SOFIA: It is one of the reasons why Eastern Europe is known as "the Wild East." After 17 years of transition to a multiparty system, with new political and business elites in place in Bulgaria, nobody yet knows who did what for the secret police under communism.

This is changing, however, as Bulgaria finally begins to face up to its totalitarian past, the last former Soviet bloc country to do so.

In a timid first step, a commission set up in April screened the candidates running in Bulgaria's first European Parliament elections on May 20. Of the 218 candidates vetted, 6 were found to have collaborated with the former state security services. Only one was replaced on a party list.

The nine commission members did not actually consult the state security files, but rather sent letters to the security services asking whether the candidates' names showed up in their card catalog of agents, officers and informers.

This is because the special services still physically control the state security archives, which are due to be delivered to the commission's central repository by August. The procedure was established under a law on opening the archives passed just two weeks before Bulgaria joined the European Union on Jan. 1.

But will the archives actually be opened? The public and some legislators remain deeply skeptical.

"There will be huge resistance," said Tatyana Doncheva, a legislator and outspoken critic of the continuing influence of former state security officers, even within her own Socialist Party. "These services will say everything possible not to give up control of the archives."

Bulgarian society is still divided on whether anyone should bear moral responsibility for the communist past and, if so, who. Few believe the new commission charged with opening the archives will act impartially.

The files are still fearsome political weapons, containing highly damaging information about many current political, economic and social leaders.

The vetting commission is composed of former Parliament members, journalists, and former state officials, none of whom is targeted for political persecution by the state security police in the communist era.

The commission has begun checks on a range of high-level officials - Consitutional Court judges, the governing board of Bulgarian National Television, the Supreme Judicial Council - as well as all former office holders dating back to 1989. The results will be released in the coming weeks.

Before all elections in the future, the commission will screen candidates for every office, from president to city councilor, said Evtim Kostadinov, who gave up his seat as a legislator from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the former communists, to head the body.

"It is important to know how far and how wide the long hand of these services reached," says Kostadinov.

The commission is also setting up a reading room that is expected to open by the end of the year. Anyone will be able to read the files, not just those directly affected.

"The law is good," said Alexander Kashumov, a lawyer at the Access to Information Program in Sofia, which has represented journalists in court cases to get access to documents from the archives. "My concern is whether it will be implemented in the right way."

The new law contains no provisions for "lustration," the term commonly used in Eastern Europe rather than purges.

"The purpose of the commission is to offer society the possibility to inform itself about people holding public positions so it can make its own decisions," especially at election time, Kostadinov said.

While all the East European countries have faced enormous challenges in assigning moral responsibility for totalitarianism, punishing former officials, and removing compromised individuals from their state administrations, most established their policies at least a decade ago.

When Romania announced the formation of an Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism in December 2005, Bulgaria was the last former Soviet Bloc country left without any institutionalized effort to face up to its past.

Officers of the former Durjavna Sigurnost, or state security, played leading roles in Bulgaria's democratic transition, and now wield enormous power in political, business and social circles. Those who suffered at their hands during the communist era are especially concerned about their influence today.

"I don't think anyone in the West can understand what it is like to always feel guilty, to feel fear when you come home at night without knowing why," said Atanas Kiriakov, 68, a documentary film maker in Sofia.

During communism, Kiriakov said, he was often interrogated by the fearsome 6th division of the state security services - the domestic secret police - simply because he traveled abroad for his work.

"The role of the Durjavna Sigurnost was to create a network of informers who created and maintained this fear. They were the faithful guard dogs of the dictatorship," Kiriakov said.

"Now these faithful dogs continue to guard, and they are absolutely everywhere."

Shortly before the archives law was passed, amendments were made exempting some files from complete disclosure: those of current ambassadors and the current heads of directorates within intelligence services, as well as documents that could threaten "national security."

Doncheva attributed the last-minute changes to pressure "from above" in party circles.

But she said she remained optimistic that the commission would help lessen the influence of former security officers by exposing their past collaboration. Because the files will no longer be secret, she noted, the special services will no longer be able to blackmail current office holders by threatening to expose them as collaborators.

National sensitivities about the issue were heightened in November, one month before the Parliament was due to vote on the law, when Bozhidar Doychev, the head of one of the main archives, was found dead at his work desk at the National Security Service with a bullet in his head. Prosecutors did not announce his death until two days later, after the press had already reported it.

The Sofia Regional Military Prosecutor concluded its investigation April 24 and found "categorically" that Doychev's death was a suicide for personal reasons, according to Ilian Georgiev, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office. There was no force involved, and Doychev's office was located in a high security-area accessible only with magnetic badges and under video surveillance, the spokesman said.

The selection of the commission members reinforced concerns about the politicization of the entire process.

The anti-communist Union of Democratic Forces, an opposition party in Parliament, nominated Georgi Konstantinov, an admitted anarchist, for the commission.

Among the reasons cited for his rejection was that he was deemed a terrorist for blowing up a statue of Stalin in Sofia in 1953.

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