Bulgaria–United States relations to work. Bulgaria became a member of the Warsaw Pact on May 14, 1955. Though no Soviet troops were stationed on Bulgarian soil, in 1968, Zhivkov sent a Bulgarian division to join Polish, Hungarian and Soviet troops to crush a popular uprising in Prague. In 1978, the Bulgarian secret police were implicated in the assassination in London of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident who was a correspondent for the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle radio and the U.S. sponsored Radio Free Europe. Markov was assassinated with a poisoned umbrella on September 7, Zhivkov's birthday. The rise of democratic movements across
The Umbrella Coup who wants a real killer. Lecomte's performance is convincing and consequently he receives a contract to finish off arms dealer Otto Krampe. He is supposed to kill Krampe with an umbrella containing a built-in syringe full of potassium cyanide at his birthday party in St-Tropez. Lecomte takes the don for a producer and believes this was all part of shooting a film. The Umbrella Coup The Umbrella Coup () is a 1980 French comedy film directed by Gérard Oury, starring Pierre Richard, Gordon Mitchell and Gert Fröbe. The creation of the film was inspired by several assassinations of Bulgarian dissidents