Flashes of Spontaneous Order (Cases of Self-organization Reported in the Bulgarian Press) *

Currently in Bulgaria, there is return in the public mind and political debates to the idea of big government that replaces individual responsibility. With a little help from friends, namely, Hristo Hristov – a journalist from Dnevnik (www.dnevnik.bg(1)) and Vesselin Komarski, a computer professional, I managed to collect some stories that basically prove that the Bulgaria government is malfunctioning and people tend to take responsibility in their own hands.

Street Lights and Civic Disobedience(2)

In the capital city of Sofia until 2003 the streets and the traffic lights were managed by the City Council’s on Traffic Security and Organization Department while the street signage was coordinated between the Department and the Sofia city branch of the Ministry of Interior’s Control over the Automotive Transport, or CAT, i.e. the traffic police.

In 2002 – 2003, fifteen Sofioters were killed on the streets by drivers who did not observe street lights and other signs like speed limits, “school”, “pedestrian crossing” and the like. Among the victims there was an entire family of three that was crossing on “Green” in a residential neighborhood, two students of the American Collage of Sofia, pupils and senior age people. The drivers were prosecuted and most often received harsh terms in jail. But the public was completely dissatisfied by the way the traffic and signage is managed.

People from the neighborhoods and schools organized acts of civic disobedience: blocked the traffic on the key cross roads, demanded change in the speed limits, construction of “sleeping policemen”, installation of street lights, etc. Particularly outraged were the residents and the neighborhood of the family killed and the American Collage(3) students. In 2001, a college student was severely injured when crossing on the “zebra” in front of the school. Students, teachers and parents send a petition to CAT and the City Council demanding an installation of a street light. The City Council promised but did not take any action until another student was killed on the same place in 2003.

Besides blocking the traffic, students and the public usually threaten managing the traffic themselves, not paying taxes and other acts of disobedience. Normally, such protests attract the media and message spreads fast.

There were two significant impacts of those protests. First, the City Council in 2004, concession the traffic management to a private company, which acts promptly restoring damaged lights and signs, invites CAT to hot spots, and raises additional investment from near operating private companies, mostly gasoline retailers. Second, since 2004 the number of such outrageous – i.e. pedestrians dieing when obeying traffic rules – accidents declined but there is little hard core evidence that this happened just because of the rule change. At the same time it is certain that because of the protesters and the media attention gasoline retailers and other companies financed campaigns to promote proper driving ethics.

Retired Teacher Uses Explosives(4)

A 70-year-old former physics teacher, Nikola Pohlupkov, lives in Sofia and spends half of his time on the Danube River, at the town of Oriahovo, 200 kilometers North from Sofia.

Suffering from theft and completely disappointed by the incapacity of the local police to protect properties of the citizenry, he decided in 2000 to self protect his Oriahovo home and the slot of land around it. In order to do so, he invented, made and installed explosive devices and mined doors, the fence and the house.

On 25 April 2001, Ms. Maria Mitzova, a 28-year old Gypsy woman – a fact that was specifically mentioned by all press reports – who came to check out what was possible to be taken from Pohlupkov’s house, was unfortunate: as she was opening the door her left wrist was completely blown away.

Mr. Pohlupkov was found by the police investigators in his Sofia apartment and was brought to the Oriahovo scene of attempted theft where he showed them six more self-made mines installed in different corners of the yard and the house.

The court found the former teacher guilty for two criminal offences: of causing a heavy corporal injury to Maria Mitzova and of possessing weapons, the total suspended term in jail was determined at fourteen months and Mr. Pohlupkov was requested to pay Ms. Mitzova BGN 2,000(5) compensation. She was acquitted; the court decided she did not rob the house. The attempt to rob a house was interpreted as no life treating attack, so, under the circumstances; the owner did not have the right of armed self-defense. At the end of the day, the teacher had to sell it to cover the lawyers’ fees and the compensation.(6)

“Vigilantes” Initiate a Legislative Reform to Provide for Better Organization of Self Defense(7)

They are equipped with a 1978 Soviet made sort of a car Moskvitch and a 24-year old Opel. Their task is to guard houses, yards and fields of the village of Sratsimir near the ancient city of Silistra on the river Danube. The group operates already two months. Four men of age between 35 and 49 with the two cars every night set ambushes in the four edges of the village lands. They do not wear arms but one of them has experience in law enforcement bodies: the 49-year old Mincho Iliev is a former police officer, retired and currently unemployed; and one served a guard on a water reservoir. The other two are local farmers. The group is responsible for patrolling the streets and the two roads into the village, and for watching the paths that lead into it. They inform fellow villagers if they see doors or windows open and expect an SMS-message if something suspicious takes place.

The initiative to organize the self-defense unit came from a pensioner, Mrs. Ivanka Valeva. She and her husband move to the village because of raising cost of living the bigger near by town. Few months ago their well-protected yard was visited by four uninvited night strangers, who left frightened by her husband. But it was clear that they have prepared for taking away Valevs’ two cows and the horse.

On the next morning she, with the help of the mayor called a meeting of the villagers, held in few days. The meeting was well organized. First, they listen a report from the state police officer (who covers five villages) on the crime situation, the outlined the plan, fixed the personnel selection criteria (option to have unemployed for the job was ruled out), and, eventually, they decided on a monthly tax of BGN 2 to finance the protection effort and elected a committee of volunteers to handle the organization. Part of the strategy is a wide publicity of the effort. The guards are on duty from about mid-night to 5 a.m., and the daily rate is BGN 4-6.

