Completely out of the question. No one would have the authority to be able to create such a regime, least of all the demoralized Socialists. And this is discounting the fact that Bulgaria was firmly into the US sphere of influence almost immediately after democratic reforms began.What with how ambivalent many Bulgarians are about the country's Communist past, plus the problems of the 90s, I think Bulgaria regressing into some authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regime wasn't so far-fetched now that I think about it.
These two things are not the same. It was the EU admission that was popular and had difficult entry requirements. Bulgaria was going to almost certainly join NATO once the US government had made expansion in Eastern Europe a priority.The goals of NATO and EU membership helped keep the country on course, helped by the PMship of the committed Atlanticist and economic reformer Ivan Kostov, who is a politician I have a lot of time for despite him being well to my right.
Completely out of the question. No one would have the authority to be able to create such a regime, least of all the demoralized Socialists. And this is discounting the fact that Bulgaria was firmly into the US sphere of influence almost immediately after democratic reforms began.
These two things are not the same. It was the EU admission that was popular and had difficult entry requirements. Bulgaria was going to almost certainly join NATO once the US government had made expansion in Eastern Europe a priority.
As for Kostov being an economic reformer, I should only point that destroying something with the intention of building it up anew (but never doing so) has nothing to do with economic reform.
An authoritarian regime requires a dictator. Who exactly would have filled this role in the 1990s in Bulgaria?We're talking about a country which had last been a democracy (of sorts) in the early *1930s*, which all the lack of democratic traditions and institutions that that implies. Frankly, I think that Eastern Europe was very lucky to have *only* Belarus regress into authoritarianism.
I am strongly anti-NATO (though I support Bulgaria's membership for pragmatic reasons), but I don't see why you think that my opinion would show in what I wrote. NATO membership was never really popular compared with the EU and it's also true that requirements for NATO entry were easier compared to the EU. I don't think either of these statements is under dispute. And as NATO is dominated by the US, it's usually their opinion that matters and they were clearly supporting NATO's eastward expansion since the early 1990s.As for the NATO accession, I think you're letting your personal anti-NATO views color your opinions – I'm strongly pro-NATO, and I freely admit mine do. My parents weren't in Bulgaria at the time, but it's hard to believe that the country joined up if there was little domestic support for it.
Good for you. I was here at the time and I was old enough to understand what was happening. As for pegging the lev for the mark, this was a good move. However, this was an idea of the previous government which was adopted by Kostov (and he opposed it initially). What I counted as destruction was the incompetent, thoroughly corrupt privatization of industries and services carried out under his government.As for Kostov, as I said, neither me nor my parents were there at the time (me being just a small kid anyways), but pegging the lev to the mark really did help stabilize a desperate situation even by ex-Eastern Bloc standards. I count that as "reformism".
Um.Cleaned up the presidential election boxes a bit.
snip
That's nice butCleaned up the presidential election boxes a bit.
*snip*
Um.
Is this at Heat's request?
Because unless it is I'm not sure it's On.
That's nice but
well
did Heat ask you to clean them up or did you do this on your own volition? Because the latter is a bit of a faux pas.