THE ISSUE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION OF THE CITY OF ROUSSE IN THE BULGARIAN-ROMANIAN RELATIONS
THE ISSUE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION OF THE CITY OF ROUSSE IN THE BULGARIAN-ROMANIAN RELATIONS

Summary/Abstract: The crisis that broke out in the Eastern Bloc in the second half of the 1980s, the foreign- and internal economic problems of Bulgaria and Romania, the exhaustion of the mechanisms for their practical solution, the formalization of personal contacts between Todor Zhivkov and Nicolae Ceausescu, influenced the Bulgarian and Romanian diplomacy, which prove incapable of solving the escalating environmental problem of gassing the city of Rousse. For the sake of the socialist solidarity of member-states the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the use of Todor Zhivkov as a “a link” between the USSR and Romania, the problem of the environmental pollution of Rousse by the chemical plant “Verahim” in Giurgiu has been silenced for a whole decade (1981–1991), despite the indisputably proven presence of unacceptable concentrations of chlorine ion, which is harmful to the health and life of the citizens of Rousse. The positive consequence of the bilateral political and diplomatic stalemate, in which the Bulgaria and Romania fall is the emergence of the first public protests, the announcement of the environmental problem in Rousse by the media, and the emergence of the first dissident organization in Sofia – Public Committee for Environmental Protection of the City Rousse (8 March 1988).

• Details
• Contents