Bulgaria

In March 1941, under German pressure, Bulgaria joined the Axis powers. Though Germany began pressuring Bulgaria to declare war on the USSR after the war turned against the Germans, Bulgaria resisted. It was only when Czar Boris died under mysterious circumstances and left the country without any strong leadership that the USSR declared war on Bulgaria and soon occupied its territory.

The following government cut off relations with Germany and asked the USSR for an armistice. Soon after, a government under the auspices of the USSR was established. By a plebiscite in September 1946, Czar Simeone was ousted and Bulgaria was declared a people's republic. The Communists won a majority of the National Assembly and elected Georgi Dimitrov as premier in November 1946.

Bulgaria joined COMECON and the Warsaw Pact and received increasingly large amounts of aid from the USSR in order to industrialize. The Communist government industrialized Bulgaria and alsso expanded education, helping to prepare the way for a new reform-minded generation at the end of the 1980's. In 1989, an opposition leader supported by the Communists, Zhelyu Zhelev, won the elections and was reelected in January 1992.