Foreign Policy In Focus

There wasn't always samizdat. But there was always rock 'n roll.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

In Bratislava, as the Velvet Revolution unfolded in November 1989, musicians played a key role in the Czechoslovak opposition movement. Yes, they participated in the demonstrations and spoke out against the communist authorities. But their main contribution was more prosaic: amps. The dissident community, which had been silenced for decades, needed to get their voices heard by the hundreds of thousands of people crowding the public squares. And the musicians provided that amplification.

In Bulgaria, during the 1970s, oppositional voices were even rarer. The country never experienced a “socialism with a human face” experiment, as Czechoslovakia did in 1968 under Alexander Dubcek. There was no student movement. There wasn’t a lot of samizdat.

But there was rock ‘n roll.

Konstantin Markov was a leading figure in the Bulgarian rock scene in the 1970s and 1980s with the band Tangra. Bulgaria was no Yugoslavia. It wasn’t easy to form a band and tour the country, especially if you were playing Western-style heavy metal and New Wave. But youth culture was irrepressible.

“All these institutions — management, cultural institutions, media (at that time we had only one TV program and two radio channels, state-owned)—they had very strict regulations,” he told me in Sofia back in October. “They tried to keep all these kinds of music out of their programs. But at the same time there was a huge demand. People really liked this music, and it was a symbol of freedom to them. It was very difficult to completely suppress it. We were quite clever in going around the institutions and all these obstacles.”

Tangra circled the country, doing gigs even when the audiences were miniscule. They gradually built up their reputation until they were doing two concerts a day. There was censorship and harassment from the secret police. But they managed to get their message across.

“There was no way to get on stage and say that all this is bullshit, that this system is nothing,” Konstantin Markov continued. “Unless you wanted to commit suicide! But actually our biggest success came when we started singing in Bulgarian. At the beginning it was Deep Purple, hard rock stuff. But then, we started singing in Bulgarian and we had a very strong message. It wasn’t completely clear at the beginning, but if you read the text several times and if you thought about it, then you could figure out what we wanted to say. And that was our biggest reward.”

Tangra left Bulgaria before the changes in 1989, but Konstantin Markov returned to Sofia in time to see the regime change. He created a radio station called Tangra and continues to be involved in the music scene. And he remains upbeat.

“I haven’t lost my hope—which is very important,” he concluded. “I wish that most people could keep their hope for the future in the same way they had it 20 years ago. When you see pictures of rallies of that time, it was absolutely unbelievable.”

The Interview

When you think back to 1989, and what has changed from 1989 until today, how would you evaluate those changes here in Bulgaria on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being most dissatisfied and 10 being the most satisfied?

According to your scale, I’d say 7. During this period many things happened and many didn’t. Actually people hoped that all this would happen in a very short time, in a few years. And nobody believed it when somebody said, “You know, this will take 10 years, 20 years.” That looked like an incredibly long period of time. During all these years I’d say the bottom line is: it’s all been positive. There are some people who think that “in the good old days” it was much better for them. But I think most of the changes that happened to this country during these years are positive. No doubt about it. And there is nothing to compare Bulgaria in 1989 and 2012. Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Over the same period of time, 1989 to today, how would evaluate what’s happened to you personally, on the same scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being most dissatisfied and 10 being the most satisfied?

Above all, I was 20 years younger at that time, and everything was new. But I’d say 7 again. At least 7, even more maybe. At that time nobody ever believed that such change could happen to the country and to him, to himself, personally.

When you look into the near future, the next couple of years here in Bulgaria, how do you feel about the prospects for the country? And the scale again is 1 to 10, with 1 being most pessimistic and 10 being most optimistic?

I’m afraid to be most optimistic, but I’d say 9.

Do you remember where you were when the Berlin Wall fell: what you were doing, what you were thinking when you heard the news, and whether you thought it would have major impact here in Bulgaria?

First of all, I couldn’t believe my ears. I used to listen to Radio Free Europe, BBC, Voice of America, all these stations. And when I heard the news on the radio, it was so incredible and unexpected, honestly I couldn’t believe it.

You were here is Sofia

Yes. At the beginning the official statement, it was kind of unclear. It wasn’t very clear because I think it wasn’t only unexpected to me but it was to everybody—the government included. But it was very exciting news, no doubt about it. And it was the beginning. Everybody felt that it was the beginning of a new era for these countries, for this world.

And you were a musician?

Yes, I’ve been a musician for many years. Actually, I’m an engineer, but I’ve never worked as an engineer. I used to be a musician in a very popular band here, a rock band, a touring band. I was the founder of the band. The name was Tangra, the old Bulgarian god of the Sun. The band was very popular and we used to tour a lot in the country and outside the country.

When was the band put together?

The late 1970s.

How would you describe the music?

At the beginning it was typical heavy metal. Then we started playing a kind of pop rock. Actually, this was the second period of the band. And then we changed to post-punk — new rock alternative, New Wave, new romantic — and this was the most successful. It was vey risky because people used to know us as kind of pop rock band. Suddenly we changed everything: look, style, stage performance, everything. But it was worth it.

And you founded the band when you were in school or…?

I’d just finished high school and I was quite lucky because I started playing with probably the most successful singer at the time in Bulgaria. I went to this audition and they liked me, so I started playing with their band. Emil Dimitrov. He was like Johnny Halliday in France. It was incredibly popular here in Bulgaria. At that time there was Emil Dimitrov and a very popular lady singer Lili Ivanova—she’s still performing.  I started playing with her band, and this was for probably 5 or 6 years. And then I started my own band. It was 1976.

What was it like to have a rock band here in Bulgaria? Did you get a sense pretty early on that it was an entirely different experience having a rock band in Bulgaria compared to, say, France?

Yes, because I think there are two things that really affected that generation in Bulgaria. Number one is western music, and number two is jeans. For this generation, you can’t imagine what it used to look like to have a pair of jeans. It might sound funny, but it’s true.

Were there any obstacles to creating a hard rock band in Bulgaria?

Yes, lots. You know I could write a book about that.

You should write a book!

I don’t have time, to be honest. But it was really difficult, because officially you were not allowed to create a band. At the same time, all these institutions — management, cultural institutions, media (at that time we had only one TV program and two radio channels, state-owned)—they had very strict regulations. They tried to keep all these kinds of music out of their programs. But at the same time there was a huge demand. People really liked this music, and it was a symbol of freedom to them. It was very difficult to completely suppress it. We were quite clever in going around the institutions and all these obstacles.

And were you able to actually record music?

It was very difficult. At that time there were only two places to record, one was the national radio, which had quite a good facility by the way, and the other one was the state record plant. It was called Balkanton. And when you went there they told you, “Okay, but in order to record the whole record you have to take, let’s say, eight songs that belong to famous Bulgarian composers.” One of their first questions was “Are you a composer?” You needed to have a diploma to be a composer, which was very stupid. It’s very difficult to explain the difference between a composer and a songwriter. As you know, most of the bands had songwriters, not composers. So they told you, “You should take this, this, this, and this.” And most of these songs were very stupid. We had to redo them, completely in some cases, so that the original so-called composers didn’t recognize their songs. But this was one of the ways to get around the obstacles.

And there were so many other things. I’ll tell you something funny. Before you signed a contract with the management—there was one management, state-owned—you went to a kind of audition. They had to give you a grade. When we first went to this audition we were a four-piece band without keyboards: two guitars, drums, and a singer.

They said, “Where is your keyboard player? Why don’t you have a keyboard player?”

I said, “This is the band, this is the style.”

They said, “No. No way, you can’t perform without a keyboard player.”

So we recorded everything on a tape recorder, and we went back again. And they said, “Okay, it sounds very interesting, but where is the keyboard player? We hear some keyboard parts and synthesizers.

And we lied. We said that we had special pedals that change the sound of the guitars, blah, blah, blah.

This is funny, but some are very sad stories. For instance, you could get arrested. One morning you just got arrested. And it happened to me and to us several times.

You got arrested for…

For instance, one morning we got arrested by a special group of secret police—not the regular police. They started questioning us, “What did you do three months ago?” How could we remember? Every day we were in a different town. We said, “We don’t remember.” And then, it turned out that they had people that recorded everything on tape recorders, sometimes on video cameras: the reaction of the audience, what we said on stage. Sometimes it was very very stupid. I even don’t want to think about this. It was like 1984, George Orwell.

Were there accusations that you were spreading Western influence? 

Oh yeah! This was the biggest threat, and this was the thing that they were most afraid of. That Western influence was coming through the music and the performances—which was true. And they knew that.

But how did you respond?

At a certain point they accused us of being neo-Fascists because we changed the look of the band. We had white shirts, black ties, and black pants. And suddenly they saw neo-Fascists on the stage. At the beginning we had very long hair, and the funny thing was that you were not allowed to have long hair. It was the middle of the 1980s when we completely changed the look of the band. We had short hair, and they didn’t know what to say. And most of the bands used to play with jeans, t-shirts, and all the typical accessories for rock bands. Suddenly we changed, and they didn’t know what to say.

How in those days did you get audiences?

It was word of mouth. The interesting thing is at the beginning, for instance, the halls were half empty. It was very difficult because in order to perform, you have to bring a certain amount of money to the management. There were cases where we played and it was absolutely clear we wouldn’t get any money from this concert—or barely any money, only enough for sandwiches. But we played, played, and played, and we circled around touring the country. All over the country. And no matter how many people were in the hall, we played as if it was full. And then the next time, the second time around we started, there were more, more, and more. A year later, we started doing two concerts a day. We had enough audience for two concerts. The halls were overcrowded! This was the biggest reward for what we’d done.

You said you also started touring outside of Bulgaria. Did you go to Yugoslavia? In those days, Yugoslavia had a pretty big rock scene.

Yugoslavia was a completely different country. At that time, Yugoslavia was from some points of view even better than in the West. It was a huge scene there: very talented musicians and very good bands. But they were free. Rock n’ roll equals freedom. At that time, in certain neighborhoods of Sofia, it was possible to watch Yugoslav television.

Really, just certain neighborhoods?

Certain neighborhoods because the signal came from quite far away. Theoretically, it was not possible. But the reality was that in certain neighborhoods it was possible to watch. You can’t imagine: we started making huge antennas. And then the police came and told us to take off the antenna. But it was like a window to the world. At that time Yugoslavia had really good TV programs: concerts, movies, theatre, news programs. This was one of the ways besides BBC, VOA, and Free Europe to get informed, to be connected to the outside world.

Do you remember the first concert you did outside of Bulgaria?

I started touring with Emil Dimitrov and Lili Ivanova, and they used to play a lot abroad. They used to do three concerts a day. I’m not talking about club performances, but real concerts. And with my band, we used to make between 250 and 350 concerts a year. Yes, it was really intensive, and this went on for years. So you see many things. You see actually the backside of the coin, because you cannot see this kind of stuff if you are, let’s say, a tourist.

What was the most interesting experience you had in this part of the world?

We used to go, at that time, to East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. We toured Russia a lot. Then because the band was very good, we were invited to Switzerland for one rock festival. Then we went to Canada. Then, after the middle of the 1980s, we decided we should leave the country, because it was very difficult to play. We started having problems with the officials.

It became more difficult than between 1979 and 1983. 

Yes, because they realized the power of the music and the message, especially the new trends. As I told you the post-punk and new rock alternative, it was different music than Deep Purple. At a certain point, they kind of accepted Deep Purple. But after that it was beyond their imagination, and they decided it was too dangerous.

And there were some ridiculous things. They accused us of taking drugs and doing some wild things on the stage. It absolutely wasn’t true. Actually we were banned several times. And they erased all of our recordings on the radio and on national TV. That’s why we don’t have very many recordings now.

