In 1971, a new constitution was promulgated, but the basic clauses of the 1947 document, regarding so-called individual freedoms and state ownership, remained essentially intact. It was restated in Article 54 that "citizens enjoy freedom of speech, press, meetings, associations and demonstrations." Article 46 again provided for state development of, and control over, the mass communications system.
The results of the policy regarding the media are witnessed by numerous examples of party control and the repression of dissidents. All newspapers must provide space for the official news of the government, and all Central Committee directives must be printed without alteration. No dispatches sent out by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (Bulgarska Telegrafna Agentsiya--BTA)--the official news agency of the country--are allowed to be revised. No criticism of government policies is tolerated. Dissident individuals and groups are singled out for criticism by the Politburo. In 1972 a Politburo member, Todor Pavlov, accused certain writers of rejecting Socialist Realism in favor of more bourgeois literature and art. Other writers were criticized for their so-called subjectivistic interpretation of Bulgarian literature and were branded as pseudoscientists.
ADMINISTRATION OF THE MASS COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM
As the system has evolved, the broad outlines of propaganda have been dictated from the Politburo, the party's chief policymaking unit. From there policy is transmitted to the Agitation and Propaganda Department (Agitprop), which is a major operational unit of the Central Committee. Agitprop, in turn, is responsible for the transmission of guidelines down to the lowest levels of party organization. Simultaneously, the same dictates are transmitted throughout all cultural institutions by the Ministry of Information and Communications. Under this ministry's jurisdiction are the arts, the film industry, radiobroadcasting, television, book and pamphlet publishing, printing, all cultural or educational institutions, and all so-called independent artists. Still a third channel for the transmission of the original propaganda are the mass organizations that function in the propaganda field under direction of either Agitprop or the Ministry of Information and Communications (see ch. 9).