Bulgaria -
Rags to Riches?
20 mins - April 1997
A Danmarks Radio production
00.01.58
NARRATOR: There is consolation to be had from the church in hard times. The
word of god gives comfort. And the poor come for the warmth - and to pass a long morning. They have been queuing up outside the church since 5 a.m. for something to eat. They are people who worked all their lives for the communist state. Their reward is a pension they can't exist on.
02.41
1 Pensioner Our pension isn't enough. After I've paid for heating,
electricity and water, there is no more left. That is why we have to stand here in line for a bowl of food.
03.06
2 Pensioner I worked 28 years at a rubber factory. My pension is not very
big, just 3500 leva (2 dollars) a month. And the state doesn't help. They just say my daughter should help me. But my daughter is ill and has a little child, and she has to look after us all.
NARRATOR: At the church anyone can receive as long as he stand sin line.
Further up the road a new queue is forming. Here people obtain the forms for applying for food aid from the EU. They can only qualify if they can prove they can't manage by themselves. Bulgaria is a country on welfare.
3 This is the new savings declaration.
-Haven't you got the other form?
-I'll give you one right away.
There are forms for everything.
NARRATOR: Back at the church Father Gregory has reached the sacrament.
But it won't fill his parishioners' bellies. After service he will have to go out and speak to the impatient pensioners - now it is eleven o'clock, - six hours since they joined the line in the biting cold.
4 Excuse me, what are we getting today?
Lentil soup.
If you can manage for a few more days, you will be given something a bit more interesting for the holiday.
04.43
5 Father Georgii We are servants of the church and must not interfere
in politics. But at the moment people are starving so badly and we cannot imagine a worse situation for people who have worked hard all their lives, especially the elderly. And when they do retire, they haven't even enough to fill their bellies. Conditions in the country are really dreadful at the moment. I can't imagine that anywhere else could be worse.
NARRATOR: There is soup at the church three days a week. On the remaining
four days the old folks must fend for themselves. But they simply cannot afford the food that still can be had from the shops, and the church has no more money - so there are people actually starving in Bulgaria today.
6 Can I have two helpings?
Can I have two bits of bread for my grandchild?
-I didn't mean to ...
-But it was your fault.
Stop fighting!
Can I have a bit for my sister? She is lame.
NARRATOR: The valuable meals are carefully put into plastic bags and
nets - or eaten on the spot by those who can't wait! - And at home the sick, aged and those too frail to venture outside are waiting for their meal of the day.
(music with money)
NARRATOR: The Georgievii family lived well under communism. Both are
engineers and had senior positions. He developed advanced medical apparatus for hospital use. Today they have both left their professions and work for miserable wages. She is a clerk and he tends an air-conditioning plant at a hospital.
07.16
7 Ivan Georgievii/engineer: What I get today in wages is not enough for us to maintain our standard of living. So I have to have an extra job with a security company. But even though I have two jobs we cannot lead a normal life.
07.53
8 Evgenia Georgievii/engineer:
I shop where I can get most for my money, and maybe save a leva so I've got enough for something else. We women have quite simply become magicians at putting food on the table, and improvising and making something out of nothing. Because you've got to survive, haven't you? With the salary I get today, 30,000 leva (USD 20), you can figure out for yourself how many loaves we can afford. Specially when one loaf costs 500 leva.
9 Ivan Georgievii/engineer: After we've paid our bills we have no more money for the rest of the month. From pay day to pay day we just cope, by the skin on our teeth. Very often we can't even pay our bills. We are in arrears with the heating bill, for example.
NARRATOR: It was a university hospital like this one that used to have the
funds to buy Ivan Grigoryi's equipment. No longer. The dialysis ward LOOKS well-equipped, but the reality is different.
09.12
10 Maya Georgieva/Doctor The machinery is relatively new, but it has to run for ages at a time, and I don't know when we will need spares. Another problem is that we are short of dialysis machines. We hope we'll be able to get some via an aid program.
NARRATOR: A special group of children has always lacked love and care - now
it's lacking food, too.
09.49
11 Emilia Panteleeva/Doctor:
In Bulgaria, unfortunately we have children's homes which have to look after children who have no parents, but have been abandoned. And this year and last year there has not been enough food for them. We receive them because there is not enough to feed them. Yesterday a nurse brought this child from a children's home. She is one year old and weighs 6 kilograms. She has had no loving care. And she needs something nice and pleasant, someone to caress her and make her happy. Instead she pokes her hand into her mouth in protest, and makes herself vomit.
(music - gypsies)
NARRATOR: The orphans are the outcasts of society. They are vulnerable,
often completely lost. If they are gypsies to boot, their only comfort may be the subterranean heat mains in Sofia - and a bag of glue to sniff.
11.33
12 street kid: I did live at a children's home but I got kicked out one and a half months ago because I ran away. I have had to live in the streets for one and a half months now because I escaped through a window.
11.47
13 street kid: My dad was drunk and had money on him. He was beaten up by
three people he knew. One of them is now in prison. He was struck by a stone and died. That was three years ago.
(music - in the country)
NARRATOR: Seven goats and Ivan Ivanov are the only living creatures left
in what was once a huge collective farm - and that's what it is like all over Bulgaria. The communist kolkhozes have been stripped of everything. The soil lies fallow - and Bulgaria, traditionally an agricultural country, has to import food - food which only a tiny minority can afford to buy anyway!
12.56
14 Ivan Ivanov, farmer: We once had 600 cows, dairy cows. 9,000 sheep.
There were about 300 workers here. After the fall of President Zhivkov, they began selling everything off from the co-operative. The cows went to the private farmers, the clapped out cows to the slaughterhouses. One day ten cows, the next day another ten, and that was that.