I’ll tell you something that might sound unbelievable, but it’s true. We had a concert in one town, and the roadies were doing the sound check. We were in the hotel cafe, and we wanted to have a cup of coffee. The whole band was there, and suddenly we realized that they served the other tables next to us and not ours. And it probably took more than 45 minutes to wait for the coffee, which was ridiculous and we were late, so we decided to go. A few months later, I found out through some people that we were quite lucky because they decided to put something in our coffee in order to make it look like we were drugged. And they could use this to cut relations with the band. It was only a question of a few minutes that they were late in organizing this.

There were several things like this, and we decided to leave Bulgaria. And there was another reason: the “revival process,” which is a very stupid phrase. This was when they changed the names of the Turks. And there were the first signs of economical difficulties for the country, for instance, shortages of electricity and fuel, especially in these areas with the Turks. It was very sad. They were not allowed to go from one place to another. There were many restrictions.. People couldn’t come to our concerts. Or, if they came, suddenly in the middle of the concert the electricity stopped and they’d have to leave the concert in full darkness. So we decided to quit, and we started again from zero in Scandinavia.

In which country?

In the beginning it was in Norway, at a restaurant. We were very popular here, and suddenly we started playing in restaurants. But it was also very exciting because we decided to do everything possible to get out of the restaurant scene, and to move to clubs and discotheques. And actually we managed to do this in four years. We toured a lot, all over Scandinavia. The band was really good and we invested a lot in our business. Because this is a business, no doubt about it. We bought the latest instruments, we bought a big van with beds, and we started from zero.

And you were singing in English?

Yes, in English. You know, the management company that we used to work with, they put “Tangra England” on the posters. They didn’t announce us as a Bulgarian band. At the end we used to tour clubs in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, all of these countries.

And were there folks from the Bulgarian diaspora who came to the concerts as well?

Not very many. Only a few. You play for the locals, and this is interesting because nobody knows you. Here in this country, if you ask somebody from these generations if they know Tangra, you will see their reaction. Everybody used to know us here, but there we were completely unknown.

Did you change your music at all?

Yes, of course, at the beginning we started playing covers and evergreens. This was for the restaurant scene. It was an incredible experience as a musician because you discover completely different kinds of music. But then we started playing our own stuff in English, plus covers for the clubs.

Covers of what kind of music?

Duran Duran, Dire Straits, U2, this kind of stuff. At that time, New Wave rock was very popular.

And you came back to Bulgaria…

It was the end of the 1990s. In those first years in Scandinavia, they asked for a contract and work permit for six months. That’s how it used to work. But a few years later they start asking you at each place for a particular contract and work permit. These were the first signs of Schengen, and it was very difficult to play clubs, because you were playing a different place every night. And when the owner or the manager came and said, “We like you, can you come in a month, on this date?” you didn’t know what to say because you were not sure whether by then you would have a signed contract. It became very difficult.

So the only way out was to go back to the restaurants in Norway—which was too much. And this is how the band split. They decided to stay there, and I came back here. It was 1989, right when the change happened. The big change, the so-called change.

You have good timing! Do you remember when you came back?

It was right before November. Must have been, let’s say, September or October, or something.

Things were already beginning to change a little bit of course, but not here necessarily.

Not here, no. There were some signs, but nobody believed it. It was like, you know, a total shock. One morning when there was a program on the radio, and it was the first time they said bad things about Todor Zhivkov, it was incredible: you couldn’t believe what you were hearing. I still remember, we used to live in a different place at that time in the center of Sofia. And there was some graffiti against Zhivkov that appeared overnight—at that time we didn’t think that it was suspicious, but actually it was part of the whole thing. It was unbelievable. He was on top for maybe 35 years and then suddenly his comrades took him down.

Do you think music played ultimately played a role in the transformations that took place in this region?

You might not believe this but yes. This was our biggest reward. Because there was no way to get on stage and say that all this is bullshit, that this system is nothing. Unless you wanted to commit suicide! But actually our biggest success came when we started singing in Bulgarian. At the beginning it was Deep Purple, hard rock stuff. But then, we started singing in Bulgarian and we had a very strong message. It wasn’t completely clear at the beginning, but if you read the text several times and if you thought about it, then you could figure out what we wanted to say. And that was our biggest reward.

We had such strong fans. They used to follow the band. You’d see them one day, and suddenly there they were the next day in the first rows of the hall. They got the message. And they started dressing our way. At that time it was very new and unexpected, and very provocative. At certain points I wonder how we managed to do that, to be honest. Maybe we were just such strong believers in all this. Talking now, it’s only touching the surface. But deep under the surface it was a very difficult life, not only because we were traveling musicians, but because of the circumstances, the whole environment. You had to have a really strong will to go through with all this and to be at the same time a good performer. But the people got the message. They used to sing our songs, not only because of the music but because of the text. Many of our texts were censored, many times.

Can you give me an example of what your text was, and what happened to it?

For instance, there was a song with the name “Be what you are, be who you are.” Originally it was like this: I wanted to go to university, but instead of me they accepted somebody else. It’s very difficult to translate this, because it was the typical Communist idiocy. There were some rules that the sons and daughters of so-called anti-Fascist fighters were accepted in the university without competition, and we said this in our song. It was immediately censored. We managed to change the words and keep the meaning the same: you might be very talented, but in reality somebody else could take your place in life.

Were you ever tempted to change the lyrics in concert? 

We tried that. But as I told you we realized that there were people in the audience recording and writing reports after each concert. So it was very dangerous. But there were many other ways to get the message across. And I think people got the message. You know, the most powerful message was freedom. Freedom of mind. That’s why the audience liked us. Otherwise it was not possible. I want to declare this clearly: it was not possible. Absolutely not possible.

Were there other rock bands at that time?

There were a lot of very popular bands: Shturtsite (The Crickets), for instance. They were very popular too, and had some good songs, and they were fans of ours. And they had problems, but maybe not as many as we used to have. Especially in the 1980s, we were something new, with this post-punk. And we created a new message. There were some others, but not more than four or five professional touring bands. Other bands played in clubs, discotheques, and restaurants.

You came back to Bulgaria just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Todor Zhivkov. What were you thinking when you came back and your band mates stayed behind in Norway, and suddenly there were different possibilities?

Number one was the feeling of freedom. I think this is the most important. It was everywhere, in the air, freedom after all these years of suppression and restrictions. Suddenly, you could feel it and see it in people’s eyes.

The country was completely destroyed. It was corrupt. The worst time was the fall and the winter of 1990. Suddenly there was nothing in the shops, no electricity, no fuel, no bread, no milk, nothing. But there was hope, and this is the most important. Hope for the future. Probably it wasn’t really realistic. As I told you, when somebody said it would take ages to become a normal state, nobody wanted to believe that. At that time, there were several big rallies and meetings in the center of Sofia. And it was clearly visible that people didn’t have anything to eat, but you could see hope for the future in their eyes. And it was really exciting because suddenly it was up to you to decide what to do. It wasn’t up to somebody else or the Party. This was the most important thing in those years.

Those first years weren’t very good for Bulgarian music, especially for rock. Which was kind of strange, because there was freedom everywhere, in all directions. I was surprised because I expected some new bands to emerge. But this actually didn’t happen. My explanation is that, first of all, rock music and popular music are like mirrors of life that reflect whatever happens. At that time people were more concerned about food than music. Everything was destroyed. All social life was destroyed. All the structures during these years, like management companies, were suddenly gone. It was not possible, for instance, to organize tours, and there were no bands. Many people left, especially young people, because they didn’t see any possibilities here. Some succeeded, some didn’t, but many people left. At the same time others decided to stay.

And I decided to come back here. Most of my friends thought I was crazy. They thought, you know, this guy is either really crazy or he is a loser. And I got married. I met my wife, Laura, in Paris, and from Paris we decided to come here in 1990 — instead of 99.9% of my friends who went to the States. We didn’t have any problems to go there, but for some reason I didn’t. Actually Bulgaria is my country. No matter what happens, it’s my country. So I was quite lucky that my wife accepted this crazy proposal to move here, but I don’t regret it. I think we both don’t regret it.

What did you do musically when you returned?

Nothing. There was no music, no music scene, nothing. Of course, we tried many things. Most of them failed. But in 1992, we started the first private radio station. Me and a friend of mine, Kiril Maritchkov, who is a bass player, the leader of Shturtsite, the other band I told you about. It was very exciting. The name of the radio station was Tangra, the same name as our band. It was a kind of smooth transition away from the band. It was actually a rock station. It was our dream. This time we played for many people on the air. We played whatever we wanted, and we again sent a very strong message. This time it was possible to say whatever you think. It was up to you. So the station was very successful for about eight years.

But two years later, some things started happening here—like a lack of regulations. By the way, I used to be the chairman of the Association for Bulgarian Broadcasters for seven years, and before that I was a member of the board. So for almost 10 years I used to be in the union of the broadcasters. And in 10 years, the law changed 11 times. We used to meet lots of broadcasters from the West that wanted to invest money in the media here in Bulgaria. But when they saw the regulations and the law, they said, “No, forget it!” For instance, it is very strange to have a media outfit, an advertising agency, and a research firm all in the same company. So, guess who is first in the ratings, and guess how the money goes from the budgets of the advertising agencies? It was not possible to compete in a normal way.

The other thing was it suddenly became overcrowded. We warned the authorities that, for instance, in London there are 12 stations. In Sofia there were suddenly 33 or 35. And the market in Sofia is a very small fraction of the market in London. It’s not possible to sustain a business like this, and a radio station is a business. This was a period when media became part of other businesses. For instance, a radio station might become part of a company that deals with gas or oil. It was part of a larger process: the concentration of power, money, media.

I’ve seen a lot in the media. We used to negotiate all these laws and regulations with the parliament, with the authorities. And it was clear that they wanted to keep control. Different forces — political forces, parties, and businesses — wanted to have control. And they managed to establish this control. Now media is concentrated among only a few owners, or groups, and I think it’s used to manipulate peoples’ minds. The level of content in the newspapers is very low, full of rumors and celebrities. On the television there are shows like Big Brotherand shows with everybody singing. This is a very powerful tool to manipulate people’s minds.

Are you still involved in that world?

Not at all, and I don’t want to be. I don’t want to go back there. First of all, it’s very difficult to be independent, and throughout my whole life I was independent. Even throughout the worst years of Communism, I was independent. Somehow I managed to maintain my own situation – through friends, family. Now it’s very difficult to be independent. It’s almost impossible.

Are you still involved in music in any way?

That’s how I make my living actually. I have a studio. I went back to the roots. I record a lot of soundtracks: for movies, for theater, for advertising. I do a lot of what’s called sound imaging for TV and radio. I do music for sound libraries. Probably half of my work is for companies in the West. And this is how I make my living. I don’t feel regrets about anything, to be honest. I have enjoyed my life. No matter in what circumstances and environment. The most important is to be in balance with yourself, and this is how you have enough strength to survive.

What’s your impression of the music scene today in Bulgaria?

I think there are two tendencies in today’s Bulgarian music. There are some examples of good music, which is quite competitive with Western music: very well-produced songs with good messages. Unfortunately there are not very many. In the middle is popcorn. This is pop music with no message, no personal attitude, that’s only copy and paste. At the same time there is an overwhelming amount of so-called pop folk.

Like turbo-folk in Serbia?

There you go. Serbia is a relatively good example. But also music from Turkey, India, Pakistan that’s very low quality. They’re everywhere in the media, because they follow the recipes of music from American or British pop music. But it’s a kind of distorted image of this music, and it’s very simple, for simple people. And it’s popular. I don’t care about this music. It’s not my music. But you cannot pretend that it doesn’t exist. It’s here, and it’s successful.

In Bulgaria there are two groups of people. One group follows turbo-pop folk. The other group are fans of rock music. Surprisingly there aren’t many new Bulgarian rock bands. But you can see these people at the concerts of the big stars. The halls are full. They have extremely intelligent reactions. And most of the artists who come once here, want to come back again. They really enjoy the reaction of the audience. You can see families at these concerts. Normally you would only see only youngsters, but in these concerts you can see fathers and sons.

