Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume X, Eastern Europe

399. Telegram From the Embassy in Bulgaria to the Department of State¹

1435.

Sofia, March 22, 1988, 1356Z

SUBJECT

• Eastern Europe Restructuring: Sofia Perspective.

REF

• (A) 87 State 398186,²
• (B) Oslo 9059,³
• (C) State 52978,⁴
• (D) 87 EmbBerlin 5150,⁵
• (E) EmbBerlin 1213,⁶
• (F) State 403443,⁷
• (G) Budapest 1124,⁸
• (H) Paris 6379,⁹
• (I) Vienna 243,¹⁰
• (J) US NATO 801.¹¹

1. C—Entire text.

2. Summary. Embassy Sofia welcomes the invitation to the dance, but must regretfully decline a more recent invitation to the “csardas”, since that, or even a “mazurka” are presently not possible here. The local dance is the “horo”, and that seems just to go round and round, sometimes rapidly, but frequently with a back and forth variation. The January party conference, for example, confirmed the radical-sounding program of the July plenum, which had taken a big leap forward while undoing some of the 1986 round of reforms. At the same time, the conference enshrined the entire concept of reform in the traditional context of Zhivkov’s “April (1956) line” and thus carried forward the trend of recent months of giving restructuring and glasnost a more conservative, gradualist character. The impression is left that not much more in the way of reform is to be expected at present, barring more forward movement in Moscow or still unforeseeable Bulgarian personnel changes that would install a leadership better able to read and respond to the unsteady signals from Moscow.

3. From Embassy Sofia’s vantage point, prospects for genuine change look better in other, more developed Eastern European countries. For reasons historical and geographical, Bulgaria is set apart. These circumstances, too, will have an impact on a future under restructuring that even over the more manageable short term is clouded by many cross currents of politics and economics. The indications for U.S. policy are for making more and better of the same kind of efforts as now, under the policy of “differentiation”, while remaining alert to any opportunity for exerting leverage toward political liberalization that restructuring may offer. End summary.

Problem and Challenges of Restructuring

4. “Perestroyka” and “glasnost” represent a reform orientation, primarily in the USSR, that was long prescribed, but never really expected by most Western observers. So apparently fundamental a challenge to a inveterately conservative regime raises prospects of opportunity and uncertainty for Western policy that can hardly begin to be appreciated, even if the movement results in only partial changes, or fails altogether. The odds seem so heavily against the reformers that the question is not whether they will succeed, but what are the consequences of any partial success, or of failure—or what, in fact, may be let out of the box by the mere effort.

5. While only a month ago one could muse over the consequences of restructuring and glasnost for Eastern Europe, that exercise has been “OBE-ed”. Now one need look no further than the border republics of the USSR to see to what talk of liberalization in Moscow can portend. Can “Russian” nationalism really contemplate risking the loss of its hard-won gains in Eastern Europe, not to speak of those within the USSR? Or must not there be many “Karamzins” warning Gorbachev against tempering with a system that has won greatness for the empire, even at the cost of continued social and economic stagnation?

6. The corresponding dilemma in Eastern Europe—and Bulgaria—is not less intractable, nor the variables less complex. Over and above questions of Gorbachev’s consistency, and tenure, loom the overlapping constants of Eastern European history: geography, nationalism, culture and religion, and even differences of social and political attitudes. These greatly increase the risk and difficulty of Eastern European restructuring form the Soviet point of view. They would also, under any significant degree of autonomy, produce a new “Balkanization” of Eastern Europe that would gravely complicate East-West relations.

7. In light of these uncertainties, it makes little practical sense to project our outlook in specific policy terms beyond four to five years. Assuming that within this time frame, and presuming on Moscow’s indulgence, restructuring will enjoy a modicum of success in the region, one might expect an Eastern Europe characterized by a greater degree of economic diversity than exists today. Some countries would be richer and more developed, while others would lag further behind, given current relative levels of economic and social achievement. This would be the case especially should Gorbachev’s dictum that developments may differ, based on local conditions, be heeded. Economic diversity, moreover, would tend to promote political diversity.

