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Introduction

In early 1983 a new Bulgarian minister of the power industry was appointed. Eager to demonstrate his professional managerial capacities, he introduced large-scale economic and organizational changes. These followed the new prescriptions just discussed among COMECON countries, aiming to increase productivity and efficiency of the power system. The new measures included significant time reductions of the traditional summer repairs of electric power stations. Also, the two-months coal operational reserves for thermal power stations were reduced to two weeks, freeing significant financial and material resources.

In the 1980s about a third of Bulgarian coal supply came from Ukraine (then Soviet Union) via Black Sea ports. The winter of 1984, however, appeared to be extremely cold and in early January most of Soviet ports were frozen and coal supply to Bulgaria was disrupted. The limited lignite reserves at Bulgaria’s biggest electric power complex Maritza East vanished soon, and most thermal generators ceased to work. The remaining generator capacities worked at extremely high loads and many broke down too, partly due to the reduced repairing work in the previous summer. For almost two months the Bulgarian economy and population were subjected to severe electricity cuts - two out of every four hours were without electricity.4 This counted as the most serious crisis of the country since the early 1950s. The new minister was dismissed and the old one came back, but it took more than six months before Bulgaria’s power supply was fully restored.

The events from the winter of 1984 spurred the development of nuclear power in the country, a 800 MW turbo-pump accumulating hydropower complex at Rila mountain, and the construction of new high-voltage power lines linking Bulgaria to the Soviet power system and several other countries in the region.

AP aims and objectives

This Associated Project aims at studying technological, organizational and normative issues in transnational power supply through the lens of developments in the Bulgarian electric power system during the period between 1945 and 1985. This was the period, which led to radical changes in the Bulgarian electric power industry, using till then (Western) European technology and relying predominantly on private, state and community (municipal) capital. Unified economically by COMECON, the former socialist countries aimed at mutual development of their power industries, which played a key role in the dominant ideology foregrounding production and heavy industries. Indeed, such coordination occurred in the COMECON framework. This happened in a context of booming Bulgarian power production: it grew tenfold during the 1950s and 60s. Also, in the mid 1950s the Energoproect research institute was established, which combined fundamental research, R&D and design of power systems. In mid 1970s Bulgaria’s most ambitious projects came into operation – the Bulgarian Nuclear PowerStation and the Belmeken-Sestrimo Accumulating and Pump Hydropower System. Also several high voltage transmission lines to neighbour countries were built, among them a 700 kV (!) line between Ukraine and Bulgaria. By the end of 1980 the annual Bulgarian electricity production exceeded 30 billions kWh. After the collapse of large sectors of Bulgarian industry after 1989, the country became the biggest net exporter of electricity in the region, supplying power to electricity to Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Turkey.

This AP addresses questions such as: What have been the technological, institutional and organizational principles in building the Bulgarian power system – were they simply a local application of COMECON strategies and rules? What have been the patterns of electricity system integration with other COMECON countries and with the former USSR? How did these processes relate to perceptions of transnational interdependencies and vulnerabilities? Given such historically shaped interdependencies, how was an electrical reorientation towards non-COMECON Balkan countries (Turkey, Greece, former Yugoslavia) possible?

To answer the above questions, we propose to study the following related issues:

a) Analysis of the origin and execution of National Strategy for Electrification (NSE), launched by the communist regime in late 1940s till the early 1960s. The NSE reflected increasing Soviet dominance in Bulgarian economics and politics.

Special attention will be paid to the growing dependence of Bulgaria from Soviet technology and know-how, and from Soviet energy sources such as coal and oil, and since late 1960s - natural gas and nuclear fuel. Our hypothesis is that Bulgaria eschewed electrical dependency on the USSR, and that from the very beginning the country’s policy was to develop its own production capacities. Hence the long-distance transmission lines build after 1960s aimed to increase stability and efficiency of the power system rather than (solely) import and/or export of electricity.

b) The process of transnational integration of Bulgarian electric power system in a COMECON context during the 1970s and 1980s. We will examine the role of Bulgaria in the regional specialisation (so-called ‘socialist division of labour’) among the COMECON countries – in research, in production of machinery and equipment, in management, etc. At the final stage of the analysis we intend to draw a parallel between national electric power policy and international demands and regulations – both during the COMECON period and during the current process of integration to EC. This will help to better understand the challenges in transforming the electric power infrastructure, built during the socialist era into a part of electric power systems of EC.

The critical events in the winter of 1984 – the conditions that made it possible and the lessons drawn from – will be of special importance for the analysis. It will reveal the functioning of Bulgarian power system both from national and international perspectives, helping to access the degree of openness of power system to external influences, including its overdependence of single source of energy and/or single supplier – critiques that are often voiced even today.

c) An important subject of the study will be the process of accumulation of experience by local managers, engineers and R&D scientists in building and managing an increasingly complex electric power system. Part of this accumulation of experience was the process of learning from the failures and critical events. It is our thesis that this accumulation of experience resulted in specific ‘entrepreneurial profile’ of socialist managers and engineers in electric power industry and number of innovations introduced. The support they received by or conflicts they had with the communist party nomenclature will be analysed too.

We will also investigate to what extent the promotion of these new patterns of development in electric power industry have been influenced by the increasing relationships between Bulgaria and some developed Western countries in the field of electric power industry - especially with West Germany (Siemens), Japan (Toshiba) and others, that took place since mid 1970s.

Methodology

We are planning a historical study of the actor-network in the electric power industry in Bulgaria and the region of South-Eastern Europe, based on analysis of archives, of legal documents, of published memoirs, and on in-depth interviews with relevant actors that had taken part in these processes. The interviews with contemporary experts in the field will be carried out too.

The Bulgarian research team will use the experience gained by IP partners in the EUROCRIT project and especially studies of electric history in Northern Europe. It will also inform these IPs on electric integration issues in the COMECON region.