We went to a Lady Gaga concert, which was incredible. There were, I think, 16,000 people. It was full! And people were singing with her, and she got really excited.

You talked about the concentration of power and ownership. Do you think any of that has changed over the last 10 years? Have you seen any improvement in either the conduct of government or in the political-economic infrastructure?

We have regulations here, but the point is to implement them. In another country, when you see a one-way street, it’s one-way street. But in our case it’s not a one-way street. Somebody could go against the sign. This is very frustrating. There is also quite a high level of corruption, which is another big problem for this country.

And I think that one of the most important things that was supposed to happen, but never happened in full, was to open the archives of the former secret service. The whole social, political, and economic way of life used to be dominated by the secret service and the Communist party. The whole so-called change was to change ownership and to change the power. And this was the reason of the whole thing. At a certain point it became clear to the Communist elite that the whole country wasn’t going in the right direction, and it was inevitable that this was the end. The most important thing for them was to transfer the power from political power into financial power. For normal people it became very difficult to start a serious business. I know only a few people who are not connected to the former elite who managed to start successful businesses. Most of these businesses actually belong to people from the past, in one way or another. Or to their sons, or daughters. And this was their goal.

The other thing is the court system. Every day you see people get arrested for something. I’m talking about criminals, obvious criminals. And a few days later, they are released. It’s really frustrating, and it sends the wrong message. It says that I can do whatever I want, but I won’t be punished for it.

A culture of impunity.

Yes. That’s why it’s frustrating that the archives were never really opened. Germany did it the right way. The Czech Republic and Hungary, they also did it, and it was very important for society to know who is who and why suddenly some people became millionaires or billionaires. If this had happened, I’m sure the whole country would have gone in quite a different way, or many changes would have happened a lot earlier than now.

But now, and probably you see this too, there are quite many changes, especially in the past few years. I think there is some hope for the country. I know some hard-working people who managed to succeed as businessmen – in a honest way. Which is quite different, and a lot more difficult.

Can you identify other hopeful signs?

Yes, there are many. Some of them are very simple. For instance, only a few hundred meters away from here there is a big construction on the road going on. And they are working hard for 24 hours. It might look simple, but it has never happened so far. And there are, I think, maybe even seven road construction projects going on at the same time all over in the city.

The other interesting thing is you see some young people who decided to stay here, and they are different. Their faces are different. Some of them are very intelligent young people — hardworking, innovative — and this is the future generation.

Another thing is when you go, for instance, to some small towns in Bulgaria, everybody is talking about the lack of money, the lack of this and that, but at the same time you see nice new houses, small enterprises. For instance, I was in Plovdiv a few weeks ago, and you can see many relatively small enterprises that are modern enterprises. Some of them are probably owned by businessmen from the West, but it doesn’t matter, they’re here and Bulgarians are working in them. You can see many things happening in the cities, especially with European money used in the right way. You can see the streets are changing, which is very important, the infrastructure. And gradually, the whole look of the town changes, and this is what gives me hope for the future.

I’m talking about simple things. I’m not talking about the nuclear power plant, which is a big thing. I’m talking about, for instance, a place called, Better House, which is a very interesting way of connecting young people, innovative people. It’s this big place that offers rooms for business meetings, for working individuals with their laptops, and this is the new young generation. Things like this started happening in the past few years. It wasn’t like that between, let’s say, 2000 and 2005. So some of these people are coming back to Bulgaria, and they are bringing new culture, new ways of thinking and working.

At the end of the day Bulgaria is a nice country. It has beautiful nature, the climate is really good, agriculture could be a very important part of the economy if developed in the right way (and if this had started 20 years ago, we would be in a completely different situation today).

I think the current government—despite many mistakes—is from this point of view the best so far. Up until recently we saw only few results, and this time we can see many things happening. I’m not politically involved in any party, but I would like to be as objective as possible. And there is no doubt that you can see many changes: in the metro system, the public transportation.

So, I haven’t lost my hope—which is very important. I wish that most people could keep their hope for the future in the same way they had it 20 years ago. When you see pictures of rallies of that time, it was absolutely unbelievable. There was one rally, when you see the people’s faces, when you look at people’s faces at that time, you almost want to cry. Because you see tears in in their eyes. Happy faces, despite all they’ve gone through.

Sofia, September 26, 2012

The nineties were challenging years in Bulgaria for trade unions affiliated with the political opposition.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

Poland was unique in East-Central Europe for the size, strength, and pivotal role of its labor movement, Solidarity. In no other country in the region did workers take the lead in challenging the communist system. But that doesn’t mean that worker movements were not important in other East-Central European countries. In Bulgaria, for instance, Podkrepa was a key part of the opposition representing workers’ voices.

From the word “support” in Bulgarian, Podkrepa had its start in February 1989, before the spike in popular revolt. Later, as change accelerated in the country, it was a founding member of the opposition coalition known as the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). Through “citizens committees,” Podkrepa campaigned on behalf of the UDF in the first free elections in 1990. By 1991, and the election of the first non-socialist government, Podkrepa formally withdrew from the UDF.

But those were challenging years for trade unions affiliated with the political opposition. There were fierce debates within the union over whether to be involved in formal politics. When opposition parties supported economic reforms that adversely affected workers, these debates became even more heated.

“We made the same mistake as Solidarity,” Oleg Chulev told me. “We participated in governments. I was the head of the national employment service for four years: at the time when the unemployment rate ranged around 18-19 percent. This led to shrinking membership. And the repressions at the enterprise level pushed a lot of people away.”

I met Oleg Chulev of Podkrepa back in 1990, when it was a relatively young organization. Since then he has continued to work with the union and has also participated in government, heading up the national employment office.

Our conversation focused on what workers have gained and lossed in Bulgaria over the last couple decades. “The hired labor force now has the freedom to choose what to study, where to study, what to work, where to work,” he told me. “They have the freedom to move. But this comes with a price.”

That price can be measured in different ways: “If you consider the standard of living in Bulgaria now and back then, you’ll see that people live better now. They have a higher standard of living. But there was no unemployment back then. There was so-called artificial employment for all. Now, the GINI coefficient can be felt by the man on the street even if he doesn’t know what this coefficient is. The gap between the rich and poor is much higher now in material terms than the gap between the nomenklatura and rank and file was back then. The insolence of the new rich is no way smaller than the insolence of the party nomenklatura was back then.”

Our conversation ranged from how economic reform could have been done differently in Bulgaria and the failure to create a Labor Party to labor-market policies and the impact of the European Union on the Bulgarian economy.

The Interview

Do you remember where you were when you heard the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall and what you thought about it?

It was the evening, and I was sitting with friends at home. And it was a big joy. But it wasn’t as unexpected as one might think. It was just a matter of time. It was already happening in our minds. We used to say that Gorbachev shouldn’t stop. But even if he did, he would only delay this process.

When did you first become involved with Podkrepa?

It was in the spring of 1989. I got in touch by phone. There was no other way to get in contact at that point. My affiliation with Podkrepa back then was personal: signing the declaration of support of Podkrepa. I joined the organization in October 1989 when we started meeting with people from other cities in Sofia. This is when we founded the teachers’ trade union as well. In November, we officially founded it, at a press conference.

You’ve been affiliated ever since?

Yes, since the beginning of October in 1989.

It is often said that the people who lost the most during the transition are workers. Do you think that’s the case?

Yes, if by workers, you also mean not just blue-collar workers but also teachers and clerks. They were lied to. Of course, they didn’t have much to lose. They lost the illusion of security, the illusion of equality. Materially, they are not worse off now. But they lost the feeling that they could do the same job in the same place for the rest of their lives. They lost the feeling that if they were qualified for a job, they could always have that job.

They also lost security in real terms. If you consider the standard of living in Bulgaria now and back then, you’ll see that people live better now. They have a higher standard of living. But there was no unemployment back then. There was so-called artificial employment for all. Now, the GINI coefficient can be felt by the man on the street even if he doesn’t know what this coefficient is. The gap between the rich and poor is much higher now in material terms than the gap between the nomenklatura and rank and file was back then. The insolence of the new rich is no way smaller than the insolence of the party nomenklatura was back then.

However, when one loses, one gains too. We often don’t know what we gain when we lose. The hired labor force now has the freedom to choose what to study, where to study, what to work, where to work. They have the freedom to move. But this comes with a price.

Are there any things you would have done differently from a trade union point of view?

Plenty of things, starting first of all, with the privatization process. Privatization was carried out unfairly. Well, fairness and unfairness are emotional characterizations. Let’s say, rather, that it was non-transparent. The winning bidders were known in advance. Enterprises were not sold so that the factories could continue working. Rather, the new owners cashed in the mortgages and took the money. There were no safeguards to preserve the workplace and the jobs.

There are so many examples. There was the sale of the national refinery to Russia’s Lukoil, which made Bulgaria dependent on this company. There was the sale of the Bulgarian national carrier, Balkan Airlines, which went bankrupt after its purchase. With the privatization of mines and metallurgical companies, the new owners, instead of modernizing manufacturing and making it more environmentally correct, squeezed out as much money as possible and then went bankrupt.

This all resulted in structural unemployment. The government kept giving bonuses to employers through tax benefits and by reducing the insurance contribution rates. They ended up creating the so-called bad debt millionaires by providing them with a state guarantee. These bonuses given to the employers didn’t go to creating jobs or higher salaries. Over the last 7-10 years, businesses failed to pay $10 billion in taxes. And instead of raising salaries, they bought yachts and Bentleys.

Plenty of things could have been done differently. The fact that we were half a trade union, half a political organization: now I can say that this was a mistake. Back then, however, this may have been necessary. Together with Fratia in Romania, we were the first two trade unions after Solidarity. Fratia consolidated with the former government trade union and lost influence in society. And now there are other strong players in Romania. Despite the errors that we recognize now in our political commitments, Podkrepa managed to preserve its influence.

Only very late did we learn the lesson that it’s not so important who is in power but how they exercise this power. Currently the members of Podkrepa do not vote for socialist parties and will not vote for the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). But if we consider the economic claims of Podkrepa, they are much further to the left than the Socialists. It can’t be otherwise. The Socialists evolved in a weird way. The Socialist Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, who is now the chairman of the European Socialists, introduced the flat tax in Bulgaria, something that two right-wing governments didn’t dare to do. This party, in other words, was protecting the interests of big capital. One third of the members of the BSP Executive Board, the leaders, are millionaires!

One of our mistakes during the transition was that we did not consider setting up a Labor Party. Until the mid-1990s, we identified ourselves with the party of the right wing, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). But within this right-wing coalition was Petar Diertliev of the Social Democrats, the Agrarian Party, and the Green Party. It was a political mistake for the UDF not to have specified its identity. Initially, it filled the whole political spectrum. It shouldn’t have identified itself as the right wing, leaving the whole left to the former communist party.

But you were in a common predicament. The former Communist Party in Poland instituted austerity communism. And Solidarity initially supported shock therapy. You may have made a political mistake, but it was not a unique political mistake.

I’m not a believer in global conspiracy theories. I don’t think anyone predetermined that these mistakes would happen. Perhaps this was just the logic of development.

Is it too late to establish a Labor Party?

Sooner or later it will spring up. But our members believe that this isn’t our business. They do not trust politicians, regardless of their party. It’s not just our members. This mistrust has resulted in a tsar being elected prime minster, which was basically a rejection of political parties. Later, after the unsuccessful mandate of the BSP, this mistrust in parties resulted in the current prime minster coming to power. He set up a party five minutes before the elections, just because he needed it for the registration. Basically, a person who doesn’t respect any parties won the elections. But this can’t go on. If voters are not swayed by extremists, such a party will eventually come into being. And then it will be natural for the two trade unions to support it. But if we invest efforts in political activities, people will not trust us.

