MOSCOW'S OLD RELIABLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140094-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 94
• Publication Date: March 27, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

S1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140094-6
PRE 1 LE APPEARED
014 PAGE,-T
THE WASHINGTON PCST
27 March 1983
Jack Anderson
MOSCOW'S
Old Reliable
Because of its alleged connection to the at-
tempted assassination of Pope John Paul 11, Bul-
,aria has received more international attention in
the past two years than at any time in the nearly
four decades that it has been a Soviet satellite.
The fact that it's Bulgaria taking the heat,
instead of Big Brother in the Kremlin, does not
surprise Western intelligence. Secret intelli-
gence reports warn that Bulgaria will remain
what it has always been: the most loyal of the
Soviet satellites. For this reason, it is referred to
as the 16th republic of the Soviet Union.
One reason for this devotion is historical, a
case of Slavic solidarity that dates back long be-
fore the Bolshevik revolution.
Evidence of this ethnic kinship is the fact
that Sofia, alone among Soviet bloc capitals,
boasts a statue of a Russian czar-Alexander II,
who in 1878 freed the Bulgarians from five cen-
turies of Turkish rule at a cost of nearly a quar-
ter-million Russian soldiers.
According to a confidential Defense Intelli-
gence Agency appraisal--one of several intelli-
gence documents reviewed by my associate, Dale
Van Atta-Bulgarian Communist Party meetings
are "little more than replays" of those in the
Soviet Union. Bulgarian party leaders constantly
seek to affirm "the orth(xloxy of Bulgarian social-
ism and the party's total loyalty and commitment
to the U.S.S.R.," the DIA report states.
Much of this is the doing of Bulgaria's Com-
munist boss since 1954, Todor Khristov Zhiv-
kov, the Kremlin's devoted 71-year-old stooge.
When he visits Moscow for party get-togethers,
a State Department profile points out, Zhivkov
always seems "intent on surpassing other lead-
ers in praise of and expressions of fidelity to the
Soviet Union"-not an easy task where party
rhetoric is concerned. .
Bulgaria's slavish servility to the Kremlin has
drawn the contempt of other'Communist satel-
lites. But it has paid off for Bulgaria, the only
Warsaw Pact nation whose economic condition
has improved since its association with the
Soviet Union.
The Bulgarians get a price break on coal and
oil imports from the Soviets, who also provide a
steady market for Bulgarian products, which have
changed from primarily agricultural to mainly in-
dustrial in recent years. As a result of this sweet-
heart arrangement, Bulgaria has the healthiest
foreign debt structure of any Soviet satellite.
Alone among Warsaw Pact nations, Bulgaria
has no Soviet, troops stationed on its territory.
But a DIA report notes that since 1970 there
have been important developments in Soviet-
Bulgarian military ties.
During the last decade, for example, the
Soviets have set up a new regional military
headquarters at Odessa in the Ukraine, with a
key supporting staff in Sofia. According to the
DIA, the Odessa headquarters "would probably
control and coordinate wartime operations
against Greece and Turkey carried out by Pact
forces from Bulgaria and the Odessa, North
Caucasus and Transcaucasus military districts."
Can the Soviets depend on the continued loy-
alty of 9 million in Bulgaria? The only real chal-
lenge to the Soviets is occasional eruptions of
Bulgarian nationalism.
Oddly enough, this nascent nationalism was
once led by Zhivkov's Oxford-educated daugh-
ter, Ludmila Zhivkova. As the member of the
Communist Party's Central Committee in
charge of cultural affairs, she spent more than a
year preparing for the 1,300th anniversary of
Bulgarian statehood in 1981.
Western intelligence sources say the Soviets
were concerned about Zhivkova's activities,
which they felt might encourage nationalistic
fervor in Poland. In fact, rumors were rampant
among Bulgarian youths and intellectuals that
Zhivkova's death at :t8 from a brain hemor-
rhage, in .July 1981, was just too convenient. not
to have been arranged by the Kremlin.
Even if Zhivkov succumbs to his various physi-
cal ailments soon, Bulgaria's role as the most loyal
of Soviet satellites seems unlikely to change sig-
nificantly. In short, the Soviets couldn't have
found less troublesome scapegoats to take respon-
sibility for the alleged assassination attempt
against the pope.
?x1983, Unite" ?-ature syndicate
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140094-6