aware of what has hit them.
RICHARD CARVER reports.
Bulgaria is perhaps the least familiar the European countries. All most people can remember Scargill's comment after a holiday there: If this is socialism, you can keep it'.
They might also remember that it was Bulgaria which cooperated with the West German state in tracking down lent-wing German oppositionists earlier unis vear But now the cloak umbrella operations of secret police have propelled this remote Black Sea country into the headlines.
Georgi Markov, the dead oppositionist, was a former friend of Bulgarian party chief and head orOe Jivkov. The whisper is that Markov stalesortne peccaalios of the Sofia bureaucracy which entertained une masses courtesy of the BBC - didn't exactly go down a bomb in official circles.
If the overseas operations of GEORGI Markov was murdered with such finesse that they still don't know how it was done. The thousands in Bulgaria's political prisons are only too the Bulgarian state would tax East the imagination of a Borgia or an lan Fleming, its domestic image is more mundane.
According to a 1977 report Amnesty International says it can hardly even guess at the extent of internal repression: in labour camps, psychiatric hospitals.
A pamphlet recently pub. ished in Paris suggests that Bulgaria has a higher number of political prisoners per head and of the population than any Eastthe European country other inar the USSR.
GULAG The extent of the Bulgarian Gulag can be judged by the facilities available for those who are less than enthusiastic about life under 'socialism' about a dozen prisons and well over twice camps, and us. in a country with a population same caler condon s. But a ruling caste which has The tiny poisoned ball that killed prisons, and GeorgiMarkov to resort to such measures can never be a has its internal problems divided between the uncritical friends of the Kremlin those who are worried by possible annexation country to become the 16th 'Soviet Socialist Republic' And then, in March, came the first coherent expression of opposition, when interectuals 'Declaration 78'. sugard many labour anything like Charter 77 but, as about the document was modelled on the Czechoslovak example. But it went far further politically.
in all the daily papers.
Discontent discontent attempts to impose stable one. The system of wage payment.
apparatus and there are resurgence the country healthy atheist tradition public published crimes of has never seen bureaucrats.
this declaration relate to basic civil rights; the right of freedom of movement; the establishment of a better relationship between prices and wages and a rise in state benefits; the creation of independent trade unions; the abolition of privilege; and the publication of the declaration spread other sections of society. In summer 1977 miners at Pernik went on strike and reports later tered out of working class at bureaucratic Not all the manifestations of opposition to bureaucratic rule are so positive. For example reports COl of religion (and pro-monarchist sentiments) ir with a long anc Whatever its more dramatic aspects, Markov's death may yet rebound if it makes workers in the West more aware of the the Bulgarian The important thing now is to make sure that it is not the right wing which makes the running, but the defenders of the bulgard works css aciviLes ove the of women southern Africa.
The trial of the Headers and the hanging of ANC Solomon Mahlangu need to be fought, especially by Socialist Challenge 12October 1978 Page 11
THE CRISIS in Iran shows few signs of abating. Last week four more students were shot dead in a street demonstration. They had been solidarising with the The following interview with Iranian Trotskyists provides further background to the events which are shaking the throne of the murderer who governs the
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ANTI-APARTHEID YEAR 1978-9 MARCH TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE