On 01 October, parliamentary elections were held in Latvia, a post-Soviet country, and on 02 October, parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria, a former Eastern bloc country - the fourth election in just 18 months. These elections showed how much the war in Ukraine affects the politics of European countries.
Latvia is a small Baltic country (less than 2 million inhabitants), which until 21 August 1991 was part of the USSR. About 25% of this country is of ethnic Russian origin. However, after independence none of the ethnic Russians was automatically granted citizenship – they had to pass first an exam in the knowledge of Latvian and Latvian history (insisting on an ideologically anti-communist usage of language, naming the years of the USSR as "occupation"). In 2017, about 70% of ethnic Russians were citizens.
The Latvian political scene cannot be simply divided according to ideological lines. There are many parties (the parliament is divided into about 20 parties), and the main division is the attitude towards Russia and ethnic Russians in Latvia. Some of the parties described in propaganda as "pro-Russian" – in fact, those are parties that want equal treatment of all citizens, not just ethnic Latvians, that is, they oppose ethno-nationalism – are economically social. These parties, it must be emphasised are not socialist, but social – i.e. they are opposed to the looting of state property and the sale of the economy to Western capital, but on the other hand, they are socially conservative parties. The other parties are fanatically pro-Western, but most of all Atlanticist (pro-NATO). Some are Euro-enthusiastic, others Euro-skeptical, but all are economically neoliberal.
Distribution of the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia
The currently ruling Unity, a party of Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, is extremely pro-NATO and pro-EU. Currently in opposition the Union of Greens and Farmers in the 1990s dealt primarily with the privatisation of land (liquidation of post-Soviet state-owned farms). However, they did not distribute the land to peasants, or employees of these state-owned farms - they gave the land to the former landowners or their descendants. Today, 30 years later, this structure has changed, but it follows the principle of capital accumulation. 8 out of 10 landowners in Latvia are foreign companies – mostly Swedish, Norwegian, American.
From the point of view of the political "transformation" – i.e. the creation of a new, capitalist Latvian state after the collapse of the USSR – Latvia is an example of a real tragedy. Austerity was imposed and the economy was deregulated (i.e. taxes were lowered and numerous allowances for Western capital were applied). "Latvia has almost no effective job protection and only the weakest trade unions are in favour of decent working conditions and wages (and sometimes even only wages)," we are told. This caused massive waves of emigration. As Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson write: “At least 10% of Latvians left after joining the EU in 2004 and joining the Schengen area. [...] Its 2.7 million inhabitants in 1991 shrunk to the official 2.08 million in 2010 due to a combination of emigration and a financial environment too precarious to allow marriage and children."
After the financial crisis, the Latvian government decided to defend the banks at all costs (that is, at the expense of its citizens). Thanks to this, Latvia became the European kingdom of money-laundering. According to Sommers and Hudson, Latvia began cutting forests en masse to save the economy (earlier, the USSR had promoted forest cover here).
Today, as a result of the post-Covid crisis, and also allegedly caused by the war in Ukraine, Latvia has the third highest inflation in the European Union at 21.5% (only Lithuania and Estonia, i.e. the other two Baltic states, have higher inflation). 23% of the Latvian population is at risk of poverty. In the face of this terrible crisis, the government, instead of saving the economy, has been pursuing a Russophobic policy since February. The Latvian parliament described Russia as a "terrorist sponsor state." The anti-Russian policy is deeply rooted also in the educational system of this country – where the learning of the Russian language is limited and there are even plans to limit the use of the Russian language in the workplace).
Poster attacking the Russian president outside the Russian Embassy in Riga, Latvia
However, the aggressive attitude of the current government towards Russia – including a ban on entry of Russian citizens to Latvia or the demolition of the monuments of the Red Army – which is ahistorical, scandalous and worrying, not least because also Latvians fought in the Red Army against the Nazi German invasion, not only Russians – made the prime minister more popular.
The election results turned out to be even more shocking than expected from the polls. The Harmonia party, defending the rights of the ethnically Russian population, did not exceed the 5% threshold, which means that none of its candidates got to the parliament – while in the last elections in 2018, this party won first place, although it did not manage to form a government. The undisputed winner is the party Unity of Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, which, however, has to look for coalition partners: for the last four years, it has been in a coalition with, among others, Russophobic neo-Nazis from the National Alliance party, which currently took fourth place, winning 13 out of 100 seats).
The only non-Russophobic party that got into parliament after these elections is the newly formed party For Stability!, which only managed to win 10 seats. Despite the catastrophic economic situation, the anti-Russian narrative of the current government turned out to be a success, and Latvians believe that their biggest problem was not gigantic inflation, but Russia.
