Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World

Soviet bloc policy since the establishment of the Warsaw Treaty Organization in May 1955 was coordinated by the Kremlin on the principle of a ‘distribution of tasks’ amongst its smaller Eastern European allies. The primary aim of that ‘coordinative framework’ was focused towards the ‘main adversary’ – the USA and NATO – and towards Europe in general. Thus, Bulgarian foreign and security policy was oriented on the southern flank of the two military blocs – the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. Due to its geopolitical position and historical legacy within an Islamic empire, Bulgaria was also assigned the task of maintaining a more active policy in the Middle East. In the 1960s and the 1970s, Sofia became more involved with support for various leftist regimes and front organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The global nature of the bipolar IR model during the Cold War era logically determined such long-distance involvements in military and political conflicts. At the height of the decolonization process, between 1955 and 1965, the countries of what was known as ‘Black Africa’ became a new significant target, and during the Indochina War, Vietnam and Laos also became recipients of large amounts of military, economic and humanitarian aid. Latin American countries (except Cuba) began to be a significant target for the Bulgarian leadership only after 1970.

While Warsaw Pact countries pursued fairly independent policy initiatives in the spheres of economic and cultural cooperation with the Third World, military and security policy was more ‘sensitive’ and was thus subject to confidential joint coordination in advance. The aim of this study is limited to the discussion of this highly sensitive area: the ‘special’ Bulgarian military and humanitarian aid and sales delivered to various governments and non-governmental actors in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The chapter is based on a huge variety of newly declassified Bulgarian political, governmental, diplomatic, military and intelligence records that have been the subject of this author's study over the previous two decades.¹ While the Third World military conflicts and political and economic bilateral relations with Third World countries have been discussed in various Bulgarian publications, the particular case of the delivery of military and humanitarian aid to those countries from Sofia has thus far been lacking, both in international and national Bulgarian historiography.

The first case of Bulgaria's involvement outside of Europe took the form of humanitarian support for North Korea during the 1950–3 Korean War. A small and undeveloped agrarian country, postwar Bulgaria could not contribute substantially with any concrete assistance; its support was required by Moscow rather as a symbolical moral gesture in favour of Stalin's and Mao Zedong's backing for North Korea. In 1952–6, Bulgaria sent two ‘medical brigades’ of about 60 physicians in total to North Korea under the flag of the Bulgarian Red Cross. In the 1952 campaign, for only four months, about 1,174,000 items of clothing and a large amount of food products worth BGN 52 million were collected in Bulgaria; they were transported by 60 freight wagons through Romania, the Soviet Union and China. In 1953–6, the Bulgarian Government also delivered free technical and economic aid for the postwar recovery of North Korea to the tune of about RUB80 million, including two factories. The communist regime in Bulgaria used the two public campaigns ‘in support of the fighting Korean nation’ in 1951 and 1952 for a wider psychological mobilization of its population ‘against American imperialism’.²

With the exception of North Korea, Bulgaria's military and humanitarian assistance to Third World countries began at the height of the decolonization process in the late 1950s and early 1960s, reaching its peak in the mid-1970s.³ A fundamental distinction should be drawn, however, between military aid to clandestine national-liberation movements and arms supply to independent governments through official bilateral agreements. Still, it is very difficult to give a universal definition and determine precisely the exact typology of terrorism since modern and contemporary history shows so many examples of illegal armed movements that formed future ruling elites, and whose leaders and commanders become respectful presidents or prime ministers of their newly established states. In the bipolar postwar world, the logic of Bulgaria's support sometimes followed a simple principle of ‘the enemy of our enemy is our friend’. This logic became even more complicated in the mid-1960s as the split between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China added a third contender for influence in the Third World.

Until the 1950s, Soviet bloc countries did not pay any special attention to the Middle East. Until 1952, Bulgaria supported the ‘struggle of the new Jewish state against British imperialism and reactionary Islamic empires’ like other communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Soviet policy towards Israel and Arab reaction was reflected in the words of Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, the king of Transjordan, who in 1951 warned about ‘the Russian-Jewish threat to the Arab world’.⁴ Initial tensions in Israeli–Bulgarian relations appeared only in the summer of 1955, when a Bulgarian Air Forces pilot shot down an Israeli civilian aeroplane that had crossed from Yugoslavia into Bulgarian air space in error. The investigation that followed proved that the incident was not a premeditated action but a pilot error, caused mainly by the psychological confrontational atmosphere of a ‘war of nerves’ between the two blocs.⁵ A radical change in policy came only after the Soviet Union and its allies backed Egypt following the coming to power of radical nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser in February 1954, followed by the Suez Crisis.

However, Bulgaria's first delivery of military aid to an Arab nation was for the National Liberation Front (FLN) who fought for the independence of Algeria from France during the 1958–62 Algerian War. On 19 August 1958, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) Politburo adopted a Ministry of Defence proposal to send material aid to the FLN. In January 1959, material aid for the Algerian rebels was transported via Tunisia. The first arms delivery was transported by sea in July 1960. A second, secret, resolution for arms delivery to the FLN through Morocco was signed on 3 November 1960. On 19 November, the commercial ship Bulgaria, with 1,800 tonnes of weaponry and ammunition on board, ran a French naval blockade and reached the Moroccan port of Tangiers. In January of the next year, another arms delivery, worth BGN 700,000, was sent to the FLN along with three Bulgarian military instructors. The Algerian national-liberation army headquarters requested help to organize a secret base on Bulgarian territory for the delivery of armaments from the Warsaw Pact countries. After consultations with Moscow, the Bulgarian political leadership accepted the proposal. On 15 March 1961, BCP First Secretary Todor Zhivkov addressed confidential letters on the matter to his colleagues Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania, Walter Ulbricht in East Germany, János Kádár in Hungary, Władisław Gomułka in Poland and Antonín Novotný in Czechoslovakia because ‘it was a common issue of the competence of all Warsaw Pact allies’. After about a month, positive responses were received from all these Eastern European leaders.⁶ A few years later, Zhivkov explained in a confidential conversation with Raul Castro in Sofia that ‘the [FLN] staff for providing the weaponry from the socialist countries for the Algerian insurgents was in Bulgaria’.⁷ In 1962–3, the Bulgarian Government approved several other resolutions for the delivery of free military and material aid to the provisional Algerian government, and dispatched a large number of technical experts and a military medical brigade of 20 physicians.⁸ In 1963–5, more than 400 young Algerian cadets received education or training at Bulgarian Air Force and Land Forces military schools.⁹

Soon after the Suez Crisis of 1956, contacts between Bulgaria and some Arab nationalist regimes became more intensive. The Middle East conflict was viewed by Soviet bloc experts as part of the global Cold War confrontation, and a direct result of the USA's attempt to dominate the region through the Eisenhower Doctrine. A mass anti-US campaign started in Eastern Europe after the landing of US and British marines and paratroopers in Lebanon and Jordan in the summer of 1958. During this campaign, both the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence and the Central Committee (CC) of the BCP received many requests from dismissed officers insisting to be sent as ‘volunteers to support the struggle of the Arab people’.¹⁰

Bulgaria developed an ever-growing interest towards the Middle East crisis because of its proximity to the region. Despite the fact that the Bulgarian leadership was clearly suspicious about the true positions, intentions and goals of some Arab leaders like Nasser in Egypt or, later on, Hafiz al-Assad and Saddam Hussein in Syria and Iraq respectively, it provided military assistance and permitted the establishment of official contacts with the state-security services in those countries. Zhivkov's initial attitude towards Nasser was sceptical, as is clear from his statement at a CC BCP plenary session on 2 October 1958:

Nasser is a nationalist, a military person, without necessary political and life experience, and with the ambitions of a dictator. He perhaps believes that life is something of a military barracks and that he can command and lead the people in whatever direction he wishes.¹¹

Attitudes towards Nasser, however, changed slowly in Sofia over the next few years, influenced mostly by the Kremlin's closeness to the Egyptian leader.

