The "Russian Factor" in Bulgarian Foreign Policy in the Years of Post-Communist Transition.

This article seeks to give counterarguments against the claims of some political scientists that Moscow continued to exercise control over the foreign-policy decision-making process in Bulgaria even after the country left the Soviet sphere of influence in the early 1990s. To this end, the term Russian factor is used in the light of Bulgaria's post-Communist "distancing" from the Russian Federation and its integration into the Euro-Atlantic community. Dwelling on some examples taken from the diplomatic practice of Sofia–Moscow bilateral relations, the author has tried to prove that soon after the end of the Cold War, the "Russian dominance" gave way to the much more attractive idea of Bulgaria's pro-Western spatial reorientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]