the
humanities, governmental policies have limited the number of places
available in these areas in order to train technical-vocational
specialists to meet the needs of the economy (see ch. 12).

The last important principle of Bulgarian education is the
nationalization and secularization of the school system. When the
Communists took power in the 1940s, they quickly closed all foreign and
private schools with the exception of schools for the children of Soviet
officials and diplomats. Schools of ethnic minorities fell under the
aegis of the government and thereby lost all autonomy. Ironically, in
1973 the only private school that existed was related to the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church. As the church is subservient to and dependent upon the
state, however, the existence of such a school undoubtedly represented
little threat to the government.

EDUCATIONAL REFORMS

Between the years 1944 and 1948 the Communists set about eradicating the
prewar educational system. By 1947, when the constitution (also called
the Dimitrov Constitution) was enacted, all prewar textbooks had been
replaced by communist texts; all schoolteachers and university
professors who were considered reactionary or fascist had been replaced
by persons loyal to the Fatherland Front (Otechestven Front) government;
and all institutions of higher education had been opened to workers and
their children, whereas students thought to have fascist or reactionary
tendencies were denied admittance.

The Dimitrov Constitution stipulated further that all schools, including
those that had previously been private, would be the property of the
state; that all foreign schools would be closed for the academic year
1948-49; and that religious schools would be discontinued. Ironically,
the only denominational schools that were allowed to continue were those
that trained priests, but these schools had to have special permission
from the state in order to continue their operations.

In 1948 and 1949 another series of reforms was initiated, which,
although less sweeping than the original reforms, tended to pattern the
Bulgarian school system more closely on that of the Soviet Union. In
August 1949 a joint resolution of the BKP Central Committee and the
Council of Ministers declared that education would be carried out in the
spirit of socialism, based both on the teachings of Karl Marx and
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and on Bulgarian friendship with the Soviet Union.
The ideolo