hey
believed that they would receive support from its members. On the other
hand, they sought to unify the churches by placing the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church under close control of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Therefore, the regime reestablished the Bulgarian patriarchate; the
patriarch, in turn, required all church members to support governmental
policies.

Minority religions were treated as separate entities, although all of
them had to register with the Committee for Religious Affairs, a body
attached to the Council of Ministers. The leadership of all churches was
considered responsible ultimately to the state. The churches became
financially dependent upon the government as all church funds were in
the hands of the bureaucracy. A certain percentage of Muslims--who
constituted the largest minority religion--were expelled from the
country. Those Muslims who remained were organized into small
communities, and their religious leader, the grand mufti, was allowed to
retain his position as long as he remained subservient to the state.

As far as other minority religions were concerned, their churches were,
for the most part, closed, and their leaders were either harassed or
executed. Roman Catholic churches were closed, the church hierarchy was
abolished, and in 1952 forty leading Catholics were tried and sentenced
to death. The Protestants were allowed slightly more latitude. Although
all Protestant schools were immediately closed, five Protestant
denominations were allowed to merge into the United Evangelical Church.
In 1949, however, fifteen Protestant pastors were executed. Some Jews
were allowed to emigrate to Israel in the early period of communist
rule, but in Bulgaria the grand rabbi, like the Moslem grand mufti, was
rendered completely subordinate to the state.

In 1949 Dimitrov died and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Vulko
Chervenkov, known as the Stalin of Bulgaria, who controlled the
government from 1950 until 1956. His was a one-man rule, patterned
completely on the rule of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. He was both
the premier and the First Secretary for the six years of his rule. There
was an increase in industrial production under Chervenkov. Production
plans, however, appeared to be conceived more in the light of Soviet
five-year plans than with regard to Bulgaria's economic needs.
Agriculture was almost completely collectivized, although production
goals were not achieved, and the standard of