The People's Militia
The People's Militia (local police) deals with crime and maintains routine day-to-day contacts with the people. The militia operates under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and has intermediate administrative offices at the level of theokrug(district) and local police stations at therayon(municipal) orobshtina(urban borough or village commune) level. Although the primary control descends from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, all militia organizations have a degree of responsibility to the people's councils at their levels.
Local militia forces ordinarily work only in the areas under the jurisdiction of their people's councils. In urgent circumstances they may be called upon the Ministry of Internal Affairs to assist the militia in neighboring areas, and they may even crossokruglines. To operate outside their own areas on their own volition they must have the permission of an agency in the ministry.
The police are charged with maintaining order, enforcing the laws, protecting personal and public property, and regulating traffic. They assist governmental and party agencies in the execution of their various resolutions, orders, and instructions. They monitor the rules of residence and the collection of taxes. In the event of natural disasters or major accidents they are equipped to rescue, to give first aid, and to transport victims to medical facilities. They supervise observance of quarantine measures imposed by health authorities. They monitor drinking establishments to ascertain that alcoholic beverages are not served to alcoholics, obviously drunken persons, juveniles, and drivers of motor vehicles. They are instructed to combat rowdy and irresponsible behavior—hooliganism, begging, and vagrancy—and other antisocial manifestations. They see that unsupervised and stray children are provided for.
Many militia functions are peripheral to the primary police duties of law enforcement and criminal investigation. Such functions include social controls having diverse objectives ranging from gun control to keeping undesirables off Sofia streets during visits of foreign dignitaries. The police have unusual powers in dealing with beggars, vagabonds, and others in the category that they classify as socially dangerous. Some of the controls are directed at preventing crime; others appear intended to reduce the possibility of incidents on occasions when the presence of such persons could be embarrassing. The regulation allows the police to prohibit individuals from visiting specified towns or areas or even from leaving their residences for a twenty-four-hour period. Some may be prohibited from meeting certain other specified persons or from frequenting certain parts of towns. Such restrictions can be for definite or for indefinite periods of time. Persons may be denied the use of common carriers or the privilege of attending sports events or of visiting certain public institutions. Some, prostitutes for example, may be denied the right to become telephone subscribers. If they think it advisable, the police may require some persons whom they are monitoring to report to them on a daily or other regular basis.
Individually held weapons, ammunition, and explosives are accounted for and are registered with the militia. Certain forestry and farm personnel, hunters, sportsmen, and youth organizations are authorized to retain controlled weapons. Explosives are permitted when they are required in, for example, construction projects. By law there is no production of cold weapons—brass knuckles, daggers, scimitars, and the like—in the country.
The police collect or maintain a major share of local records for theobshtinapeople's councils. These records deal with vital statistics, citizenship, identification, travel visas, registration of residences, licenses and permits, and employment data. A person acquires Bulgarian citizenship in the circumstances that are accepted in most other countries—by ancestry, place of birth, or naturalization—but there may be somewhat more than the usual number of situations in which he may lose it. Persons are deprived of citizenship if they leave the country unlawfully, leave lawfully but fail to return within a reasonable time after their visas expire, go abroad to avoid military service, acquire foreign citizenship in a manner not specified in Bulgarian law, or if they conduct themselves abroad in ways that are contrary to Bulgaria's interests or that are unworthy of a Bulgarian citizen. Persons not ethnically Bulgarian are released from their citizenship upon emigration, although they are not released unless all of their obligations in the country are settled.
Laws governing the stay of foreigners in the country also are administered and enforced by the militia. According to the revised law that took effect in 1972, the whereabouts of a foreigner is subjectto the same rules that apply to Bulgarian citizens. His hotel or other local address, therefore, must be reported to the militia within twenty-four hours of his arrival at each stop. Tourists are usually unaware that such detailed records of their stays are being maintained, because hotel personnel ordinarily take care of the reporting. If the visitor stays at the home of a Bulgarian, that citizen must report his presence on the same twenty-four-hour basis.
A foreign visitor may travel freely otherwise, except that he may not go to certain restricted areas or to the border zone at any place other than at one of the designated crossing points. He must leave the country when the time specified in his visa has expired unless he has a criminal charge against him and is awaiting trial, has been sentenced and is serving a term in prison or at a correctional labor camp, or has the obligation to provide support for a person in the country.
