David Elazarov at an International History Conference

This is me at an International History Conference in the 1970s in Sofia. This is the presidium and next to me [to the right] is Boyan Grigorov, deputy director of the Bulgarian Communist Party History Institute. In the 1960s I became head of the department 'Propaganda and Campaigns' in the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party [BCP]. I was also awarded the title 'Honored Citizen of Sofia'. From 1970 to 1989 I was director of the Institute on History of the BCP. In the institute I was a contributing author to a number of international scholarly works - 'The Reichstag Fire Trial and Georgi Dimitrov', 'The Biography of Georgi Dimitrov' and the six volumes of the big Bulgarian Encyclopedia. I was also an editor-in-chief of the almanac of the institute. All that time, during the 1970s and the 1980s, I was five times deputy in the National Assembly, first a candidate member and then a member of the Central Committee of the BCP. From a political point of view I consider the changes after 1989 differently. For me they were not something out of the blue, but more of a logical continuation of the policy Bulgaria led in the 1980s as a socialist country. The political changes gradually led to the democratization of the state. During that time perestroika started in the USSR, which however was essentially wrong and confused: it led to destruction and not to democratization of socialism.