Revival Process
[1] The People's Republic of Bulgaria officially practiced State Atheism, in line with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and religious expression was tightly controlled.
The policy of the Bulgarian Communist Party towards ethnic and religious minorities evolved during the forty year course of one-party rule.
[3] Following on from the ban on the Turkish language in schools, the government forced many Slavophone Muslims to Bulgarianize their names in the early 1970s.
Officials were sent to Islamic funerals to ensure that the proper Socialist rites were carried out and prayers said in the Bulgarian language.
The measure was extended to a number of Crimean Tatars and Alians (a Shia group, also referred to as Alevi or Kizilbash)[8] mere months before the "Revival Process" began in earnest in 1984.
[citation needed] While this list was not completed prior to the start of the "Revival Process", some name indexes were available by that time.
According to one eyewitness account by an ethnic Bulgarian: "The [Turkish] village was surrounded by militia and/or special internal troops or regular army trucks or even light tanks.
Officials regularly inspected Muslim boys to ensure they remained uncircumsized, and if a couple were found to have violated the ban, both the parents and the individual who had performed the circumcision faced punishment.
[17] Similar to the system of government-controlled religious organizations which exists in the People's Republic of China today, Bulgaria tightly regulated the practice of Islam in the country.
[17] Unsurprisingly, the state-employed Chief Mufti expressed his support for the "Revival Process", declaring that "...There have been no cases of preventing or in any way restricting Muslims from performing religious rites and services.
For example, in spite of regulations, many Muslims continued to secretly practice their faith and instruct their children in the Turkish language and Islamic religion.
[19] While the international borders of the People's Republic of Bulgaria were generally closed, Turks sought refuge within the country.
Many fled into the forests and other inaccessible areas to hide from the state while others attempted to flee for the big cities (where the re-naming process was slower and more cumbersome).
[20] Muslims who refused to assimilate faced imprisonment, expulsion, or internment in the reactivated Belene labor camp, situated on an island in the Danube river.
[23] In spite of the high number of fatalities among the Muslim community, organized armed resistance to the "Revival Process" never arose.
[24] Explanations for why resistance remained non-violent are varied (in contrast to contemporaneous armed movements in places like Northern Ireland).
In an event euphemistically referred to as the "Big Excursion", over 300,000 left Communist Bulgaria for Turkey between 30 May 1989 and 22 August 1989 (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanized: Goliamata Ekskurziya.
While the government of the Bulgaria maintained that the migration of Muslims to Turkey was voluntary, many Bulgarian Turks had been coerced into leaving the country.
[32] At a 2000 speech at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example, keynote speaker and head of the National Security Agency Michael V. Hayden, made only non-specific reference to the "Revival Process" that he observed while stationed in Sofia during the Cold War because the audience would not have understood the "facts and context necessary to follow his talk.