8. This limited success scenario would indicate a more open policy environment in which diversity in government and society, both in terms of internal pluralism and foreign policy choices, perhaps even of “glasnost” and “democratization”, would permit interaction with Western and non-Western countries in more sophisticated economic and political ways. Some regimes might have more flexibility and subtlety in their policies than at present, and consequently an enhanced ability to deal constructively over a broad range of issues with the USG.

9. But even in the short run national economic priorities would emerge uppermost in intrabloc relations as competition among the Eastern European countries for scarce Western capital and trade opportunities sharpened, and that would promote the emergence of conflicting national political priorities. Pride in achievement, or hoped-for achievement, could heighten differences based on nationalism. Old wounds would reopen, and even irredentist sentiments might grow, as developments in the Caucasus so forcefully testify.

10. It thus could be argued with greater cogency that Moscow would find such centrifugal developments intolerably at odds with its more limited aim of rejuvenating communism, making it more productive and keeping it responsive to party direction. As events threatened to get out of hand, one might expect to see the quick restoration of centralized, bureaucratic, or even military control closely supervised by Moscow. In that event, small elites would continue to rule over populations burdened with stagnant living standards based on obsolescent economies, the productivity of which would increasingly lag behind those of the West.

11. Disillusionment could quicken into even more dissatisfaction. Anger at the system might grow among the more assertive, such as the Poles and Hungarians, and among all intellectuals and many professionals, while fear for their status and power would increase among the rulers, both in Eastern Europe and in Moscow. This “failure scenario” of restructuring would point to continued polarization, regression, and eventually even crisis in East-West relations.

The Balkan Factor

12. Neither the scenarios depicted above, nor the U.S. policy choices they imply are likely to occur so starkly in Bulgaria. While on paper Bulgaria’s may be among the most impressive sets of reforms, at least in the economic and administrative spheres, the BCP is dragging its feet on glasnost and democratization. It carefully modulates its rhetoric while keeping a close eye on shifting developments in Moscow, and Bulgarian officials from Zhivkov to the MFA desk officer will candidly admit that democratization and glasnost, even Soviet style, are not yet for Bulgaria.

13. Both this conservatism and the special relationship to the Soviet Union relate to the peculiar circumstances of Bulgaria’s history and geography. Bulgaria is an Eastern European country by virtue of its membership in the Warsaw Pact and CEMA and by its “social system” and ideology. It is at the same time, however, a Balkan country, with a different set of baggage, and playing in a different game with different rules from those of the countries of North-Central Europe.

14. As a Balkan country, Bulgaria is a latecomer to the modern community of European nations. Poor, politically and socially underdeveloped, it emerged into nationhood from Ottoman rule more the result of European power politics than its own efforts. After its independence, it failed ever to establish any stable political consensus internally, and experienced foreign affairs mostly as a dismal series of quarrels and futile wars with its neighbors over quixotic, irredentist goals. A major consequence for Bulgaria has been a weakly developed sense of national identity, low national self-confidence, and uncertainty about its place in the world.

15. In addition, Bulgaria operates in a much more complex strategic environment than that of its more northerly neighbors, whose role is largely defined by their location on the traditional east-west invasion route where Western and Eastern security concerns are of a different level and kind. This requires Bulgaria to perform a complex international role, which must, moreover, be played out in a community of very diverse countries whose relations represent not only a more subtle regional interplay of the two alliances’ interests, but which also have more scope individually to pursue their own sharply clashing claims and interests. This is the arena in which Bulgaria must fulfill its obligations to the Soviets while at the same time pursuing its own, regional goals.

16. These circumstances severely complicate Bulgaria’s choices—in its relations with the USSR and other countries of the East Bloc and with the U.S., as well as in the matter of internal restructuring. Bulgaria views its ties with the USSR as a client-patron relationship. It has aggravated that dependency, however, by pursuing regional policies that irritate its larger neighbors, at least up until the recent Balkan Foreign Ministers meeting in Belgrade. Bulgaria adopted a more conciliatory stance at that meeting as a champion of Balkan cooperation, which it dramatized by concluding a protocol with Turkey intended to upgrade their bilateral relationship on the eve of the meeting. While it is still too early to judge whether that protocol and other conciliatory statements at the meeting portend any real measures to improve relations by alleviating the Turkish minority problem through family reunification, there can be little doubt that Bulgaria is promoting Soviet interests in the Balkans as well as its own. This aspect of its policy most likely focuses in addition on newly emergent Albania, as well as the GOB’s continuing intrigues and overtures to Yugoslavia and its courtship of Greece. This special role as representative of Soviet interests in the Balkans, reinforced by nationalistic predilections, creates a bond with the USSR that would be hard to loosen under any conceivable scenario of restructuring in the near term. That bond, of course, is strengthened further by the fact that Bulgaria considers the USSR the ultimate guarantor of its territorial integrity and, in extremis, of its national survival.

