Krastjo TRENDAFILOV*
V. "New Dawn"
Elections are coming up and we once again witnessed another gathering of “socialists”, a large part of whom have not been members of THIS party for a long time. They themselves have long been leaders of other parties who always want to distinguish themselves from the BSP. They appeared in elections with their own platforms. They participated in the management of the state with the Borisov and Peevski packs, but they are very excited about the BSP, which was not an exponent of the left-wing politics that the country so badly needed. And which is performing worse and worse in the elections – both local and parliamentary. The reason, they claim, is that things got worse after the BSP was headed by Cornelia Ninova. Their decision is unequivocal: replacement of the chairman Cornelia Ninova! Comrades from “Socialists– 21“ according to others Pirinsky; “Socialists – 23“ according to Pascalev, and “Buzludzha - 24” according to others Such.
Many of those who cut down and broke the branches of the 130-year-old oak are concerned that the crown is getting smaller and smaller and that despite their efforts it continues to exist. However, they never understood that cut branches only make a leaf for goats' food, but not a sapling for planting.
DEAR GENTLEMEN AND FRIENDS
The truth is that in recent years the BSP has been fighting a consistent battle with the parallel state, that it developed and adopted the “Vision for Bulgaria” with the participation of some of you and that it protects and often succeeds in implementing solutions in the fight against poverty and the parallel state. Sirech - Unlike you, Ninova is a fighter. She makes mistakes as a party leader, but she has not betrayed the covenant of the thousands who gave their lives in the fight against those who are robbing the people, against those who have ruined health care, education, the army in the last 15 years, and this is the party of the former member of the BKP Boyko Borisov and his party GERB.
To the question of when and why the BSP began to lose the trust of the Bulgarian people, the answer is clear: right at the beginning of the so-called transition!
THE POSITION OF A SOCIALIST VETERAN WITH OVER 60 YEARS OF SERVICE IN THE PARTY
My generation, which worked in the basic party organizations, in the construction and management of the thousands of industrial enterprises and powerful agrarian structures, and endured some of the mistakes of the growth of the comrades of the top leadership led by Todor Zhivkov, was often punished. We were sent to the most difficult sites, but this did not distract us from the main goal - building a country where people could live peacefully, with faith in tomorrow. We worked with self-confidence that we were creating conditions for our children so that they could live in a country comparable to the best in the world.
Andrey Lukanov and Petar Mladenov, who took over the management of the party and the state after Zhivkov, had a key role in this leadership. They were young, educated, experienced in politics. We were happy that in the presence of the enormous material wealth accumulated over 45 years, in the presence of an already seriously prepared and qualified working class, of powerful scientific and productive creative collectives, we will quickly overcome the crisis that has occurred.
Unfortunately, our hopes were dashed only a week after the infamous plenum!
It started with purges of some of the most deserving and worthy specialists. Many were perplexed, but even more were those who told themselves that the day can be seen from the morning. And it began.
Already at the beginning of 1990, the maturities of the principal on the foreign debt in the amount of 2.909 million dollars occurred. Lukanov's government, made up of socialists, was facing a serious test.
Until the end of 1989, Bulgaria had no unpaid debt! In the new year 1990, the country entered with a gross foreign debt of 9.210 million dollars. This represented 227% of our annual export earnings in convertible currency. For Hungary, this ratio is 319%, for Poland 484%, which means that we were in a much more favorable position. If we add 174.3 billion in tangible assets, a foreign exchange reserve of 1.381 million dollars, receivables from other countries for 2.358 million dollars, we could guarantee the foreign debt tenfold. This data is from the World Bank.
Lukanov's assessment was: “economic catastrophe“! And he ordered, without the consent of the Council of Ministers, without a decision of the National Assembly and the State Council, on 28.3.1990, that the Bulgarian Foreign Trade Bank /BVB/ should send a letter to the creditors for a moratorium on payments on the foreign debt - at the beginning of the principal, and later late and on interest. Sirech declared the state bankrupt. The World Bank immediately described the government's actions as “limited, belated and even wrong”. By the way, etc. Georgi Pirinski was a member of this government.
THIS WAS THE FIRST “FRIENDLY“ HIT
to the party “led the country to this situation”! This assessment later turned out to coincide with the assessment of the American friends of Lukanov and company, who wrote: “These revolutions have revealed to the world the devastation and ruin which four decades of socialism have imposed on the economy of these countries”.
The quote is from the Introduction to the “Ran-Ut“ project, secretly ordered by Lukanov himself.
