Dissidents Bulgaria

In an attempt to mend fences with reform-minded opposition groups here, the regime of new Bulgarian leader Petar Mladenov offered Tuesday to reinstate 11 key people expelled from the ruling Communist Party for their political activities. Included in the 11 are Georgy Tambuev, a journalist banished for writing a series of investigative articles about a corrupt rural prosecutor.

In an attempt to mend fences with reform-minded opposition groups here, the regime of new Bulgarian leader Petar Mladenov offered Tuesday to reinstate 11 key people expelled from the ruling Communist Party for their political activities. Included in the 11 are Georgy Tambuev, a journalist banished for writing a series of investigative articles about a corrupt rural prosecutor.

Like news traveling from a distant planet, the world-changing events in Eastern Europe have finally touched this isolated capital at the mountainous center of the Balkan Peninsula, wedged between ancient Macedonia and the Black Sea.

Like news traveling from a distant planet, the world-changing events in Eastern Europe have finally touched this isolated capital at the mountainous center of the Balkan Peninsula, wedged between ancient Macedonia and the Black Sea.

Bulgarian dissidents, struggling under one of Eastern Europe's most orthodox Communist governments, formed a group Wednesday to monitor human rights. Activist Anton Zapryanov said he and 11 others had founded the Helsinki Watch committee to check Bulgaria's compliance with the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Declaration on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Similar committees exist in Western European countries as well as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

More than 4,000 Bulgarians shouting "Democracy!" and "Glasnost!" rallied Friday outside the National Assembly in that country's first mass protest in four decades of Communist rule. The cheering but orderly crowd had joined a brief march organized by an unofficial ecology group to present lawmakers with a petition on environmental problems. "It was electrifying, the biggest sign of hope that seems to be mounting here," said one Western diplomat in the crowd.

More than 4,000 Bulgarians shouting "Democracy!" and "Glasnost!" rallied Friday outside the National Assembly in that country's first mass protest in four decades of Communist rule. The cheering but orderly crowd had joined a brief march organized by an unofficial ecology group to present lawmakers with a petition on environmental problems. "It was electrifying, the biggest sign of hope that seems to be mounting here," said one Western diplomat in the crowd.

Bulgarian dissidents, struggling under one of Eastern Europe's most orthodox Communist governments, formed a group Wednesday to monitor human rights. Activist Anton Zapryanov said he and 11 others had founded the Helsinki Watch committee to check Bulgaria's compliance with the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Declaration on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Similar committees exist in Western European countries as well as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.