Library:To kill a nation/Yugoslavia's future: is it Bulgaria?

In September 1999, an open letter from Blago vesta Doncheva, an erstwhile activist of the Bulgarian anti-Communist “democratic opposition,” described what might be in store for Yugoslavia if and when it is taken over by the kind of neoliberal free-market “democratic opposition” that has already assumed power in Sofia. Bulgaria's present plight, she suggests, offers a sobering glimpse into Yugoslavia's future.

Doncheva had been a member of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) in Bulgaria until June 1993. UDF is a mirror image of the United Democratic Opposition in Serbia, antisocialist and “pro-West,” that is, dedicated to free-market “democracy.” Like the Serbian opposition parties, the Bulgarian UDF received a great deal of money from abroad, along with cars, computers, and “luxurious placards” for the 1990 election and elections in the years that followed. In exchange, the Bulgarian UDF government provided air and ground corridors to US/NATO forces during the war waged against neighboring Yugoslavia.

In what she describes as the “most awful period of my life on earth,” Doncheva witnessed the UDF “reformers” privatize the Bulgarian economy. “The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are successfully devouring Bulgarian industry, destroying the social fabric.”¹ The Bulgarian government and Western investors first privatized the state-run Bulgarian firms, then liquidated them. Or they sold them for a pittance to powerful foreign corporations. Thus the Copper Metallurgical plant that produced gold and platinum as well as electrolytic copper was sold to the Belgian corporation, Union Miniere, for a nominal price.

Doncheva goes on to describe the dismantling of Bulgaria’s state socialism by Western financial powers and the systematic Third Worldization of her country, although she never calls it that. She notes that Bulgaria’s industry and infrastructure, including the roads, “have been successfully demolished—and this without bombing—in less than ten years.” Free-market reforms also have created hordes of unemployed, beggars in the streets, and children dying from malnutrition and drugs.²

Bulgaria’s population is declining as the death rate climbs and young people are refusing to have children. In addition, as more mothers now suffer from disease and malnutrition, infant mortality has increased. Doncheva reminds her Serbian friends that Bulgaria under the former (Communist) economic system had free medical care, free education, social assistance, and programs for mothers and the elderly. Women could retire at fifty-five, men at sixty. Today the chance to enjoy a secure retirement has disappeared along with many employment opportunities. The number of children who do not go to school is increasing each year. “Only comparatively well-to-do parents or parents who still have some money saved can fulfill their children's desire for a higher education.”

In capitalist Bulgaria, health care has become all but inaccessible for most, as people turn to makeshift home remedies. “Going to the dentist is looked upon as a kind of luxury. There are talks of a drastic raising of all medicine prices. ... The chasm between the handful of rich and the great majority of poor people is disastrously deepening with every day,” Doncheva writes. The low subsidized prices for train tickets for students, women with children, and the elderly had been slated for elimination. Many pensioners add to their meager income with some occasional jobs in the towns or, if they are city dwellers, by providing vegetables and fruit for the winter from their family village gardens—all made possible only because they could travel by train at half price. The higher fares would cause additional hunger and hardship.

Doncheva singles out George Soros, “the international financier of newspapers, radio stations, NGOs and political parties that facilitate the destruction of previously viable nations.” She sees Soros as a prime exponent of the “open society” and “open borders,” leading to the ruination of those plucky few Bulgarian industries that still manage “to stay alive and thereby give bread to a certain number of people.” So-called free trade brings a flood of inferior commodities and processed food products from abroad; these undersell local producers and drive them out of business.

Doncheva lives under extreme economic duress and does not know how long she will be able to go on. But it is the sight of old people digging into the rubbish containers and begging in the streets with trembling outreached hands and tears of pain and humiliation that is most heartbreaking to her. “Street beggars might be a familiar part of the New York scenery. But it is a new and very shocking sight for us here.” She goes on to point out that prices on basic commodities such as bread, shoes, clothing, and utilities have doubled or tripled, while salaries have fallen by 25 per cent or more, and pensions by 50 per cent over the last ten years. “In 1989 [the last year of Communism] my friend's mother had a pension of 105 leva. Now it is 46 leva. Yesterday my brother-in-law told me he had seen the former headmistress of his son's school digging in a garbage can.

Doncheva warns the Serbian “democratic opposition” about being lured by “the sweetened slogans of ‘democracy' (what democracy?) and joining ‘Western civilization' (what civilization are we speaking of?). Do you, the so-called opposition in Serbia really think that the best road for you is joining that ‘civilization'? What will be the bitter fruit of your current efforts? Cheap labor for the US and Western corporations and the humiliating agony of a slow torturous death through a wretched poverty imposed on your people.” NATO's merciless bombing of Yugoslavia, a sovereign European country, revealed the true nature of their “civilization.”