I remember at the beginning of the transition here, Jim Baker of the AFL-CIO came to Bulgaria. He told us off the record that political democracy is beautiful but it ends at the threshold of private companies. We had no idea what private property meant back then. We had so much to do in the field of industrial democracy. We are still not on equal footing with employers. They have their own powerful representatives. Many years ago, you and I talked about the trade union lobby in parliament. Now almost all MPs belong to the lobby of capital.

When populist parties here, like Ataka, talk about economic issues, they sound left wing in their criticism of big capital and globalization.

This is why I said that if they don’t shift to extremes, people would support a Labor Party. But poverty is the problem. When the poor are marginalized, they become the social base for both right-wing and left-wing extremists, including nationalists. It’s easier to put the blame on the Gypsies, on the Jews — on the Martians, if you like! — rather than admit that you must take your life into your own hands.

Podkrepa now cooperates quite well with the former official trade union CITUB.

For 10 years now. In general, we do not have different paths though we have two different headquarters. But we do compete as rivals within enterprises. We compete for workers: who will offer more, who will do more. Usually, our demands are stronger. Maybe they are better negotiators; maybe we are better in action. For instance, during the railway strike of a year ago, their leaders were more in the front. But 75 percent of the strikers were ours. They waved the flags.

But there are two trade unions in Bulgaria, that’s a fact. They are the larger trade union. The time when Podkrepa was growing is over. We made the same mistake as Solidarity. We participated in governments. I was the head of the national employment service for four years: at the time when the unemployment rate ranged around 18-19 percent. This led to shrinking membership. And the repressions at the enterprise level pushed a lot of people away.

We do not have the financial resources that CITUB has. I’m the head of the Institute for Social and Economic Trade Union Research here at Podkrepa. Our institute doesn’t have permanent staff. It works ad hoc. The mirror institute of CITUB, meanwhile, has 15-16 staff. Nevertheless we are rivals. Our people keep working because of an idea. They do this for minimum pay. They work elsewhere and come here to support Podkrepa. I suppose that this is what holds us together: the idea.

At the same time, we developed a network of service not only for our members but for all workers. We provide legal counseling free of charge as well as assistance on labor market and assistance for professional retraining, We’ve finally been able to grow our youth network. This is very important because the workforce is aging in Bulgaria. The young people entering the labor market are more individualistic. They don’t care about trade unions. And the fact that this youth network is developing is very satisfying.

Have you had second thoughts about your four years as the head of the national employment office? 

Yes. After the economic crisis of 1996-97, the situation here was terrible. The closing of workplaces was accompanied by hyperinflation: this was a huge challenge. The right-wing expert government of Stefan Sofiyansky and the right-wing government that followed of Ivan Kostov invited two trade unionists to serve: the minister of labor Ivan Neykov from CITUB and I was from Podkrepa. The national employment office at the time was not a government agency. It was a public employment agency. It had a tripartite governance. We had advisors from the U.S. Department of Labor and support from USAID for institution-building and capacity building. And I think that this reform was good. Personally, it was difficult. I had to work 10-12 hours a day. Everybody did.

At that time, we introduced labor-market policies that exist everywhere but were new for Bulgaria. And I think with scarce funding we managed to stabilize the situation. We also managed to preserve the social peace or, at least, we prevented the unemployment rate from exploding.

I now hold an expert position at Podkrepa. I provide expertise to the leaders of Podkrepa particularly on the issue of labor markets. And I represent Podkrepa in the national council for employment.

Does Bulgaria have a social safety net that is sufficient, comparable to safety nets in the region? And has the EU been helpful on this?

My reply to this is in the form of a question. Is there a European social model? Is there a social Europe?

We have the poor South and the rich North here in Europe. The difference between our standard of living and the European standard of living is huge. But there is also the difference between Spain and Portugal on the one hand and Netherlands and Sweden on the other. I’m talking here not about the phenomenon of migration but internal European mobility whereby a qualified labor force from Spain, Portugal, and Italy goes northward and we Bulgarians take their places. They engage in social dumping in the north, and we do the same in their countries. It’s quite doubtful, of course, that the Spanish will ever receive Swedish pensions or that our workers will receive Spanish pensions.

The institutions of a social safety net are there. They are more or less working. The problem, however, boils down to people’s incomes, because contribution rates are dependent on income. We have a 10 percent flat tax rate here in Bulgaria, which is unique in Europe. If I get $1000 dollars, I pay $100. Bulgarian pension system faces two problems. The first is stability. It depends on the income. The second is adequacy. Pensions fail to replace income, regardless of the European level. Health insurance fails to cover adequate services. The current government is very much concerned about stability and security, but they don’t care about adequacy.

I can give you an example. Every worker pays health and pension insurance contribution. The military, police, and civil servants, however, do not pay: the government transfers their contributions to the insurance system out of the taxes of the same employees. I’m not going to refer to this as honest and fair. It’s illogical! I said my score was 4 for the social sector. Because the institutions are in place and largely corruption-free. The sector isn’t corrupt because it doesn’t generate profits. It operates at a deficit.

My forecast for the future, however, is not very positive. Employment remains low. In its 2020 Strategy, the government set as a goal an employment coefficient of 75-76. This is the proportion of the workforce that has a job. The Europe-wide coefficient is 72. The Bulgarian government’s goal is too ambitious. Right now we are  about 50!  Maybe they are expecting that the next government or the government after that will achieve this goal. Brussels requires many papers to be submitted: a national strategy on this, a national program on that. We are excellent at delivering these papers. But this particular one is really a non-paper.

One policy the government takes pride in is the retention of young people. Emigration has dropped. But this is because the jobs in Europe have decreased. Our efforts should not be to convince people to stay rather than emigrate but to convince the government and the employers to increase remuneration. The average productivity of labor in Bulgaria is 43 percent of the European average and the average income is 30 percent below the average. For over 10 years, remuneration has been lagging behind productivity. In the last couple years it has gone slightly ahead of productivity. But there’s a lot to do. Our job is to fight employers at the negotiation table. Our job is to be the red light in society and to tell capital that, when there’s a crisis, it’s better to negotiate with us in order to avoid social explosions. However, the appetite of capital is insatiable.

You see what happened in Europe. When the Berlin Wall was still in place, Europe was a symbol for us: something to look up to, a colorful shop window. Workers from France and Germany came here on holidays, with loads of money. Back home they had lots of rights. They had strong trade unions. They were highly respected. That showed the advantages of capitalism. After the Berlin Wall fell, we witnessed, I won’t call it exploitation, but the intensification of labor. In the years after the Berlin Wall fell, especially lately, Western Europe was shaken by protests and strikes that it had not seen since the 1960s. It’s still going on. This is why Cyprus elected a communist president and Greece all but did as well.

Where do you think there is the greatest potential for growth in trade union membership? Are there barriers to organizing new members imposed by the government or by international circumstances? We have for instance Right to Work laws in the United States.

Something similar is attempted in Bulgaria in terms of an effort to limit collective bargaining. The Civil Service Act deprived civil servants of the right to become members of trade unions. Traditionally, trade unions were very strong in this sector. Now they have no right to collective bargaining. They have no right to strike. We lost a lot here. If this law is not amended, we won’t be able to organize in this sector.

As for prospects, that’s where the greatest obstacles lie, for instance in the banking sector. There’s not a single bank with a trade union. In the high-tech sector also there are many challenges. At the beginning of this year, we set up a chapter in a mobile operator called M-Tel (Mobitel). Young people were working there, average age of 25, with good education and language proficiency. They are confident that they are working at a good company, and they receive handsome salaries. When hired by a bank or a high-tech firm, new employees sign declaration that they voluntarily don’t want to be part of a trade union. This refusal of labor rights has no significance. But the human resources managers often refer to this declaration.

In any case, four times we tried to set up an organization within M-Tel. And four times they fired the initiators. Two years ago, the fired employees won their case in court and were restored to work. M-Tel said that it was cheaper to pay out 100,000 Euro in judicial costs and compensation rather than allow a trade union in the company. The owner was a Russian mafia guy, Mikhail Cherny, who was subsequently ousted from the firm. But we suspect that he continues to be in charge through an offshore company.

This last time, we worked underground for 6 months at M-Tel until we had 250 people. And only then did we announce the existence of the union. The managers couldn’t deal with that. But the first union was set up in the call center and in the headquarters, where they do technical support for software. It those workers were dismissed, the company would collapse. Even if they go on strike, it will be detrimental to the company. So, there is potential. It’s a matter of strategy.

One of our big allies is the anti-trade union policy. Currently, we have temporary work agencies. The companies dismiss people that have permanent contracts and hire people from these agencies at half-salaries. The notorious EU directive on Flexibility and Security in the Labor Market is all about the growth of temporary agencies, part-time workers, distance workers, and so on. In Bulgaria, this means flexibility for workers — they must be very mobile, be willing to work flexible hours — and security is only for capital.

The response to this is to make people organize. I’m observing this organizing within M-Tel. They have developed their own tactics. They are scattered around the country. They communicate by Internet. They set up meetings over the Net. New members are admitted online. This has never been done here before. One of the tasks of our institute is to observe this tactic and see the results and propose it for organizing at other companies.

The EU once represented something positive, not just for Bulgarians, but in terms of harmonizing up social welfare standards, labor standards. But more recently it seems that the EU is driven more by banks and finance. Flexibility is definitely part of that. But do you see a possibility of EU institutions strengthening trade unions or leading to the overall improvement of working conditions and compensation?

Yes. The problems that Europe faces are not unique to Europe. They are part of globalization. Workplaces were shifted to China, not only from Europe but from the United States as well. The knowledge-based economy was deployed on such a minor scale that it never was able to create new jobs to replace industrial employment.

The response to globalization is a mirror image. Trade unions have responded by unifying on a large scale. Six European trade unions in metallurgy, transportation and mines became one big union. All public sector unions – teachers and so on — united into the European Public Service Union. This response gives us more possibilities.

When we organized a strike at a Turkish company in the Bulgarian city of Targovishte, which privatized a glass factory, it was a 60-day strike. We were supported by the Turkish trade union, because they had 7,000 members in that sector, as well as the European glass factory trade union members. 

Has there been cooperation among trade unions within Eastern Europe?

Yes. Interestingly, the former relations are preserved. For instance, Podkrepa maintains close relations with Solidarity. CITUB is closer to OPZZ. There is some sentimental value to these relationships. So, certain strong relations were established in the past, and they are still in place. However, some of the trade unions that we partnered with in the past are no longer influential, like Liga in Hungary, which is very very small, or Fratia in Romania.

Are there joint projects? Around organizing in companies that have enterprises in both countries?

Yes, and we use European money for joint projects and cross-border programs. It’s always best to have a Western partner so that there’s a transfer in knowhow and innovation. Some time ago, I visited Barcelona. With a trade union in Catalonia and with Polish partners, we introduced knowhow for career counseling. Up to now this service was not offered by unions in Bulgaria. We trained 70 people who will be offering this service all over the country.

This knowhow didn’t exist in Spain, Poland, or Bulgaria. The transfer of this knowhow originated in Austria. This was not a major project in terms of funding. The training, localization of materials, and translation came out to 60,000 Euro — 20,000 Euro per country – and it lasted a year. It’s a wonderful project because it provides people with a free service that would otherwise be very expensive on the market.

Do you see any prospects of “wild capitalism” being any less wild in the future?

No. It hasn’t become milder. Perhaps only a little bit more civilized. What can stop capitalism from becoming wilder is the recognition that greed may lead to social explosion. There’s the example of Greece. You don’t think that the deficit resulted from the fact that the Greek workers and pensioners simply ate this money. Money was wasted, and the budget crisis is the result of the actions of politicians and big capital. But the price will be paid by the workers and pensioners. And when they can’t pay, they go onto the street and you see what is happening there. This won’t threaten European institutions. But it can serve as a very bad example.

I saw two rallies in Barcelona in two days. One was for the independence of Catalonia. And the second was against the austerity measures. Both of these rallies were very strong. And there were Greek flags waving there.