Border Troops
The Border Troops are part of the Bulgarian People's Army and are organized within the Ministry of National Defense. Border units resemble regular military forces more than they do the police. They are considered militarized security units, and some 15,000 men serve in them.
Their mission is described as safeguarding the country's frontiers against penetration or illegal crossing. Because they are a part of the regular armed forces, it is presumed that in time of war they would work in coordination with those forces. If the enemy were to penetrate into Bulgaria, the Border Troops would be expected to control the area immediately behind the ground forces. If Bulgarian armies were driving the enemy beyond the borders, they would probably remain at the old border or establish a new one if the leadership expected to retain any newly occupied territory.
The most strictly defended borders are those shared with Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, but the border with Romania is also defended. The Border Troops operate a number of patrol boats, both on the Danube River, where it forms the border with Romania, and along the Black Sea coast. The troops also control the movement of people into and within a border zone, which is a strip approximately eight miles wide in from the border. Smuggling, however, even large-scale smuggling, is the concern of the Ministry of Internal Affairs customs police and not of the Border Troops.
Construction Troops
A Bulgarian institution that is unique among the Eastern European communist countries is the organization known as the Construction Troops. Thousands of young men who are not called for service in the regular armed forces are drafted into the Construction Troops, fromwhich the government derives productive labor at the same time that it instills military discipline and political indoctrination into a large segment of the young male population. Similar organizations have been maintained since the establishment of the original Labor Service in the early 1920s, which was a means of circumventing the World War I peace terms that prohibited large conscript military forces. Obligatory military service was restored during the 1930s and, as part of the change, the Labor Service was militarized. It was made a part of the army and remained so during World War II, when it became known as the Labor Army.
Two types of compulsory labor forces emerged after the communist seizure of power in 1944. The Labor Army continued in existence and, following the example of the Soviet Union under Stalin and of the other states in the Soviet post-World War II orbit, Bulgaria also placed those of its citizens considered politically dangerous in forced labor camps. These were the prison colonies populated by victims of the secret police, persons who might or might not have had proper trials but who were considered to be enemies of the party or the government. Some camps were temporarily located at sites where large numbers of manual laborers were needed, but more often camps were at permanent locations. Buildings at all camps were flimsy, and facilities were minimal. In the early period, while the Communists were establishing their control over the country, about 1 percent of the population was imprisoned at hard labor in such camps at any given time.
In the early 1970s the Construction Troops organization that had evolved from the Labor Army was military in form and character. Its men were provided from the annual draft and were subject to military regulations and discipline. Its officers, who had regular military ranks, were provided from the armed forces or had been prepared for that specific assignment in the Construction Troops own school. The headquarters of the organization, however, was a main administration responsible directly to the Council of Ministers; it was not within either the Ministry of National Defense or the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Furthermore, the work of the organization was heavy construction and, at least in peacetime, the greatest portion of it was unrelated to any requirement of the armed forces. The Construction Troops worked on various construction projects on a five-day-week basis but assumed a military routine on Saturdays, which were devoted to platoon and company drill and to political education classes.
Until the mid-1960s the troops were used mainly in roadbuilding and land reclamation. By the early 1970s more than one-half of their work was in factory, housing, water supply, and other such construction. Its 1972 projects included building a tire manufacturing plant and a resort hotel complex and harnessing a river for hydroelectric power, recreation, and supplies of irrigation water and city water. One ofthe organization's spokesmen claimed that there was not a large-scale project underway anywhere in the country where its troops were not at work.
The men acquired in the annual draft serve two years, which satisfies their military service obligation. Almost all of the conscripts in the Construction Troops work as unskilled laborers. During or at the end of their two-year tours, those who enjoy or show a special aptitude for construction work may volunteer for extended duty tours and serve as noncommissioned officers. Some of those who are accepted are sent to technical schools for further education.