17. As to the rest of Eastern Europe, there is little likelihood of spinoff from developments in Bulgaria, given its many differences from those countries. Bulgaria’s Balkan identity also limits its possibilities for broader relations with the U.S., quite apart from the vitality of the special relationship with the USSR and despite the GOB’s professed desire especially to expand commercial relations with the U.S. Bulgaria’s isolation until very late from the events of nineteenth century Europe that prompted emigration to the U.S. means that it lacks the multiplicity of historic ties and interests with the U.S., based on large ethnic communities in that country, such as the Poles and others enjoy. Bulgaria’s economic relations with the U.S. have traditionally been marginal, and Bulgaria lacks those shared Western political and social values that resulted from earlier development, in closer contact with the West, of such countries as Czechoslovakia and Hungary. On the U.S. side there is less ability to support those values, even to the meager extent they exist in Bulgaria. Thus any American policy seeking to encourage the seeds of restructuring and glasnost in Bulgaria and to nudge those developments toward greater liberalization starts on much rockier soil.

U.S. Security and Political Interests

18. Nevertheless, it is precisely in its Balkan aspect that Bulgaria is of most interest to the United States. On the negative side, US policy aims at blunting Bulgarian effectiveness as a Soviet cat’s-paw in an area where by dint of great effort Soviet expansionism has been contained. This effort has aimed appropriately at keeping southeastern NATO allies Greece and Turkey well-armed and amicable; Yugoslavia solvent and nonaligned; and Romania a Warsaw Pact gadfly. Only Albania’s impartially hostile neutrality, the last stone in the dike blocking free Soviet basing of forces on the Mediterranean, has come cheap for U.S. policy.

19. On the positive side, Bulgarian geography dictates a policy of pressing the GOB for greater cooperation in a number of fields, not the least being narcotics interdiction and the movement of terrorists. These aims—plus a desire to limit the effects of Bulgaria’s courtship of Greece and overtures toward Albania, to lessen the tensions between Bulgaria and Turkey, and to reduce Bulgaria’s threat as a Soviet proxy to Yugoslavia—are all excellent reasons for active USG engagement with Bulgaria. They also require USG support for such forms of Balkan cooperation as the Belgrade foreign ministers’ meeting in which Bulgaria can be drawn into a more pluralistic regional cooperation and consultations environment not wholly dominated by Warsaw Pact goals.

Restructuring in Bulgaria: Limits and Perspectives

20. Bulgaria has felt the same pressures for economic reform as its more advanced neighbors to the north: stagnant growth, low productivity and the incapacity of its rigid economic structure for technological innovation; increasingly exigent Soviet demands for better grade performance; and growing loss of confidence by the people that the system can improve their lives. Bulgaria’s responses have also been similar to those of other East Bloc countries. Economic administration has been decentralized, centralized planning and trade relaxed, and pricing and foreign currency rules reformed in an effort to introduce “self-management” by firms and encourage economic creativity. On paper, it all looks more radical than reform elsewhere in Eastern Europe, but to the extent it has been implemented it was haphazard and hasty enough to draw criticism from Gorbachev and lead to confusion and production slowdowns. At the January national party conference, Zhivkov underscored the conservative tendency of recent months to backpedal and to identify restructuring with the traditional “line” of the April (1956) plenum that brought him to full power. Journalists and officials here have been publicly rebuked recently for overstepping the narrow local bounds of glasnost. The leadership gives the appearance of having settled back into doing what it likes best—making the minimal substantive change possible and packaging it as the maximum.