So, there are areas in which we perform well and we can give a high score. No matter how unproductive our elections might be, we have political freedom. The right to choose is amazing. We also have the right to travel, the right to information.

I have contact with our colleagues in Russia and Ukraine. When I tell my son that they restrict the Internet over there, I think that he’s happy that he lives in Bulgaria rather than in Russia or Ukraine. 

When you look back to 1989 and what has changed or not changed since then, how would you evaluate the situation in Bulgaria over that time, with 1 being most dissatisfied and 10 being most satisfied? 

4. Because 40 percent of things are done. 

The same period of time and the same spectrum, how do you feel about your own personal life?

6

Looking into the near future, how do you feel about the prospects for Bulgaria over the next few years?

5.5.

Sofia, October 2, 2012

From the perspectives of trade unions, the reforms in Bulgaria over the last 20 years have been disastrous.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

In the early 1990s, I helped put together a delegation on the topic of women and workplace in East-Central Europe. Several U.S. groups invited the delegation to the United States, with support from the German Marshall Fund, to meet with women’s organizations, trade unions, and a variety of Washington-based organizations.

It was not an easy task to identify women for the delegation. Many unions wanted to just pick the participants and didn’t understand my request for several candidates and their CVs. Also, there were two types of unions in the region: former official unions and new unions affiliated in some way with the political opposition. In those days, they didn’t get along very well. The U.S. government, and most U.S. organizations, only worked with the independent unions. So, it was challenging to put together a delegation with representatives of both sides.

I pushed hard to include representatives from the former official unions. As I wrote in a 1993 report, “The former communist trade unions have been doing a reasonably good job of democratizing themselves, and they still command the lion’s share of workers’ support. This despite several years of money and effort on the part of the AFL-CIO and the U.S. government to strengthen the ‘alternative’ unions. Now the international unions are having to adjust their strategies and open doors to the very unions they initially spurned.”

It seemed like the people who might benefit the most from a trip to the United States would be representatives from these former official trade unions. And it would have been educational, to say the least, for U.S. trade unions and government staff to meet with “the other side.” But for a mixture of external and internal reasons, a mixed delegation didn’t happen.

Still, I learned a great deal from my meetings at these former official unions. Some of the best discussions that I had on these topics, for instance, were at the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CITUB) in Sofia, thanks to the help of Snezhana Dimitrova who was working with the international affairs division.

Twenty-three years later, I returned to the CITUB building and met in her office. CITUB still owns a big building in the center of Sofia. But whereas many other offices in Bulgaria’s capital have been remodeled and modernized, the CITUB building has none of the fancy furniture and outfitting that USAID recipients enjoy. It looks much as it did during the communist period, though without the bustle or the security. There was no guard in the booth in the lobby on the day I visited, and I pushed through the turnstile without having to announce myself.

Indeed, it has not been an easy time for CITUB. It has seen its membership base decline from 2.5 million to 300,000. However, it is still by far the largest union confederation.

“We no longer have heavy industry in Bulgaria,” Snezhana Dimitrova explained to me as a major reason for the decline in membership. “There are still union members in the big cities, where there is work. Also, it’s very difficult for workers at small enterprises to organize, because they’re afraid they’ll lose their jobs.”

The economic reforms, from a trade union perspective, were largely disastrous. “From 1991, controls on prices were removed and industry was privatized,” she continued. “Collective farms were dissolved. A new constitution was introduced in July 1991. Economic reform started off in the wrong way. For example, agriculture was destroyed. Now they are saying that they made a mistake when they destroyed the cooperatives. They also didn’t privatize the right way. When they privatized and sold off the enterprises and the machinery, we lost many enterprises and many many jobs. The chemical industry, the Kremikovtsi steel complex, heavy industry in general: everything was destroyed.”

We also talked about the relationship between CITUB and the other major trade union organization (Podkrepa), the role of strikes, and the economic prospects for Bulgaria. Economic crisis in Europe? “Here in Bulgaria,”  Snezhana Dimitrova told me, “we say that we are not feeling the crisis because we’ve always been in crisis.”

The Interview

Can you tell me how you got involved in your current work at the union?

After university, I started as a translator in the international department of the  Trade Union School because my languages are Slavic: Czech and Russian. At that time, we had a lot of contacts with trade unions in Slavic countries – Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia – so I had a lot of work then. After that, I started to learn English, because we had a trade union school with many people coming from Latin America, United States, United Kingdom, Australia. Because I was in the international department, I started to translate English too, but my English is not fluent.

The transformation of society begins with trade unions. We had a lot of contacts with friends in the United States, from Western countries, and we began to have exchanges with them. We had a lot of groups from the West, like British coal miners, who were having a lot of problems with the Thatcher government because it was cutting jobs. It was interesting to work here at that time because of these contacts. There was more freedom. It wasn’t like in the Center of the Communist Party, which was much stricter.

The Institute for Social and Trade Union Research (ISTUR) is a research institute at the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CITUB) in Bulgaria. CITUB is the successor to the 100-year union tradition. The Confederation brings together 35 federations, trade unions, and associations and a number of associate members.  The main subject area for ISTUR is to analyze the processes associated with social and economic reforms in Bulgaria in the transition to a market economy and prospects for trade union policy and industrial relations. Research is being conducted at three levels: theoretical, applied and as ordered by public organizations.

The Institute employs 12 researchers representing different specialties: economics, sociology, political science, psychology, and computer science.. ISTUR maintains a network of outside contacts with relevant research institutions, universities, social partner organizations,  state administration, and NGOs. Now we are only 12 people, so I have to do a lot of work. I’m the national coordinator of Eurofound, the librarian of our small collection of books, and I also translate.

CITUB was the only trade union for a long time. And then Podkrepa began in the late 1980s. What was the relationship like between the two union confederations?

Podkrepa started out very well. It was a new trade union. It was accepted by the population as a break from the old. Many of the trade unions in our confederation went over to Podkrepa. I couldn’t say why. We have a very wise leadership here.

I expected one large trade union to emerge here in Bulgaria, but that didn’t happen. All the time we were the largest trade union organization, but of course the membership is not the same as in 1989. We are the better trade union than Podkrepa. I can’t say why they lost their initial advantage. I suppose maybe it’s poor leadership. They had everything. They were new. They were supported by western countries. They received material support.

But we remain the largest. We have about 300,000 members. Podkrepa has 60,000. In 1989, our membership was 2.5 million, because membership was obligatory. All workers had to be members of trade unions.

In the beginning, because CITUB was thinking in terms of the old-style trade unions, the relationship with Podkrepa was not good. Now, with compromises by both sides, it is good. Over the last 10 years, we’ve coordinated our strikes with Podkrepa, and they’ve coordinated theirs with us.

CITUB has proven that it is a new organization with new vision. Our leader is a relatively young man: Plamen Dimitrov.  He started activity in trade unions as Varna district coordinator, executive secretary of CITUB, and vice president of CITUB.

Why has there been such a big decline in union membership?

We no longer have heavy industry in Bulgaria. There are still union members in the big cities, where there is work. Also, it’s very difficult for workers at small enterprises to organize, because they’re afraid they’ll lose their jobs.

Bulgarian workers are losing jobs, and they have lower pay. Compared to other European countries, we are at the bottom in terms of wages. Also, pensions are very small. If pensioners didn’t live with their families, they couldn’t pay for electricity and heating.

As a trade union, CITUB attaches great importance to collective bargaining as an essential tool for the effective protection of the rights and interests of employees. Since 1995, CITUB is a member of the European Trade Union Confederation, which is an institutional partner of the European Commission. Representatives of CITUB participate actively in the work of the European Economic and Social Council.

In Bulgaria, we have many trade union organizations. The labor code defines the criteria for trade union representativeness at national, branch, and sectoral levels. According to this labor code , only Podkrepa and CITUB are national representatives of workers. Other trade union organizations are present only at the enterprise level. They can’t negotiate at the national level. This kind of trade union has no power. Wages more often depend on the ministry, at the national level. Because of that, it is necessary to have a bigger trade union that can negotiate with the ministers. But still, more aggressive and more charming union leaders are appearing at the enterprise level, perhaps because they are not satisfied with either CITUB or Podkrepa.

Have there been a lot of strikes?

There were many strikes, especially between 1991 and 1993. There were meetings, rallies, political strikes, economic strikes. And sometimes the government resigned because of the strikes. After this political turmoil, they strike only for wages, to improve working conditions. They strike because they don’t want to lose their jobs if the enterprise closes. You can read about every strike at Eurofound, where we are the correspondent for Bulgaria. You can read about what happened, the results, and who was the leader, whether CITUB, Podkrepa, or another organization.

Have there been any particularly successful strikes?

The railways wanted to stop increasing wages. They threatened to cut jobs. Both CITUB and Podkrepa negotiated with the management. We had a strike. Now the railways make reforms but without cutting jobs, and they even increased the wages a little bit.

How would you evaluate the economic reforms that have taken place here in Bulgaria?

From 1991, controls on prices were removed and industry was privatized. Collective farms were dissolved. A new constitution was introduced in July 1991. Economic reform started off in the wrong way. For example, agriculture was destroyed. Now they are saying that they made a mistake when they destroyed the cooperatives. They also didn’t privatize the right way. When they privatized and sold off the enterprises and the machinery, we lost many enterprises and many many jobs. The chemical industry, the Kremikovtsi steel complex, heavy industry in general: everything was destroyed.

Sold to whom?

Most enterprises were sold to domestic buyers. But Balkan Airlines was sold to foreigners and then closed down. We are now without an airline. We had access rights in airports in London, Vienna, Paris. But we’ve lost those rights. I fly now only with Turkish airlines. 

Are there any positive signs economically?

They are now developing the tourist industry. And agriculture has started again. The agricultural produce grown here is a hundred times better than what we are buying from Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey.

Are there positive signs for growth in union membership?

There is no potential for growth. This is normal, not to be a big organization. It’s better to be a strong organization, to organize people whether they are members or not. If we negotiate something for a branch, the deal is valid for all people working in the branch, not just the members of trade union organizations. It’s better to give all the people the possibility to increase wages and not just your trade union members. It’s easier at the national level to negotiate with the minister to increase the wages for all branches, for all enterprises.

Where would you put CITUB along the political spectrum?

Normally, trade unions are closer to the left wing. But here in Bulgaria, I couldn’t say. First, the trade union supported the economic reforms, and the reforms were made by the right wing. That meant that we supported the right-wing party. But then CITUB decided to be an independent trade union and not to support a particular party. Now, the union supports the party that has programs similar to ours in terms of economic development, wages, and jobs. Now we support the party that wants to increase wages and create new jobs.

All parties are the same. They implement only a small part of their programs. Most people don’t believe in the parties. Only the people on the left and the right vote for particular parties. Most people don’t vote. They don’t know whom to choose.

The current government is popular. The leader speaks with ordinary people. He makes jokes. Women like him: not me, but other women.

How do you evaluate the future prospects for Bulgaria?

I can’t see anything positive. Most young people want to work abroad. For example, the young people who win the medals from math or science Olympiads, when they return to Bulgaria, they get offers from American or British universities to study there. And they agree immediately, without thinking that they could study and work here.

A friend of mine told his children to stay where they are. One is in Belgium, the other in France. Mothers don’t want their children to come back here: because it is difficult to get a job, especially a job with a good salary, even for people who are educated. As for people in the villages, there aren’t any jobs, good or otherwise.

What about foreign investment?

Everybody knows that it’s good to attract foreign capital. We have no capital. We are not a rich country. Only the trade unions can protect the rights of workers in this situation. If foreign investors want to cut jobs, the trade unions negotiate how many and and under what conditions. We negotiate so that they pay six months of wages, and we make sure that pensioners get their pensions.

Can you explain the pension situation here?

The minimum retirement age in Bulgaria has been increased by 4 months as of Sunday, January 1, 2012, as part of a controversial retirement reform package. The same measure will be applied on the first day of each of the upcoming several years until the retirement age in Bulgaria reaches 65 years for men and 63 for women. Up until the new pension reform was approved in December 2011, Bulgaria’s retirement age was 63 years for men and 60 years for women.

