Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences // Section "Ethnology of Socialism and Post-Socialism"
is pleased to invite you to the presentation of the collection Bulgarian Socialism: Ideology, Everyday Life, Memory, edited by Ana Luleva, Ivanka Petrova, Petar Petrov, Svetla Kazalarska, and Yana Yancheva (Sofia, BAS Publishing House "Prof. Marin Drinov," 2021).
The event will take place in a hybrid format on May 12, 2022 (Thursday) at 4 p.m. in Hall 19 of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 6A Moskovska Street, and online on the Zoom platform (access requests: socialism@abv.bg).
The collection will be presented by Assoc. Prof. Nikolay Vukov, PhD, and Assoc. Prof. Svetla Raksheva, PhD.
The collection includes twenty texts presented at the international scientific conference "(Re)thinking Socialism. Knowledge, Memory, and Oblivion of the Socialist Past," which took place in November 2019 in Sofia on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the symbolic end of the socialist regime in Bulgaria. The authors are historians, ethnologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and art historians who examine and (re)think various aspects of the socialist way of life and policies during the period of state socialism. The texts focus on the state of research on the socialist past, shed light on new fields of research, and enrich our knowledge of the period with new details. They cover various spheres of everyday life and the experiences of Bulgarian citizens during those decades – the policies of collectivisation and the changed relationship with the land, market practices and consumer culture, everyday working life, punitive practices against minority communities, the forced resettlement of villages during the construction of dams, the material world and changes in urban architecture, atheistic policies and their traces in memory, and many others.
In addition to the diverse topics, the collection offers an abundance of previously unpublished and unexplored archival materials, a rich corpus of oral testimonies gathered as a result of systematic research, as well as a number of scientific hypotheses aimed at providing an in-depth understanding of the policies and practices of that era. We believe that the collection not only expands knowledge about Bulgarian socialism per se, but also offers fruitful perspectives for understanding post-socialism as bearing the marks and legacy of socialism, for understanding the connection between the past and the present.
The collection is published under project BG05M2OP001-1.001-0001 "Establishment and Development of the Center for Excellence "Heritage BG," funded under the Operational Program "Science and Education for Smart Growth" 2014-2020, Priority Axis 1 "Scientific Research and Technological Development," co-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
We look forward to seeing you there!
From the editors