The decision to begin arms deliveries to Middle East governments was made in 1959 with the signature of the first CC BCP Politburo resolution on the matter on 15 May 1959.¹² One of the reasons was that Bulgaria had a surplus of Soviet and Bulgarian-made small arms left from a radical reduction of the armed forces in 1956–9 and, according to a politburo discussion from May 1960, these arms should be sold to Third World countries like Iraq, the United Arab Republic (UAR), Indonesia and Ghana.¹³ In January 1962, a Syrian military delegation visited Sofia. The head of the delegation raised the question of delivery of military equipment for strengthening the ‘defence capacity of the Syrian armed forces against the hostile neighbouring countries Israel and Turkey’. The Syrian leadership formulated its request in four main points: to assist in the delivery of Soviet and Czech planes, tanks, missiles, artillery pieces, etc., which were not produced in Bulgaria; to deliver Bulgarian-made military equipment to Syria; to train pilots and paratroopers, assist in the establishment of an Air Forces school in Syria; and to participate in the build-up of Syrian military airfields, command posts, depots, repairs bases, etc. This request was immediately transferred to the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Presidium, and very soon Moscow informed Sofia that ‘the question had been resolved positively in principle’. On 25 January 1962, the CC BCP Politburo approved a special secret resolution on the matter. Over the following years, Bulgaria participated in the construction of Syrian airfields near Damascus, Dmer and Tifor, and of a naval base in Latakia.¹⁴

Despite some misunderstandings and mutual suspicions at the beginning, Bulgaria's relations with Arab countries grew in the 1960s. In 1963, a new agreement for the delivery of military equipment to the UAR was signed.¹⁵ In June–July 1963, the CC BCP Secretariat and Council of Ministers approved additional resolutions for free arms delivery to the Yemen Arab Republic.¹⁶ In February 1965, a Bulgarian ship delivered to the Yemeni port of Hodeyda weapons and military equipment worth approximately BGN 800,000 (about US$500,000). In November 1965, a Bulgarian official delegation, led by Prime Minister Todor Zhivkov, visited Cairo and discussed with Nasser, Field Marshal Amer and other Egyptian leaders the prospects for the enlargement of bilateral relations. A few months later, a Syrian delegation, led by Prime Minister Youssef Zuein, visited Sofia. Amongst the members of this delegation was General Hafiz al-Assad, then Syrian defence minister.

At the end of October 1966, a Bulgarian military delegation, headed by the defence minister General Dobri Dzhurov, paid a visit to the UAR. On 31 October, the two sides signed a long-term bilateral agreement on military equipment for the period 1967–71 in Cairo. However, ratification of the agreement was postponed until late May 1967, and thus the arms and ammunitions did not arrive in the UAR before the Six Day War in June.¹⁷ In October 1966, Bulgaria and the UAR signed another protocol – this one for training Egyptian officers and exchanging observers during military exercises carried out in both countries.¹⁸ Only the protocol was made public; the agreement for arms delivery was kept secret. Therefore, in a telegram from 2 November 1966, the US diplomatic representative in Sofia, John McSweeney, informed Washington that ‘General Dzhurov visit to UAR was only return for UAR defense minister visit last March’, and did not confirm the rumours of ‘shipments of military equipment’.¹⁹

Bulgaria's commitment to Arab countries aggravated its official relations with Israel. The Bulgarian Government was seriously perturbed by a few preventative sanctions from the ‘frontline’ Arab countries against some Bulgarian foreign-trade companies such as its national airline, TABSO, and the Bulgarian merchant fleet because of their contacts with some Israeli companies. In a report to the CC BCP Politburo in May 1965, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivan Bashev suggested a ‘clarification of the Bulgarian policy toward Israel in the light of Bulgarian-Arab relations’. The main conclusion in the report was: ‘The political and economic interests of our country with the Arab world demand Bulgaria to determine its relations with Israel in frames that could not hamper its economic cooperation with the Arab countries.’ On 6 July 1965, the Bulgarian leadership approved a resolution, which prescribed that trade with Israel be managed by a separate organization in order to avoid ‘direct contacts with Israeli companies’, and that cultural and sporting contacts be limited to a small number of individual visits.²⁰ From 1966 to early 1967, Bulgarian diplomatic missions in Damascus, Cairo and Tel Aviv sent a large number of reports and cipher telegrams regarding increasing tension in Israeli–Arab relations and border incidents.²¹ Reports from Arab capitals increasingly discussed the indicators of total ‘war psychosis’ and the increase of everyday claims against Israeli ‘border provocations’.²²

During the Six Day War in June 1967, Bulgaria decisively backed the Arab countries. On 13 June, the Bulgarian Government adopted a secret decision for the immediate delivery of free military aid to Syria, and a week later the CC BCP Secretariat approved a proposal for providing humanitarian aid (medical goods, food, clothes, etc.) to the Arab nations worth more than BGN 1 million.²³ On 18 July 1967, the CC BCP Politburo discussed proposals made in a report by the ministers of foreign affairs and foreign trade, and approved a secret resolution for ‘extending […] contacts with the Arab countries’. Defence Minister Dzhurov was entrusted with the task of designing a new programme for ‘increasing […] collaboration with the Defense ministries in the UAR, Syria, and Algeria’. Amongst the measures recommended were increases in the size of arms deliveries and in the number of Arab officers admitted into Bulgarian military schools.²⁴ According to an additional proposal, the Bulgarian military and economic aid and loans that were to be delivered to the Arab states after the Six Day War exceeded the sum of BGN 22 million. On 27 September, the Council of Ministers approved a secret decision for additional arms sales to Syria, on credit, amounting to US$5 million for a period of eight years at 2.5 per cent interest per year.²⁵ On 28 June 1970, the governments of Bulgaria and Syria signed a new secret agreement for armaments delivery.²⁶

The Six Day War radically changed the Soviet bloc position towards the Middle East conflict in favour of stronger and more categorical support of the Arab cause and a long-term break in bilateral relations with Israel. The main reasons for such a sharp turn were due to the domination of a general schematic communist vision of local conflicts throughout the world as outcomes of the global bipolar Cold War confrontation. The world arena was viewed in the light of only two, ‘anti-imperialist’ and ‘pro-imperialist’, alternatives. Unlike some other Eastern European nations (like Hungary in the early 1950s, Poland in the 1960s and Czechoslovakia after the ‘Prague Spring’), however, there were no anti-Jewish official or public manifestations in communist Bulgaria. Amongst the reasons for this were the full integration of the Sephardic Jewish community within Bulgarian society since the Ottoman period, a relative tolerance towards religion and also the fact that some party functionaries and intellectuals of Jewish origin held influential positions amongst the communist elite. Therefore, state-sponsored propaganda and the ideological struggle against Zionism expressed by some joint Soviet bloc directives was expressed in Bulgaria not in ethnic or national terms but rather as a substantial part of the struggle against the ‘Imperialist reactionary ideology’. However, Bulgaria's rupture in diplomatic relations with Israel on 10 June 1967 terminated any official contacts between the two states for about 20 years.