Career officers who are educated in the Construction Troops service academy are expected to serve for ten years after graduation. This school, the full title of which is the General Blagony Ivanov People's Military School for Officers in the Construction Troops, offers a so-called semihigher course of instruction. Applicants to it must have completed their secondary education, and its three-year course can be used for undergraduate transfer credit toward a university-level degree elsewhere. Many graduates continue their education at the Higher Institute of Construction and Engineering in Sofia, from which they may receive a further career specialization and bachelor's or advanced degrees.
CIVIL DEFENSE
Authorities responsible for the civil defense program justify their efforts by arguing that modern warfare has virtually eliminated the difference in importance between the armed forces at the front and their support in the rear areas. They stress that it is essential to provide for continued production and delivery of supplies, primarily foodstuffs, that are needed for survival. Such arguments have been effective in Bulgaria, and civil defense training is compulsory for all citizens from twelve to sixty years of age.
The civil defense organization is staffed at all administrative levels in the country. It is within the Ministry of National Defense in the national government and has committees under the people's councils in eachokrugandrayonorobshtina. Committees or working teams are also set up in manufacturing plants, enterprises, schools, and collectives. Indicative of the importance placed upon civil defense activities, its national chief in the early 1970s was one of the deputy ministers of national defense, a level shared with only the topmost officers of the military establishment.
Civil defense tasks are divided into three categories. The first includes provision of shelters and defense for the population, providing warning of attack, and training of the people for implementation of dispersal and evacuation plans and for defense and salvage work. The second includes implementation of measures intended to maintain production and to keep transportation, communications media, andpower supplies in operation. The third includes industrial salvage, restoration of production, fire fighting, decontamination, and provision of medical assistance.
Specific work assignments vary widely in differing locations and enterprises. For example, industrial teams train to maintain or restore production. Agricultural teams work to save crops, farm animals, or to protect feed and watering spots. People's councils at all levels, party and youth groups, and the mass organizations are instructed to assist in specific ways and to volunteer in other ways as opportunities arise.
Enthusiasm for civil defense activities varies widely. One town with a population of just over 1,000, for example, built or modified areas to shelter 6,000 people. In more typical situations tasks such as those of civil defense that have little to contribute to the needs of the moment receive much lower priority.
PUBLIC ORDER
The Communist Party and Social Organizations
The most important element in establishing control of the country at the inception of the post-World War II communist government was the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP—see Glossary), with the iron discipline it held over its carefully chosen members and its single-minded planning and direction. After gaining control, the party attempted to retain its exclusive character, insofar as possible recruiting as members only those whose loyalty was unquestioned and who could organize and lead.
To maintain control based on a broader segment of the population, the party then encouraged the development of a number of social and special-interest organizations, designed to appeal to the interests of as many of the people as possible and to enlist them in activities that shape public opinion, regulate the conduct of the people, and support the party and its policies. These organizations ranged in size from the extremely large Fatherland Front and the trade unions to the painters, writers, and composers unions, whose memberships numbered between 100 and 800 (see ch. 9).
With the exceptions of the party, the Fatherland Front, and the small artists unions, these groups are called mass organizations. The small unions do not qualify because they are far from massive in size; the party and the front have the requisite membership, but they are set apart from the others. The Fatherland Front attempts to gather members from all other socially or politically active organizations in the country, combining as many as possible of them within it. Its membership includes nearly one-half of the country's population. The party, although ostensibly a member organization of the Fatherland Front, is set above all other organizations. It controls and directsthe others and requires them to support it in general and specific ways (see ch. 9).
The largest of the mass organizations are, in descending order, the trade unions, the Bulgarian Red Cross, the Dimitrov Communist Youth Union (Dimitrovski Komunisticheski Mladezhki Suyuz—commonly referred to as the Komsomol), the Bulgarian Union for Physical Culture and Sports, and the Bulgarian Union of Tourists. Their memberships range from about 1 million to approximately 2.5 million. The Bulgarian Agrarian Union, the Bulgarian Hunting and Fishing Union, the Teachers Union, and the Scientific and Technical Union are much smaller, having memberships between 100,000 and 200,000. The Fatherland Front attracts nearly 4 million people; the party has 700,000 members.
