Three Heads Roll

In timing, spacing and wording, the pronouncements echoed Moscow. First, Bulgaria's leading Communist newspaper, Rabotnichesko Delo, front-paged an editorial: "The party cannot have two disciplines, one for leaders and another for ordinary members." This meant that somebody's head was about to roll. Next day, the Bulgarian Communist Party announced that three of its paladins had been purged from the Central Committee for "antiparty activities."

Yet if the words were the same, the results were a little different. Far from being old Stalinists, the three deposed leaders were all home-grown Communists, partisans of better relations with neighboring Yugoslavia, and all opposed to the Moscow-trained faction led by ex-Premier Vulko ("Red Wolf") Chervenkov. Cher-venkov's chief victim was First Deputy Premier Gheorghi Chankov, 48, a onetime tailor who won his top-level post in 1956 precisely when Chervenkov was forced to step down by Moscow's campaign to make up to Tito. Out with Chankov went former Deputy Defense Minister Yonko Pa-nov and World War II Partisan Commander Dobri Terpechev, 73. The "general" is a bluff old street fighter who takes proletarian pride in signing state papers with his thumb. The story goes that when someone once slammed a door on it, he growled: "Comrade, you've broken my only fountain pen."

In Communist fashion, Chervenkov had managed to consolidate his position as Bulgaria's strongest Communist by denouncing as Stalinists three rivals who might better be denounced as Titoists. As usual, whoever runs the country makes the rules, marks his victims, and writes the history.

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