World Notes BULGARIA

He was once revered as a staunch fighter of fascism and the founder of communist Bulgaria, but past glories could not save Georgi Dimitrov from the ash heap of history. Last week Dimitrov's embalmed body was quietly removed from the mausoleum in Sofia's main square, where it had been on public display since his death in 1949, and cremated in a ceremony attended only by a few relatives.

The fate of Dimitrov's corpse had been hotly debated since the downfall of communist dictator Todor Zhivkov last November. The cremation was carried out against the wishes of some party members and unbeknown to demonstrators camped outside the mausoleum to protest the homage paid to a leader some reviled as a Stalinist. Their posters depicted a sphinx above slogans reading, WE DON'T NEED ANY PHARAOHS and IT STINKS!

Dimitrov was part of a shrinking club of embalmed communist leaders. If the trend toward democracy continues, will Lenin, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh also go up in smoke?