Youth Programs
The first sizable leftist youth organization in the country, then called the Union of Working Youth, was formed in 1926, and by 1940 it had a membership of approximately 15,000. It and the party furnished most of the partisan fighters that harassed the Germans and the pro-German government of the country during World War II. Both the party and the youth group grew stronger during the war, largely because the partisan cause was more popular than that of the government.
The youth organization became the Dimitrov Communist Youth Union after the war. The new name did not come about from a major reorganization or reorientation of the group; transition to its postwar status was smooth, but it saw fit to honor Georgi Dimitrov, who had by then become the most powerful and famous of the party's leaders. Even after its renaming in Dimitrov's honor, the organization has usually been referred to, in official government communications as well as in conversation, as the Komsomol, which is the name of the Soviet Union's youth organization.
The Komsomol became the organization through which the party reached the nation's youth. Its responsibilities were expanded, and its membership grew rapidly. In the ideal situation the entire youth segment of the population of eligible age, both male and female, would be members of the organization. In 1970 its 1.16 million members did include about 77 percent of those between fourteen and twenty-four years of age. Some of the organization's leaders, instructors, and exceptionally active members stay in the group beyond the upper age limit of twenty-four, but their number is too small to alter the membership statistics significantly. Male members outnumbered female members by a large margin; 88 percent of the eligible males were members, only 66 percent of the females. The disparity in membership by sex reflects the fact that more of the organization's activities—sports and premilitary training, for example—appeal to or areoriented toward the future needs of the males. Membership is either a prerequisite for admission to higher educational institutions or makes admission much easier.
Statistics notwithstanding, party and other national leaders complain that Komsomol membership is lower than it should be, but they have greater concern about the number who are members merely for expediency and who are apathetic toward the organization's activities. A low point in the Komsomol's appeal was reached during the 1960s and, sensing an urgent need to reattract the cooperation of the nation's youth, its programs were given a major reevaluation and overhaul beginning in about 1968.
The youth problem in 1968 was probably less serious in Bulgaria than it was in many Western countries and other communist countries, but it had reached proportions that warranted action. Among symptoms cited by the authorities was apathy toward education, work, and party ideology. Young people in rural areas seemed anxious to move to the cities, where idleness, crime, and so-called parasitic living were increasing. Consumption of alcohol by young people was up markedly.
Many young people were described as silent nihilists, persons who were characterized by unresponsiveness and vast indifference. No expression of group youth protest, for example, was recorded between the inception of the communist government and the late 1960s. When individual complaints were solicited, however, they appeared to come out freely. Some said that they would have cooperated but spoke of the anemic and empty lives of the youth organizations where the dull, boring meetings consisted largely of upbraiding sermons full of pious admonitions and reprimands. Others assumed an offensive posture, indulging in self-praise, pointing out shortcomings in party work, complaining about the lack of individual freedom and the lack of opportunity for showing initiative, and criticizing the older generation.
Consumption of alcoholic beverages is common enough in typical families so that early exposure to it is considered natural, but its use by young people became excessive enough to be considered a national problem in the mid-1960s. According to a survey published in 1971, more than 50 percent of the students in Sofia secondary schools consumed alcohol regularly. Percentages were considerably higher in provincial secondary schools. Few of the youthful users had consumed it over a long enough period to have become addicted, but more than one-half of the inebriated persons brought to sobering-up facilities in Sofia hospitals and clinics were young people.
Authorities blame advertising of alcoholic beverages, imitation of Western fashions, disillusionment, and monotony in daily living for most of the increase in youthful drinking. They also blame lax parental control, but the surveys concluded that the influence of contemporarysocial habits and the pressures of peer groups were forces more powerful than those exerted by the family.
Measures have been undertaken to reduce the so-called parasitic element that according to party and governmental spokesmen, is composed of those who neither study nor work. As early as 1968 the minister of national education was given six months to organize a nationwide program to cope with the problem, and the Center for Amateur Scientific and Technical Activities among Youth and Children was created to coordinate planning. The Committee for Youth and Sports, the State Committee on Scientific and Technical Progress (renamed the State Committee for Science, Technical Progress, and Higher Education), the Komsomol, and the trade unions were charged with contributing ideas and assistance. As a result of the center's activities, the next year eachokrugwas directed to organize schools with three-month-long vocational training courses and to canvass its area for young people who required the instruction. Enterprises in theokrugwere directed to cooperate by indicating the skills they most needed, by furnishing facilities and, finally, by hiring those who completed the training.
