Area Handbook For Bulgaria Part 11

SOCIAL BENEFITS

In addition to receiving free medical care, all citizens are ent.i.tled to a variety of social benefits, including sickness and disability pay, pensions, maternity benefits, and family allowances. Most of these are administered by the trade unions, but pensions are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance. They are financed by the central government and by contributions from the employers based on a percentage of gross salaries and wages paid.

All workers are ent.i.tled to paid sick leave after three months' service.

In the case of accidents at work, there is no waiting period. Lump-sum compensation for temporary disablement because of an accident at work ranges in amount, depending on severity of injury and length of service. During the period of disablement, the worker is ent.i.tled to benefits ranging from 30 to 100 percent of his wage, depending on the severity of the disablement and on his income. Prolonged or permanent disability ent.i.tles the worker to a pension.

Old-age pensions are based on the years of service and kind of work performed. The pensionable age is fifty-five for women and sixty for men, but earlier retirement is possible for certain categories of work.

Pension payments range from 55 to 80 percent of wages based on a scale covering the last five years of employment or, in some cases, three out of the last five years. Higher rates are paid for work years past the usual retirement age. Pensions are payable to dependents after the death of the pensioner. Dependents also receive life insurance payments.

Cooperative farm members are ent.i.tled to pensions after twenty years of work for women and twenty-five years of work for men provided they worked 100 to 135 days each year. In 1972 it was suggested that 200 to 250 days of work per year should be required for pensions in exchange for higher pension payments to cooperative farm members.

Pensions are collectible even if a person continues working. This system was criticized by Zhivkov in late 1972. He suggested that persons who continued to work after being eligible for a pension should be encouraged to do so without drawing a pension but should, instead, acc.u.mulate additional increments to their pension for each year worked.

In addition to old-age pensions there are pensions for special merit payable to persons who have made an exceptional contribution to national life and national pensions payable to fighters against fascism and capitalism. All minimum pension payments were increased in 1972.

Under new provisions announced in March 1973, employed women will be ent.i.tled to four months of fully paid maternity leave and six months of leave at minimum wages for the first child; five and seven months, respectively, for the second child; six and eight months for the third child; and four and six months for each subsequent child. Mothers who are students or who do not work for some valid reason will receive minimum wages for corresponding periods. Mothers of children under the age of ten are ent.i.tled to special annual leave. All mothers receive a cash payment at the birth of a child; the payments are sharply differentiated to encourage larger families. In early 1973 the payments were 20 leva for the first child, 200 leva for the second child, and 500 leva for the third child. It was planned, however to raise these payments to 100 leva, 250 leva, and 500 leva, respectively.

Another inducement for larger families is a system of monthly family allowance payments for children up to the age of sixteen or until they complete secondary school. Allowances are payable to all families regardless of whether or not the parents work. A variety of other social a.s.sistance benefits are available to indigents, persons disabled from childhood, orphans, and the aged with no income.

WORK AND LEISURE

In 1973 the country was in the process of s.h.i.+fting from a forty-six-hour, six-day workweek to a 42.5-hour, five-day workweek. The transition was being carried out district by district according to a set schedule. It was to be completed by 1975. Persons working in agriculture, education, and the health service, however, were to continue to work their forty-six hour workweek, except where the actual work involved was adaptable to a reduced workweek.

The reduction in working hours had been a much debated subject for several years. It was first promised by the government in 1968, but its implementation has been slow because it is predicated on the same level of productivity and output by each enterprise as before implementation.

Pressure for reduced working hours has been strong because most Bulgarians have very little time for genuine leisure in their daily life.

The lack of time for genuine leisure is the result not only of long working hours but also of an inadequate trade and service network, a shortage of time-saving household equipment, and an excessive bureaucracy. All the daily ch.o.r.es, such as housekeeping, shopping, and attending to other personal or family matters, are time consuming and c.u.mbersome. Studies have shown that all persons over the age of six devote an average of four hours out of every twenty-four to housework alone. The national leaders.h.i.+p feels this is excessive and has proposed measures to develop the service sector.

The favorite leisure-time activity of young and old, urban and rural Bulgarians is to get together with friends for informal socializing. Men congregate at the neighborhood tavern or their favorite cafe to drink plum brandy or wine, play cards, and talk about the latest news. Women gather to gossip at each other's homes, at the village pump, or at the neighborhood playground or park. The evening promenade is an important diversion for all ages and social groups. Walking back and forth at some designated public thoroughfare in small groups of friends or relatives, people greet each other and exchange pleasantries.

Sports are a major form of recreation for young people. Soccer is the national sport, and the matches of major teams are followed with great interest. Hiking and picnic excursions are popular among city dwellers who like to get out into the country to enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of nature. In towns and cities, the theater, operas, concerts, and other cultural activities are popular leisure-time diversions. The cinema is extremely popular in both town and village, although increasing television viewing has been reducing cinema audiences.

In addition to sports, young people spend much of their leisure time listening to popular music and also dancing. In fact, they are periodically reprimanded by the BKP leaders.h.i.+p for spending too much of their time in leisure activities and not enough in socially useful work.