The governmental changes in Egypt after Nasser's death in 1970 were carefully observed in Sofia. The attitude towards the new Egyptian Government was reflected by Zhivkov in a special report on the international situation, delivered at a Communist Party plenary session in October 1971. The report pointed out the contradiction of Egyptian leaders speaking about war against Israel while experts underlined the unpreparedness of the armed forces of ‘frontline’ Arab countries. Zhivkov shared information on the state of the Egyptian Army: ‘Soviet comrades, who are very well aware of the real situation, informed us that the Arabs have not yet overcome the fear of tanks and aircraft’ and ‘they could be defeated’ in eventual hostilities in the near future. Therefore, the Soviet position was ‘to withhold the Arabs from fighting’.²⁷ Very soon, however – in December 1971 – the Bulgarian Government approved a new agreement for arms delivery to Egypt.²⁸

In July 1972, a few months after Zhivkov's visit to Syria and Egypt, the Bulgarian Government adopted a special programme for the development of relations with the Arab countries with a special emphasis on arms delivery. Its key elements included a pledge of ‘strengthening and expanding the relations between the Ministry of People's Defense and the War Ministry of the Arab Republic of Egypt, seeking ways for influence and consolidation of the positions of the progressive forces in the Egyptian army’. The programme also outlined steps to expand relations with the Syrian Ministry of Defence by increasing the quantity of delivered ‘special equipment’, and measures to activate military cooperation with Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan. Particular attention was paid to enhancing military relations with Iraq and PDR (the People's Democratic Republic of) Yemen:

Taking into consideration the important role, played by the armies in Arab countries, the Ministry of People's Defense shall consolidate and expand their relations with their counterparts in Iraq, in order to strengthen the positions of progressive forces in the Iraqi army […] The Ministry of People's Defense shall expand their relations with the Ministry of Defense of PDR Yemen and deliver support to strengthen their armed forces.²⁹

Despite cautionary warnings from Soviet military advisors, on 6 October 1973 the armed forces of Syria and Egypt attacked Israel's positions in Arab territories that it had occupied in June 1967. The Iraqi Army became involved in the conflict with three divisions. Later, during a discussion with Zhivkov, Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al Bakr claimed that it had been Egypt's President Anwar Sadat who had made the decision to commence hostilities, without giving them (the Iraqis) notice. According to some authors, Soviet leaders were aware of the preparation of an Egyptian–Syrian attack two days prior to the beginning of hostilities.³⁰ Bulgaria's involvement in the October 1973 war included the organization of an urgent sea and air lift to the Middle East with the code name ‘Operation Danube’. From 11 to 30 October 1973, Bulgaria delivered to the Arab states 3,799 tonnes of armaments, ammunition and military equipment worth BGN 20 million. Of these, armaments, ammunition and equipment at a cost of BGN 5,145,860 were delivered to Syria by the Ministry of Defence. An additional 5,000 tonnes of armaments, ammunition and equipment were transferred via Bulgarian Black Sea ports on behalf of Poland.³¹ A report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Cairo from December 1973 analysed some lessons learned from the October War and its impact on the status of the Egyptian armed forces. The document underlined:

According to the experts, only officers ranking from brigadier and below possesses modern military thinking. This is due both to the work of Soviet military specialists and to the fact that along with Soviet weapons, the majority of the army adopted Soviet tactics. On the other hand, the senior command is old and unwilling to change. Specialization of general officers in various military schools has not brought positive results. The war in October proved that senior military leadership refused to adopt the Soviet military doctrine and is still a slave to the old ideas from the English schools during World War II. This was the reason for some gross errors of [a] strategic nature during the fighting in October. In this respect, Egyptian generals are far behind compared to the younger, more flexible and modern Israeli generals.³²

The aggravation of Egypt's relations with Moscow and the Soviet bloc countries in the mid-1970s led logically to the reduction and eventual cessation of Bulgarian–Egyptian cooperation in the military field. The final agreement for arms delivery to Egypt was approved by the Bulgarian Government on 30 June 1975.³³ It was coincidental that on 30 June the Egyptian foreign minister, Ismail Fahmi, had a three-hour confidential talk with the Bulgarian ambassador to Cairo, Petar Vutov. Fahmi delivered a personal letter from Sadat to Zhivkov, and requested several times Bulgarian ‘mediation’ in deteriorating Soviet–Egyptian relations. Ambassador Vutov remarked on Fahmi's proposal in his report thus: ‘I believe there is blackmailing and pressing the USSR, in order to receive military and economic support and increase Sadat's value while flirting with the Americans.’³⁴ Just three years later (soon after the ‘Camp David deal’), a fabricated incident involving an attack by an Egyptian police team on the Bulgarian Embassy in Cairo led to a break in political and economic cooperation between Bulgaria and Egypt for several years. The provocative action of the Egyptian authorities led to the withdrawal of Bulgarian diplomatic personnel from Cairo, and was qualified in Sofia as the last straw in the process of ‘de-Nasserisation’ of the country.³⁵

Military, political and economic contacts with Iraq became more intensive after General Hassan al Bakr came to power in 1968. Cables sent from the Bulgarian Embassy in Baghdad in 1969 for the first time informed Sofia about the increasing influence of Saddam Hussein, who gradually and quietly replaced the sick President al Bakr over the following years in order to concentrate absolute power in his hands ten years later.³⁶ While in 1967 Bulgaria sold military equipment to Iraq valued at only BGN 324,000, by 1968 its arms supply to Iraq had increased to BGN 2,562,000. An agreement for the sale of armaments to Iraq for the period 1969–75 was approved by the Bulgarian Government in April 1969. It was amended with a new long-term accord in December 1970, and with a widened agreement for ‘special technical assistance and training’ in December 1972.³⁷ During the implementation period of this agreement, Bulgaria received Iraqi officers for ‘exchange of experience’. After Zhivkov's visit to Iraq in April 1974, the Bulgarian leadership approved a special Resolution No. 331, dated 25 July 1974, for ‘joint participation with the USSR in the planning, construction and procurement of equipment for the defense industry in Iraq’. According to the resolution, Bulgaria was involved in the build-up of the Iraqi ‘military-industrial complex’ with arms and military equipment worth US$80 million.³⁸

The first contacts between Warsaw Pact countries and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were established relatively late. The reason for this was a certain restraint regarding official connections until the end of the 1960s, caused by the PLO's strong extremist line with its objective to liquidate the state of Israel and its rejection of UN Security Council Resolution No. 242 of 22 November 1967, which emphasized the ‘termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area’. This was probably what led the Bulgarian leadership to deny the PLO's request for arms in 1968.³⁹ At the same time, however, Moscow commented with concern on the intensification of Chinese activities in the Middle East through the extension of Beijing's contacts with the PLO, its provision of considerable military assistance and training of large groups of Palestinian fighters.