As of 1972 the program had achieved spotty or inconclusive results. Most spokesmen considered it as satisfactory as could have been expected. They did not consider that it reflected badly on the effort when a few groups reported that about 30 percent of the students who completed their classes never reported to the jobs for which they had been prepared and that others stayed at work for only a short time. Other observers consider that the authorities are concerned over a problem much of which does not exist or that is blown out of proportion to its seriousness. For example, 85 percent of the offending group were girls or young women. A few of them were undoubtedly ideological malcontents, members of youth gangs, prostitutes, or criminals, but a large majority considered themselves living inoffensively at home or, at the worst, were working at small family enterprises. In rural areas they might have been attending the family's private agricultural plot or the privately owned livestock.
CRIME AND JUSTICE
Crime
The country's most widely quoted authorities on crime view it as a social phenomenon, that is, actions by people within society against the interests of the society as a whole or against the principles directing it. Combating crime, therefore, becomes a matter both of law enforcement and of social edification and persuasion. Although they adhere to the argument that in a developing communist society most of the crime is related to holdover attitudes from the old society and to unavoidable contacts with such societies still existing, they do notexpect to eradicate crime according to any existing timetable.
Petty crime is an irritant to the leadership, not so much for the damage or lasting effects of the individual criminal acts, but because such acts reflect an attitude on the part of the perpetrators indicating that they hold the society, if not in ridicule or contempt, at least in less than proper respect. Such attitudes prompted an official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs to state, "Social democracy does not take a conciliatory attitude toward petty criminals, or tolerate individuals who disturb the public order or who are engaged in a parasitical life." The actual amount of petty crime is less worrisome to the authorities than the fact that it is increasing. Also disturbing are statistics showing that most of those apprehended for it are in the eighteen-to-thirty-year age-group.
Authorities have found themselves facing a problem in relation to petty crime that is in no way unique to Bulgaria. Misuse of government property, including theft and pilfering, has become rampant and is considered forgivable by those who are guilty because "everybody does it." The courts have become reluctant to hand down harsh sentences upon people who consider that they have done no wrong and, at least in the opinion of some government spokesmen, lenient court sentences have helped foster a view that theft of public property is wrong only because it is so described in certain of the laws.
The authorities also point out that statistics accumulated on such thefts reported in 1970 are revealing in other respects. Almost 90 percent of those recorded fell into the category of petty crime, but about one-half of them were carried out by overcoming locks or other barriers protecting the property. Over one-half of the persons apprehended for such thefts were repeaters. Analysis of other records also indicated that in all but a very few cases the most serious crimes were committed by individuals who had begun their criminal careers by stealing.
At the same time the courts were handing down sentences of the minimum punishment for theft or even less than the prescribed minimum. More often than not, the culprits were given suspended sentences. Of those convicted of serious theft, less than one-half were sentenced to a period of deprivation of freedom considered appropriate—that is, the six months or more prescribed in the criminal code.
More serious are the crimes of violence, political crimes, and economic crimes involving abuse of management positions or large amounts of property. In the period since the mid-1950s crimes of violence have increased; political and serious economic crimes have decreased.
Citizens convicted of political crimes no longer constitute the bulk of the prison population, as they did during the early post-World War II period. Active or aggressively vocal opposition to the regime is usually called ideological subversion, diversion, or revisionism, and it isdescribed as activity or expression of thoughts related to the old society and not in accord with the policies of the new. It is still listed among the more serious crimes. Officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs blame both external influences and dissident internal factions for having caused the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and the Czechoslovak troubles in 1968. They say, however, that such events are unlikely in Bulgaria because the ministry's state security agencies are busy combating foreign intelligence efforts and the native elements that would bore from within. The success of their efforts is credited with having reduced political trials to only a few each year.
