His rule remained unchallenged until the deterioration of East–West relations in the 1980s, when a stagnating economic situation, a worsening international image and growing careerism and corruption in the BCP weakened his position.

Although the BWP was banned along with all other political parties after the coup of 19 May 1934, it continued fielding a handful of non-party National Assembly Deputies and Zhivkov retained his posts at its Sofia structure.

After Nikita Khrushchev delivered his famous secret speech against Stalin at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 20th Congress, a BCP Central Committee plenary meeting was convened in April 1956 to agree to adopt a new Krushchevite line.

Zhivkov resented the idea of himself being the subject of a cult and later, when the residents of his hometown of Pravets erected a monument bearing his likeness – he personally thanked them for their gesture, before ordering the statue be removed.

Subsequently, Zhivkov resigned from his post as prime minister and was instead made Chairman of the State Council, making him the titular head of the collective Bulgarian Presidency.

[17] In 1959 the Communist Party borrowed from the Chinese Great Leap Forward to symbolise a sudden burst of economic activity to be injected into the Third Five-Year Plan (1958–1962), whose original scope was quite conservative.

[18] Zhivkov, whose "theses" had defined the goals of the plan, purged Politburo members and party rivals Boris Taskov (in 1959) and Anton Yugov (in 1962), citing their criticism of his policy as economically obstructionist.

[23] In an effort to remedy the chronic distribution problems of the central economy, higher economic institutions became financially accountable for damage inflicted by their decisions on subordinate levels.

[23] A large percentage of high-quality domestic goods were shipped abroad in the early 1980s to shrink Bulgaria's hard-currency debt, and the purchase of Western technology was sacrificed for the same reason, crippling technical advancement and disillusioning consumers.

A system of distribution was implemented, which gave priority to 'Active Fighters against Fascism' (those that had been part of the partisan struggle or fought against Nazi Germany in World War II), as well as eminent artists, scientists and "Heroes of Socialist Labour" (mostly collective farmers and shop-floor workers).

[31] Although the Zhivkov regime often advocated closer relations and multilateral cooperation with Yugoslavia, Turkey, the Kingdom of Greece, Albania, and Romania, a number of traditional issues barred significant improvement until the late 1980s.

In 1963 and 1973, the Zhivkov regime made requests – it is unclear how far these were in earnest – that Bulgaria be incorporated into the USSR, both times because the Bulgarian government, having engaged in bitter polemics with Yugoslavia over the Macedonia naming dispute, feared a Soviet–Yugoslav reconciliation at its own expense.

In the face of Moscow's post-1953 efforts to reach out to Belgrade and Athens, Zhivkov seems to have calculated that a policy of unswerving loyalty to the Kremlin would ensure that it remained more valuable for the USSR than non-aligned Yugoslavia or NATO-affiliated Greece.

[35] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bulgaria gave official military support to many national liberation causes, most notably in North Vietnam, Indonesia, Libya, Angola, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East.

[38][full citation needed] In 1986 the two countries signed a declaration of good-neighborliness, friendship, and cooperation that was based on mutual enmity toward Turkey and toward Yugoslav demands for recognition of Macedonian minorities in Bulgaria and Greece.

Zhivkov also softened organised opposition by restoring symbols of the Bulgarian cultural past that had been cast aside in the postwar campaign to consolidate Soviet-style party control.

When Zhivkova died in 1981, relations with the West had already been chilled by the Afghanistan issue, but her brief administration of Bulgaria's official cultural life was a successful phase of her father's appeal to Bulgarian national tradition to unite the country.

[46] Though official statements attempted to allude this to be a campaign of unity and the destruction of inter-ethnic barriers, it was met with wild resistance among several groups of Bulgarian Turks, who viewed it as an attack on their identity.

[47] Organised ethnic Turkish opposition against the "revival process" occurred in early January the following year, as an honoured "fighter against fascism and capitalism", a local mayor and a communist party secretary joined forces to petition the government to end the campaign.

[52] The Central Committee fell into line two days later, calling for free elections in the spring and asking the National Assembly to delete the portions of the Constitution that enshrined the party's "leading role".

[54] Years and even decades after his death, his legacy is continued in Bulgarian pop culture, with songs,[62] shirts and various souvenirs featuring him or his likeness being easy to find in modern-day Bulgaria.

[63][64] A billboard posthumously celebrating his 100th birthday was erected in Nesebar in 2011,[65][64] while portraits, posters and calendars bearing his image are still commonly found in the country, with several mayors and other officials being reported as placing them up or handing them out regularly.

The Socialists' government, which had by then rejected Marxism–Leninism in favour of social democracy under its new leader Andrey Lukanov, subsequently collapsed under its inability to deal with the crisis, narrowly losing the opposition in the 1991 Bulgarian parliamentary election.

[81][82] Zhivkov's attempts to integrate and assimilate Bulgarian Turks ultimately did not yield their intended results, instead leading to the creation of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a party largely based on ethnic Turkish affiliation.

Having been among the first nations to market electronic calculators (the ELKA brand, since 1973) and digital watches (Elektronika, since 1975), in 1982 the country launched its Pravets personal computer (a near-"Apple II clone") for business and domestic use.

Following the end of Zhivkov's rule state properties were widely embezzled and stripped of assets, the revenues of which were funnelled through tax havens, creating a new class of nouveau riche oligarchs at the cost of the destruction of Bulgaria's industry.

[8][85] Lyudmila would become a very notable, albeit controversial, cultural icon – promoting unorthodox and divergent artistic ideas, as well as practising Eastern religions and mysticism to the ire of both the supporters of state atheism and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Zhivkov respected his wife's wishes during her life, but reconsidered his position following her death and was later convinced to appoint Lyudmilla, who was popular among artists and the intelligentsia, as the vice-chairperson on the consultative committee for friendship and cultural diplomacy.

In this position, she actively promoted cultural liberalisation with the aid of several of Bulgaria's top intellectuals, while at the same time her avant-garde tastes were left unappreciated by the general masses.

Zhivkov nevertheless allowed her to advise him on cultural matters and agreed on an idea she had presented alongside several artists, for the creation of a grand monument in commemoration of the 1300th Anniversary of the Bulgarian State.