His book on fascism was pulled in three weeks; he became president
In 1982 the Bulgarian philosopher Zhelyu Zhelev published a study of fascism that looked uncomfortably like a portrait of communism. Authorities stripped it from shops and libraries within three weeks. Eight years later he became his country's first non-Communist head of state in over four decades.
Zhelev was born in 1935 into a modest family in Veselinovo, a village in northeastern Bulgaria. Philosophy at Sofia University came next, and he finished his degree in 1958. Expelled from the Communist Party for political reasons in 1965, he found that every job in the country was controlled by the state, and spent six years officially unemployed, a condition the regime branded social parasitism. He scraped by with farm work in his wife's village, a kind of internal exile, yet still earned a doctorate in 1974.
His book Fascism described the regimes of Italy, Germany and Spain in terms that readers could easily map onto the Eastern Bloc, which is why it vanished so quickly. As communism weakened he founded the Ruse Committee in 1988 and in 1989 chaired a club promoting openness and reform, one of many democratic groups springing up. That led him to head the coordinating council of the Union of Democratic Forces, and he became a leading figure of the revolution that ended Todor Zhivkov's 35 years in power.
Elected to the Grand National Assembly in June 1990, a body charged with writing a democratic constitution, he was chosen president on 1 August 1990 after Petar Mladenov resigned. The new constitution of July 1991 made the office largely ceremonial and directly elected. Zhelev ran anyway, and in January 1992 won the runoff with 52.8 percent. He promptly suspended his party membership, believing a president should stand above politics, and Bulgarian presidents have followed that custom since. In 1996 he lost his party's primary to Petar Stoyanov.
Out of office he chaired liberal organisations, set up a foundation in his name, and led a club of former Southeast European leaders that backed Turkey's bid to join the European Union. He argued for a stronger, French-style presidency. North Macedonia honoured him for helping secure recognition of its independence, and a peak in Antarctica bears his name for his support of Bulgaria's polar programme. He died in Sofia on 30 January 2015, aged 79.
Source: Zhelyu Zhelev
