Communist Party Bulgaria

Five senior Socialists have quit the party of former Communists in protest against its unwillingness to change, the state news agency BTA reported. The party is in turmoil after it was forced by a month of street protests and strikes to give up its bid to continue governing and submit to elections in April--more than 1 1/2 years early. Among those who resigned were the chief of the parliamentary committee for foreign affairs and the nation's representative in the Council of Europe.

In weekend elections, Bulgaria joined Hungary and Poland as former Soviet Bloc countries where Communists have staged a comeback. With 97% of the votes counted, officials said the Socialists will command a majority of 125 seats in the 240-seat Parliament.

Todor Zhivkov, who was Bulgaria's Communist leader for 35 years, went on trial Monday on charges of misappropriating state funds and handing out cars and homes to friends and cohorts. Zhivkov, 79, is the first leader of a former East Bloc country to stand public trial since a wave of revolutions threw out Communist rulers in 1989. After the first day of the proceedings, he scorned the court and insisted that he is not guilty.

A speech by Vice President Dan Quayle turned into an anti-Communist rally Friday, with more than 20,000 Bulgarians waving American flags, shouting "U.S.A.!" and chanting "We don't want communism." "America is with you," Quayle, the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to visit Sofia, told the crowd that crammed the central Alexander Nevsky Square despite pouring rain.

About 50,000 Bulgarians took to the streets Monday to celebrate an opposition group's claim of victory in parliamentary elections that could oust the government of former Communists. "You are free! The age of communism in Bulgaria is over," said Filip Dmitrov, leader of the Union of Democratic Forces and its candidate for prime minister.

Parliament tentatively approved a law that would confiscate the property of the Socialist Party--the former Communists who ruled autocratically for more than four decades. The legislation was the first introduced by the anti-Communist Union of Democratic Forces after it won Bulgaria's general elections Oct. 13.

Communist Party leaders Wednesday began a series of meetings with opposition groups that could result in formation of a transitional government until free elections are held. Communist Party spokesman Ivan Angelov said that delegates from the Union of Democratic Forces, a group of opposition organizations, concentrated on discussing political reform during the three-hour meeting at the National Assembly, the BTA news agency reported.

The fear of Dimo Bodurov is the problem of Bulgaria and Eastern Europe itself as the region attempts to revive democracy. A petty entrepreneur in this small factory town, Bodurov in many ways is a man to be admired. He runs the local market and is an active member of the Ekoglasnost opposition group, one of many budding organizations that will challenge the ruling Communist Party as early as next May in Bulgaria's first free elections since 1946.

In the biggest public display of opposition to Communist rule ever staged in Bulgaria, tens of thousands of protesters crowded in front of the capital's main cathedral Sunday, shouting for the government's resignation and an end to the one-party state. The National Parliament is expected to vote today to abolish the Communist Party's leading role. The demonstration was the third major opposition protest rally since the fall of Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov last Nov.

In a move that virtually ends communism's ascendancy in the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria's Parliament on Monday voted overwhelmingly to abolish the leading role of the Communist Party. After less than an hour's debate, all but a handful of Parliament's 400 deputies voted in favor of a constitutional amendment that effectively ends the one-party state. The vote came two months after the former dictator, Todor Zhivkov, was deposed.