The 1970 ‘Black September’ events in Jordan focused Soviet attention even more strongly on the PLO, which resulted in Arafat's secret visit to the USSR for the first time in 1971.⁴⁰ A CC BCP Politburo document of July 1972 underlined the changes from the previous Soviet bloc attitude towards the PLO: ‘The ways to establish contacts with PLO are to be studied and our own approach to the Palestinian Liberation Movement elaborated.’⁴¹ In February 1973, Arafat visited Bulgaria for the first time. After the visit of PLO Political Department Chairman Faruk Kadumi in 1974 to the country, an agreement was reached to open a PLO representation in Sofia. This change in the Bulgarian position was partially due to the change in the course of action of Arab countries and the states of the Non-Aligned Movement regarding the statute of the PLO.

In the early 1970s, the Bulgarian political leadership made infrequent decisions to grant small amounts of military aid to several leftist Arab paramilitary groups. For instance, in December 1970, the CC BCP Secretariat reacted positively to a joint request by the communist parties in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon for free military and financial aid to the newly established ‘guerrilla forces’, intended to act against Israel from the territory of Jordan. The arms and military equipment were transported by a ship to the Syrian port of Latakia.⁴² However, the idea of establishing a joint communist guerrilla force soon failed. Military aid from Bulgaria to some leftist and radical Palestinian armed groups increased after the war of 1973. In the second half of the 1970s, about 5,000 Arab students received their education in Bulgaria, some of them in army and air force military schools. However, the Bulgarian security services received information that amongst these young men were some devoted followers of extremist and terrorist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and the Abu Ayad group – which created a new security dilemma for Bulgaria in the final decade of the Cold War.⁴³

The Soviet Union and Eastern European countries promised significant aid to North Vietnam for its postwar recovery after the 1946–54 Indochina War. When, in April 1955, the newly appointed Beijing-based Bulgarian Ambassador visited Hanoi and talked with North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh and other officials, he informed Sofia of a request for economic support from Bulgaria. On 15 June, the Bulgarian Government approved a proposal for the delivery of economic aid worth BGN 30 million and the dispatch of a medical team to North Vietnam. The first group of Bulgarian physicians arrived there in November of the same year. Following another decision in March 1956, Sofia dispatched a team of 32 physicians and material aid for the establishment of a hospital worth BGN 1.7 million to North Vietnam. When Ho Chi Minh visited Sofia in July 1957, both sides agreed on a new medical mission, and thus Bulgaria sent medical equipment and medicines totalling BGN 1.4 million; two more Bulgarian medical teams were dispatched over the following two years. Bulgarian aid contributed to the construction of two military hospitals – Nos. 108 and 303. By 1961, aid from the Warsaw Pact countries led to the elimination of malaria in North Vietnam, and an almost threefold reduction in the occurrence of other diseases like tuberculosis.⁴⁴

Bulgaria's assistance to North Vietnam reached its height during the Vietnam War, also known as the ‘Second Indochina War’. Between 1965 and 1973, the Bulgarian Government approved 21 secret resolutions for providing military, financial, economic and humanitarian aid to North Vietnam.⁴⁵ In the period 1966–72, the amount of Bulgarian military aid exceeded RUB 45 million. On 21 August 1971, North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong addressed a personal letter to his Bulgarian counterpart, Stanko Todorov, with a request for free economic aid in the amount of RUB 7.5 million, and additional military aid.⁴⁶ On the eve of Dong's planned visit to Sofia in July 1973, the CC BCP Politburo approved a secret resolution to provide free military aid to North Vietnam worth RUB7 million.⁴⁷ During the period 1973–5, Bulgarian arms deliveries to North Vietnam reached RUB20 million.⁴⁸ Overall, Sofia delivered RUB 60 million worth of credits to North Vietnam between 1964 and 1975.

The Bulgarian political and state leadership established initial contacts with the South Vietnamese armed insurgents of the National Liberation Front (‘Viet Cong’) at the relatively late juncture of April 1967.⁴⁹ Most probably, this was the reason for the delivery of relatively small amounts of Bulgarian military and humanitarian aid to the Viet Cong at the end of the 1960s – under US$100,000 annually. In the early 1970s, however, Sofia approved several resolutions for the medical treatment of wounded Viet Cong soldiers in Bulgaria.⁵⁰

Bulgaria also gave free medical military aid to Laos, via governmental decrees of 1 March 1961 and 25 July 1962.⁵¹ In 1964–6, the Government of Laos received from Bulgaria about BGN 80,000–100,000 of material aid annually. With another government resolution of 22 May 1966, humanitarian and military assistance to Laos increased to BGN 2,151,000. Up to the end of 1970, Bulgarian military and humanitarian aid to Laos amounted to about BGN 8 million. On 2 March 1971, following the US air offensive against Laos, the political leadership in Sofia approved a new proposal for free arms delivery to Pathet Lao communist guerilla forces amounting to BGN 724,000.⁵² In the period 1974–6, Bulgaria provided new military equipment to Laos worth about BGN 650,000.

Bulgaria also became involved in the Congo. Soon after the murder of the first prime minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, the Bulgarian Government declared, on 17 February 1961, that it would ‘give its full support and possible aid to the legal government of Congo’.⁵³ Actually, just a day before the announcement of that government declaration, a secret resolution was issued to send weaponry and military equipment to Lumumba's followers who had coalesced around Antoine Gizenga in Stanleyville. The weaponry included 2,000 Manlicher rifles, 30 Bren light machine guns and some ammunition, and was delivered to the Congolese office in Cairo.⁵⁴ After new confidential talks with one of Lumumba's ministers, Pierre Mulele, in Cairo in April 1961, another shipment of 200 tonnes of weaponry was transferred through Egypt, but subsequently disappeared somewhere on Sudanese territory. Four years later, during another round of the civil war known as the ‘Simba Rebellion’, a new, significant Bulgarian arms delivery was successfully transported through the territories of Egypt, Sudan and Tanzania to the National Liberation Council (CNL), which had been established by Lumumba's associates, Christophe Gbenye and Gaston Soumialot, in October 1963 in Congo-Brazzaville. Military aid for the Congolese National Liberation Army of General Nicholas Olenga and his ‘Simba fighters’ amounted to US$500,000, while at the same time about 100 Congolese men received military training in Bulgaria.⁵⁵

In the early 1960s, Bulgaria established military contacts with some newly independent African states – Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mali, Nigeria and Guinea – as part of its policy of support for decolonization in Africa. The first contacts with the Kenya African National Congress (KANU) of Jomo Kenyatta came in 1960, when Bulgaria sent modest financial aid to that party. In 1964, shortly after Kenya become independent, the Bulgarian Government agreed to cover costs for the military training of more than 100 Kenyan cadets in Bulgarian military schools. Even before the announcement of Zambia's independence (formerly Northern Rhodesia), the government in Sofia delivered, in 1962, minor financial aid to the United National Independent Party (UNIP) of Kenneth Kaunda, who became the first president of the country in 1964.⁵⁶ Soon after a left-wing revolution in Zanzibar in January 1964, on 1 April that same year, the Bulgarian Government approved a proposal for delivery of arms and medical equipment delivery to that country.⁵⁷ In September 1967, an agreement was signed for an arms sale to the Sudanese armed forces. During the civil war in Nigeria, in 1968–9, Bulgaria delivered arms to for the federal government worth about US$12 million, while in October 1970 another long-term agreement for arms exports of US$15 million to Nigeria was approved for the period 1970–5.⁵⁸ On request by the Guinean president, Ahmed Sékou Touré, in December 1970, the Bulgarian Government approved a decision to send Guinea a free arms delivery worth BGN 100,000 and medical supplies of BGN 30,000.⁵⁹ Several hundred young African military officers received their training and education in Bulgarian military schools in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. From the early 1960s until the end of the 1970s, Bulgaria also provided some modest financial and military aid and training to several African national-liberation movements: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), the Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the African National Congress (ANC) and the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO).

Initial contact with the first president of the MPLA, Mario Pinto de Andrade, was established with the assistance of the leader of another Angolan national-liberation organization – UPA (since 1962, the FNLA: National Front for the Liberation of Angola) – Holden Roberto. When visiting the United Nations headquarters in New York in April 1961, he informed the Bulgarian Ambassador to the UN about the principal MPLA base in Conakry. During confidential talks between Mario de Andrade and Bulgarian representatives in Conakry in December 1961, it was agreed that Bulgaria would provide US$40,000 worth of free military aid to the MPLA.⁶⁰ In 1963, and again in 1964, the new MPLA president, Agostinho Neto, sent requests to the Bulgarian political leadership for further free military aid as well as military training of MPLA activists in Bulgarian military schools.⁶¹ In 1964, ten MPLA functionaries received one year's military education, while in 1965 another 50 functionaries received military training in Bulgaria. In December 1966, another proposal for free military aid to the MPLA worth BGN 800,000 was approved.⁶² In 1968, an additional BGN 722,000 worth of military and medical aid was also approved. Responding positively to a fresh request from Neto, in September 1971, a new delivery of arms and medical equipment worth BGN 548,000 was delivered to MPLA armed forces in Dar es Salaam.⁶³ Further military aid to the MPLA in Angola prior to the announcement of its independence was agreed in April 1973 (for BGN 595,000), September 1973 (BGN 944,000) and November 1975 (BGN 960,000).⁶⁴

The first aid package to FRELIMO took place in 1965; it amounted to BGN 170,000.⁶⁵ In December 1966, a new proposal was approved totalling BGN 1,385,000.⁶⁶ After a visit by FRELIMO's leader, Samora Machel, to Bulgaria in March 1971, Bulgaria's military and humanitarian aid to that organization increased significantly. In 1971, it amounted to BGN 675,000; in 1973, BGN 788,000; and in 1974, BGN 100,000 (US$50,000).⁶⁷ In response to a request from Machel, in 1974, a Bulgarian military medical team was sent to Tanzania to organize a field hospital for medical treatment of FRELIMO's wounded soldiers.

The initial contact with PAIGC was established in September 1964 by the Bulgarian Embassy in Conakry. The following year, Bulgaria sent a small amount of material aid to that organization. When in February 1966, PAIGC leader Amilcar Cabral sent a request for medical treatment of wounded fighters, the Bulgarian Government reacted positively – and in the next few years, several groups of PAIGC functionaries were treated in Bulgarian military hospitals. Bulgarian military aid to PAIGC for 1966 amounted to BGN 316,000; BGN 300,000 for 1969; BGN 608,000 for 1971; and BGN 420,000 for 1973.⁶⁸

Initial contacts with ZANU took place in 1964, when a representative of that organization raised the issue of free assistance in a message to the Bulgarian Embassy in Cairo.⁶⁹ However, over the following years, the ZANU leadership oriented its policy closer to Beijing than to Moscow, which was the main reason for the Warsaw Pact countries establishing closer relations with ZANU's main rival, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) led by Joshua Nkomo. In June 1968, a secret CC BCP resolution was issued for free military and humanitarian aid to ZAPU worth BGN 300,000 to be delivered to Dar es Salaam, and for military training of 30 ZAPU functionaries in Bulgaria.⁷⁰ In November 1964, initial information about SWAPO and its guerrilla bases in Tanzania and Zambia was also received in Sofia. A request for free military aid from Bulgaria for SWAPO was received in 1966 through that country's embassy in Dar es Salaam. In 1964, the Bulgarian political leadership approved another proposal for financial aid – this time to the ANC in support of some of its imprisoned leaders, such as Nelson Mandela. Soon after the visit of the ANC Secretary General Alfred Nzo to Sofia in 1972, free Bulgarian humanitarian aid for his organization was transported to Dar es Salaam.⁷¹ Over the next few years, the ANC received military aid from Bulgaria totalling about BGN 500,000, and more than 100 ANC soldiers completed military training in Bulgarian military schools.

The Cuban Revolution in January 1959 and the October Missile Crisis in 1962 induced a more serious Bulgarian public interest in political events in the western hemisphere. On its way back from Argentina and Mexico in late May–early June 1960, a Bulgarian governmental delegation visited Cuba and held talks with Raul Castro, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and other Cuban officials. At the end of June, proposals for the establishment of diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations, and Bulgaria's rendering of economic and technical aid to Cuba, were coordinated between the two governments’ representatives. At the 15th UN General Assembly session in September 1960, the first personal meeting between Todor Zhivkov and Fidel Castro was organized. Years later, Zhivkov related that their improvised unofficial meeting happened on 27 September 1960 in a small room at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where Castro also famously met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.⁷² On 8 October 1960, Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Trade Luchezar Avramov and Che Guevara signed a bilateral commercial agreement in Havana. The same day, an official communiqué announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between Bulgaria and Cuba. A few months after the Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) invasion in April 1961, the Bulgarian Government responded positively to a request for arms to Cuba. Bulgarian armaments deliveries and credits to Cuba in 1961 exceeded US$8 million in value.

