Georgi Pirinski

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Georgi Pirinski (Bulgarian: Георги Пирински) (born 10 September 1948) is a Bulgarian politician of the Bulgarian Communist Party and after 1990 of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. Born in New York City, USA in the emigrant family of Communist functionary Georgi Pirinski, Sr., he has roots from Pirin Macedonia. His mother Pauline was born in New York City and was a member of the Young Communist League at the City College of New York. She was a university professor of English in Sofia. His father was expelled from the U.S. as an undesirable alien about 1951. In the late 1970's, Pirisnki was an aide to then Deputy Prime Minister Georgi Lukanov and then at the age of 31 became Bulgaria's youngest deputy minister (of foreign trade). A rabid Communist during his youth, Pirisnki later was regarded as having mellowed. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1974, but political opponents argued that the renunciation was judicially null and void inorder to disqualify him from the race for president of the republic after the fall of the communist dictatorship.

A vice-premier during the Georgi Atanasov and Andrey Lukanov governments and a foreign minister during the Zhan Videnov government, Pirinski is the current Chairman of the National Assembly of Bulgaria since 11 July 2005.