21. Moreover, this is not a situation likely to change pending the departure of Zhivkov, who shows no inclination to retire soon despite his broaching at the party conference the possibility of splitting his party and state leadership functions and placing limits on terms of service. He also has the succession question under such firm control that it is not possible, except in the most speculative way, to identify any leading contender. The only other plausible impetus toward change would have to come from the Soviets, since even when Zhivkov is succeeded it will not necessarily be by a proponent of reform. It is not clear from Sofia’s vantage point, moreover, that Gorbachev is ready yet to push harder for the replacement of such guarantors of stability in the East Bloc as Zhivkov, the Husak example notwithstanding.

Implications for U.S. Policy

22. Despite the continued obstacles to any basic liberalization in Bulgaria in particular and in Eastern Europe in general, that has, nonetheless, been a major U.S. policy goal. American policy makers should be poised to take advantage of any opportunity to press toward that end that restructuring may offer. The problems, especially in Bulgaria, are daunting. The low level of political development in Bulgarian society—in fact, the stagnation under Zhivkov—combined with the absence of real opportunity for economic reorientation toward the U.S. or the West in an economy in which eighty per cent of foreign trade is with CEMA, including sixty per cent with the USSR, offer little purchase for our policy measures.

23. For its part, the U.S. cannot offer Bulgaria sufficient incentive to break out of that East Bloc grip. There is too little interest on the part of American business in going to the trouble, in a setting posing so many difficulties for trade transactions, to pursue the few opportunities that exist for expanding trade in those items not ruled out by COCOM restrictions. An analogous argument works against scientific and technical cooperation: even in those areas where it is possible, there is too little payoff to interest the American private sector. There can also be marked reluctance on the Bulgarian side to expand cooperation, as the Embassy has discovered in trying to sell the idea of drug abuse treatment and prevention exchanges. The GOB remains very wary of entering into any arrangement that might expose sensitive weaknesses in the society.

24. Thus any real upturn in either economic or scientific-technical relations would require a basic U.S. decision that the increase has sufficient bearing on the national interest for the U.S. to take the lead. If so justified, it would be necessary to review the policy of telling the GOB it must work directly with American firms. But with the difficulty of identifying potential concrete gains in Bulgaria that would make such efforts worthwhile, the argument against increased U.S. effort on behalf of Bulgarian restructuring gains strength, and the “horo” comes back around again.

25. Yet, if only to preserve the framework of the policy of differentiation, U.S. diplomacy must not neglect even the slender prospects that restructuring in Bulgaria may present over the short run. The Bulgarians have expressed readiness for openness to the West, and we should seek opportunities to expand it. The progress in our bilateral relations over the past two years from the days when the Embassy was fenced off from the public by metal barriers until now, when there is perceptible forward movement in dialogue on such issues as narcotics and terrorism, argues for that much. Whether from “restructuring” or from our success in inducing Bulgaria to improve relations with us, the Embassy now has more and better access. Any increase in that access attendant on restructuring, and there has been some increase, would make it possible to press harder for the kind of exchanges needed to open Bulgaria and the East more to U.S. ideas and values; to promote more effectively and refine across the board the U.S. CSCE agenda on human rights, contacts, and emigration; and to move from political dialogue to expanded political interaction in which the U.S. could more persuasively press on all issues, including East-West issues. It might then be possible, for example, to exert more suasion, if not leverage, on such problems as name-calling votes at the U.N., GOB’s uncritical support for radical states and Soviet policies in areas of the world where Bulgaria has little objective interest, and GOB support for terrorist states and groups.

26. Concretely, in the case of Bulgaria, the U.S. might take small, but significant steps to lessen the Soviet stranglehold over the Bulgarian economy dramatized by the “joint scientific-production enterprises.” USDOC and other agencies could, in fact, be more supportive of the Bulgarian-American Trade Council and business contacts, primarily through greater attention to trade fairs, exhibits, and such exchanges as those involving management training, dissemination of information, and identification of trade opportunities.
Similarly in the area of scientific-technical exchanges the Department of State could coordinate efforts of the relevant agencies to help identify those non-controversial areas such as ecology and AIDS that correspond to emerging GOB official and popular concerns, and would capture public attention. Without fanning Bulgarian nationalism, USIA could devise programs to acknowledge positive aspects of Bulgarian culture in events, customs, and holidays, and cultural achievements that would build on basic popular goodwill toward the United States.