The Bulgarian leadership had not been informed in advance about the Kremlin's decision to deploy Soviet missiles in Cuba. In his memoirs, Khrushchev wrote, ‘While in Bulgaria, I could not even share these thoughts with Zhivkov, because I hadn't discussed them with my own comrades.’⁷³ Zhivkov confirmed in his own memoirs that there were no any bilateral or multilateral (within the Warsaw Pact) consultations on the issue. Nor was there direct consultation between Moscow and Sofia at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The Bulgarian leadership simply followed the official information from the available open sources, collected at the Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Policy and International Relations Department of the CC BCP.⁷⁴ At the height of the missile crisis, a few directives on raising the combat readiness of the Warsaw Pact joint armed forces and on intensification of military-intelligence activity against Turkey and Greece were received from the Pact's Joint Command. In its public declaration of 23 October 1962, the Bulgarian Government announced that an order had been issued for raising the combat readiness of its armed forces.⁷⁵ Similar actions were taken by other Warsaw Pact allies. Following the Missile Crisis, the CC BCP Politburo adopted another secret resolution for arms delivery to Cuba.⁷⁶ During a visit to Cuba in May 1966, Angel Solakov, the Bulgarian state security chairman, discussed with Cuban Minister of the Interior Sergio Del Valle and Manuel Piňeiro, Cuban state security director, the possibility of organizing sabotage and counter-intelligence training for 30 Cuban officers in Bulgaria. On 8 June 1966, the CC BCP Secretariat adopted a secret decision for counter-intelligence training of 30 Cuban state-security servicemen. Zhivkov's handwritten resolution on the document stated, ‘We have no conditions to train people in sabotage.’⁷⁷ In February 1967, a new protocol for arms exports to Cuba was signed in Havana.

In the 1960s, Bulgaria also gave some underground Latin American communist parties limited financial support. Following a request from Fidel Castro, on 2 November 1961, the CC BCP Secretariat approved a proposal for the delivery of 35,000 old German Mauser carbines to Cuba.⁷⁸ The guns were to be transferred by the Cubans to Latin American leftist guerrilla groups. At the same time, the Bulgarian leadership met with a degree of hostility – or, at least, with suspicion during the following years, over strategy for guerrilla warfare in the region – and all requests for military training of Latin American guerrillas in Bulgaria were declined. In March 1966, a report from the Bulgarian Embassy in Havana stated,

We have recently sent several reports concerning the training of people in Cuba who are subsequently infiltrated back in other Latin American countries with the task to organize armed resistance […] The guerrilla actions and their simultaneous opening in a wide range of countries – are considered as task number one. This strategy, its objective being to provoke imperialist occupation of the Latin American countries which will allegedly serve as an incentive for an anti-imperialist final victorious struggle, is very difficult to understand.⁷⁹

The only known documentary evidence of Bulgarian military support for a Latin American armed group in those years refers to two special cases. In January 1967, the Bulgarian communist leadership approved a secret decision to meet the request of the Workers’ Party of Guatemala (GPT) for arms delivery to the leftist FAR (Rebel Armed Forces) guerilla forces in that country. The proposed aid, which had to be transferred via Cuba, included five heavy machine guns, 50 sub-machine guns, 300 hand grenades and ammunition.⁸⁰ During his talks with Raul Castro in Sofia on 26 March 1965, Zhivkov surprisingly mentioned, ‘Our partisan [guerilla] commanders are even in Venezuela.’⁸¹ What Zhivkov had in mind became publicly known two years later when a former Venezuelan guerrilla commander, Teodoro Petkoff,⁸² escaped sensationally along with two other communist party functionaries from the military prison San Carlos.⁸³ Teodoro's brother, Luben Petkoff (aka ‘Sucre’), also a Venezuelan guerrilla commander, went illegally via Cuba to their father's homeland, Bulgaria, at the beginning of April 1967. On 15 April 1967, the CC BCP Secretariat reached a hitherto unprecedented decision to offer one month of military training to ten Venezuelan and three Guatemalan communist functionaries.⁸⁴

On 5 October 1967, the CC BCP Politburo approved a series of measures to strengthen Bulgarian–Cuban relations.⁸⁵ However, the envisaged initial visit of Zhivkov to Cuba at the beginning of 1968 was postponed – mainly because in January 1968, Fidel Castro made a secret speech to a Cuban Communist Party plenary session with a sharp anti-Soviet critique. When Castro publicly approved the Warsaw Pact military invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, it became possible to renew the preparation for Zhivkov's visit to Cuba, which was the subject of special discussions at the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry in March 1969. Todor Zhivkov's official visit in June 1970 – the first ever visit of an East European leader to Cuba – not only played a significant role in the development of bilateral relations but also gave impetus to the improvement of Soviet–Cuban relations soon afterwards. The first visit of a Soviet leader (Leonid Brezhnev) to Cuba took place at the end of January–early February 1974.

Analysis of postwar official relations between Bulgaria and Latin America shows that after the Cuban Revolution, in particular, those contacts were considerably intensified. During the first 15 postwar years, Bulgaria had official relations with only two countries in the region; in the course of the following decade, state relations (diplomatic and consular) were established with another six countries, and in 1970–1 with three more. Nevertheless, when compared with the other Eastern European countries’ presence in Latin America, the foreign policy of the Bulgarian Government in the region does not seem to have been particularly active. At the end of the 1960s, Romania enjoyed diplomatic relations with nine Latin American countries, Yugoslavia with 13, Czechoslovakia with 15 and Poland with 18. In the same period, however, Bulgaria had only trade relations with 16 Latin American countries – and in nine of these, Bulgarian commercial representations were opened.

In the early 1960s, the smaller communist coalition partner, the Bulgarian Agrarian Union party (BANU), established contacts with certain farmers’ unions, agricultural trade unions and other agrarian organizations – at first in Western Europe, and later on in the Third World. This was a trend with some echoes of the late 1950s, when the Bulgarian Communist Party increasingly began to utilize the activities of its smaller political partner. This tendency became a highly visible and important new element in the Bulgarian foreign-policy mechanism over the following three decades. At the same time, BANU regularly rendered support in the process of establishing new international contacts for its other East European partners, like the Agrarian parties in Poland and East Germany. In June 1971, one of the BANU leaders, Petar Tanchev, in his capacity as deputy prime minister, visited 12 Latin American countries, where besides signing a number of commercial and economic treaties he also held talks with leaders of various political parties. In the 1970s, BANU also strengthened its relations with influential centrist, radical, liberal, Christian-democratic and other parties, the greater number of which were members of government coalitions in their own countries. However, BANU's international activity was much more intensive that that of similar parties and organizations in other Eastern European countries, encompassing a wide range of activities. BANU was quite often used in the final two decades of the Cold War as a principal Eastern European non-communist organizer of representative international meetings and conferences for ‘détente, peace and international dialogue’. A number of parties in Western Europe, Asia and the Americas found it more politically acceptable to maintain official relations with an agrarian, rather than with a communist, party in Eastern Europe.