A new surprise followed – American specialists Richard Rann and Ronald Utt were invited to develop a “Project for economic growth and transition to a market economy in Bulgaria”. This caused our universal astonishment. They reassured us by promising that our best economists from BSP and SDS would also participate in the development and that the project would be subject to discussion before being adopted. And what was unthinkable until then happened: They just lied to us!
We were given the “Project“ without the two chapters developed by the Bulgarian specialists. And they “forgot” the promise that it should be discussed, that in the National Assembly we have a powerful parliamentary group, formed by experienced politicians and statesmen, which can take the best decision for the country, since we had an overwhelming majority.
However, a third betrayal followed - not to say a harsher word. And this happened when the government, pressured by the opposition /SDS/, had to perform clearly “jointly” adopted “Project“. Then Lukanov asked for support from the party. And we went as apostles around the country to hold meetings in support of the government.
The party scheduled and held a national rally. We were very pleased with the work done. Moreover, they were loaded with the trust of the party and the people, because the meetings in the country were attended not only by socialists. And so, we, the people's representatives from the parliamentary group, gathered in one of the halls of the not-yet-burnt Party House. We have been waiting for the Prime Minister to convey to him the mood of the people as well as our full support.
Lukanov arrived to inform us that he has resigned! And again without even asking us. Clara Marinova, her kingdom in heaven, almost with tears in her eyes, asked him: “ Andrei, how could you?!“
The answer was: “I judged!“.
He turned and walked away.
It is hardly necessary to tell you what these two hundred men looked like, who were really the color of the nation. And who never forgot that knife in the back, that humiliation, that bullshit, that meanness!
WHAT NEXT
A government of “national salvation” was quickly formed. with Prime Minister Dimitar Popov and two deputies – one each from BSP and SDS - Dimitar Ludjev and Alexander Tomov. Interesting – those who only a few months ago categorically refused to be in a government with the BSP, now happily accepted after being offered the “Project” for the defeat of the state, accepted and approved by others. Lukanov and his deputy - others. Pirinsky. We will not talk about the specific performers. And it began. Participating in this government then was truly disastrous! You led the party then, as did many who left it in time.
Popov's government carried out the liberalization of prices, price and customs relations and Bulgaria became a paradise for speculators, mobsters and organized criminal groups. From the storehouses, which were crowded with provisions, the hidden abundance was brought out. The empty shops until then illustrated the “socialist reality”, while the new course convinced that the way was liberal capitalism.
The government of Philip Dimitrov and the privatization of land followed.
“The business sector is in such a bad situation that to miss another production season would be tragic. We therefore recommend that March 1, 1991 be the deadline by which all agricultural property /land, structures, livestock, equipment/ be in private hands" (quote from the “Ran-Ut“ program).
Well, they failed to meet the deadline, but in 1992 with the unique solution “liquidation councils“ executed the instructions flawlessly.
Kostov's government: “Privatization is first and foremost a political process with economic consequences” /quote from “The Project”, ibid., chapter 4, page 3/.
While successful privatization programs in other countries involve no more than two dozen enterprises, for full privatization in just a few years Bulgaria needs to privatize thousands of enterprises if it wants to change for the better the economic decline it is in.“ / ibid., ch. 4 – 3/.
Dr. Pirinski, etc. Pascalev, etc. Such, as well as all former and current members of the socialist party, I do not say socialists, they are either socialists or they are not, remember: these are the reasons for the collapse of confidence in the party, then “the left“ and it was already evident in the first elections in 1991. We lost the parliamentary ones, and in the local ones we won 120 municipalities against 94 for the SDS, but in the so-called “red“ 2,077,000 citizens lived in municipalities then, and in the “blue” 94 - they were 6,020,000 people.
The active part of the population, where that group of party members was concentrated, which built socialist Bulgaria, which you denied, that powerful unit, ceased to believe that this was his party. This is called collapse, gentlemen and comrades “ Socialists -21“, “C-23“, “ S- Buzludzha“. Notice - we lose the election – a party that still had almost a million members at the time.
No one has made an assessment of this loss so far. You should!
In the period 1996 - 2001 we lost 2,102,991 voters.
The leader of the party was Dr. Parvanov.
Between 2005 and 2014 we lost another 1,129,196.
Comrades Stanishev and Mikov were the leaders of the party.
Then, from the 82 deputies, we reached the “enviable“ 39 (almost as many as we had in April 2021). These “achievements“ are under conditions when the party had a president, a prime minister, a chairman of the National Assembly, and in different years we had the leadership of 170 municipalities.
Comrade speakers from “C-21“ , “C-23”, did it not occur to you that this is an assessment of your work as party and state leaders? Has anyone mentioned the word resignation?
FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT
all governments implement the “Project”, developed by Lukanov's friends and with the support of the internal currents that appeared already in the nineties - ASO, “Path to Europe“, “Euroleft“, which instead of openly saying that they strive for building of “organized capitalism”, they talked about implementing a “socially oriented market economy”.
Only Videnov's government tried not to change the course, but to slow down the collapse of the state. The liquidation councils were abolished, the Law on Assistance to Agriculture was adopted, the DF “Agriculture“ was launched, we managed to sow the wasteland fertile lands of Bulgaria. A part of the state's foreign debt was paid in order to show the world that we exist and to erase the stain from the image of the no longer existing socialist Bulgaria. And all this provided that our country did not have access to credit for four years. The government has also started talks with the IMF for the granting of loans, vital to continue the implementation of its program.
However, the gentlemen set conditions with which they only aimed to get us back on the right track of the “Project”!
And then, as if on cue, our social democrats went openly against the chairman of the party and the Council of Ministers. Remember the letter on the 19th? And when at the plenum of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Zhan Videnov received support, 7 people left the parliamentary group and out of 121 we remained 114. So we no longer had the majority in the National Assembly. And others Georgi Pirinski, for the sake of being more democratic, resigned and without a vote in the National Assembly, he stopped coming to work! He was waiting, as it turned out, for the next proposal for a People's Representative.
At one of the gatherings in an address you wrote
„LET'S LOOK THE TRUTH IN THE EYES“
But I'm afraid that you don't see her where she is. Whatever you evaluate - whether the elections for the chairman of the party, whether the work of the congress, or the participation in parliamentary elections, you know and repeat only one thing: Replacing Kornelia Ninova .
During the election for the chairman of the party, you supported Krasimir Yankov, who, after losing, threw his party ticket in the trash together with the platform you wrote for him, and left the party with the people around him. Then he appeared independently in the elections against the BSP. However, it doesn't seem to matter to you.
In the series of elections in recent years, a section of you as party leaders also came against the BSP. And that is not all. Is it normal and fair that until recently leaders of the party occupy the television studios and talk about how bad the BSP is, how weak the party organizations are, as if they left them in a flourishing state. The then Secretary for Organizational Affairs Kiril Dobrev made the relevant assessment at a plenary session. You may recall it if you have forgotten about the letter of the 50s after all.
Now you are once again distributing lists. During the elections, the party of Maya Manolova, “the bee”, flying from color to color, from protest to protest, worked particularly hard against the BSP. And it doesn't bother her at all that she does it after leaving the hive of honey that nursed her. In this activity, she was heartily supported by the staunch supporter of NATO “our“, if you haven't forgotten, Minister of Defense Angel Naydenov.
But let's take a look at the documents adopted at the meetings of socialists concerned about the party, which highlight the sins of Kornelia Ninova. And because of which it should be changed according to you. The most frequently mentioned of them: “Participation in the cabinet “Petkov” is detrimental to the party”! And participation at any cost in the king's office was not? An interesting discovery: a right-wing government could not make a left-wing policy.
Then why could he?
However, people forgot about the increased incomes and pensions from the triple coalition, but they remembered the flat tax, the closing of the Kozloduy NPP reactors, which we still carry like a stone around our necks. However, Ninova bears the reproaches of the people. What's more, you accuse the current leadership of not raising the issue of progressive income taxation and claim so even though it is not true.
BSP was faced with the question of whether to join DPS and GERB and watch the state perish, heading for another election. Or to make efforts in the difficult situation to form a government. The management chose the latter and in my opinion, they were not wrong! After serious and not easy negotiations with the partners (having nothing to do with what is happening now with the “assembly” as negotiations), with the support of expert help from socialists from before the 21st century, whom you described as incompetent. However, this government accepted and implemented all the issues raised by the BSP, for which the party has been fighting for years.
I hardly need to explain to you that politics is the art of the possible and every small victory is a path to the big goal.
ANOTHER SERIOUS SIN
of the current leadership, according to you, is “the desire for personal arrangement of Ninova and her cronies when they became ministers”.
Comrades socialists, it is an arrangement to elect you in the proportional lists in the National Assembly, because we did not win a single seat in the majority ones. It is an arrangement to sit there for three or more five-year terms, to receive salaries of committee chairmen in the National meeting, with no public evaluation of your work, as well as whether you worked at all. It is an arrangement to be an MEP, to receive a salary higher than the salary of the president and again without public evaluation, except when you try to push the “Euro-Atlantic values” which contradict our morals and were rejected by the party and the Bulgarian people, not by Nineveh.