What is the Serbian “democratic opposition” striving for? she asks. “The dismal, hopeless life of their Bulgarian neighbors? Do they really want to see their children going without money for shoes and textbooks? Do they really want to slave for the American or German corporations twelve hours per day for miserable pay?” They should keep in mind that the greatest attraction for a foreign corporation in a devastated country like Yugoslavia is the cheap sweatshop labor.

Doncheva notes that back in 1993 she and her associates in the UDF all believed that the Bulgarian Communist government had simply been lying about life under capitalism. They preferred to believe “the seductive talk about democracy and openness and the rest,” while understanding nothing about the IMF or transnational corporations. But the “so-called Serb Opposition” cannot claim to be so innocent, especially after the US war on their country and the $100 million Washington is funneling to that opposition. “The issue is not Milosevic,” she concludes. The United States and other Western powers “are reaching greedily” into what remains of Yugoslavia. “Their geopolitical interests and their corporations demand it: they want the land” and what resources Yugoslavia still has.

If not the Bulgaria described by Doncheva, then perhaps Romania might serve as a free-market model for the future Yugoslavia. By the end of the millennium, the average wage in Romania had slipped to $80 a month while prices have climbed precipitously. About one-third of the population subsists on less than two dollars a day. According to the New York Times, a publication that usually promotes the glossy side of free-market neoliberalism, “At dawn in Bucharest, the capital, groups of children emerge from the sewers to beg just as they do in the capital of Angola.”⁴ Lifetime job security has vanished, unemployment is rampant, and the prison population is burgeoning. A November 1999 poll stunned the capitalist-restorationist Romanian government when it reported that 61 per cent felt that life had been better under the Communist government of Nicolae Ceausescu.⁵ Despite the shortages and serious problems under that regime, everyone had some measure of security and the problem of survival was neither an everyday challenge nor frequent tragedy.

FOR INCORRECT THOUGHTS, DONCHEVA SENT TO MENTAL HOSPITAL On November 16 1999, a group of Sofia citizens gathered at the US Embassy to protest Clinton's visit and the planned location of US bases in Bulgaria. In direct violation of Article 39 of the Bulgarian Constitution, which guarantees every Bulgarian citizen the right to protest, Sofia's mayor Stefan Sofianski, a UDF member, had forbidden all protests against Clinton's visit. Only fifteen minutes after the demonstrators had assembled, a police van appeared and forcibly dispersed them but not before dragging three women along the ground and throwing them into the van. The three arrested protestors, Madeleine Kircheva, Anka Petkova and Blagovesta Doncheva were detained for two hours. Kircheva and Penkova were then released. But Doncheva was taken to a mental hospital and held incommunicado.3

If not Romania, perhaps Yugoslavia's future will resemble Russia, where free market “reforms,” privatization and deindustrialization have brought enormous corruption, crime, mass poverty and human misery, in what amounts to another successful Third Worldization. Russia might best be described as a kleptocracy. The devilishly shrewd and ruthlessly corrupt few have stripped the country of much of its assets and driven average citizens deep into poverty, notes retired US colonel Alex Vardamis. “While criminals with foreign bank accounts live in regal splendor, Russian pensioners go hungry.”⁶

If not Bulgaria, Romania or Russia, then perhaps Yugoslavia's future is something still worse: Iraq. Iraqis once enjoyed the highest standard of living in the Middle East. But Iraq has been battered by massive Western aerial assaults, and mercilessly strangulated by protracted international sanctions, leading to tens of thousands of deaths each year. Iraq's health system, considered a good one prior to the Gulf War, has been in shambles for more than a decade. The mortality rate due to infectious diseases, many of which are readily curable, is extremely high. Tuberculosis in particular is on the rise. “Patients suffer and die in hospitals because there are no spare parts to repair damaged equipment,” says Iraqi Minister of Health Dr. Omeed Medhet.⁷ As of 2000, because of the sanctions, Iraq had a zero per cent cure rate for leukemia. The cure rate in the US is 70 per cent. In addition, Iraq's water supplies remain contaminated; cholera and typhoid continue to kill. Iraq's previously abundant agricultural base has been destroyed by chemical toxins dropped during the Western aerial assault, including vast amounts of depleted uranium. Food shortages remain severe. Because of malnutrition, many Iraqi children—those who manage to survive infancy—are growing up severely underweight and undersized.

As of 2000, Yugoslavia did seem to be headed in a Third World direction that could go only from bad to worse. A report released in London in August 1999 by the Economist Intelligence Unit concluded that the enormous damage that NATO inflicted on Yugoslavia's infrastructure will cause the economy to shrink dramatically in the next few years.⁸ Gross domestic product dropped by 40 per cent in the first year after the bombing, and will stay at levels far below those of a decade earlier. Yugoslavia, the report predicted, will soon become the poorest country in Europe. Mission accomplished.