Economic crimes include those of dishonest or illegal operation of an enterprise, the misuse of socialist property by its management or workers, currency manipulations, and improper sale or transfer of property. If inefficient management practices are serious enough to result in less than optimum production, they are considered criminal, but sufficient guilt has been difficult to prove, and those accused are rarely, if ever, prosecuted. They are occasionally reprimanded, transferred, or dismissed for bureaucratic practices. Management personnel who are brought before the courts are usually tried for corruption, using their positions for personal enrichment, or violation of administrative or financial regulations.
Workers can be prosecuted for theft, waste, willful damage, or illegal use of materials. Poor labor discipline, shirking on the job, or nonmalicious negligence may result in individuals or entire work shifts being brought before party groups or trade union committees. Action in such cases usually involves counseling, social pressure, or the like.
Consumption of alcohol is not excessive when compared with that of other European countries, but it has been increasing steadily and has been a major contributor to crime and antisocial behavior. During the 1960s per capita consumption of absolute alcohol increased by a factor of nearly 50 percent, from 4.01 quarts per person annually to 5.93 quarts. Strenuous efforts on the part of the country's leadership to combat the trend resulted in a decrease between 1968 and 1970, but the dip in consumption was temporary. Per capita consumption in 1971 reached the highest level yet recorded.
Police are involved in aspects of the programs combating the rise in consumption of alcohol and alcoholism because alcohol has figured increasingly in crime. Nearly 90 percent of those charged with rowdiness or disturbing the peace were under its influence, as were increasing percentages of those apprehended on rape, assault, and murder charges.
Many more men than women have alcohol problems, but the percentage of women problem drinkers has risen more rapidly. Similarly, consumption by youths is less than that of adults, but the numbers of youths becoming habitual drinkers has been increasing. Many ofthe campaigns against the use of alcohol are also directed against smoking and drugs, although neither of these is considered a cause of serious concern. Smoking is viewed as an evil that may be damaging to the user's health but that has no serious social consequences. By 1973 drugs had not become a serious problem.
The police monitor a large number of alcoholics whose conditions are chronic but who can work. These persons get a period—ordinarily from six months to a year—of compulsory treatment. This may include work therapy in groups that are supervised to the degree necessary to prevent the members from acquiring alcoholic beverages.
Increasing tourism has resulted in special problems in resort areas. Spokesmen note that what they refer to as petit bourgeois attitudes toward moneymaking have shown up, especially at the new Black Sea coastal resorts. Local people inflate prices for tourists, accept and encourage tips, and buy and sell merchandise illegally. On some occasions the Bulgarians exploit their guests; at other times the foreigners exploit the local population. Most seriously viewed of the adverse tourist influences are the introduction of unacceptable ideology and foreign encouragement of moral laxity which, according to the authorities, pervades the area. Occasionally, however, there is an example of an ideological diversity in a direction opposite that of lax morality. One group of tourists was evicted from the country after distributing what the police described as forty Bibles and 150 godly booklets. Many tourists enter the country by automobile; traffic has become congested, and violations of traffic laws are more numerous than the police can cope with.
Criminal Code
The criminal code's preamble states that its purpose is to protect the society and the state, the person and the rights of its citizens, the economy, and the state's property and laws and to educate the citizens in the rules of life in the socialist society. It defines crimes as socially dangerous acts that are identified and declared by law as punishable.
In addition to the qualification that a crime must be set down as such and declared punishable, the individual is further protected by the stipulation that he may be punished only when he has been found guilty of one of the listed crimes by a proper court. The punishment may be only what is set down in the code and declared consistent with the crime, and it may be imposed only by the court trying the case.
Adults, eighteen years of age or older, are criminally liable. Minors, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, are criminally liable if they are judged capable of understanding the act and its significance and of controlling their actions. Juveniles under fourteen years of age and mentally deficient persons unable to understand the nature orsignificance of a criminal act are not criminally liable.
Courts may hand down punishments of eleven different varieties. In addition to fines, confiscation of property, and confinement, they may sentence a guilty person to corrective labor or compulsory residence without confinement. They may deprive an individual of the right to occupy certain governmental or public positions, of the right to practice certain professions or activities, of the right to residence in a specified place, or of the right to earn decorations and awards. If he is on duty with the military, a court may remove his rank. It may also administer a public reprimand, alone or in combination with another type of punishment. The sentence, however, should be within the upper and lower limits in the amounts of fines or the time period for which the other sentences may apply. Such limits are set down in the code.