However, then the voters realized who they elected and how their interests were protected. Many of you were also set up as ministers, but when you started getting grades for your work, you stooped to the next MP offer.
Serious reprimands were directed at Ninova as Minister of the Economy in connection with the arms sent to Ukraine. Let's be honest - the BSP did the only thing possible by proposing and defending a decision of the National Assembly that no weapons would be sent from Bulgaria to Ukraine. However, they went through third countries and, of course, Ninova is to blame for that. But the official minister in the president's government, who succeeded her, supported and repeated exactly hers. I have not heard you apologize on this occasion, neither you nor Mr. President.
At the same time the European Parliament voted billions of euros of our money as aid to Ukraine for the clown Zelensky. This aid is not for anything else, but for weapons to kill two brotherly Orthodox nations. Don't you know that this has been the dream of the Anglo-Saxons for centuries? Have you heard that Sergey Stanishev, Petar Vitanov or the journalist who covered "Maidan" spoke out against these decisions? I know it is beyond your power to change them. Therefore, I will repeat: Modern weapons are sent with these so-called aids. No nutritional supplements are sent. The goal is to exhaust two Slavic states. Doesn't that bother you? I do not even mention that there is a position of the party that sent you to the European Parliament, because it is clear that it does not matter at all to you.
The irony of the case is that your proposal to refuse to participate in a new government is now being implemented. It was clear that it would not happen and that we are going to elections, as the person who alone hates Nineveh more than you wants. What will happen in the state? How will the poor and working people survive? What will happen to the economy - that does not concern you.
But you exceeded all expectations by accusing Ninova of colluding with Borisov. However, I refuse to appreciate this miracle!
I don't want to list the other mistakes that the party made under Ninova's leadership, according to you. But one thing has been clear for years now – you have no answer to the main question that life poses to the party and the state in this time of crisis in every respect
„WHAT TO DO?“
You're talking about a “new left” again. It's an old fake song some of you have been humming for over twenty years.
When I look at the photo of the last gathering, in which, it is true, Alexander Tomov, Nikolay Kamov, Elena Poptodorova are not present in the front row, which is actually to the detriment of the professional staffing of the team, it was difficult for me to imagine that you have the capacity to answer the questions that today poses not only to the party and the state.
Today, the idea or feeling of the need for change turns into an anxious search for an answer to the question of the direction and nature of change. No one dares to deny its need, and that we live in a society of dynamic changes.
For now, humanity has no acceptable options. There is a deep crisis, expressed in a lack of alternative answers to the question of what the dynamics of our time bring us. We are forced to adapt. But adaptation blurs the connection between past, present and future. And this hinders the movement of society forward and upward.
The most dangerous illusion that the adjustment process gives rise to is the idea of neo-capitalism, of a well-reformed capitalism that is able to solve our problems. At the basis of this illusion are the numerous achievements of modernity, the most essential of which is the high degree of development of the productive forces in the main capitalist countries and the past achievements of the social market economy. This illusion was suggested and imposed on us by the “Project” developed by our crypto social democrat American friends in 1990
The perpetuation of this deliberately invented lie for more than thirty years showed not only its bankruptcy. It shows that not only is our naive trust in it costly, but that social horror and social hell are no small feat. They are something very real and the big question is how to swim through this sea of tar.
And I, like many, see only one way.
Dear comrades, stop creating new “movements”. To make parties with new leftist messages. To propose the writing of new programs and strategies…
It is time to return to the BSP. This is the last chance and you should not kill it. Come back even with the accumulated experience from your “previous activity” and help change what you think is necessary to makethe Party a serious political entity again, as you wish. Not leading, as Stanishev says, but unavoidable, as Petar-Emil Mitev used to say.
The party was wrong at the time that it did not firmly oppose the reckless change of the system. Today, however, the agenda is to save the state, the survival of our people, of the people who live in the poorest country in Europe. And there is no one else to do it but us – sinful but righteous people.
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*Krastjo Trendafilov is a politician and expert. He was born in Hairedin, Montana. He graduated from the "Karl Marx" Higher Economic Institute. in Sofia. He was the mayor of Vratsa, secretary of the Central Committee of the BKP and director of the "Gavril Genov" machine-building plant. in Vratsa.
In the period 1990 - 1991, he was a deputy of the 7th Great National Assembly. He was a member of the Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Land Reform. From June 10, 1996 to February 12, 1997, he was Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry in the government of Jean Videnov. He became a member of the Supreme Council and the Executive Bureau of the BSP in 1998. He was an advisor to the President Georgi Parvanov.
The text was published in Epicenter