CHAPTER 6

EDUCATION

The educational system in Bulgaria, as in the Balkans generally, began to develop in a real sense only in the nineteenth century, princ.i.p.ally because Bulgaria had been under Turkish rule for 500 years. As education was of little concern to the Turks and an educated Bulgarian population would only represent a threat to their regime, the advancement of a formal educational system was either openly repressed or neglected by the Turks. As a result, the literacy rate in Bulgaria was one of the lowest in Europe at the time of liberation in 1878. During the six decades between liberation and World War II, the educational system had made great progress in providing basic education to young people, but there remained a hard core of illiterates in the adult population. After the Communists took over in 1944, a ma.s.sive drive in adult education virtually eliminated the problem of illiteracy within a decade.

The educational system under the Communists was essentially patterned on that of the Soviet Union, and the desire on the part of Bulgarian authorities to stay within that pattern brought about a general cautiousness as they restructured the system to make it coincide with the newly imposed ideology. Although educational reforms have been enacted with great frequency, they have often dealt with matters of form rather than of substance. The basic adherence to Soviet guidelines has remained intact throughout the years of communist rule.

As in most Eastern European countries, the major objectives of the Bulgarian educational system have been premised on both ideological issues and the demands of the national economy. One of the primary goals of the system--both stated and implicit--is the production of the ideal communist citizen who will work for the realization of "socialist construction" and the betterment of the socialist society. A second major premise of the system is that the demands of the economy must be met; this goal is to be achieved by educating skilled personnel to fill the specific needs of its various sectors. Because of the trend toward industrialization that obtains in all communist countries, a corollary policy is that the study of science and technology must be emphasized over the study of the humanities.

According to established principles, therefore, certain policies are carried out in the process of education. People of worker or peasant origin, who the Communists perceive as having been deprived of their basic rights to an education in the past, are allowed to enter the higher levels of the educational system without the usual prerequisite examination if the necessary places are available. They generally represent between 30 and 40 percent of the total higher education population as compared with 80 percent of the population as a whole.

Certain communist principles form the backbone of the curriculum. Work is perceived to be an integral part of education as are directed extracurricular activities, and a sizable percentage of formal education is allotted for practical and vocational training. Religious education, which was a legacy from the past, has been dismissed as superst.i.tious and archaic, and virtually all religious schools have been banned. The curriculum from the earliest years of schooling to the upper levels of higher education is filled with such courses as Marxism-Leninism, the history of the communist party of the Soviet Union, and the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP--see Glossary).

Under the many and varied educational reforms legislated under the Communists, the pendulum has swung between relative emphasis on science and technology on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Although overall emphasis has always been on the sciences, that emphasis has increased and decreased at various times since the communist takeover.

Between 1944 and 1948, for example, there was little overall emphasis on technology in the curriculum. Between 1948 and 1967, however, these subjects were emphasized to a large degree. Beginning in 1967 some weight was again placed on the humanities. As of 1973 there had been some manifestation of rededication to technology and science, but the latest proposed reform regarding secondary education represented a desire on the part of the government to fuse general education--which of course includes the humanities--and specialized training into one system.

In mid-1973 problems inherent in the educational system of Bulgaria continued to exist. One of the most serious was the inadequacy of funds for education generally but particularly for higher education where the need was the greatest. Another problem was that of overcrowding.

Although there was virtually no problem of teacher shortage, there were far too many students in proportion to the number of schools. A third problem lay in the area of foreign student exchange where relatively few foreign students studied in Bulgarian universities and inst.i.tutes and few Bulgarian students were allowed to study abroad. Another problem on the higher educational level was the discrepancy between students'

preference regarding their fields of specialization and government dictates in this area. Although many students at the university level were interested in the arts and social sciences, the government, feeling the weight of the economy's demands, very often preempted their choices and allocated many more places to the sciences than to the arts. The most serious problem, however, in terms of higher education, was that owing to a shortage of places at the university level only 20 percent of the secondary students who applied for admission were accepted. This shortage of places in higher education, coupled with the fact that extremely few Bulgarian students were permitted to study abroad, meant that a large proportion of potential students capable of serious work were turned away from higher education altogether.

HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Until the late eighteenth century education made virtually no progress in the country. Although schools did exist during the period of Turkish rule, the Turks had no interest in furthering education among their subjects, except insofar as it would benefit themselves. From the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries education remained at a standstill. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Turks allowed the Greek Orthodox Church to become predominant among Christians in the area, and an intense h.e.l.lenization campaign ensued with the seeming purpose of a.s.similating the Bulgarians as a people into the Greek society that surrounded them. The campaign, which was particularly virulent in the 1750s, was successful in the schools, and the Bulgarian language and customs were supplanted by those of the Greek.

By the late eighteenth century, however, a national revival grew in force, stimulated in large part by Father Paisi, a monk who wrote the first Bulgarian history, _The Slav-Bulgarian History_. This work and Father Paisi's teachings provided an incentive for the development of education in the country. From 1762 until liberation from Turkish rule in 1878, education made great strides. As the churches began to throw off the domination of the Greek Orthodox Church, more church schools staffed by monks and priests were established within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church framework.

