Georgi Parvanov (born June 28, 1957, Sirishtnik, Bulgaria) is a Bulgarian politician who served as president of his country (2002–12). He was the first former communist to be elected president of Bulgaria since the fall of communism in the country and the first Bulgarian head of state to be reelected.
Parvanov obtained a master’s degree in history from Sofia University in 1981. That year he also became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) and started a decadelong research position at the party’s Institute of History. He obtained a doctorate in 1988 and became a senior research associate in 1989. As the decade came to a close, the BCP ousted its leader and renamed itself the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). In 1991 Parvanov entered electoral politics, and by 1994 he had become deputy chairman of the BSP Supreme Council and a member of the parliament. Parvanov was elected chairman of the party in 1996 and reelected in 2000. Running on a platform of support for Bulgaria’s inclusion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), Parvanov was elected president of Bulgaria in 2001, defeating incumbent Peter Stoyanov. He was inaugurated in January 2002.
Parvanov announced that, to take partisanship out of the presidency and represent all Bulgarians, he would not continue his membership in the BSP. As president, Parvanov moved forward with plans to join NATO, a process that was completed on March 29, 2004. Parvanov was reelected in October 2006, and, with his assistance, Bulgaria’s membership in the European Union was made official on January 1, 2007. In addition to pursuing closer ties with the West, Parvanov also worked to rekindle relations with former allies Russia and Ukraine.
In 2007 an investigative commission disclosed that records of the former Bulgarian secret police indicated that Parvanov had collaborated with the police for four years following his alleged recruitment in October 1989. Parvanov denied being an informer and maintained that he had merely contributed to a book authored by an individual who was, unbeknownst to him at the time, a police agent.