Tenth Anniversary of the Cold War Research Group--Bulgaria

CWIHP is pleased to announce the tenth anniversary of the Cold War Research Group—Bulgaria which will be marked at the annual congress of the Bulgarian Historians Society in Sofia on November 27.

Established in 1998 by faculty from leading Bulgarian research centers, the group has grown to include archivists, journalists and post-graduate students, as well as former foreign office, military and intelligence officials.

For the past decade, the Cold War Research Group—Bulgaria has worked with Bulgarian government institutions to facilitate researchers' access to Cold War-related archival documentation. To date, more than 20,000 pages of formerly classified documents have been released from Bulgaria's military, security, and diplomatic archives thanks to declassification requests filed by the Cold War Research Group—Bulgaria.

Since its establishment, the Cold War Research Group—Bulgaria has been an important CWIHP partner. The group's coordinator, Dr. Jordan Baev, and his colleagues have participated in more than 20 CWIHP conferences and seminars, contributed to several editions of the CWIHP Bulletin, and made substantial contributions to CWIHP's online Virtual Archive.

With support from CWIHP, the Cold War Research Group has published three interactive bilingual CD documentary volumes, Bulgaria and the Cold War: Documents from Todor Zhivkov's Personal Records (2002), Bulgarian Intelligence & Security Services in the Cold War years (2005), and Bulgaria and the Middle East conflict during the Cold War years (2006) each of which includes over 5,000 pages of newly declassified Bulgarian documents.

Most recently, CWIHP assisted in the publication of An Odyssey into Two Worlds, by Jordan Baev and Kostadin Grozev (Sofia, March 2008). The book deals with the case of George Andreytchine, a Bulgarian American shot by Stalin's secret police in 1950. An Odyssey into Two Worlds was acclaimed as a "non-fiction bestseller" by Bulgarian National TV, and was chosen by the weekly Kultura as the "book of the month" in Bulgaria.