The theft-temptation situation of Sratsimir, as explained by the mayor, is the following: there 300 houses in the village (in 30 of them none lives permanently, owners live in big cities and come on vacation), 50 cows, few herds of sheep and coats. Theft intensity is irregular; animals are at risk mostly around national and religious holidays, when the demand is high, guarding field produce is, obviously, seasonal.

At the end of May 2006, the villagers held a special meeting to evaluate the impact of the initiative. They decided it was effective, kept the level of contribution unchanged and discussed improvements.

They decided the overall legal framework of the operation like theirs needs amendments and perfection. There are two issues to be addressed: wearing arms and cooperation with state low and order bodies. A volunteer committee member, a former officer of Silistra District Police Department has sent a letter to the one of the members of the parliament from the region, who openly committed to work on the issue.(8)

Are These Cases Typical?

The answer is “yes”

The selected cases do not go into extremes. The three cases represent examples of everyday problematic situations, in which the planned and politically controlled order and enforcing institutions fail to deliver expected outcome or at least appear to have being failing.

They demonstrate how the public law and order system works, is being reformed and how the deficiencies of the system are being compensated for.

In all these cases there is private, individual and civic initiative that aims to amend and/or substitute the inefficient segment with one that is working. It seems that these amendments and substitutes are doomed to be more effective, but often they enter a collision with the official framework, like in the case with the retired school teacher, that backfires and “punishes” the initiator.

At a closer look, these are not isolated cases – these are examples of processes. And such processes were and still are common to all ex-Communist countries; they deserved but rarely receive an appropriate and comprehensive analytical attention.

The Sratsimir group is by no means unique. Press reports for the last fifteen years give an impression that there are such organized protectors of rural properties virtually all 280 local communities of Bulgaria.

The teacher making explosives and mining his own yard is perhaps only the most famous example of a desperate individual looking for cost-effective (in this case self made) ways to keep property violators off his estate. There are cases of similar behavior, still pending in the courts: the “weapons” used were not explicitly prohibited but the thieves have killed themselves, putting in motion various automatic devices when they broke into the premises they intended to rob.

The treats of civic disobedience in Sofia are just a simple example of a relatively constant variable of political attitudes in Bulgaria and ex-Communist countries. Many ill-outlined reforms and poorly performed duties of public institutions were either amended or totally changed as a response to public disagreements and/or expected and expected discontent. . I tell the story to make a point that even ordinary rules sometimes require action to get established and enforced.

The three cases indicate an existence of a strong under-current in the reforms that is reflected in the everyday accounts of the events in the country but rarely “experts” bother to research and analyze them. Meanwhile, it is obvious that these spontaneous constellations shape individuals behaviors.

Common sense and efficiency

1. All these cases deal with issues of security in a normal, visible to everyone dimension of the human life and property.
2. There is no complicated collective action in them and they represent a reaction to a situation, when some acceptability threshold has been challenged. But often these reactions would require a concerted effort to bring conformity between formal official rules of the game and the informal rules and habits that come into being by trial and error.
3. There is an element of spontaneity in each of the cases, and in every case there is issue dealing with a fundamental right, the right of life in the first case, and property right in the other two cases.
4. In the first case, it is obvious that it highlights an inefficiency of the state system that manages city traffic, some sort of neglect of duty on behalf of the city police and government that is typical for many constellations in the transition. But it also shows how system is being perfected by a public request, expressed via treats of civic disobedience and street action.
5. The second case questions the validity of the conventional regulation on the use of weapons in the circumstances related to the protection of ones properties.
6. The third case demonstrates an attempted efficiency of a collective action and how it proceeds in a democratic manner, from the bottom up and it is likely to test how the official system would be able to digest the informal test and its outbreak to the level of public law making.

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* This publication is a part of a more extensive paper on spontabeity and economic security being prepared for Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

(1) This Internet site has an English version which is very informative for those interested in the Bulgarian affairs.

(2) Source: Sofia daily newspapers, in particular “Dnevnik”, January 15, 2004

(3) The collage is private institution, with a reputation of being the best in the town and with 90 years of history; it was confiscated in the late 1940’s, when the premises were granted to then just organized Communist militia academy; immediately after the political changes of 1989 the American Collage was re-established, reclaimed it properties and reopened its doors for students in early 1990’s. The public image of the Collage gave an additional strength to students’ demands.

(4) Source: media coverage of the court case and interview with Ms. Rayna Tosheva, a local correspondent of daily Dnevnik in Vratza, a district center city for the town of Oriahovo.

(5) About six times the average monthly salary or nine times the average pension (t he exchange rate to the US Dollar at the end of June 2005 is 1.55; the exchange rate to the Euro is 1.95).

(6) This is not an isolated case of attempts to utilize own skills for property protection. On July 12, 2003 the Standard daily, in an article by Kostadin Arshinkov titled “Former Electrician Installs in His Garden Deadly Snares Like in a Hollywood Movey, reported the “technical genius”, Christo Naydenov had installed so many traps using knifes, nails, axes, sharpen tin and broken glass in his yard and house near Plovdiv (the second largest city, in South Central Bulgaria) that it is virtually impenetrable but he regrets that he did not have enough money to use his skills of an electrician. (See in Bulgarian: http://www.standartnews.com/archive/2003/07/12/society/s3779_4.htm .)

(7) Source: 24 Hours Daily, 20 May 2006, and an interview with local correspondent, Mr. Yordan Georgiev.

(8) The author has read the draft concept to amend the framework; it does not reflect the concerns of the Sratsimir “vigilantes” and could complicate future spontaneous organization; more specifically, the member of parliament intends not to tackle at all the issue of the use of arms to protect private property and is focused on fixing by law a structure, the management, etc. of groups like this one.