On 10 June 1970, the CC BCP Politburo adopted an important resolution (No. 351) for intensifying relations between Bulgaria and Latin America countries.⁸⁶ It had been suggested three months earlier by the BCP's ‘second in command’, Boris Velchev, who in November 1969 had visited seven Latin American countries for talks with various political and government officials. The new ‘policy, strategy and tactics related to the Latin-American continent’ was predominantly motivated by the ‘common struggle against […] American imperialism’ and the strategic intention ‘to gradually win these countries and their peoples as our friends’. This new line of the Bulgarian communist leadership was not a surprising solo action. As early as December 1969, in a session of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Committee in Moscow, Zhivkov had suggested ‘coordination’ of the steps undertaken with regard to the Middle East and Latin American countries.⁸⁷ Soon after the approval of the June politburo resolution, at the end of July 1970, Velchev sent a letter to Boris Ponomarev, head of the CC CPSU International Department, in which he warned that ‘the influence of the socialist countries [had] dropped behind the development of […] progressive tendencies in that area’. Velchev underlined the necessity to follow a more coordinated policy towards Latin America, and proposed a coordinative CMEA session to be organized in the near future on the issue.⁸⁸

The victory of the Unidad Popular leftist coalition in Chile in September 1970 was a significant political event, which gave a strong impetus for the development of Bulgarian–Chilean relations and was the Latin American political phenomenon most remarked upon in Bulgarian public opinion. On 3 April 1971, the CC BCP Politburo approved a special resolution for further development of bilateral relations with Chile, which was discussed during the first visit of Chilean Foreign Minister Clodomiro Almeyda to Bulgaria at the beginning of June. In January 1972, the Bulgarian Government approved a proposal for the delivery of long-term credit to the Government of Chile.⁸⁹ In October 1972 during a state visit in Chile, one of the BANU leaders and Vice-Chairman of the Bulgarian State Council, Georgi Andreev, was invited to dinner in the house of the Chilean president, Salvador Allende. Allende informed Andreev that the opposition had plans to destabilize the political situation in the country – an operation known as ‘Plan September’.⁹⁰ To Lalyu Ganchev, another important personality within the Agrarian Party, who visited Chile around the same time, Allende allegedly addressed an ‘appeal for help to the socialist countries in Europe’. As a result, a new loan of US$20 million was granted for the Allende government in January 1973.⁹¹ On 11 September 1973, Commander-in-Chief General Augusto Pinochet launched a coup in Chile that led to Allende's death and mass repressions against the country's leftist, liberal and syndicalist functionaries, provoking a strong international protest campaign in Europe. Following the Soviet Union, on 22 September 1973 the Bulgarian Government broke off its relations with the Chilean military junta.

In the mid- and late 1970s, the BCP also maintained contacts with the leaders of the communist and socialist parties in Chile. When in February 1974, the leaders of the Chilean socialist and communist parties in Europe, Carlos Altamirano and Volodia Teitelboim, spoke with Todor Zhivkov in Sofia, it was agreed that financial aid amounting to US$30,000 would be given to the Chilean Communist Party, and another US$20,000 to the Chilean Socialist Party. In response to another request from Teitelboim, who presided over the emigration centre for Chilean communists in Moscow, on 14 October 1974 the CC BCP Secretariat approved a secret decision for the military training of 20 communist militants from Chile. However, during a meeting between Zhivkov and Altamirano in January 1976, a new agreement was reached for organizing six months of military training for 15 Socialist Party activists. With a number of top-secret resolutions in the 1970s, the Bulgarian Communist Party leadership also granted financial aid to several clandestine communist parties in Latin America, which were obliged to work under the military dictatorships in their countries.⁹²

Moscow considered Bulgaria its most loyal ally because of many historic, cultural, geopolitical and other reasons. It is well known now that Todor Zhivkov's ‘political prescription’ for his long survival as a doyen of the Warsaw Pact leaders was ‘political loyalty for economic benefits’. He even joked cynically in private talks with visiting US businessmen and members of the US Congress that the Soviet Union was a Bulgarian colony, because Bulgaria sold machinery and electronics and received cheap petroleum and raw materials from there in return.⁹³ In the field of foreign policy, Bulgarian leaders had a separate stance only regarding some key questions of national interest – for instance, on the so-called ‘Macedonian question’ with Yugoslavia and Greece or the question of the ‘Bulgarian Islamic minority’ with Turkey. While Warsaw Pact members enjoyed a relative amount of freedom in their bilateral relations with Third World countries in economic and cultural matters, the military sphere was subject to strict Soviet coordination – however unfashionable it might have been to remind them about former close ties, and even sometimes subordination, to Moscow.

Sometimes, however, Bulgarian actions went beyond the scope of coordinated Warsaw Pact policy. An indicative example was the maintenance of contacts with both Nkomo and Mugabe in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), while at the same time the Soviet Union promised support only to the Nkomo faction because of Mugabe's close relations with Maoist China. Another case was the development of Bulgarian–Cuban cooperation after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Soviet–Cuban relations deteriorated visibly. Bulgarian Prime Minister Todor Zhivkov was the first Warsaw Pact leader to visit Cuba in the process of strengthening Havana's ties with Eastern Europe. Despite of the fact that Bulgaria focused its Third World policy mainly on the neighbouring Middle East and eastern Mediterranean areas, in some cases the political leadership in Sofia took independent initiatives towards more distant regions like Latin America, such as the example of the proposal to Moscow in July 1970.

Compared with relations between the developed European countries and Japan, this cooperation with underdeveloped Third World countries had no such significance for the Bulgarian economy. It was motivated mainly by reasons of political prestige in pursuing the ‘internationalist’ ideological imperatives of ‘class solidarity’ and of strictly following the common Warsaw Pact line towards regional and internal armed or social conflicts in the bipolar Cold War world. The generously granted ‘military and humanitarian aid’ to Third World leftist or nationalist regimes and insurgent organizations was the focal point of that policy. It continued with even higher level of engagement and intensity in the final 15 years of the Cold War.

Since the beginning of the transition period to pluralist democracy after the Cold War era, Bulgarian society has reassessed the ideological and political motivation of the economic and military support given to the Third World countries over the course of the previous decades. Now, new interpretations and questions arose in regard of that ‘special assistance’. At what point did it go beyond the accepted international norms and to what degree did it turn from being a natural obligation under the spirit and according to the international community's principles into an unjustified ‘burden’ on the economy of small Bulgaria? The generous free aid extended to left-radical fronts and movements in many cases was undoubtedly dictated by political-propaganda motives and matters of prestige, and lay by no means within the limited resources and economic possibilities of Bulgaria. The enormous loans and credits delivered to several Third World countries, like Iraq, have never been refunded, and contributed in some way to the sharp financial crisis in Bulgaria in the post-Cold War years.

1.Yordan Baev, Voennopoliticheskite konflikti sled Vtorata svetovna vojna I Bulgaria [Military and Political Conflicts after World War II and Bulgaria] (Sofia, 1995); Yordan Baev, Drugata studena vojna. Savetsko-Kitaiskiat konflikt I Iztochna Evropa [The Other Cold War. Sino-Soviet Conflict and Eastern Europe] (Sofia, 2012); Jordan Baev (ed.), Bulgaria and the Middle East Conflict in the Cold War years. Documents volume (Sofia, 2006); Jordan Baev, ‘Eastern Europe and the Six Day War: The Case of Bulgaria’, in Yaakov Roi (ed.), The Soviet Union and the Six Day War (Stanford, CA, 2008); Jordan Baev, ‘Bulgaria and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, CWIHP Bulletin, vol. 17/18 (2012); Jordan Baev, ‘Bulgaria and Latin America in the Cold War years: A Case Study for Soviet Bloc Political Relations with Latin American Countries’, in Revista OPSIS, Dossie Tematico: America Latina no Contexto da Guerra Fria (Catalao, Brazil, 2014).

