The Committee for disclosing the documents and announcing affiliation of Bulgarian citizens to the State Security and the intelligence services of the Bulgarian National Army has presented another documentary collection, No 15 in a row. It reveals the activities of the exclusively established with the First Dept. of State Security 14^th Division. The first chapter of the edition presents documents, describing the structure, HRs, plans and reports of the division. The second one reveals the operational activities of the cultural and historical intelligence, mostly in Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Romania and the Vatican. The next, third chapter describes the cultural and historical valuables and documents, acquired this way. Reports to Liudmila Zhivkova, daughter of the then-leader of the communist party and head of state Todor Zhivkov, with evaluations of the objects acquired are also included in the chapter. The last, 4^th section – Sites for Intelligence Breakthrough, presents documents from both most significant operations, related to the ISLAND object – the Vatican Apostolic Library and the CITADEL one – the Zograf Monastery on Mount Athos and the acquiring of Paisius of Hilendar's “Istoria Slavyanobulgarskaya” (Slav Bulgarian History).

In the words of Tatyana Kirkova, head of the directorate for research of the documents with the Committee, the exclusively created 14^th Division with the First Dept. – State Security, has no analogue in any other country from the Eastern Bloc:

“There was no such a division even in KGB. The division itself was personally monitored by the interior minister. It was established in 1972, after a decision of the Secretariat of the Bulgarian Communist Party, taken on April 5. It required the search, protection and taking care of Bulgarian cultural and historical monuments on foreign territory. At that time Lyudmila Zhivkova was a Deputy Chair of the Art and Culture Committee and later on she became its chair. There were three major groups of tasks in that committee: the first one was the acquiring of cultural and historic valuables, heritage and documents. The next one was the penetration into foreign institutes, scientific departments with the purpose of recruiting agents. Scientists were attracted to serve to the interests of the Bulgarian policy.”

The documents make it clear that reports on the division’s activities were prepared each year. The recruited people tended to concentrate on the acquiring activities, leaving ideology behind, as scientists were attracted to secret cooperation. The interesting thing is that there were no cases, when people refused to cooperate within such assignments.

These activities were taking place mainly via the creation of scientific research institutes both in this country and abroad, led entirely by the agents and heads of the division. That was how the intelligence activities were covered in general. One of those organizations was “Nature Fans, search of Historical Monuments from the Liberation Fights of the Bulgarian People. Its main goal was to gather information on where there were Bulgarian historical valuables and to do its best to move them to Bulgaria.

“The collection reveals extraordinary documents, showing not only the actions of the division, but also testifying about the historical valuables discovered,” underlines Chair of the Committee Evtim Kostadinov. “Unfortunately these valuables, obviously acquired illegally, cannot be exposed in public. The division’s activities were quite large-scaled, given by the number of recruited people and the funds provided for their work. It is some sort of a contribution to the preservation of our history and culture, but what worries me is the fact that the discovered objects cannot be exhibited,” Mr. Kostadinov says in conclusion.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev