Economically, Bulgaria still looks to the Soviet Union for foreign aid
and preferential trade treatment. The rapid pace with which Bulgaria has
moved toward industrialization is primarily owing to Soviet assistance.
Raw materials critical to Bulgaria's economy are supplied by the Soviet
Union and, with Soviet aid, the country has been able to construct many
large industrial enterprises. Estimates in 1967 put the number of Soviet
specialists in Bulgaria at 5,000, and the number has probably increased.
The renewal of a five-year agreement for 1971 through 1975 would serve
to increase further the Soviet share of trade in Bulgaria.
Relations with Other Communist States
Bulgaria's relations with Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland,
and Romania are largely governed by a series of bilateral and
multilateral treaties of friendship and cultural cooperation and by
military and economic alliances. The alliances are the Warsaw Pact and
COMECON. Relations with the other two communist states of Eastern
Europe, Albania and Yugoslavia, have usually followed Soviet initiatives
toward those countries.
Quite naturally, Bulgaria's major concerns in foreign affairs have dealt
with relations among the states of the Balkan Peninsula and particularly
with adjacent states. Romania, its northern neighbor, is a member of
COMECON and the Warsaw Pact but has often appeared to be a reluctant
member and since the early 1960s has stressed nationalism rather than
Marxist internationalism, causing Bulgaria, with its strong Soviet
orientation, to tread lightly in bilateral relations for fear of
offending the Soviets. Nevertheless, the Bulgarians and Romanians have
drawn closer together, probably because both countries see benefits that
might accrue from Balkan cooperation and believe that such cooperation
should in no way disturb the Soviet Union. In the early 1970s relations
appeared to be particularly good: there were frequent meetings between
leaders and government ministers, and a plan to cooperate in the
building of a huge hydroelectric project on the Danube River between the
two countries was announced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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