The Christian Science Monitor, December 5, 1990, Wednesday Bulgarian Opposition Struggles For Unity Ariane Genillard, Special to The Christian Science Monitor SOFIA, BULGARIA 'GO, son, we have to fight communism,'' says the mother to her son as he announces his decision to go fight in Vietnam. On the screen, a split second later, the Bulgarian subtitles appear and the crowd gives a loud, laughing cheer. Bulgarians love the American movie ''Born on the Fourth of July,'' now playing in the enormous neo-Stalinist Palace of Culture in the heart of Sofia. And last weekend especially, they were cheering their own victory against communism. After a week of protests and strikes, opposition-minded Bulgarians got what they were fighting for: the resignation of Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov and the replacement of the government he had formed barely three months ago. Mr. Lukanov and his men represent to many Bulgarians what they are trying to destroy: the link with the past. Lukanov's Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the renamed communist party, includes many important figures from the old regime. ''A government will only be successful if it has the support of all political parties and of the people. Only a united nation can implement the change ahead,'' said Lukanov as he announced his resignation Nov. 29. === The New York Times, September 19, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final The Oldest Profession Seeks New Market in West Europe By ROGER COHEN DUBI, Czech Republic Early this summer, Pavlika, a young Bulgarian woman, boarded a bus in Varna on the Black Sea coast and traveled westward to this town on the Czech-German border, where she now stands on the road in vampish boots and a skirt so short it leaves little to the imagination. "Work," she says simply, a helpless smile spreading across her broad face. "Work, that is why I came. In Bulgaria, there was no way to make money." Prostitution is an old trade but not an honored one, so Pavlika prefers not to give her family name. At the age of 21, she has plenty of company. Dubi now forms the center of a five-mile sex strip leading to the border where bars have names like "Libido" or "Kiss" or "Alibi" and young women loiter on every corner. About 70 percent of the prostitutes are foreign, most of them from Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, said Vladimir Kriz, the Dubi police chief. He said several hundred women cater to "sex tourism" from Germany -- the ugly face of the economic divide that scars the land where the cold war died. Many of the women end up here because it is easier and cheaper to get a Czech visa than one to a European Union country. Average wages are $110 a month in Russia, three times that in the Czech Republic, more than fifteen times that in the European Union. No wonder a tide of more than one million migrants, a growing number of them women, is washing up each year on the European Union's borders and within them. Communism put women to work; post-cold-war capitalism does not necessarily do so. More than 60 percent of Russia's unemployed are women. A Russian girl called Luda, in a bar in southern Spain, put the West's lure simply: "One-zero-zero-zero," she said laughing, "instead of one-zero-zero" -- the chance to earn $1,000 a month instead of $100. But the laughter can be short-lived, promised money illusory and the human cost high. Scratch the surface in the Dubi area and a world of violence, xenophobia, disease and misery is revealed. At the orphanage in nearby Teplice, Jirina Rajtrova, brisk in white uniform, points to three babies in a large bed and says two of them, Adam and Lucia, were born to local prostitutes. Of the 55 infants under her care, half are children of prostitutes. "You see," she said, "There are regular clients for pregnant women." Mr. Kriz, the police chief, said he last saw "some pregnant girls working" several months ago. As for child prostitution, Jiri Voralek, the chief of police in nearby Usti, says nine pimps are being prosecuted in three cases this year involving 12 children. "The youngest was 9," he said. Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