There are three kinds of pensions: the government pension fund, an obligatory fund for people born after 1960, and private pension funds. In terms of the private pension fund, you can pay into this fund for an additional pension. The employer can also pay for an additional pension to the worker, particularly if the trade union negotiates this arrangement. In the beginning, this private fund was interesting because it was very new. It was also important because the government pensions in Bulgaria were very low. The trade union believed that it was important to have this additional pension, especially if the employer was paying into it.

What kind of international cooperation do you now have at CITUB?

For instance, at ISTUR we are working with Turkish trade unions with women in trade unions there on career development. This project, led by Italians, has EU funding, and we participate as lecturers.

How do you feel about Bulgaria’s own membership in the EU?

I am optimistic about Europe. I still think that membership is a good thing. But I think that most people here had high expectations that wages would increase automatically and everything here would be closer to the living standard for Europe. That didn’t happen, so they are disappointed.

We lost our former markets in the region. Russia was a big market. It accepted everything that we produced. Now with the EU, we can’t sell them our products in the same way. So, it’s quite difficult.

People in Europe talk about the economic crisis. But here in Bulgaria, we say that we are not feeling the crisis because we’ve always been in crisis.

Sofia, September 27, 2012

Bulgaria's younger generation carries the past more lightly.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

My current project focuses on re-interviewing the people I talked to in East-Central Europe in 1990. But if I restricted my interviews to this group of people, I’d get a rather skewed picture of the region today. After all, I’d miss out on an entire generation of people that was too young to participate in the changes or was born afterwards.

To ensure that I have a more balanced picture, I thought it would be interesting to interview the children of the original interviewees. Nevena Milosheva-Krushe, the daughter of Mariana Milosheva-Krushe, is the first of these interviews.

Like many people of her generation, Nevena has no direct experience of the communist era. She was only two years old in 1989. She remembers the stories that her elders told her. But 1989 is as far away in time for her as the 1960s were for my generation (it took me a long time, for instance, to realize that Woodstock was something other than a character in the Peanuts comic strip).

Nevena works in one of the multinational companies with an office in Sofia. She is rather optimistic by temperament, a trait she shares with her activist mother but which is sometimes a sentiment in short supply in Bulgaria. And because of her contact with other ethnic groups and her own time spent abroad, she highly values multiculturalism.

“Since I was little, I had contacts with different groups through my mother,” she told me. “And then in the university we had people from different ethnic groups and also different countries, mostly from the Balkans. And in Amsterdam, we had people from very different places. I really don’t like generalizations that all people from this group are such and such. I experienced the same thing in Amsterdam: ‘You’re a Bulgarian and this means that you are not hard-working and so on.’”

It is perhaps this awareness of the outer world – and how the outer world perceives Bulgaria – that distinguishes the younger generation from those who lived during the communist period. From an early age the post-communist generation has travelled outside of Bulgaria and/or has had access to all sorts of global media. They carry the past more lightly and are often bemused by the intense arguments that still rage over what took place before they were born.

Of course, young people in Bulgaria are all over the map, literally as well as ideologically. There are young neo-fascists and young farmers and young populists and young drug addicts and young rock musicians and many many young people who are living outside of Bulgaria. Many of these young people share little in common except for the generation gap that separates them from their dinosaur parents. But that gap doesn’t seem very large in the case of Nevena and her mother.

The Interview 

When did you first realize that you were living in a country that was completely different before you were born?

There were many things that were different compared to other countries. For instance, I remember the stories of when we had only one kind of chocolate or standing on line for bread. One of my first memories, when I was younger than 8 years old, is my grandmother telling me about the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I was 8, I traveled for the first time abroad and the difference was huge. We went to Switzerland.

Ah, well the difference between Switzerland and most countries is huge! Your mom said that you got a business degree. Where did you get that?

In Amsterdam. It was my master’s degree. My bachelor’s was at the American University in Bulgaria.

How was that experience at the American University?

Very interesting. Our educational system is much worse than the Western European and American education. But I wanted to be in Bulgaria, so that was my choice.

Were all the classes in English? 

Yes.

Was your English pretty good when you graduated high school? 

I studied some subjects in English in high school. But I needed to study quite a lot more: to learn business terms and so on.

You were interested in business early on in life?

No, actually, I wanted to study politics. I started with politics at the university. But then I wanted to stay in Bulgaria and honestly I didn’t feel like going into politics in Bulgaria. I took a business course and it was very interesting. But I also studied journalism as a second degree.

You said you wanted to stay in Bulgaria. Why?

Because I am more optimistic than most people. Many things have improved a lot here, even though people are quite negative about everything around here most of the time. Many things continue to improve regardless of what specific party is ruling.

A lot of your classmates didn’t stay in Bulgaria. Did you have arguments trying to persuade them to stay or did they try to persuade you to go?

Yes, we had arguments. But to be honest, then I went to Amsterdam for a year for my masters. What was most different there was that it was more organized. It can be quite tempting to stay somewhere else. But again, I have my family and friends here.

You weren’t tempted to stay in Amsterdam?

A little bit. But finding a regular-level job there was much more difficult than finding one here.

It was easy to find a job here when you got back from Amsterdam?

Yes. I got a job at a company called Shevana. We deal with service departments for employees traveling around the world.

What are your responsibilities?

I’m in marketing and sales. We do different campaigns, communicating with different kinds of customers.

Customers just in Bulgaria?

Everywhere.

That’s why you have to speak English.

Yes.

You’ve seen Amsterdam. You’ve studied business. How would you evaluate the business climate here in Bulgaria? Is the workplace here basically the international standard? Or are there some things that are really frustrating?

I think it’s getting better and better. Many international companies have offices here by now. Most of the bigger ones and some smaller ones. Of course we’re a good destination. The salaries can be lower but at the same time the work standard is good. In Amsterdam, the salaries would be quite higher.

Can you give an example of something that was frustrating that is no longer frustrating?

At the beginning many companies were not paying maximum health benefits. For the past five years, this has been much better.

You said at one point that you decided not to do politics. Do you think the political situation has improved?

I think there’s some improvement. For example, it might sound strange, but now we have a subway line. Of course we also have more traffic. On social issues, I think it’s getting a bit better. There’s more tolerance of differences than some years ago. Of course, there’s still some problems, many problems, but I think it’s improving a bit. More foreigners are visiting the country than before.

In your free time you mentioned that you do volunteer work?

I haven’t had a lot of time for it, but I’ve helped my mother on some of her projects. But I’d like to help children, orphans, in my free time.

She mentioned that your friends and colleagues are also interested in volunteering.

For example, I have one friend working in a bank for seven years who also feels like doing something in his free time, because business gets a little tiring. You need to not just sell products but help people, without any salary. Most people are not doing a lot. But there is a desire to do more. But then we also have to stay at work quite late.

Have you gotten involved in any of the big environmental actions?

I’ve heard about them. But I’m more interested in topics connected to children or discrimination. I have a friend who works for this type of organization. I’m thinking of helping her.

On the issue of tolerance, you’ve said that the situation on the street is a little better and there are more visiting foreigners. But there’s also the anti-Roma sentiment. How do you explain these two things?

In other countries also, there’s been these tendencies after the collapse of the communist regimes: prejudice but also some improvement in tolerance. Before, we had the same Ataka type of thing, but it was not public. These people had the same views.

They just didn’t open their mouths in public?

Yes. And they didn’t have such a political party.

How much contact did you have with other Bulgarians of different ethnicities when you were at school or growing up?

Since I was little, I had contacts with different groups through my mother. And then in the university we had people from different ethnic groups and also different countries, mostly from the Balkans. And in Amsterdam, we had people from very different places. I really don’t like generalizations that all people from this group are such and such. I experienced the same thing in Amsterdam: “You’re a Bulgarian and this means that you are not hard-working and so on.”

In the business community here, is it mostly ethnic Bulgarians? 

Mostly. But there are different people. The companies are international and for them it’s only important whether you do your job.

On the Roma issue, I’ve talked with people about three different policy directions: good jobs, good education, and political power. Which do you think is most important?

Education. But at the same time, in order to to start with education and get to political power we need to be more tolerant. In schools, for instance. Most Bulgarians are not very nice to other ethnicities.

Can you give some examples?

I remember in my first to fourth grade school, we had two Roma kids and they were mostly not treated in a nice fashion. That was not okay with me. We should start by understanding each other’s cultures.

Was there any Roma information in your textbooks or your classes when you were growing up?

No.

Ethnic Turkish culture?

Only from the history textbooks about when we were enslaved by the Ottomans. But that was a long time ago. We should now just look at people as people.

What about at the American University? Were there classes about Roma or ethnic Turkish culture?

Nothing specific.

In the United States, the civil rights movement went hand in hand with a change in textbooks. It’s hard to have a change in people’s attitudes without that change in education. You were lucky to have your mother.

You’re right about education. We need to learn more about their culture. That would help people understand each other better. We can start with that.

You were more pessimistic about the future than you were in your assessment of the past.

Yes, but my view of the future was more optimistic than most people’s.

Yes, but why didn’t you say 8 about the future?

I think we are going to develop further but at a slower pace than other countries.

What do you think about the overall economy in Bulgaria? A lot of people tell me that they go abroad or don’t come back because of the lack of jobs. Is that something you hear among your friends?

Very often. But actually, I think things are getting a bit better than before. It’s as hard as in other countries. Before you go and live somewhere for a year, you can’t know what it’s like. Many people think that Western Europe is great, all well organized and arranged. But you’re still a foreigner over there. And it’s as hard to find a job as here. The salaries are low here. But our living standard is lower too. The minimum wage is quite low. And the pensions are really a big problem. I don’t think any grandparents can live by themselves without anyone helping them. That’s a problem.

When you hear the word NGO, what do you think?

People who help society but not related to profit.

So you have a positive association. I’ve heard that people here have negative associations with NGOs.

Yes. They feel like NGOs are not doing enough. But I think it’s because they are doing things for the long term. You have to be patient for the change they’re working for to come. Of course, I communicate with business people. They are thinking in terms of short-term profit. So, that’s a different mindset.

What do you think will happen in the next Bulgarian elections in the fall? Let’s say there are two scenarios: the one you want to happen and the one you don’t want to happen.

All the times that I could vote, I wasn’t voting for a scenario I wanted to happen but for the least-worst scenario.

Because your scenario wasn’t available.

Yes. I don’t think there’s any party that’s perfect, that I want to vote for now and forever. But of course, everyone has pitfalls. And everyone is trying to do something. Even the current government.

When you say that they’re trying to do something, did you have anything in mind? Other than the new subway.

The financial situation is not so bad in the context of the global economic situation. It could be quite worse.

Why haven’t young people come together to form a political party?

I think there’s quite a lot of fear. And people are not that active in civil society, including young people. They are trying some stuff like, as you said, on the forest issue. But still we need more activity. People focus on their job, their business, and that’s it.

What do you think of when you think of Europe?

The continent.

Does the continent include Bulgaria?

Yes, the whole continent includes Bulgaria. The EU also includes us. But we’re a new member, so there are certain restrictions.

Do you think the overall experience of joining the EU is a good one

Yes.

Any negative aspects?

I don’t think so. We are a very small country, and we need to somehow to join the others. Of course the situation of the EU right now is not the best. We don’t have the Euro, and for the first time it’s a good thing that we are a little backward.

Yes, hooray for the leva!

Yes, exactly.

Do you see yourself living in Bulgaria for the rest of your life? When you talk to your friends, what do they think in terms of the future?

More people are staying here and wishing to stay here. Maybe five years ago, I knew many more people who wanted to leave. And now, many people want to stay.

When you look back to 1989, when you were two years old, and all that has changed or not changed, how would you evaluate that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being least satisfied and 10 most satisfied?

8.

Same scale, same period of time: your own personal life?

