crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
prevent abuses, related to obtaining budgetary transfers on behalf of persons, who were not affected
by the actions, defined in the law and simultaneously to achieve full remedy of the really repressed
persons by providing compensation for their grief and sorrows. In the period between 1990 and 1996,
about 120 thousand persons have been compensated by decision of the municipal councils, the central
and regional commissions, (according to Ahmed Hussein, MP, who introduced into the Parliament the
bill for amendment and supplement of the Act). After 2004, the newly established Central Commission
considered some 7,400 applications for recognition of repressions on the basis of declarations of
witnesses due to lack of formal documents.
Pursuant to the Act for Declaring the Communist Regime in Bulgaria as Delinquent, the leadership
and members of the leading apparat of the Communist Party, the ruling party in this period have been
declared guilty of “the conscious breach of fundamental human rights and freedoms; unprecedented
violations against the members of the ХХV th National Assembly and the innocent persons, sentenced
by the so called ‘Peoples’ Tribunal’ … the violation of religious freedoms; the continuous terror against
non-conformists to the government system and entire groups of the population …”. The act declared the
communist regime responsible for “systematic breach of fundamental human rights, by oppressing entire
political, social, religious and ethnic cohorts of the populations”. Texts of the Act show, however, that
political revenge in Bulgaria is not yet under full control – in addition to the admission of a series of real
facts, foreign actions were also attributed to the regime – the defendants before the Peoples Tribunal after
Word War II (WWII) were found guilty and the proceedings were executed under the control and the strong
ascendancy of the Allied Control Commission. Further, pursuant to a decision of the Tehran Conference
of 1943, the main defendants, who designed and implemented the internal and the foreign policy of the
Bulgarian Government should have had to appear at a hearing of an international court, but were returned
from Moscow upon request of the state prosecutor. Well known is the “bullet in the head” option of
Franklin Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill for war-criminals without access to lawsuit. A conclusion is
to be derived that revenge, immediately after WWII and after the changes in 1989 should be managed by
the most efficient means to resolve such type of conflicts, that is reconciliation. With the aim to achieve
that, Bulgaria activated a series of measures for declassifying the dossiers of the former State Security.
Whether the result from the procedure of revealing the dossiers is positive or negative is still questionable.
Following long-year debates, two acts were passed: in 2001 the Act for Access to Documents of the
Former State Security and the Former Intelligence Department of the Army General Staff, and in 2007 –
the Act for Access and Declassification of Documents and Identification of the Affiliations of Bulgarian
Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian Peoples Army. Pursuant both
laws, the specially constituted commissions act as independent state authorities. The second act stipulates
the establishment of a centralized archive of documents of the State Security and the Intelligence Services
of the Bulgarian Peoples Army. Whether measures of the type, pursued almost 20 years after the changes
were the desirable pathway to progress and whether an adverse impact is in store, is a pending question
for the Bulgarian society. The society fears that the most prominent State Security agents destroyed their
dossiers and, currently, the archive contains only the dossiers of those, who worked for the intelligence
and the counter-intelligence, which maintain the population’s security and ability to counteract to terrorist
actions, attacks to cultural heritage and identity.
3. Raising the public awareness
Modern history of Bulgaria is doubtlessly a matter, included in the History subject in schools.
Given the unaccomplished process of building up the pupils’ personalities, knowledge about this period
should be delivered cautiously and without extremities. Controversial historical events normally cause
differentiation of public opinions, and the goal should be not to give a next reason for splitting the
society and an impetus to revenge, but to consolidate efforts of the youth for activities to the benefit of
the society. Therefore, the admission of the facts should be supported by explanation of the negative
consequences of extreme actions. In addition to the History textbooks, even more details on the near
past are topical in historical research, the media, books and movies. Literature, journalistic reports and
art products present particular facts of the secret archives of the State Security and even of Russian
archives, related to Bulgarian policy in the period 1944–89. Quite important information is offered by
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