It must be every academic’s dream to have their book held high and waved by ecstatic crowds on the streets. Zhelyu Zhelev enjoyed just that moment in Sofia in late 1989 as the Bulgarian communist regime under the dictator Todor Zhivkov began to disintegrate.
Zhelev’s publication, Fascism, which explored the similarities between totalitarian regimes, had been banned by Zhivkov, but many copies were sold and kept hidden by eager readers. Now they were brought on to the streets as an act of defiance. Before long, Zhelev himself had become Bulgaria’s first democratically elected president. He was a modest, academic philosopher rather than charismatic politician, firmly committed to western values and free-market economics.
However, his presidency took place in difficult circumstances. His constitutional powers were limited, and Bulgaria’s communists, who renamed themselves socialists, remained a political power. They only agreed to Zhelev’s election to avoid political stalemate and remained determined to frustrate his ambitions. Zhelev described the country’s situation as “catastrophic”, and speculated about the dangers of a military dictatorship. “The Treasury is empty, the shops are swept clean, industrial raw materials are in short supply, the external debt is a huge burden,” he said in 1991. “I am ashamed of the Bulgarian political class, of its callous attitude to people’s fate.”
Re-elected president in a popular vote in 1992, but only narrowly, his authority remained weak. “I counted on greater support than I got,” he said ruefully. Ultimately, he hoped for the creation of a more powerful presidency, along French lines, but his own turbulent time in office came to an end somewhat humiliatingly in 1997 when he was defeated in a primary election for his party’s presidential candidacy. He was credited with some achievements and retained a degree of personal popularity, however, while challenging corruption, but living modestly. On a visit to Britain, he paid for a trolley of food donated by a supermarket for distribution to a Bulgarian charity with which his wife was involved. He thought the offer smacked of corruption.
He also insisted on visiting the grave of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident murdered in London in 1978 with a poisoned umbrella. The authorities organised for a helicopter to take him to the grave in Dorset, but the weather restricted flying so he went by road, which allowed him just a few minutes by the grave before having to go back to London. He considered the journey well worthwhile.
Zhelyu Mitev Zhelev was born in the village of Veselinovo in 1935 and studied philosophy at Sofia University. He joined the Communist party as an essential step in the academic career he hoped to pursue, but was expelled when his doctoral thesis was critical of Lenin.
For nearly a decade he was unemployed or had to earn a living from menial jobs. After a limited political thaw in the 1970s he was able to work again as a philosopher, but was marked out as a dissident figure. He was encouraged in January 1989 when the visiting French president, François Mitterrand, invited Zhelev and some of his colleagues to breakfast at the French embassy. He began to write with some optimism about Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, but he believed Gorbachev was wrong in thinking that communism could be reformed. It had to be abolished.
Zhelev’s wife Maria, a documentary film-maker, survives him, together with their daughter Stanka, who works for a charity. Another daughter and a son predeceased him.
His happiest time was probably in 1994, when he watched the Bulgarian football team reach the semi-finals of the World Cup in the United States. When the team returned home, Zhelev told the players they had given “unprecedented inspiration and national pride to all Bulgarians — and for the country’s image abroad you did what no politician or diplomat has managed to do.”
Zhelyu Zhelev, philosopher and statesman, was born on March 3, 1935. He died on January 30, 2015, aged 79