8.

When you look into the next couple years, what do you expect for Bulgaria, on a scale of one to 10, with one being more pessimistic and 10 being most optimistic?

6.

Sofia, October 2, 2012

NGOs devoted to public works paradoxically became part of the wave of privatization that swept the region.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

The transformations of 1989 began in the streets as people protested their governments in Leipzig, Prague, Bucharest, and Sofia. The agents of change were popular movements like Solidarity, Civic Forum, and the Union of Democratic Forces. Gradually the protests receded, and these popular movements turned themselves into parties. Many activists, however, didn’t want to join formal politics. And so was born the new era of the NGO in East-Central Europe.

Non-governmental organizations proliferated throughout the region in the 1990s as part of the institutionalization of civil society. They often received support from foundations and governments in Western Europe and the United States. Exchange programs brought staff for training sessions in Washington and London and Paris. NGOs became increasingly important in addressing social issues – poverty, inter-ethnic tensions, trafficking – as the governments in the region downsized. In this way, NGOs devoted to public works were paradoxically part of the wave of privatization that swept the region. What governments no longer had the money to do, private organizations stepped in to help out.

In the early days, NGOs enjoyed a rather high reputation in part because of the legacy of “anti-politics” from the earlier period. Newly enfranchised citizens viewed government and the official political realm with a degree of suspicion just as they dismissed the communist governments as the playthings of the nomenklatura.

Today, however, NGOs don’t meet with such universal acclaim. “Of course there is a certain frustration about the lack of progress in the region,” Mariana Milosheva-Krushe explained to me over coffee at the Archaeological Museum café in Sofia back in September. “So, who do they blame? NGOs.” NGOs are often perceived as well-funded entities that don’t in the end produce anything of enduring value. Although some NGOs certainly fit this description, others have achieved sustainable results with relatively modest means.

Mariana Milosheva-Krushe has been working with NGOs in Bulgaria and throughout the region for more than two decades. She first encountered community organizing in the United States in 1993 and was impressed with this grassroots approach to political and economic development. She brought that spirit back to Bulgaria to democratize the NGO sector. Deeply involved in this sector, she is nonetheless critical of the bad habits of civic organizations.

“Change depends on people in the community,” she told me. “I learned my lesson in Stolipinovo. We raised some money from an outside donor to pave some of the streets there. An old man was sitting and watching me. He said, ‘Pave the street over there too.’ I said, ‘Come on, it’s your street.’ And he said, ‘It’s your project!’ And he was right. He was very wise. I was coming with this money and we were creating a consumer culture.”

In addition to the evolution of NGO culture, we talked about working on Roma issues in Bulgaria, the rebirth of the chitalishte cultural centers, and political polarization.

The Interview 

Do you remember when the Berlin Wall fell and what you were doing and how you reacted?

Yes. I was having a sandwich and walking to the office I was working for here in Sofia. I just dropped the sandwich. I couldn’t believe it. I was just stunned. So, this is a very vivid memory.

Where were you working at the time?

At the Institute of Modern History. It was very boring, very politicized. I couldn’t find a job as an ancient historian, as an archaeologist. I had to do something.

Did you think about the implications for Bulgaria? Or was it just an event happening on a distant planet?

Of course, something was going to happen. You had a feeling that everything was changing.

When perestroika started in the Soviet Union, at some point we began looking for Russian magazines to see what was happening. I had three exams in Russian/Soviet history and I knew nothing about it, only the official things we were studying. So, it was a real exciting time. These magazines were not easy to find: they were too alternative for us here. The Soviet Union was moving faster than us, which has not always been the case. So, It was already in the air that we might see some changes in our lifetime.

Was there a specific moment in your life in Bulgaria when you realized, ah, something is changing?

Yes: when I saw the completely stunned face of Todor Zhivkov. He just couldn’t believe that he had to go. That was the visual moment I remember.

For me, personally, probably the most exciting thing was to meet people who survived from the old political establishment, like Dr. Petar Dertliev and Dr. Atanas Moskov, who were Social Democrats. Meeting them was a great opportunity for me to see that not only can the system change, but there are ways to change it. I worked with them. This was the best school for me in terms of participation, elections, campaigns. I was the director of their foundation, the Yanko Sakazov Foundation at the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party. I started as a secretary then became director.

Do you remember in 1990 the conflict between groups that were willing to have some political compromise with the former Communist Party and those who weren’t, like the people in the City of Truth?

Yes, the City of Truth took place right over there. It was very exciting. We all were enthusiastic that things could change. But others were also denying everything. If you cook under pressure and you try to open the pot too fast, it can explode. I guess these different trends were trying to keep from exploding.

When my daughter was very little, I would walk her in the park. There was one column of people walking and screaming UDF (Union of Democratic Forces), and the other column walking and screaming BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party). It was too polarized. Maybe that’s normal. But it was also generational: in most cases, the older generation, the people who were called the “red grannies,” supported the status quo because they were afraid of change. So in a way complete denial was not the best, but neither was compromise. Change was very much needed.

Do you think there was a point at which this political polarization disappeared? Or has an element of that initial polarization continued?

I don’t know. Right now, I don’t see very much passion and polarization. We don’t have a real opposition. We have the ruling party GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria). It calls itself a citizens’ movement, but it’s really a party. There’s the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and the Bulgarian Socialist Party. Unfortunately the UDF lost, and that’s kind of sad.

This development has taken place over the last 10-12 years since King Simeon came here. This was for me the first sign that populism — in our sense, not in the American sense – had overwhelmed politics. People just wanted immediate benefits. They were frustrated with the slowness of change, and they couldn’t see any direct benefit to their income or wellbeing. The king’s slogan was: Trust me. People voted for that! Without anything more concrete. But perhaps that’s normal.

I’m worried that whenever frustration grows like this, it always touches on the ethnic issue, especially Roma, and that’s really bad. I like talking with taxi drivers: they’re my focus group. Whenever you mention Roma, they say, “They’re dirty, they cheat, they do nothing, they have no potential.” Sometimes the sentiment is against the Turks, the Muslims. This is our supposedly tolerant Bulgaria! Sometimes I wonder what we’ve done for the last 20 years, with all our preaching about human rights and equal opportunities for people. I still don’t see enough mixed schools or different colors on television. Bulgaria is monochromatic.

Do you remember the campaign against the ethnic Turks in 1988-89? What was your impression of that? How did your circle of friends react?

I was at home on maternity leave. My daughter, who was born in 1987, was very little. I was living near the Palace of Culture. There were these orchestrated demonstrations against the eksursianti – that’s what they called them, people who go on excursions. None of my friends supported this. “What if they rename me?” they worried, “Or tell me where to live?” This was the stupidest thing that communists did. This is what gave birth to all the anti-regime groups, this and the environmental movement, like the Club of Mothers in Russe.

It also gave birth to the Movement for Rights and Freedom. It generated a lot of controversy. Number one, the constitution said you couldn’t have a party based on religion. Number two, Ahmed Dogan was a very controversial figure. And number three, it was the third largest party, so it played a major pivotal role in determining coalitions.

It continues to do that.

I’m curious about your analysis of the MRF and its evolution.

The idea was good, because you need a certain self-organization. No matter what, when people say that Turks were represented in other parties, they weren’t. However, like all parties, the MRF was copying the old totalitarian model of party organizing, especially Dogan. He’s very smart, an amazing politician, but he’s really totalitarian in my book. But they also had some good people in that party. They had systematic strategy for growth in their cadre. And the whole idea was based not on ethnic principle but to defend all rights and movements. This should have cut across the platforms of all parties, but it didn’t happen that way.

So there hasn’t been any attempt by BSP, the UDF, the king’s party, or GERB to to address issues of ethnic Turks?

There have been some attempts, usually around elections, with all parties buying the votes of Roma and ethnic Turks. It’s ugly. I don’t think the parties consciously care about those issues. Individual politicians, yes, but these issues were missing from the party platforms. That’s why I decided to work for civil society. It’s not enough to have elections and demonstrate that you care about the issue by buying votes or supporting the issue the day before elections. What’s important is what you do in between elections.

But I’m afraid that the political culture here was not consciously integrating the necessity of rights. That includes the MRF. We were doing community projects in the Rhodope Mountains, and ethnic Turks talked about being suppressed by their own party members. Using fear, threats to the family – the MRF was not practicing what they were established to do. Individuals within the party, yes, but not the party itself.

You worked in community development organizations in Baltimore and North Carolina. 

I had an internship there for six weeks in 1993. I had several different opportunities to go to the United States on internships to learn about civic organizing, non-profit management, community foundations and the evaluation process. The first time I was in the United States was in 1991 or 1992, on an exchange. People were laughing at me in the States because I was saying, “Ah, this is the model!” And they said, “There is no model. You have to adapt whatever model you find.” I am so grateful to all the people, all the community organizers I met. I learned so much.

You started out in ancient history and archaeology. What motivated you to turn to community development?

I was bored with history. I couldn’t find work, and it was boring to dig under the ground. We were creating history! That’s why I joined the Yanko Sakazov Foundation in 1990, because it was so exciting to organize elections. I’m not an extreme person. I’m always trying to be moderate, to find the balance. I think I was closer to the Social Democrats. But unfortunately that party doesn’t exist any more. The BSP absorbed all the rhetoric, but not the actual principles.

I was working at the national level, assisting fundraising for people to do campaigns locally. But campaigns don’t resolve issues. They need to be ongoing. That’s why I decided to continue in civil society. First we created the Access association. I had a passion was for community organizing, especially in ethnically mixed communities. I was responsible for the program for community change. If you can do community organizing in a Roma neighborhood where there’s extreme poverty, then it can happen anywhere. At the same time, there’s something lost in other communities, such as the bonds between the extended family.

I was also a technical organizer of an Anne Frank exhibition. We wanted to link the messages of the exhibition to the current situation, so we included an exhibition on Roma in Bulgaria. I was shocked by the reaction of the young students coming to the exhibition. They could understand the messages of Anne Frank, what had happened in the past, and they were open to different tolerant thinking. But whenever they saw pictures of Roma, it was immediately a very negative reaction.

I talked to a Roma poet. She said that the problem was not with the beggar children sniffing glue: it’s with poverty and growing economic issues. “You should go to learn from the communities,” she said. So, I just learned from going to the Roma neighborhoods and talking to people. I’d been excited by what I saw in Baltimore, in Washington, DC, where I saw some direct work in housing projects in poor neighborhoods. As a result, in 1995 we created CEGA – Creating Effective Grassroots Alternatives — which developed effective community development projects and grassroots alternative.

What surprised you the most from your experiences in Roma communities? 

It’s a completely different culture. And if you don’t understand it and respect it, you’re just lost. This was the biggest problem of most “projects” of different donors: they remained projects. In many cases they had a kind of “drive-through” approach. You need to work with people inside the community so that they start self-organizing. The big word “empowerment” means for me that individuals open their eyes, then they open up the eyes of other people, and they get together to do things. Nobody can do it from the outside.

We did a great job, I think. We worked with more than 40 organizations in different parts of the country. I still maintain contact. I do evaluations. But we are far from resolving the issues, right? We were trying to do things, to cultivate people, and at the same time, the situation was changing completely. Economically there was no opportunity. This was the biggest mistake: no one did anything for income generation. Generations of people never worked; generations of people did not study very much. It went very deep. A lot of good people who were activists got burned out. That’s normal. If you live in the neighborhood, you work 24 hours a day: if you’re real and you’re not just working for the money. You do it because you care

Some people had an opportunity to go abroad, and they said, “No, I’ll stay here.” They were committed. Some of them succeeded in really bringing Roma kids back to school. For instance, in Lom, at the Roma Lom foundation, 10 years ago they had only one or two students at university. Now they have over 25. That’s amazing!

Can you give an example of community development that has worked in Bulgaria, a flagship example so to speak?

There are different flags: one flag does not fit all. One of the examples is the Roma organization in Lom, but of course it’s not just Lom.

