Petar Mladenov

Mladenov underwent a heart bypass in Houston in 1986, leaving him in frail health in the ensuing years. He died on 31 May 2000 in Sofia.

Despite Mladenov's promises of reforms, the people took to the streets almost every day to demand greater freedom. Bowing to the inevitable, on 11 December Mladenov announced in a nationally televised speech to party leaders that the Communist Party had to give up its guaranteed right to rule. The BCP's position in the state, he said, could no longer be "declared administratively", but instead had to be earned "from the trust of the people". To that end, Mladenov declared that the BCP had to "adopt the principle of a multiparty system". He also called for multiparty elections by the spring of 1990. Three days later, on 14 December—the same day that Zhivkov was expelled from the party—the BCP's Central Committee asked the National Assembly to delete the provisions of the Zhivkov Constitution that enshrined its leading role. The Central Committee also endorsed early elections in the spring. Those elections were held in June 1990.

The final legal step in ending Communist rule in Bulgaria came on 2 January 1990; when the National Assembly amended the constitution to remove Article 1, which enshrined the Communist Party's leading role. However, for all intents and purposes, Communist rule had ended a month earlier when the Central Committee formally renounced its guaranteed right to rule.

In April 1990, the Communist Party reorganized itself as a Western-style social democratic party, the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

Mladenov resigned as President in July 1990 after allegedly suggesting the use of tanks against anti-government demonstration in December 1989, securing a place in history with the phrase 'The tanks had better come' (Bulgarian: По-добре танковете да дойдат). He did not run in the 1990 elections and largely retired from public life.

In October 1989, Mladenov organized a 35-nation environmental conference and invited the Bulgarian NGO Ecoglasnost to participate. Ten days into the conference, several Ecoglasnost members were beaten up by the Darzhavna Sigurnost (secret police) and the militia on orders from Zhivkov. When Mladenov found out about it, he decided Zhivkov had to go.

During the 1980s, he became attracted to Mikhail Gorbachev's reform efforts. He saw a chance to change Bulgaria's image as one of the most unreformed countries in the Eastern Bloc. In May 1989, Zhivkov ordered the expulsion of most of Bulgaria's ethnic Turks. This brought near-unanimous international condemnation. Mladenov, who had had to field most of the international complaints, was particularly upset because the expulsion violated an international human rights accord he'd signed four months earlier.

Mladenov served as the first secretary of the party's committee in Vidin Province from 1969 to 1971. He joined the Politburo and became foreign minister in 1971, serving in that position for 18 years. In the same year, he was elected to the National Assembly. He was one of the closest associates to longtime leader Todor Zhivkov.

Petar Toshev Mladenov (Bulgarian: Петър Тошев Младенов; 22 August 1936 – 31 May 2000) was a Bulgarian communist diplomat and politician. He was the last leader of the Bulgarian People's Republic from 1989 to 1990, and briefly the first President of the Bulgarian Republic in 1990.

Mladenov was born to a peasant family in the village of Toshevtsi, Vidin Province on 22 August 1936. His father was an anti-fascist partisan killed in action in 1944.