Todor Zhivkov

Todor Khristov Zhivkov (Cyrillic: Toдор Xpиcтoв Живков) (September 7, 1911 - August 5, 1998) was the leader of Bulgaria (as First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party) from March 4, 1954 until he was ousted by the party on November 10, 1989. He was the longest serving leader of any of the Eastern bloc nations.

Zhivkov was born in the small village of Pravets. The son of poor peasants, he moved to Sofia as a youth, seeking work and a better future for himself. An intelligent young man, Zhivkov took the ideals of Marxism to heart, and in 1932 he joined the Komsomol, the youth wing of the illegal Bulgarian Communist Party.

During World War II, Zhivkov rose up in the Party, and he helped organise a resistance movement against the German occupiers, the People's Liberation Insurgent Army.

After the war, Zhivkov began to take increasingly important posts in the new Soviet backed government, one of these being commander of the People's Militia. During as time as a militia leader, he had thousands arrested for political reasons.

In 1951, he became a full member of the Politburo, and was made first secretary of the Central Committee, the youngest of any of the Eastern bloc leaders.

For the first two years of Zhivkov's tenure as first secretary, the Stalinist Vulko Chervenkov remained the country's real leader, but the latter was forced out of power in 1956 in the wave of Eastern European destalinization that followed Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin.

In 1965, Zhivkov survived a coup attempt by dissident military officers and Party members, the first ever such occurrence in a communist state.

Zhivkov was also head of state (Chairman of the State Council) of Bulgaria from July 7, 1971 to November 17, 1989.

Unlike many other communist leaders, Zhivkov proved himself a sensible handler of the economy. Under his leadership, the standard of living for Bulgarians rose above that of many other Eastern bloc countries. However, he harshly repressed all voices of dissent in Bulgaria, locking thousands up in prisons across the country. Zhivkov also collectivised farms, whereby farmers were not permitted to grow food for themselves.

A protégé of Khrushchev's, and a close friend of Leonid Brezhnev, he was known for his firm, almost servile, allegiance to the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. He once even proposed that Bulgaria merge with the Soviet Union, citing their common alphabet and common Slavic heritage as justifications. Georgi Markov, who Zhivkov would later have killed, said:

"[Zhivkov] served the Soviet Union more ardently than the Soviet leaders themselves did."

Near the end of his reign, Zhivkov made several limited attempts to modernise Bulgaria, such as scaled down versions of glasnost and perestroika, while keeping the country under his control. However, these failed to stop the collapse of communism and his own ouster. In 1989, he was expelled from the Bulgarian Communist Party, and arrested in January 1990. Two years later, Zhivkov was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to seven years in prison.

However, due to his frail health, he was allowed to serve his term under house arrest. Todor Zhivkov died of pneumonia in 1998.