All local Roma organisations, including football clubs and cultural associations were prohibited and the most prominent Roma leader—also a member of the National Assembly—was sent to a concentration camp. In fact the Roma football clubs are an interesting example. After they were formed they were prohibited from using Roma club names.  They chose names of some of the heroes of Bulgarian independence instead. This in turn was prohibited on the grounds that the organisers were Roma. Finally a regulation was passed that required at least five members of the team had to be non-Roma. The teams were ‘voluntarily’ abandoned.

It is at this time that pressure was put on Turks to leave the country (for Turkey). Over 200,000 did so, including about 5000 Moslem Roma. Thereafter the Roma in Bulgaria were subjected to increased assimilation pressure –
In the main, policies affecting gypsies under ‘realistic socialism’ correspond to a pattern which, in its main characteristics, had already come into being under late absolutism. The Hapsburg policies under Maria Theresia and Josef II were directed towards accomplishing the complete assimilation of all gypsies within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These policies provided for forced re-location, compulsory schooling, removal of children from their parents, the repression of gypsy culture and the integration of gypsies in forms of production which predicated a permanent domicile. (Zimmermann)

After the communists took power, pressure to assimilate also took other forms. For example, by 1957 the Roma newspaper was published only in Bulgarian. At the same time there was a drive to set up mental and physical parameters to differentiate the Roma from the Turkish population and reduce any identification with the latter. A not inconsiderable number of Roma and Pomaks, 130,000 according to some accounts, had registered themselves as Turks. One method to this end was to segregate Roma in terms of residence but at the same time to insist that Roma give up their Moslem and Arabic names and send their children to mixed schools.

Other residence restrictions were designed to prevent Roma from moving to areas that were predominantly Turkish. Simultaneously Turkish was phased out as a teaching language, affecting Roma in Moslem areas. Romani itself had never been a teaching language due to standardisation problems with the orthography.

In the sixties the government introduced new educational policies which included placing Roma children in residential schools (by 1967 up to 10,000 of them), followed by setting up various special kinds of schools which became, in effect, Roma schools.

In the final period of communist rule Moslem Roma were the first to be subjected to name changing policies. No serious resistance on the grounds of solidarity was reported in the other minority groups even though, when the policy was later applied to them (relying on the ‘successful’ implementation with the Roma) the contrary was the case. Though this policy has been reversed since 1989, allowing names to be restored, there is still controversy with regard to the place of minorities in post-communist Bulgarian society. The myth of a unitary society still seems to hold sway and the Bulgarian constitution contains no special provisions for minorities. Indeed it does not even mention the word and goes as far as to prohibit the formation of political parties on the basis of, inter alia, ethnicity. Article 11 (4) states there are to ‘be no political parties on ethnic, racial, or religious lines, nor parties which seek the violent usurpation of state power’. It is a ‘dustbin’ category equating ethnic political aspirations with revolution, even if only by implication.

In the past it has proved difficult for Roma to form political parties, though the Turkish minority has managed to sidestep the constitutional ban by calling its ‘party’ (the DPS) a movement (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) and appointing non-Turkish personnel to some official posts.