Although the Greek educational system still predominated in the early part of the nineteenth century, complemented by a rising move toward the establishment of Bulgarian Orthodox Church schools, a movement toward secular education was initiated at this time. Secular subjects were introduced in the church schools, and communal schools were established.

By 1834 the first primer in Bulgarian was written, based on a western European model, which established the basis for secondary education. In 1835 a wealthy merchant founded the first Bulgarian high school, and within the next ten years some fifty schools had been established.

At the time of liberation, however, over 90 percent of the population over school age was still illiterate. Only a small proportion--some 30 percent--of school-age children, those from seven to fourteen years of age, were actually attending schools. After the Turnovo Const.i.tution (1879), however, which was enacted shortly after liberation, the educational system was revitalized (see ch. 8). Elementary education was made both free and compulsory. The state, the monarchy, and private individuals contributed to the goal of making education as nearly universal as possible.

In 1879 the three-year compulsory elementary school was introduced. By 1880 the period of compulsory education had been extended to four years.

In 1888 the University of Sofia was founded. The university initially had seven faculties: history and philosophy; physics and mathematics; law; medicine; agronomy; theology; and veterinary medicine.

In 1910 the school system, which covered a twelve-year period, consisted of a four-year elementary school for children aged seven to eleven, a three-year _progymnasium_ for children from eleven to fourteen, and a five-year gymnasium for children from fourteen to eighteen. This system continued with only slight modification until the Communists took over in 1944. Also by 1910 both professional and vocational schools had been established providing a relatively high quality of education in such fields as agriculture, engineering, theology, commerce, art, and music.

Although there were many students of higher education at the University of Sofia, about 10,000 students annually attended foreign universities, princ.i.p.ally in Austria and Germany.

By the end of World War I, many villages that had more than twenty families had their own primary school. Larger settlements in more urban areas often had their own _progymnasia_ and gymnasiums. In towns that had 20,000 or more citizens, there were kindergartens for children from three to seven years of age. Both religious and linguistic minorities had their own schools, which functioned within the public school system.

Foreign schools coexisted with the public school system. Although the curricula of the foreign schools were similar to those of the public secondary schools, subjects were taught in western European languages, forming a link between Bulgaria and the West.

By 1921 a three-tiered system of education--consisting of the four-year elementary school, the three-year _progymnasium_, and the five-year gymnasium--became officially compulsory in the first two stages. Many children failed to attend school, however, and many villages, despite the official policy, were without school facilities. The entire educational system was controlled by the government through the Ministry of Public Education, which regulated the contents of texts and courses and the administration of exams. The model for the educational system was essentially European, with a particularly strong emphasis on German and Russian patterns.

In 1921 the Law of Public Instruction brought an increase in emphasis on vocational training. Orders were issued to bring about a transition to "vocational education and respect for labor." Eventually, schoolchildren were forced to spend two weeks of their studies in "compulsory labor,"

a concept that was the precursor of the Bulgarian communist philosophy of the integration of work with education. During this period the students worked in such projects as cleaning school facilities, binding texts, and cultivating school gardens.

In 1934 a so-called modern school was established to give the student an alternative to the academically and socially elitist gymnasium, but there were still a number of deficiencies in the Bulgarian educational system. The literacy rate had greatly increased, but between 20 and 30 percent of the population was still illiterate. Although schooling was officially compulsory, it was in fact inaccessible in smaller villages, and many school-age children were not able to attend. Humanities were emphasized to the virtual exclusion of technical-vocational subjects, which were developed to only a very slight degree. Only one of five secondary students studied technical subjects. Adult education was virtually nonexistent.

In 1937 there were eight inst.i.tutions of higher education in addition to the University of Sofia, the country's leading educational facility. Six of these--the Free University, the Academy of Art, the Academy of Music, the Military Academy, the Theological Seminary, and the School of Physical Education--were also located in Sofia. The remaining two were business schools located in Varna and Svishtov. A large number of Bulgarian students also chose to continue their education abroad. One of the major problems at the time concerned the absorption of graduates into the various fields for which they were eligible. The country was still predominantly agricultural, and there were simply too few positions available for the annual influx of graduates, a situation that caused alienation and disaffection.

COMMUNIST EDUCATIONAL POLICIES

When the Communists came to power in 1944 they were determined to change the system of education in Bulgaria. Not only did they seek to eradicate certain elements--such as religion and social elitism--from the educational system, but they also were determined to make education universal and, insofar as possible, to create an entirely literate society. As the educational system developed under communist tutelage, however, governmental statements on the subject displayed an increasing tendency to link the system with ideology and principles to the point where the ultimate goal was the creation of the ideal Communist.

When the 1947 Const.i.tution was formulated, it established universality and state control over the school system as the two main policies of education. It stated: "Every citizen has the right to education.

Education is secular, democratic and progressive in spirit. Ethnic minorities have the right to instruction in their mother tongue; they also have the right to develop their national culture, although study of the Bulgarian language is compulsory.... Schools belong to the State.

Private schools can be established only by the pa.s.sage of a law; such schools are placed under State control...."