REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

THE CHANGEOVER IN BULGARIA IN 1947
AS A FORM OF FINANCIAL REPRESSION
Daniel VACHKOV 1
Undoubtedly, the most important and, in a sense, the most complex matter that any
power should handle is the management of the public finances. It is from its ability to
solve the current financial problems and take measures to ensure stable financial
development that the management capacity of a government is judged. In a deeper sense,
evaluated can be the overall attitude of a given government towards the power, its sense
of responsibility before society and, in the long run in view of the long-lasting effects of
its fiscal policy, also before the future generations.
In this regard, the changeover carried out in Bulgaria in March 1947 cannot be
considered as simply a chapter in our modern financial history. It is a telling example of
the very essence of the emerging totalitarian regime in Bulgaria and of the way in which
the power over the country was to be exercised and all kinds of problems were to be
solved in the years to come.
Yet, Bulgarian historiography has not provided so far a thorough research on the
financial policies of the communist government in the early years of its rule, when,
through various mechanisms, monetarist included, the government launched a campaign
to establish full control over the economy and society. Of course, until the fall of the
regime in late 1989, the total party prohibition on adequate analyzing its economic policy
prevented this topic, very painful in itself, from even being raised for however cursory a
discussion i . Let alone that, along with the financial aspects of the problem, it would
inevitably have revealed in a completely different light the role of the Soviet troops in
Bulgaria – i.e. would have attacked one of the fundamental myths on which the
communist regime was based – the brotherhood and fair-minded assistance on the part of
the Soviet Union. For these reasons, the maximum any research on that epoch was able to
proceed was to calculate the enormous costs of Bulgaria’s participation in the final phase
of World War II without analyzing their impact on its overall economic, financial and
social development ii . In fact, not only was there a ban on the study of such issues, banned
was also the use of terms such as ‘inflation’, ‘devaluation of the Lev’, and ‘price rises’
when referring to the socialist period.
Following the change in 1989, the economic issues, like all sides of the Communist
past, were subjected to a certain level of critical assessment. However, in this process the
financial problems seem again to have been left a little behind, and it is only over the last
five years, that several monographs dedicated specifically to them have been published iii .
Of course, it is not possible, in such a short paper, to provide a comprehensive and
thorough analysis of the state of the public finances in Bulgaria for the period after the
end of World War II and the years immediately following it and the financial policy
1 Institute for Historical Studies – BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria.