Todor Zhivkov to 1988, Bulgaria won an unprecedented 153 Olympic medals and numerous European and world competitions in sports as diverse as volleyball, rhythmic gymnastics and wrestling. Dissent was punished under Zhivkov's rule. The CSS was a feared tool of control, and overt opposition largely stayed underground until the late 1980s. In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated in London by an agent who stabbed him with an umbrella tip which implanted a very small ricin ball. According to former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, this was requested by Zhivkov and either performed by the KGB or it assisted the CSS;
Wood Green ricin plot There was no UK poison cell linked to al Qaida or Muhamad al Zarqawi. There was no ricin with which to poison London, only notes and 22 castor seeds . There was no one who even knew how to purify ricin. On 17 August 2006, Craig Murray summed up on "CounterPunch": I spoke at the annual Stop the War conference a couple of months ago [and] referred to the famous ricin plot... It was alleged that a flat in North London inhabited by Muslims was a "Ricin" factory, manufacturing the deadly toxin which could kill "hundreds of thousands of people".