site.btaDecember 29, 1989: "Revival Process" Officially Ends

Thirty-six years ago on Monday, on December 29, 1989, an internationally condemned assimilation campaign by Bulgaria's Communist regime against the local Muslim minority officially came to an end. What became known as the "Revival Process" was repudiated by a decision of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) policy-making Central Committee, and the Georgi Atanasov Government announced that Bulgarian Muslims will be able to restore their traditional names. 

Between 1944 and 1989, the communist authorities in Bulgaria pursued an inconsistent policy towards the country's Muslim communities (ethnic Turks, Bulgarian Muslims or Pomaks and Roma). As regards the Turkish minority, the regime initially tried to adopt the Soviet model of cultural development, tapping cooperation with Soviet Azerbaijan in education and culture. Ethnic Turks were allowed cultural and linguistic autonomy, with the establishment of Turkish minority schools, the introduction of quotas and scholarships for Turks at educational institutions, making Turkish studies a separate course of study at universities, setting up Turkish theatres and folklore ensembles, and promoting Turkish-language print and audiovisual media.

After 1956, the Bulgarian State started exerting assimilation pressure on the Muslim minorities. Islamic religious practices were banned, and Turkish names were changed to Bulgarian ones. The Muslim communities strongly resisted these policies. In the most famous incident of that period, in 1964 locals in the Pomak village of Ribnovo (Southwestern Bulgaria) pelted with stones the communist functionaries who had come to change their names. After that incident, the Communist Party suspended the drive, but it was resumed a decade later. The process was handled by commissions including party activists, propagandists, teachers, plainclothes and uniformed police officers. Muslims could choose from lists of sample "Bulgarian" names or, alternatively, were assigned a name by the authorities. Initially, only forenames were to be changed, but the campaign was soon extended to patronymics and surnames. By 1975, the campaign had affected Muslim communities across Bulgaria, with hundreds of objectors arrested and imprisoned.

The last stage of the Muslims' Bulgarianization was launched in late 1984. Initiating the drive by a report, then Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov was the first to call it a "Revival Process". The campaign was named so because it was organized under the pretext that the population concerned had been supposedly forced to convert to Islam under Ottoman rule and must be revived to its "Bulgarian roots".

In June 1984, the authorities limited the activities of Muslim clerics, halted the construction of new mosques, banned the speaking of Turkish in public and punished violations by fines equivalent to a monthly wage. From December 1984 to February 1985, a large-scale name change process was carried out on a settlement-by-settlement basis by specially organized staff, including senior Communist Party cadres assisted by law enforcement and State Security personnel. A complete information blackout was imposed, and communications between individual settlements were cut off. Between 850,000 and 1,300,000 Bulgarian Turks (estimates vary) were forced to adopt Slavic names in the space of three months. Two hundred people were wounded and at least 30 were killed (including a 17-month-old baby) in clashes with army and police, when between 30,000 and 53,000 Muslims opposed the assimilation policy by peaceful protests, hunger strikes, human chains, demonstrations and rallies. Two terrorist bombings, carried out in response to the violent harassment, claimed the lives of six adults and two children. More than 1,000 people defying the name change were imprisoned or confined to the Belene forced labour camp. The campaign triggered the largest single wave of Turks’ emigration from Bulgaria, with up to 322,000 fleeing to Turkiye between June 3 and August 21, 1989, an event that became known as "The Great Excursion".  

At a Plenum of the BCP Central Committee on December 29, 1989, the new party leader Alexander Lilov blamed the renaming of the "Turkish-speaking and Muslim population" on his predecessor Todor Zhivkov (ousted less than two months before that) and his inner circle. The new leadership condemned the campaign conducted by Zhivkov's authoritarian regime in a bid to create an ethnically monolithic Bulgarian nation and the related violations of Bulgarian citizens' constitutional rights as "fundamentally wrong and a gross political mistake". The Plenum proposed to the government to revoke the name changes and restore the rights of Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin.

In March 1990, Bulgaria's Parliament passed legislation rescinding the assimilation of Muslim minorities. Within a year, 600,000 people had reverted to their original names. Mother-tongue instruction at municipal schools was resumed as an elective subject in late 1991. President Petar Stoyanov, Prime Minister Ivan Kostov and Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Sergei Stanishev apologized for the “Revival Process”, and in 2012 the National Assembly strongly condemned the assimilation policy and, in particular, the expulsion of Bulgarian citizens of Turkish descent in 1989.

In 1991, Zhivkov, Atanasov, ex-interior minister Dimitar Stoyanov, ex-foreign minister Petar Mladenov and ex-State Council member Pencho Kubadinski were charged in a criminal case for their part in the "Revival Process", but none were tried or convicted. All five have since died.

On December 29, 1989, the BTA Home News Desk ran the full text of a decision adopted earlier in the day by the State Council and the Council of Ministers that addressed "the abuses entailed by the forced renaming of Bulgarian citizens" bearing Muslim names and restrictions on mother-tongue use, religious, and cultural practices since 1984. The decision formulated five key points:

"1. Condemnation of past actions that violated citizens’ rights to freely choose their names, practice their religion, speak other languages in private life, and maintain cultural customs.

2. Obligation of state authorities to eliminate these violations and ensure to all citizens the enjoyment of their constitutional rights equally, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sex, age, race, education, or social status, with full voluntariness and protection against unlawful restrictions.

3. Promotion of national unity as a duty of every citizen, to be strengthened under strict adherence to democratic law and respect for fundamental rights.

4. Call for parliamentary action to achieve national consensus, strengthen Bulgarian national cohesion, and consolidate the unity of society through dialogue and broad consultations involving all relevant social and political forces.

5. Amnesty for political crimes committed in connection with the forced renaming policy, provided they were not related to terrorism."