In light of exploring the mentality of the Bulgarian people, the following is a personal account of the pressures and techniques used by the Bulgarian Secret Services during communism. The report shows testimony to how agents directly or indirectly got themselves involved by using three basic strategies according to the victim:
1. “‘Soft’ breaking of the personal will by method of blackmail, transformation of refusal into ‘consent’ and making the free personality into an instrument deprived of will in the hands of the secret services;
2. Brutal suspension from scientific work, deprivation of the scholar to find any employment position, including the lowest qualified employment for him to earn his family’s daily bread, placement of his family-members to various methods of pursuit and repression;
3. Savage violation on the scholar, on grounds of definite ideological statements, provided by law, by sending him to a hospital for the mentally ill, to a labor camp for ‘re-education’ by means of primitive and sweat physical labor or at prison’s special rigid regime.”
Iankov, I. Psychology of Law Value in Communist and Post-Communist Bulgaria. First International Conference on Therapeutic Jurisprudence. (Winchester, United Kingdom of Great Britain. July 8-11, 1998): 2-5.