November 10 marks 35 years since November 10, 1989, when Todor Zhivkov was ousted from power. The day after the Berlin Wall falls. Bulgaria is painfully beginning to break the shackles of the totalitarian regime that lasted nearly half a century in its attempt to return to the European family of freedom, NOVANews recalls.
In the “Offensive” studio with Lyubomir Ognyanov, two people who stood symbolically opposite each other at the barricade of historical changes – the head of the sixth department of the Sixth Department of “State Security” Dimitar Ivanov and Dimitar Luzhev, who before 1989 ., is part of the informal organizations, and then he was deputy prime minister in Dimitar Popov’s cabinet.
November 10, 1989. It’s Friday. A plenum of the Central Committee of the BKP is being held. On the streets of Sofia, nothing foreshadows that this will be a turning point. An entire era is about to end. And it all started in Berlin, where thousands of Germans began to tear down the wall – a symbol of the Iron Curtain between East and West.
Before 1989, Dimitar Ludzhev worked at the Institute of History at the BAS. He joined one of the first dissident organizations, the Club for Glasnost and Reconstruction. “We commented that if such events happen in Germany, the same will happen in Bulgaria,” he says.
Dimitar Ivanov is the head of the sixth department of the Sixth Department of State Security. This department deals with corruption and moral decay in the administration and party nomenclature.
“After November 9, 1989, things have become radically different. The very “attack” on the Berlin Wall and on the border between West and East Berlin was sudden, accidental. The security services from the socialist camp worked in cooperation on the basis of joint assistance contracts, all related to the KGB,” he says.
“There were two issues that aroused civil discontent and were the nucleus around which some groups were formed. Individual rights and freedoms such as the right to travel abroad, public criticism of central and local governments. As well as problems related to environmental protection. Dissatisfaction from below was combined with support from above. For the first time in the National Assembly there were two people who voted “against”. These were Svetlin Rusev and Neshka Robeva”, Dimitar Ivanov also points out.
According to Dimitar Lujev, the civil movements created in 1988 had the power and dignity to publicly criticize Zhivkov’s regime and defend the ideas of freedom and civil rights. “At that time, this was very important,” he added, quoted by “Telegraph”.
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