Another example is the chitalishte. I was evaluating a program done by UNDP, and the woman working there was so excited about these chitalishte, these cultural centers established in the 19^th century as a vehicle for national revival. They were in every community: more than 3,000 all over the country. During communism, they were nationalized and became a controlling structure in the system of culture. The UNDP program decided to revive them and restore their real meaning. They did a great job. But they needed to develop assisting organizations for these chitalishte. That’s what Agora (Active Communities for Development Alternatives) does, funded by the America for Bulgaria foundation. This is community development. It’s out of the project culture. It’s just getting people involved on the issues they care about. It’s making people into active citizens.

Change depends on people in the community. I learned my lesson in Stolipinovo. We raised some money from an outside donor to pave some of the streets there. An old man was sitting and watching me. He said, “Pave the street over there too.” I said, “Come on, it’s your street.” And he said, “It’s your project!” And he was right. He was very wise. I was coming with this money and we were creating a consumer culture.

There were some great donors who were open to supporting crazy ideas. I love this spelling mistake my colleague in Romania made — these “democrazy projects,” she called them. In such projects, there’s space to grow so-called ownership. I hate these words already. They’ve become buzzwords. But still, people must own the ideas. It’s a different pace from the project pace. Projects are rhythmic: you have to spend on time and report on time. Otherwise you’re in trouble. But sometimes community development — activating people, linking them together — might go at a different pace. The biggest lesson is the pace of change. When I read all these announcements of “fast-track projects,” it sounds like McDonald’s! It doesn’t work this way. It might take years, and the development might not be linear.

What makes me pessimistic is that it was our dream to join Europe. But European Union membership came with a certain spice. It’s completely blocking community development and civic participation and democracy culture. EU funding is not accessible to small groups because of the very heavy technical requirements. And the bureaucracy in Brussels is then retranslated through our bureaucracy. This money is supposed to help municipalities and civil society. But I haven’t seen this happen.

I visited the Mercy Corps office in Tuzla in Bosnia. To get EU funding, Bosnian organizations had to partner with EU members. Many small organizations decided not even to try to get EU funding because of the reporting requirements. But the Mercy Corps office in Tuzla was extremely well organized. They had a wall full of boxes filled with the reports. And I thought: you have to be a very special organization to work the European system to get that money.

I know the European programming well. Sometimes it’s so rigid. But the intentions are good. I advise colleagues who apply to keep focused on what their organization is for, no matter what. If necessary, hire someone to do the reporting, but continue to focus on working with people. There are some good organizations doing this. But something is wrong with this system, and these bureaucrats don’t care.

One option is to reform the European system. That’s a pretty ambitious goal, and Bulgaria is a pretty small country. What other options are there? What about developing a national system that supports small organizations and community foundations?

There have been some attempts to do this, in Romania, for instance. But it’s being done by alternative donors, not the EU. The Civil Society Development Foundation gives giving small grants, supported by the Trust for Civil Society and the Romanian-American Foundation.

We’re lucky here in Bulgaria to have a colleague from the NGO community on the structural fund. He’s great. And some other people work in this system. NGOs make many suggestions about changes, but it depends on effective advocacy at the national level and the EU level. We have members in the European Parliament, and they should put forward changes to some of the ridiculous rules.

At the same time, I’m optimistic because of the involvement of young people. It’s outside the NGO community. It’s through Facebook or through humanitarian initiatives. They are acting in their own way. My daughter is 25. She grew up traveling with me to visit civic projects in the Roma community. But she decided to study business administration, and most of her friends are in the business community. Some of them say, “We want to do something else. We want to be involved in something that gives us social meaning.” That’s a good sign.

The Bulgarian Donors Fund is developing a platform for emerging donors. They are trying to stimulate a new culture of giving. We need to develop more philanthropy, more involvement of people who are donating. The Charles Steward Mott foundation did a lot on this. It applied a matching approach — if you raise this money, we’ll match it. If all the grants were like this, everyone would think about raising support. Yes, it’s very difficult, especially for minority issues, but it’s not impossible.

What is the future of informal initiatives in Bulgaria? Has the NGO experience in Bulgaria reached a certain limit in terms of its effectiveness, reach, attractiveness to young generation?

It depends on the NGO and the way it works. I can’t generalize. Of course there is a certain frustration about the lack of progress in the region. So, who do they blame? NGOs. Also, the donors needed boxes into which to invest money, and the NGOs were those boxes. Again, it was a kind of McDonald’s approach. The trick is not to serve your own self-interest. My computer used to be very creative in spelling, giving me suggestions while I was typing. When I was typing NGO, it was suggesting EGO. If you get beyond the EGO, the NGO is more broader based.

Are NGOs over? I don’t know. You need a form of self-organization, and sometimes you need well-structured forms. Governments will not listen only to informal movements. At the European level, you need a platform, you need to mirror the existing bureaucracy because bureaucracy talks to bureaucracy or organized structures.

Sometimes networking is “notworking”. I’d like to see more linkages and joint work among organizations. The National Children’s Network here in Bulgaria is very good. It brings together 80 organizations from all over the country. They have a platform, they go to the government, and they are listened to. They are lucky to have the support of a Swiss foundation and UNICEF. It’s also very active on Facebook. NGOs need to keep pace with what’s happening. They need to use new technologies to attract young people.

The environmental movement also gets people excited. Some issues excite people. With other issues, like rights and diversity, it’s more difficult. Everyone here is brought up with more or less prejudice. It’s much easier to mobilize against something, however, like racism. The new social media also can serve for negative mobilization, something that triggers your frustration, rather than positive issues.

Let me ask about the organizing on the other side of the political spectrum: the populist xenophobic rightwing movements here in Bulgaria like Ataka

What a shame that they have a TV channel! What’s shocking is that it’s supported by well-educated people.

Why has this become so much more popular in Bulgaria? Is it simply because of the economic crisis and the need to blame it on another group?

When people are frustrated and unhappy, when they have an inferiority complex, it’s easy to manipulate them. They need something to feel like they are someone. Here in Sofia, some people say, “All these newcomers come here because they can’t do anything in the communities they come from.” You can mobilize this type of inferiority complex into a platform. That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s: lumpenization.

We need to activate educated people too. We need civic education classes all over the country. If people are not growing up with these ideas, it’s very difficult for them to get it from just reading a newspaper or seeing a campaign clip on TV. It has to be part of the curriculum. There have been lots of attempts: the Step by Step program, the Debates Program of the Open Society Institute.

People are very busy with their families. They have to survive. My daughter works from 9 am to 9 pm. That’s how it is in the business world. In the NGO community, it’s 24 hours. Because of all these busy people, children grow up without this supportive system within the family. When they’re with their parents, they absorb their negative sentiments, their frustrations with life. But it’s not only here. It’s all over Europe. You can see this type of xenophobic, nationalist attitudes in Holland, in Germany.

The paradox is, the German economy is doing quite well. They’ve dealt with the financial crisis quite successfully. They’re a creditor nation. And yet still there’s this xenophobia.

The perception there is that these foreigners are coming and taking their jobs.

Even though these are jobs that Germans generally don’t want.

It doesn’t matter. It’s the same in Holland: it’s a prosperous country yet people feel vulnerable and are becoming protectionist. It’s the same in the States. No one likes immigrants flooding into their country.

Having civic education throughout the system would be useful. An improvement in the overall economy would be useful. Anything else that would be useful in terms of overcoming this xenophobia?

Investing in individuals is great: individuals from those groups that are being scapegoated. Equal opportunities can bring out the best, no matter your origin. This is what’s missing in the region. We talk it, we don’t walk it. Roma should be more visible – in the media, working in the banking system. So that people see them and say, “Hey, they’re the same person as me.” In Lom, one of the kids there who studied in London is now working in parliament. People in Lom know this and say, “Wow, it can happen, he was my neighbor!”

In Hungary, Roma journalists were working on many different shows, not just shows on Roma issues. There were Roma in government: brilliant people, spoke English, came from the NGO community. Unfortunately the new government fired most of them. But still the investment in those individuals is worth it, because they are now working in different sectors, or at the European level, or they go to other countries. When you have examples in communities, people try to follow it. It might take generations, but it’s worth it.

The investment in people is worth it. But that leads me to the topic of the brain drain. A lot of people, especially young people, have left Bulgaria. Do you think that might be coming to an end?

First, it’s not a brain drain because not all the smart ones left the country. Some of the smart ones decided to stay, me included! I could have left. Since 1992, I had opportunities to do so, and I know other people in the same situation. My daughter’s generation, many of them very good English speakers, they’ve decided to stay here. She studied in Holland for a year for her master’s degree. She said, “No, I want to be here. If we all leave, who will make things happen?”

It’s freedom of movement, and I love it. Because I couldn’t travel before. Come on, it’s not feudal times or communism, when we had to be registered in particular places.

There’s a perception that the Bulgarian government is backtracking on liberal principles. Obviously we’ve seen it more intensely with Viktor Orban and Fidesz in Hungary. I’m curious about your impression of the general trajectory of the current government in Bulgaria?

It’s a joke. But I still vote, otherwise I can’t bitch. If I have to be honest, there are a lot of professionals in this government. But it’s such populism. People like it. The government is popular.

Why is it popular?

Because the prime minister speaks a simple language. People get it. He’s doing some stuff, like repairing roads. He’s responding to the popular culture. People don’t want to hear intellectual talk.

Is that why the UDF has failed?

I think there are many reasons. The leadership is responsible. They had many supporters. Most of the people working for change supported the UDF. But it was incapable of fighting corruption. It couldn’t demonstrate that it was an alternative. It became arrogant too.

I’m afraid of what happened a couple years ago with Ataka. If there’s something positive about GERB, it’s that they took some of the more moderate supporters of Ataka and absorbed them into a more civilized alternative. Eventually there will be new movements more oriented toward what we all strive for: greater democracy.

Have you seen actual policies based on the rhetoric of Ataka or the cleaned-up version in the current government? Or has it stayed in the realm of the rhetoric?

We have anti-discrimination legislation. We have all the tools to control this negative trend. But the traditional NGOs are needed to shine the lamp on this implementation. If we don’t have strong local organizations, municipalities can do whatever they want. All parties were buying minority votes. There were cases of threats and beating people. This should be exposed. This should be in the media. But these accusations are only used by one party against another. Active citizens can be troublesome, but it’s much better than having manipulated citizens.

Have you seen any successful anti-corruption initiatives here in Bulgaria?

There were big projects on this, and some of them were good. However, I think that corruption depends on the individual level. I would never give a bribe. When they ask me, I say no. If everybody says no, then… Back in the past, you had to pay under the table to get anything done. But there are new generations now, and the generation of my daughter won’t give. They think, ”Hey it’s your job, and you’re supposed to do it.”

I was recently stopped for speeding. He didn’t ask me for a bribe. He just wrote me a ticket. He did not even hint at it. Is that a good sign? A friend said, “Maybe they knew who they were talking with.” But I just look like a normal driver. It’s not written across my forehead that I’m an anti-corruption activist.

The government tried to arrest people, but of course they were just small fish.

As you look ahead, in your work evaluating civic groups, what excites you the most?

I’m excited that I’ll be working with the organization Amalipe for half a year on organizational development. Amalipe is a Roma NGO in Bulgaria. They work all over the country. It’s a small project but it’s exciting because we’re finding the best way for them to develop as an organization. Sometimes it can be very depressing doing evaluation: just assessing and not saying how you think things should done.

Just a couple last quantitative questions. When you think about the changes that have taken place since 1989, how would you evaluate them on a scale of one to 10, with one being most disappointed and 10 being least disappointed?

5.

Same scale, same period of time: how do you feel about your own life?

8.

Looking forward into the near future, how optimistic are you?

6. I should also tell you my favorite joke. The optimist and the pessimist are talking. The pessimist says “It can’t be worse,” and the optimist says, “It can happen.”

Sofia, September 25, 2012