Bulgarian Communist Party

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Bulgarian Communist Party Българска комунистическа партия
Abbreviation	BKP/БКП
General Secretary	Dimitar Blagoev (first) Aleksandar Lilov (last)
Founded	28 May 1919
Dissolved	3 April 1990; 34 years ago (3 April 1990)
Preceded by	BSDWP (NS)
Succeeded by	Bulgarian Socialist Party[1]
Headquarters	Party House, Largo, Sofia
Newspaper	Rabotnichesko Delo[2]
Youth wing	Dimitrov Communist Youth Union
Pioneer wing	Dimitrovist Pioneer Organization
Armed wing	Military Organisation of the BCP (1920–1925) Bulgarian People's Army (1944-1989)
Membership	1,000,000 (1989 est.)
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Leninism Stalinism (until 1956)
Political position	Far-left
National affiliation	Fatherland Front (1942–1990)
European affiliation	Balkan Communist Federation (1921–1939)
International affiliation	Comintern (1919–1943) Cominform (1947–1956)
Colors	Red, Yellow, White
Anthem	The Internationale
Party flag
Politics of Bulgaria Political parties Elections

The Bulgarian Communist Party (Bulgarian: Българска комунистическа партия (БΚП), Romanised: Bŭlgarska komunisticheska partiya; BKP) was the founding and ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990, when the country ceased to be a socialist satellite state of the Soviet Union. The party had dominated the Fatherland Front, a coalition that took power in 1944, late in World War II, after it led a coup against Bulgaria's tsarist regime in conjunction with the Red Army's crossing of the border. It controlled its armed forces, the Bulgarian People's Army.

The BCP was organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle introduced by the Russian Marxist scholar and leader Vladimir Lenin, which entails democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding the agreed-upon policies. The highest body of the BCP was the Party Congress, convened every fifth year. When the Party Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body, but since the body normally met only once a year, most duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo and its Standing Committee. The party's leader held the offices of General Secretary.

The BCP was committed to Marxism-Leninism, an ideology based on the writings of the German philosopher Karl Marx and of Lenin (from 1922 to 1953 as formulated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin). In the 1960s, the BCP announced some economic reforms, which allowed the free sale of production that exceeded planned amounts. After Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985, the BCP underwent political and economic liberalization, which promptly liquidated the party and dissolved the People's Republic of Bulgaria completely. After the end of the BCP, the party was renamed to the Bulgarian Socialist Party in 1990; though Bulgaria retained its socialist-era constitution until 1991 along with its Warsaw Pact membership until its dissolution that same year.