NARRATOR: In the nearby village there are lots of people who would LIKE
their own farms - and some HAVE made a modest start. But the really big problem is that the kholkhoz land is not being farmed. For seven years the state has just left things as they are. It has not given the land back to the families who lost it to the communists, or sold it to the people who would like to farm it. That's unpopular out here in the country.
14.03
15 Todor Todorov/jobless: If the farms were working, there'd be no problem.
We would outdo other countries. In practice the land is still nationalised, but we want the land that our families owned back again. We have the deeds to it.
14.18
16 Sergei Tzvetkov/driver: My grandfather lived under the Turks for 8 years without the Turks stealing his land. But today we haven't got access to
those fields. No matter what they do, even if they hurl us to the ground, our only hope is the Union of Democratic Forces.
(Music - coal mines)
NARRATOR: Today bankrupt heavy industry is a millstone round the neck of
a poverty-stricken Bulgaria. Because 30 years ago the communist powers in the USSR decreed that gigantic heavy industry was the way to true communism in agricultural Bulgaria. So Bulgaria's rich coal reserves were burnt off in giant coal-fired steel mills - like this one in Pernik - and the iron ore came from the USSR. It does so no longer. Now they melt scrap into iron bars. And the steel mill is running at half capacity and at a massive loss - as long as it's allowed to go on doing so. It should have been privatised ages ago, according to its dynamic new production manager, who is fighting to save the jobs of the 6000 employees remaining out of the 10,000 there used to be.
15.47
17 Ivan Sarankov/production manager:
As our years of experience shows, the state makes a poor owner. And every one loses out as a result. The company cannot survive unless it's privatised. I hope that will happen soon. There is no management, neither of the resources nor of production. There is waste, corruption and a great deal besides. I see nothing wrong with the company being sold for just one leva. No matter who the new owner was, he would be interested in working, in paying his taxes, in creating new jobs, in renovating, and in the final analysis that would benefit the whole of Bulgaria.
NARRATOR: People like Ivan Milutyev are rare in Bulgaria - he has started
his own company from scratch. He worked for a large state corporation which went bankrupt. But instead of giving up, he bought some of the machinery and began producing metal moulds for plastic castings and his little outfit also manufactures plastic products on commission.
17.17
18 Ivan Milutyev/smith: I'm not complaining. He who works, gets. He who doesn't work, doesn't get.
NARRATOR: But the collapse has made things tough:
19 Ivan Milutyev/smith: The problem is the taxes and the electricity supply. As regards electricity, it is hard getting new cables laid. There are often power cuts. Every months something happens. For example, you cannot plan months or a year ahead. Planning has to be done one month at a time.
NARRATOR: A new CLASS has grown out of the ruins of communism - the new rich who are making a fortune out of the economic chaos. Most of them acquired state property, often in mysterious ways. And they are getting richer and richer in a society where rules and laws do not keep up with reality at all.
(song)
NARRATOR: Plamen Hkrankov belongs to the little club of rich Bulgarians.
He has a chain of luxury hotels. He managed to set up a sports gear firm with the state while the communists were still in power. Then he took over the company and things went beautifully.
18.31
20 Plamen Hkrankov/hotel director:
I made lots of money and decided to invest the money in Bulgaria. I chose not to place my money in foreign banks but to begin to build up a privately-owned hotel chain. As Bulgaria's main source of foreign revenue is tourism, the state ought to do more to
develop tourism.
NARRATOR: 1300 kroner (c. USD 200) for a night at his HOTEL HKRANKOV - or ten times the monthly wages of the engineers we visited. Foreign businessmen and venture capital are in short supply here, so Hkrankov is banking on a better business climate under a new government.
21 Ivan Milutyev/hotel director:
I hope there will be profound changes. You already sense that they are on their way, and after all, things can't go on going down hill, because it is in nobody's interest that Bulgaria should be isolated.
(music)
NARRATOR: The new elite gathers for a reception at the Atlantic Club - the
club which is working to get Bulgaria into NATO. The future leaders are here - politicians from the Union of Democratic Forces - they seem certain to win the election on Saturday, and the people expect them to save the country.
20.15
22 Evgenii Bakardgiev/opposition politician:
We enjoy the support of 60 per cent of the population, and that leads to a clear conclusion: Bulgaria is heading for better times. The only guarantee of that is the Union of Democratic Forces.
NARRATOR: The absolute top dog of the evening is Petar Stoljanov - a 44 year
old lawyer - and President of Bulgaria. He was elected president last autumn by a landslide majority. He was sworn in in January when Sofia's streets exploded in demonstrations and violence - and he was the one who persuaded the powers-that-were, the socialists, to bow to the protesters' demands and call an early general election. He sees only one way forward - far-reaching reforms.
21.03
23 Petar Stoljanov/President:
Bulgaria cannot waste any more time. Only through profound but painful reforms can we overcome this crisis. Society is ready for change, and also ready to make sacrifices, because after the
regime of the last few years Bulgarians have realised that all the regime did was to hesitate at the door of the EU.
NARRATOR: But the risk that the problems will take the reins out of the
political leaders' hands is very real. The opposition has been in power once since the fall of communism seven years ago. They got irretrievably bogged down and had to step down before time.
21.39
24 Evgenii Bakardgiev/opposition politician:
Bulgarians are tough. And if they know which path they have to go, and how long they must follow it, they grit their teeth and put up with it. We intend to finish this job.
NARRATOR: The President and his men have every reason to be sure of victory as Saturday's election approaches. The question is not who will win - they will. The question is whether they can fulfill the great expectations a destitute, hungry population has of them.