These parties, it must be emphasised are not socialist, but social – i.e. they are opposed to the looting of state property and the sale of the economy to Western capital, but on the other hand, they are socially conservative parties. The other parties are fanatically pro-Western, but most of all Atlanticist (pro-NATO). Some are Euro-enthusiastic, others Euro-skeptical, but all are economically neoliberal
The situation is different in Bulgaria, which has traditionally had good relations with Russia. During the period of the Bulgarian People's Republic (1946-1990), Bulgaria was considered the most faithful ally of the USSR. In 2021, 45% of Bulgarians had a positive attitude towards Russia. After the escalation of tensions between Ukraine and Russia on 24 February 2022, the positive attitude towards Russia fell to 30%, but despite this, Bulgaria is today one of the most pro-Russian countries (along with Slovakia and Hungary) in the European Union. Bulgaria and Russia are currently mainly linked by close energy relations – from gas supplies to the construction of a planned nuclear power plant by Rosatom.
In 1989/90 Bulgaria, as a socialist country in Eastern Europe, unlike the rest of its counterparts, was in a relatively good economic and social situation. According to the World Bank and FAO, it had:
“A population of 8.878 million people with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of 2,449 dollars per capita. A positive trade balance of +877.1 million dollars. The hospital beds were 970.2 per each 100,000 citizens, which surpassed substantially the average of the European Union with 15 member countries which was 777.4 per each 100,000 citizens. Manufacture was industrialized and over 80% (per cent) of the production came from industry. Only 10% of the whole production came from the so-called traditional economy – agriculture. […] country had built stable health, pension and educational systems functioning excellently and had a positive trade balance of almost 900 million dollars.”
Socialism in Bulgaria, therefore, collapsed not because of the justified discontent of the citizens, but only because of the geopolitical action aimed at the complete elimination of socialism in Eastern Europe. This was necessary to ensure the efficiency of the Western European capitalist system: they needed cheap labour.
A well-known method of controlling by the capitalist system is debt – as Karl Marx wrote about in Das Kapital (“The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation” – Das Kapital, vol. 1, part 8, chapter 31, pg. 535). That is why the first capitalist government in Bulgaria "signed in 1991 the first loan with the World Bank requiring structural reforms. Since then, 17 agreements have been signed with the World Bank and 13 agreements with the International Monetary Fund – all with conditions for reform. Bulgaria had to start quickly with the privatization process of most of its economic sectors, including the banking sector. In addition, the country had to liberalize all prices, and to liberalize and deregulate its markets. All the reforms carried out in the past 25 years have been designed, imposed and approved by two of the most powerful global institutions".
As Daniela Penkova wisely adds: “In 1989, wealth in Bulgaria was relatively evenly distributed – there were no owners of large capital, and poverty was practically non-existent. However, since many services were free (public health, education, textbooks, transportation for students and pensioners) and other services and goods were sold at state-set prices that sometimes did not exceed the cost of their production (groceries, transport, electricity), into water etc.), GDP was relatively low at the time. After privatization and liberalization, prices have increased beyond measure, thereby increasing GDP. Therefore, GDP is not a measure that will allow us to correctly portray the condition of any economy. [...] According to FAO data, in 1989 Bulgaria consumed 3,623 kilocalories per day per capita and the country was fourth in the world before all Western countries (France was 8th, Italy - 9th, Austria - 11th, USA - 14th and the average daily consumption worldwide was 2,635 kilocalories per capita). The latest available FAO data is from 2011, which shows that Bulgaria has dropped from 4th to 81st with an average daily consumption of 2,877 - 25% less (minimum survival is 2,400 kilocalories)”.
To date, some estimates claim that about half of Bulgarians would like a return to the socialist system.
Capitalist Bulgaria goes beyond merely an economic catastrophe – Bulgaria is the poorest country in the European Union and the 6th poorest country in Europe. It is also social – there has been significant depopulation, such that in the years 1990-2015 Bulgaria shrunk by 1,600,000 people. It is also known as the "European capital of the mafia." The former prime minister Boyko Borisov’s ties to the Bulgarian mafia are known to the public (although Borisov himself denies this, and no court has proven his guilt).
Borisov, despite his close relations with the US, did not adopt aggressive relations with Russia. Instead, he supported Merkel in tightening relations between Brussels (EU) and Moscow
The country is also struggling with a rather unstable political situation - especially over the past year. Almost all parties in Bulgaria are supporters of the neoliberal system, including the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which emerged from the transformation of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1990. In short, following the regime change, Bulgaria's anti-capitalist forces capitulated. The exception was Prime Minister Zhan Videnov (BSP), who was Prime Minister in 1995-1997, who showed some features of geopolitical independent-mindedness, including delaying talks between Bulgaria and NATO. He also tried to rebuild good relations with Russia. However, the neoliberal economic measures imposed by the World Bank and the IMF sparked a catastrophic crisis that pro-Western forces took advantage of to fuel anti-government riots that ultimately forced Videnov to resign. Today, this event can be considered one of the first "colour revolutions" carried out by Western powers to ‘fix’ governments that were unfavorable to them.
The right-wing party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), led by Boyko Borisov, has been the most important party on the Bulgarian political scene since the 2009 elections. Borisov himself – apart from the relations with the mafia as mentioned earlier – was the bodyguard of both the last socialist leader of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, and the bodyguard of Simeon II, the last Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria, and the prime minister of this country in 2001-2005. Borisov, despite being an anti-communist, became famous for his phrase praising Zhivkov: "We cannot even paint all that Todor Zhivkov built.”