2.Jordan Baev and Soyoung Kim, ‘Korea in the Bulgarian Archives, 1945–1995: An Introduction’, NKIDP Working Paper No. 5, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, DC, September 2017), pp. 3–10.

3.For the period 1970–4, the expenses for free arms transfers from Bulgaria to Third World guerrilla movements were about BGN 7 million, which was an increase of 39 per cent in comparison with the late 1960s. Central State Archives (TsDA), Sofia, Fond 1-B, Opis 64 [CC BCP Politburo top-secret resolutions], A.E. 352, pp. 3–6.

4.TsDA, Fond 214-B, Opis 1, A.E. 709, p. 14. See also Laurent Rucker, Moscow's Surprise: The Soviet – Israeli Alliance of 1947 – 1949, CWIHP Working Paper No. 46 (Washington, DC, 2005).

5.The investigation results were summarized in a governmental report: TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 6, A.E. 2629, pp. 14–21; and two military ones: Central Military Archive (DVIA), Veliko Tarnovo, Fond 1, Opis 3, A.E. 6, pp. 166–70; and A.E. 7, pp. 380–5.

6.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 6 [Politburo protocols], A.E. 3691, 3737, 3811; Opis 33 [CC BCP Foreign Policy & International Relations Department files], A.E. 11; Opis 64, A.E. 274, 282.

9.However, very soon some unpredictable problems appeared due to the ‘lack of discipline’ in the behaviour of many cadets.

10.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 24 [CC BCP Military Department files], A.E. 239, pp. 1–7.

14.The list of Bulgarian-made weaponry included ammunitions for T-34 and T-54 tanks; parachutes; B-10 and B-11 heavy machine guns; land and ground mines; and 120 mm, 107 mm and 82 mm mortars. See TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 64, A.E. 294, pp. 10–13.

15.Approved with a Bulgarian Council of Ministers’ Secret Protocol No. 354 / 16 May 1963: TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 86, A.E. 592.

18.DA, Opis 22, A.E. 3653; TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 6, A.E. 6610; Fond 136, Opis 86, A.E. 674, 676.

19.National Archives & Record Administration (NARA), College Park, MD, Record Group 59, Central Files, 1964–1966, Box 1952, POL-BUL.

21.DA, Opis 21, A.E. 1160; DA, Opis 22, A.E. 2053; DA, Opis 23, A.E. 1090; TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 51, A.E. 645, 649.

22.DA, Opis 5sh [Ciphercorrespondence], A.E. 151, 188, 254, 288, 348b, 380, 447, 483, 550, 585.

23.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 8 [CC BCP Secretariat files], A.E. 7749, p. 2–3; TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 86, A.E. 703, pp. 1–3. The arms and ammunition totalled BGN 3.5 million.

27.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 35 [CC BCP Politburo protocols], A.E. 2449, p. 46; TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 58 [CC BCP Plenaryprotocols], A.E. 60, p. 43.

30.A Bulgarian Military Intelligence analysis of 1974, entitled ‘Some conclusions from the Middle East war in October 1973’ underlined that, ‘[a]ccording to our information, Syria and Egypt made the decision to attack Israel fourteen days prior to the beginning of battles’.

31.From report of General Dzhurov: TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 86, A.E. 817, pp. 6–24.

32.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 81 [CC BCP Foreign Policy & International Relations Department files], unprocessed.

35.Baev, Voennopoliticheskite konflikti sled Vtorata svetovna vojna I Bulgaria, pp. 294–5.

37.TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 86, A.E. 749, pp. 1–3; A.E. 777, pp. 3–5; A.E. 809, pp. 4–11.

40.Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Sixth Department, Palestinsko nacionalno-osvoboditelno dvizhenie [Palestinian National Liberation Movement] (Sofia, 1973), pp. 41–6.

43.See: Jordan Baev, ‘Infiltration of Non-European Terrorist Groups in Europe and Antiterrorist Responses in Western and Eastern Europe (1969–1991)’, in Siddik Ekici (ed.), Counter Terrorism in Diverse Communities (Amsterdam, 2011), pp. 58–74.

44.Krum Zlatkov, Bulgarsko-vietnamski vzaimootnoshenia 1950–1989 [Bulgarian-Vietnamese relationship 1950–1989], PhD dissertation, Sofia University, 2016, pp. 108–12.

45.TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 84, A.E. 71, 75, 129, 152, 257; TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 86, A.E. 631, 633, 639, 648, 652, 662, 675, 689, 694, 716, 721, 755, 774, 775, 781, 801.

50.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 36 [CC BCP Secretariat protocols], A.E. 2823, pp. 1–2; TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 36, A.E. 3717, pp. 1–3.

53.Vunshna politika na NR Bulgaria [Foreign Policy of PR of Bulgaria], Documents, vol. 1, 1944–1962 (Sofia, 1970), pp. 558–9.

60.The request of de Andrade, of 6 December 1961, was discussed positively at the CC BCP Politburo session on 25 January 1962: TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 64, A.E. 294.

61.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 51, A.E. 23. Parallel requests for military aid to the MPLA were also received from the Bulgarian embassies in Moscow and Algiers.

72.Dokumenti I materiali za sutrudnichestvoto mezhdu BCP I PCC 1960–1981 [Documents on the cooperation between BCP and PCC] (Sofia: Partizdat, 1982), pp. 17–22.

73.Nikita Khrushchev, Memoirs, vol. 3, Statesman (University Park, PA, 2007), pp. 324–6.

74.The folder on the Cuban Missile Crisis at the Diplomatic Archive in Sofia contains a collection of information from UPI, Reuters, France Press, Soviet agency TASS, and Bulgarian agency BTA: DA, Sofia, Documentacija, IV/39/1/X-1962.

75.Vanshna politika na NRB [Bulgarian Foreign Policy], vol. 1, 1944–1962 (Sofia, 1963), pp. 613–15.

79.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 81 [CC BCP Foreign Policy & International Relations Department] – unprocessed.

82.In 1968, Teodoro Petkoff left the Communist Party in protest against the Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia, and founded a new leftist organization: MAS (the Movement Towards Socialism). In the following two decades, he ran three times, unsuccessfully, for President of Venezuela.

85.TsDA, Fond 1B, Opis 6, A.E. 6879, p. 2; TsDA, Fond 1B, Opis 6, A.E. 6979, p. 1–2.

88.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 81 [CC BCP Foreign Policy & International Relations Department] – unprocessed.

90.BANU International Relations Department Records, Information of G. Andreev, November 1972, pp. 1–6.

91.TsDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 36, A.E. 2507, pp. 1–4; Opis 60, A.E. 102, pp. 1–47. See also: Stoyan Tanev, ‘Bulgaro-chilijskite otnoshenia, noemvri 1970-septemvri 1973’, Istoricheski pregled No. 6 (1976), p. 11.