Author:  Venelin I. Ganev Venelin I. Ganev obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2000. After a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Notre Dame University, in 2001 he joined the Department of Political Science at Miami University of Ohio; since then he has also been a faculty associate of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies. His main fields of interest are postcommunist politics, democratization studies, constitutionalism, and modern social theory. His publications have appeared in East European Constitutional Review, American Journal of Comparative Law, Journal of Democracy, East European Politics and Societies, Communist and Postcommunist Studies, Slavic Review and Europe-Asia Studies. He has also contributed chapters to several volumes that explore various aspects of institution-building in contemporary Europe. In 2003-4 Professor Ganev was a National Fellow at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His first book, Preying on the State: The Transformation of Postcommunist Bulgaria was pubslihed in June 2007 by Cornell University Press.

Communist hegemony in Bulgaria began on September 9th, 1944, when several hundred army officers and communist militiamen deposed the country’s government and handed power over to an anti-fascist coalition called the Fatherland Front (FF). The key factor that determined the success of this conspiracy was the presence of the Soviet Army, which had already entered Bulgarian territory on September 5th; it was the Soviet presence that also allowed the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) to emerge from relative obscurity and stake a claim for an absolute power.