The rule of Boyko Borisov (prime minister in 2009-2013, 2014-2017 and 2017-2021) was highly corrupt, but at the same time he had close relations with the West, in particular with Angela Merkel and German business. These close relations – Borisov has a picture of Merkel on his desk – with the German chancellor allowed him to lead a hard-handed rule and, with the help of the secret services, even remove politicians or journalists who were unfavourable to him. These are measures which in the conditions of a Third World country would immediately be called “authoritarianism.” He was described by the German press as the Brussels “golden child” in Bulgaria. However, Borisov, despite his close relations with the US, did not adopt aggressive relations with Russia. Instead, he supported Merkel in tightening relations between Brussels (EU) and Moscow.
Boyko Borisov and Angela Merkel
With time, however, the society's fatigue with corruption and the oligarchic nature of the state increased. The United States also began to turn away from Borisov – it began to impose sanctions on the oligarchs close to him. Additionally, the government's problems were caused by the conflict with the president: retired general Rumen Radev from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, who wanted – although the president does not have such powers – a significant rapprochement with Russia. Radev even defined Crimea as part of Russia, which Western countries do not recognise, and caused outrage in the US.
In the face of this political turmoil, Borisov resigned, and the elections in April 2021 resulted in a highly fragmented parliament in which neither party was able to form a majority, because no one wanted to cooperate with GERB. Consequently, President Radev appointed his ally – and fellow former general – Stefan Yanev as technical Prime Minister, who pursued a policy in line with that of the President. His government enjoyed high public support. Bulgaria held a second election in July 2021, which also prevented the formation of a government, so Stefan Yanev remained interim prime minister.
In the face of such a brazenly pro-American government, in which the prime minister did not even hide that he was under the influence of the American embassy, problems arose within the coalition. Several parties were against sending weapons to Ukraine. Ultimately, Prime Minister Petkov withdrew from his declaration of military aid to Ukraine, but shortly thereafter, the coalition disintegrated anyway
Only the third election in November 2021 allowed the formation of a government. Kiril Petkov became the new prime minister, who was the economic minister in Yanev's government. As prime minister, Petkov found himself described by critics as a protector of US interests rather than the leader of an independent state. His government immediately took an even more aggressive stance toward Russia. The prime minister publicly stated that "all corruption in Bulgaria is Russia's fault." At the secret request of the US, he also entered into a conflict with North Macedonia (he demanded that the country's constitution mention Macedonian Bulgarians as a condition for supporting efforts to join the EU), whose actual goal is likely that of causing conflicts in the Balkans, a region in which Russia enjoys quite a strong support. In February 2022, Petkov also dismissed Yanev, who was the minister of defence, for using the term "special military operation" for the conflict in Ukraine, which the prime minister considered to be a pro-Russian statement.
A politician from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms(DPS) party, which represents the Turkish minority in Bulgaria – a community present there since Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire – publicly stated that "Prime Minister Petkov is threatening that the construction of South Stream (the planned gas pipeline from Russia to the EU ) will be solved (ended) by the US ambassador to Bulgaria.”
As journalist Simeon Milanov admits: “Unfortunately, the protests against the GERB regime in which thousands of us took part were used as an opportunity to replace the political elite in our country […] by the USA. The old late socialist and post-socialist elite has always served the West for opportunistic reasons. But now some young people who are educated and formed as Westerners will come to power (Petkov studied in the USA). This is actually nothing new, because the practice of educating vassal elites in the metropolis dates back to ancient Rome, and even earlier. [...] Bulgaria faces the terrifying possibility of losing even the last-minute remnants of its national sovereignty, abandoning its national interests in favour of American strategic plans and goals.”
In the face of such a brazenly pro-American government, in which the prime minister did not even hide that he was under the influence of the American embassy, problems arose within the coalition. Several parties were against sending weapons to Ukraine. Ultimately, Prime Minister Petkov withdrew from his declaration of military aid to Ukraine, but shortly thereafter, the coalition disintegrated anyway, leading to the dissolution of parliament and the announcement of early elections on 02 October 2022, which were already the fourth parliamentary elections in just 18 months.
However, their results are not optimistic either. As many as seven parties have entered parliament, and GERB and the DPS will not be able to form a majority government. Kiril Petkov has already announced that his party will not enter into a coalition with Borisov, although he expressed the hope that GERB would form a government.
In short, Petkov does not want to rule anymore, but prefers to blame the catastrophic inflation – which was aggravated by his government when it refused to pay for gas in rubles, which caused Russia to suspend its supplies to Bulgaria – on the new government, and he will be able to build his political potential for the future. Two parties that openly support rapprochement with Russia also entered parliament: the neo-fascist Revival party and the party of former Prime Minister Yanev, Bulgarian Rise.
Regardless of whether which party succeeds in forming a government or not (in that case the Bulgarians may go to the polls again at the end of January or in early spring), the biggest loser of these elections is the entire discredited political class: the turnout in these elections was less than 26%! This is the lowest voter turnout in the modern history of Bulgaria. And it has shown that Bulgarians are not interested in choosing between a corrupt establishment and Washington's puppets.
Yet the political scene offers them no real alternative to this impasse.