27. On another level, serious attention should be paid to new developments in Balkan politics centering on the Belgrade meeting. Bulgaria claims to have played a major role there on such issues as guns, drugs and terrorism; something the U.S. should continue to encourage. True, much of the GOB behavior in that forum, as in others, is in support of the Soviets. But the role gives Bulgaria responsibilities and perhaps some latitude in shaping its own policies in accordance with its own national interests. The U.S. should hold the Bulgarians to the former while encouraging them toward the latter.

28. More specifically, U.S. near-term goals in dealing with the GOB should be to achieve concrete results, as seen in:

— real economic reform, measured by trade performance, before the U.S. reconsiders its position on GATT;

— a more candid and independent approach in international forums on non-Eastern European concerns;

— the continuation of the relative truce in the GOB’s vituperative anti-U.S. media treatment;

— better access at all levels and in all areas of Bulgarian society;

— routinization of family reunification, emigration and foreign travel;

— marked progress toward implementation of international standards of human rights;

— a more prompt address to Embassy administrative problems, including providing an adequate chancery site and construction facilitation; and

— meaningful and increasing cooperation against international terrorism and narcotics and arms trafficking.

While even under the best of circumstances, progress in these areas is bound to be uneven and incomplete, it could be made in all of them without running counter to any truly fundamental Bulgarian national interests. Thus the foregoing goals are realistic targets to shoot for and against which to measure progress.

29. As for the Soviets, they could be left to read the non-radical, non-threatening nature of U.S. policy in Bulgaria, and in Eastern Europe generally, in the openness and consistency of its application. In fact, it would also apply to them in general terms, with details tailored to the USSR’s specific situation. The Soviets are aware, if only from the USG’s persistent pursuit of CSCE goals, that what the U.S. wants is a more open and humane Eastern Europe, but the USG could discuss it with them again in regard to the Soviet Union and our bilateral interests. There is, in fact, ideological and even geopolitical challenge in this posture—there is a call to Moscow to show whether it can adapt its institutions to compete economically and politically with those of free countries, and whether it can maintain its influence in Eastern Europe and elsewhere by means other than coercion, whether veiled or overt. The Soviets’ dilemma, however, is of their own making; the choice between the maintenance of the system as it has evolved and the flexibility and openness necessary to stem its decline is not one we can make. They must choose the appropriate balance of risk and gain consistent with their means and their desire fully to enter the community of modern countries.

30. Conclusion: This approach toward fuller bilateralization of U.S. relations in Eastern Europe in general and in Bulgaria in particular—as restructuring may permit—offers U.S. diplomacy the opportunity to be engaged without meddling—to encourage those striving toward normalization of bilateral and multilateral relations, as well as of their own lives—without provoking either reaction or crisis. It puts the USG, above all, on the right side of any crisis-change situation, as one dancer has already noted, and it would effectively counter in all of Europe Gorbachev’s claim to be the leader of progress as the purveyor of “new thinking”. It might even make the “horo” less monotonous someday.

31. The Ambassador has seen earlier drafts but not this version of the foregoing message.

32. Moscow and Leningrad minimize considered.

Rickert

1. Source: Reagan Library, Rudolf Perina Files, Bulgaria—Substance 1988; NLR–422–1–15–9–6. Confidential.
2. See Document 52.
3. The text of telegram 9059 from Oslo, December 18, 1987, was repeated in telegram 396379 to multiple posts, December 23, 1987. See Document 51.
4. Telegram 52978 to all European posts, February 20, encouraged more Eastern European posts to respond to the Department‘s December 1987 request in telegram 398186 for dialogue regarding the region. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D880663–0213)
5. Reference telegram number is incorrect.
6. Telegram 1213 from East Berlin, March 8, encouraged other Eastern European posts to respond to the suggestion of the Embassy in Budapest of a six-category framework for U.S.-European relations (see Document 343) and determine its feasibility in the individual countries. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D880202–0831)
7. Reference telegram number is incorrect.
8. See Document 343.
9. Telegram 6379 from Paris, February 19, reported that while the Embassy supported the U.S. policy of engagement with Eastern Europe and differentiation, it did not expect much to come of it. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D880146–0434)
10. Reference telegram number is incorrect.
11. Telegram 801 from the mission to NATO, February 10, reported on Whitehead’s presentation to the North Atlantic Council. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D880117–0395)