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In order to answer this question effectively I must portray a complete picture of what was happening in the Balkan countries at the end of the 1980’s. However before I do that I shall define what makes my countries of study; Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, different to each other and other Communist block countries. This will allow me a context of which I can discuss how the countries particular systems collapsed in different ways. The role of the Soviet Union, especially events in Russia, played and important role in the collapse of European Communism and I shall gauge how the different Russian reforms, namely Glasnost and Perestroika, affected, if at all, my three case countries. The final days of the Communist system, and the events that predated them shall be analysed, including the extent of individual countries dissent and the role nationalism played in that dissent. Finally I shall conclude that although Communism as a regime was in retreat in the late 1980’s and nationalism was being used by particular parties against it, in many countries the groups that held power under Communism continued to do so under the new regimes. After the Second World War the Soviet Union was expanded due to Stalin’s feeling of insecurity after the Nazi’s initially successful invasion of Russia. However none of the countries that I shall discuss were actually in the Soviet Union although they did become Communist after the War. The Soviet Union played differing roles in the three countries. In Yugoslavia, who already had strong Communist partisans, had limited Soviet involvement. However in Bulgaria and Romania, who did not have strong Communist party or workers parties, received large amounts of political, economic and military Soviet support (1). These levels of reliance were reflected in how closely the countries were affiliated with and were dependant upon the Soviet Union during the time between the Second World War and the Communist collapse. The country that was seen to be most closely associated with the Soviet Union without actually being part it was Bulgaria. So closely was the Bulgarian and the Soviet regimes linked that Bulgaria was known as the unofficial eighteenth state of the Soviet Union. In fact it even applied to join the union, but this was rejected. The Bulgarian Communist Party had a deeply rooted ‘leftist’ tradition (2). This meant that there was not much support within the party, the only effective political body, for Social Democracy. In fact there was a predilection for left revisionism, which was the movement towards the more extreme end of Communism as seen in China and Albania in the late nineteen seventies. However the ‘leftist’ nature of the Communist Party was not reflected by the population as a whole, who were in fact to some extent ‘westernised’. This characterised the many dualities of the Bulgarian Communist system and its leader Zhivkov. On one hand he enjoyed close ties with Moscow and employed a Stalinist regime with a cult of personality and extreme oppression, whilst on the other hand he allowed his population to be influenced by western culture (3). Western media, namely television and newspapers were permitted to a limited extent in 1. Seton – Watson, The Pattern of Communist Revolution 2. J. D. Ball et all, Developments in Eastern European Politics, the introduction 3. Gallagher et all, Experimenting with Democracy Regime Change in the Balkans – Kyril Drezov, Transition comes full circle Bulgaria. Zhivkov had allowed the slow and gradual westernisation of his population creating one of the most westernised societies in the Eastern Block. However the Communist party itself was one of the strongest in the Communist Block and so enjoyed an almost unquestioning political power monopoly. This meant that before the late nineteen eighties, that saw a swath of popular dissent across the Balkans, there was almost no popular protest or opposition to the Party. In contrast Romania under Ceausescu was subject to a number of protests and strikes before the late nineteen eighties. However all of these were quelled or disbanded without gaining too much momentum or public support. Like Bulgaria though the Romanian regime was somewhat an oxymoron. Ceausescu liked to be perceived as a humanitarianist, he even received an award from the Queen of England for his actions during the Soviet invasion of Hungary. He was viewed in the west as a “mild” Communist ruler, a leader who could influence the others to the side of reason and humanity (4).
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