Development and Crisis of the Centrally Planned Economy in Bulgaria
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2006
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Valahian Journal of Historical Studies
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Abstract
Bulgaria is probably the most appropriate scenario in which to analyze the functioning of Soviet-style planning. Here being maybe there where this system has been applied in a comparatively more orthodox way, in spite of some peculiarities. This article examines the transformations that took place within the Bulgarian economy between 1944 and 1989 with the aim of analyzing the causes of the crisis of the planned economy. The process of economic development experienced in Bulgaria traced the intrinsic limits of the planning mechanism. Several attempts to modify this mechanism were introduced to allow the continuity of the growth process. This study analyzes to what extent these reforms constituted real modifications to the pattern of centralized planning, and considers their inability to avoid economic crisis. The aim of the reforms toward the decentralization of the economic mechanism failed. All the changes introduced may be described as conservative, bearing in mind that none of them constituted any real deviation from the centralized pattern. In any case, only certain kinds of administrative decentralization, improving central control through the simplification of the system and broadening of the powers of the intermediate levels of the administrative structure, took place