DISQUS

Tom · 8 months ago

Would love to hear more about 'managing a revolution'! Any plans to tell some stories from your time there?

Duncan · 8 months ago

Well, I managed to get to one of the revolutions - it was Bulgaria, 3 November 1989 (my birthday) I was attending an international governmental conference on the environment - one of those stage managed US-Soviet events at which everyone talked about world peace and hated each other. The clever illegal opposition in Bulgaria decided to adopt the environment as a hook for their protest and decided it would be clever to stage a revolution while the Americans and West Europeans were in town. It worked. The demonstrations came onto the street the moment the conference started and Zhivkov was gone within days. I recall two things in particular: attending the rallies in the local theatres - the most exciting human events I have ever been involved in - and having a long academic discussion in the middle of all the chaos about the nature of bureuacracy with one of the leaders of the opposition, the most surreal conversation of my life.