The death penalty is never a mandatory sentence in peacetime. It is optional for a considerable number of crimes, but it is handed down only if the circumstances of a particular crime that is before the court are exceptionally serious. When the maximum sentence is deprivation of freedom and does not include a possible death sentence, the duration of the sentence will be no longer than fifteen years. If the maximum sentence can be death, twenty years deprivation of freedom may be substituted for execution.
The stipulated sentences for crimes against the state tend to be more severe than sentences for crimes against individuals. Theft of public property is punishable by confinement of up to eight years, of private property by no more than three years. Robbery involving public property may result in a sentence of from three to ten years; if it involves private property, the range is from three to eight years.
Although the individual's rights appear to have more than ample safeguards, the situation may be less utopian than the wording of the criminal code would suggest. For example, a 1973 amendment to the laws pertaining to personal property states that "when a citizen is found to possess more property than he could reasonably have acquired from his regular income, he is considered to have acquired it illegally unless he can prove to the contrary."
Courts
All of the formal judicial machinery of the country is within the governmental organization under the Ministry of Justice, but special courts—such as those of the military establishment—may be administered separately and independently in their lower echelons. Although the ministry serves as a part of the executive branch of the government, as the interpreter of laws it can check upon their compatibility with the constitution and other legislation. It might also function as a check upon the powers of the legislature and upon the other ministries in the executive branch. So far as is known, however,during the framing of legislation its professional expertise is used only to provide technical advice on the phrasing or structure of the text, to make sure that it says in legal terms what the framers intend (see ch. 8).
The Ministry of Justice is responsive to the policies of the BKP, although the minister appears to be chosen for his professional qualifications. In the early 1970s the incumbent was one of the very few important officials in the government who did not also have a high-ranking party position, and only one of his immediate staff was a member of the Central Committee of the BKP. None of the others is believed to have had an equivalent party status.
Each people's council has a legal department or a group that provides it with legal counsel. The chiefs of such departments atobshtinalevel are appointed and relieved by theokrugpeople's council.
The size and legal qualifications of the legal staff vary with the population of theokrugorobshtina. The departments atokruglevel and those of the largerobshtinihave staffs that are relied upon for competence in a wide range of criminal and administrative procedures; the legal problems that are encountered by a remote ruralobshtinaare usually minor.
Legal departments are charged with monitoring the activities of the people's councils and their committees to keep them consistent with the law; with interpreting laws for the people's councils and for inhabitants in the area of their jurisdiction; with strengthening the contractual and financial disciplines of the people's councils and of enterprises within their areas; and, as a by-product, with tightening the safeguards on public property. Most of the daily work of the departments consists of giving legal counsel to the people's councils and of reviewing the councils' resolutions to ensure that they conform to national laws and party policies.
Penal Institutions
The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the overall administration, activities, and security of prisons. Outside guards are provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the regulations, the primary responsibilities of prison administrators are to rehabilitate and to reeducate inmates.
Reeducation includes political reorientation, general education, and vocational training. All inmates are obligated to receive political indoctrination, which is intended to reorient them toward becoming cooperating members of the community. All of them are also required to perform useful labor—for vocational training, prison income, and benefit to the state. General education is compulsory for all prisoners under forty years of age who have not completed eight years of primary schooling. Vocational training, other than that derived from prison labor, varies with facilities available.
The physical facilities for confinement are classified as prisons, labor-correctional institutions, and correctional homes. The correctional homes are for minors. According to the seriousness of the offense and other factors, a prisoner may be confined in light, general, strict, or enforced strict disciplinary regimes, one of which is specified in his court sentence. The light regime is prescribed for first offenders who are serving time for minor crimes. The enforced strict regime is applied to recidivists, as an alternative to the death sentence, or to those considered dangerous or willfully and excessively uncooperative. The stricter regimes have less comfortable cells and furnishings, more rigid discipline, fewer individual privileges, and tighter security.
