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Bulgaria Through the Eyes of Foreigners During the 1960s
tional guests, to ensure broad promotion with respect to international tourism,
etc.” (IsDA 1948: 1). To this end, the number of well-equipped hotels and restau¬
rants had to increase, as well as that of ticket sales, information, and propaganda
outlets, and the enterprise had to put in place its own fleet of vehicles and prepare
selected individuals to be guides and interpreters by ensuring proper foreign-lan¬
guage training. Immediately after 1948, Bulgaria signed tourist agreements with
other socialist countries Czechoslovakia, Albania, Romania, the USSR, and the
GDR but it still lacked the well-developed infrastructure and personnel to provide
adequate service to the incoming tourists. In the 1950s, the atmosphere in the
country was rather hostile to them, and the term “foreigner” was often associated
with the term “spy”. The setting up of Balkantourist in the harsh political situation
at that time served purposes other than tourism: the company’s connections with
State Security, from the onset until 1990, were a public secret, and its employees,
regardless of their position, were all trustworthy, reliable, and loyal to the authori¬
ties (Ghodsee 2005: 92-96).
The political situation in Bulgaria slowly began to change after Joseph Stalin’s
death in 1953 and especially after 1956, the year of the Twentieth Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where Nikita Khrushchev read his famous
paper “On dealing with the personality cult and its consequences”. Soon after,
a similar paper was delivered at the April Plenum of the Central Committee of the
Bulgarian Communist Party by Todor Zhivkov.’ Even though at the April Plenum
itself no decisions were made for any drastic or purposeful steps toward overcom¬
ing authoritarianism in government or in political and cultural life, this was nev¬
ertheless seen as the starting point in the so-called defrosting process introducing
a certain degree of liberalization in the political regime. Zhivkov began introducing
a new generation of leaders in the mid-1960s, and political repression eased notice¬
ably. After consolidating his power, he made special efforts to change the policy of
the “stick” with that of the “carrot” in an attempt to attract the intelligentsia to the
government. The communist regime in Bulgaria paid attention to the consuming
of goods and services which had never happened during all the years since the
establishment of its power. The country gradually began to open up to the world
and one of its main goals became the export of products, which, in the spirit of
socialist competition and the idea of impressively demonstrating the achievements
and potential of the socialist system, had to be of the highest possible quality. In
the 1960s, the country became one of the biggest growers and exporters worldwide
of fruit and vegetables, silkworms, tobacco, and rose oil. However, one of its most
precious commodities—the fine sand along the Black Sea coast—could neither by
packed nor sold. The 200 kilometres of beach line, mostly virgin and unpopular
> Todor Zhivkov (1911-1998) became first secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1954. He
ruled the People’s Republic of Bulgaria for 35 years, until his ouster in 1989. He was the longest serving
leader in any of the Soviet-bloc nations of eastern Europe.
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