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text sizeRomanians Much Ahead of Bulgarians
One Romanian does the work of three Bulgarians, but this doesn't prevent us from envying the Romanians
Martin Karbovski
We, the Bulgarians, may feel ashamed but it's high time that we admitted the truth: Romania, Romanian economy and state are developing at much faster paces than Bulgaria does. One and the same processes of transition are now producing absurdly different results in the two countries which entered the EU together.
Now is the time when the brains trust should give a convincing explanation why the Bulgarians, travelling in EU's "last carriage," are not as happy and rich as the Romanians.
Certainly, there are people who will point out Romania's better economic indices, three times bigger than the Bulgarian market and the country's proximity to Europe's epicenter - France - as the main reason for this. But there are other global reasons as important as these.
In the very beginning of the transition period, the Romanians demonstrated their uncompromising attitude to the attempts of the old political class to go on ruling their country in a new way. It may sound heretical, but one of the reasons for the inhuman transition period in Bulgaria is the lack of radicalism during the change of the regime. The Romanians waged a war which lasted several weeks and resulted in the liquidation of the psychic remains of Chaushesku's regime. They didn't make the biggest mistake the Bulgarians made - to change the economic system but keep the physical representatives of the old rule.
Curiously, Romania failed to sprout anything like the typically Bulgarian phenomenon "thick neck" or like the Russian "the new Russians". Doing away with the old political class and police, the Romanians saved themselves the development of the extremely freaked phenomena that blossom in Bulgarian economy, politics and judicial system and even cultural life.
Another major difference between the Bulgarian and Romanian transition period is the clear hierarchy in Romanian society. On the northern bank of the Danube, the socialism failed to form an economic class that is presently quite thriving in Bulgaria. The clear-cut differentiation of people of physical labour created another type of work discipline in Romania which automatically transformed the Romanians into better and better-paid workers than Bulgarians are.
The overexposed cheap labour in Bulgaria is a thesis that the business has unquestionably refuted. Three people are hired in Bulgaria to do the job of one efficient and effective employee who, of course, receives three Bulgarian salaries.
The differences between the two nations and their transition periods look weirdly great. While the social and human existence concept was left to collapse in Bulgaria, as a result of the lack of basic rules to govern it, Romania succeeded in cleansing itself and rejecting the model followed in Bulgaria thanks to only one factor - preserving the human and political principle in the evolution of a system into another. To cut the long story short, Romania gave the floor to new people, new ideas to govern it while the only thing Bulgarians could now do is to just and observe and envy the neighbors' transition period that turned out better than ours.
In its essence the conclusion about the differences between the Romanian and Bulgarian transition periods is, pure and simple, that the Romanians knew what they wanted to achieve, while the Bulgarians did not.
We, the Bulgarians, may feel ashamed but it's high time that we admitted the truth: Romania, Romanian economy and state are developing at much faster paces than Bulgaria does. One and the same processes of transition are now producing absurdly different results in the two countries which entered the EU together.
Now is the time when the brains trust should give a convincing explanation why the Bulgarians, travelling in EU's "last carriage," are not as happy and rich as the Romanians.
Certainly, there are people who will point out Romania's better economic indices, three times bigger than the Bulgarian market and the country's proximity to Europe's epicenter - France - as the main reason for this. But there are other global reasons as important as these.
In the very beginning of the transition period, the Romanians demonstrated their uncompromising attitude to the attempts of the old political class to go on ruling their country in a new way. It may sound heretical, but one of the reasons for the inhuman transition period in Bulgaria is the lack of radicalism during the change of the regime. The Romanians waged a war which lasted several weeks and resulted in the liquidation of the psychic remains of Chaushesku's regime. They didn't make the biggest mistake the Bulgarians made - to change the economic system but keep the physical representatives of the old rule.
Curiously, Romania failed to sprout anything like the typically Bulgarian phenomenon "thick neck" or like the Russian "the new Russians". Doing away with the old political class and police, the Romanians saved themselves the development of the extremely freaked phenomena that blossom in Bulgarian economy, politics and judicial system and even cultural life.
Another major difference between the Bulgarian and Romanian transition period is the clear hierarchy in Romanian society. On the northern bank of the Danube, the socialism failed to form an economic class that is presently quite thriving in Bulgaria. The clear-cut differentiation of people of physical labour created another type of work discipline in Romania which automatically transformed the Romanians into better and better-paid workers than Bulgarians are.
The overexposed cheap labour in Bulgaria is a thesis that the business has unquestionably refuted. Three people are hired in Bulgaria to do the job of one efficient and effective employee who, of course, receives three Bulgarian salaries.
The differences between the two nations and their transition periods look weirdly great. While the social and human existence concept was left to collapse in Bulgaria, as a result of the lack of basic rules to govern it, Romania succeeded in cleansing itself and rejecting the model followed in Bulgaria thanks to only one factor - preserving the human and political principle in the evolution of a system into another. To cut the long story short, Romania gave the floor to new people, new ideas to govern it while the only thing Bulgarians could now do is to just and observe and envy the neighbors' transition period that turned out better than ours.
In its essence the conclusion about the differences between the Romanian and Bulgarian transition periods is, pure and simple, that the Romanians knew what they wanted to achieve, while the Bulgarians did not.
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