a Russophile tendency in Tanchev´s speeches, with the Russian liberation of Bulgaria in 1877-78 being hailed as a “bourgeois democratic revolution” (Marx is turning in his grave). At one point, the Russians are affectionately called Dyado Ivan (Grandfather Ivan)!

I never read Bulgarian Communist propaganda, but since Tanchev was one of Communist leader Zhivkov´s associates, I assume that the faux “Agrarian” leader never strays much from the officially approved narrative. This is probably how Zhivkov sounded, too. I don´t think this book is suited for the general reader, but if you are a history buff specializing in Bulgaria and/or Communism (or perhaps a Bulgarian Communist?), Peter Tanchev´s official pronouncements may perhaps be of some interest.