Prisoners are segregated by age, sex, and disciplinary regime. Women and minors serve their sentences in separate prisons or correctional homes. They are subject to much the same schedules as those in the prisons for male adults, except that theirs have no enforced strict regime. According to the law, those serving in different regimes are to be confined separately, and repeaters are to be confined in separate prisons from first offenders. Because there are a limited number of prisons, it may be necessary to meet the law's requirement for separation of prisoners by having different regimes in wards or buildings of the same prison complex.
The law on prison labor states that prisoners have the right to employment and political education and, at the same time, that they have the obligation to do the work and receive the political indoctrination. Inmates are given work assignments within seven days of their arrival at a prison. Their wages are based on the norms for the same kind of work done in enterprises throughout the country, and the same work and safety regulations apply. Inmates receive 20 percent or more of their wages. None except minors, incapacitated persons, or individuals who would work but who are for some reason unemployed may receive money from the outside.
Prisoners have the right to communicate with the prosecutors and courts that investigated and tried their cases and to submit petitions to them and to the Ministry of Justice. They may also see the chiefs of their prisons, correctional homes, or labor-correctional institutions in person. Other rights include time outdoors, exercise, visitors, correspondence, food parcels, possession of personal effects, and meetings and special correspondence with lawyers or other persons having a status or authority relative to their sentencing or confinement. The amount of time outdoors and correspondence and the numbers of visitors and parcels allowed vary with the severity of the inmate's disciplinary regime.
Correspondence and parcels are opened and inspected by prison officials. Visits are monitored; conversation must be in Bulgarian unless the administration has or can find a person who can understandthe language to be spoken. Inmates are not allowed to gamble, consume alcohol, use narcotics, or sell or exchange personal property with other inmates. Minors may not smoke. Prisoners and their property may be searched.
Prisoners are rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad. When his pattern of conduct has become apparent over a period of time and it appears appropriate, a prisoner may be moved into a lighter or more severe disciplinary regime. If he has insufficient time remaining in his sentence to be moved into a different regime, he may be given extra privileges or be denied some of those to which he would ordinarily be entitled. Commitment to solitary confinement is limited to two weeks at any one time.
A number of sentences do not involve confinement. For a group of offenses related to poor working discipline, an individual can be given a corrective labor sentence. This usually involves harder work, somewhat longer hours, and strict supervision on the job. The law also provides for sentences that restrict the movement of an individual. In the most severe of these, he may be banished to and be required to remain in one certain area. In other situations he may be prohibited from visiting specified areas or, in the least severe case, he may visit but not take up residence in some specified locality.
Another such sentence involves "internment without deprivation of liberty." This sentence restricts the individual to his place of residence or to another specified place. The term is usually from one to three years but, in the case of a repeated crime or in some other special circumstance, it can be for as long as five years. The essence of the penalty is that it consists of a restriction to the confines of the area within which the offender lives and works. He may not hold a job outside of the area, but he does not live in a special billet, nor is he isolated from his neighbors and local society. The usual objective, when this type of sentence is handed down, is to keep the individual in his home environment, where he retains responsibility for his share of the family support and is subject to its influences.
Bulgaria's regular military forces are organized within the Bulgarian People's Army (Bulgarska Narodna Armiya) and are subordinate in the governmental system to the Ministry of National Defense. Approximately 80 percent of the personnel are in the ground forces. Of the remaining 20 percent about three-quarters are in air and air defense units, and about one-quarter are naval forces.
Although Bulgaria is possibly the most staunch and sympathetic of the Soviet Union's allies in Eastern Europe, the country has no common border with the Soviet Union nor with any other of its Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact) allies except Romania. Because Romania has succeeded in establishing a precedent prohibiting movement of any foreign forces across its borders—even those of its closest allies—Bulgaria is to a large degree isolated from pact affairs. Unable to participate in more than token fashion in pact training, short of skilled men to care for complex equipment, and possibly restricted from an ability to become engaged during the early days of a combat situation, Bulgaria has undoubtedly lost some Soviet matériel support.
Because of this the forces have only small armored units, although the military establishment as a whole is large in relation to the population of the country. The air forces have been supplied with a few modern aircraft, but most of its airplanes are older than those of its pact allies. Naval forces are small. Even though logistic support has been meager, morale has been considered good, and the men and their leaders have been considered ideologically reliable.