“BEFORE the changes, people smiled, everyone had work, everyone was happy. Now look...bah!”, the ageing taxi driver makes a dismissive gesture at the people on the street passing outside the window.
In Bulgaria, there are those who lament the passing of the rosy era of communism. But just as often, too, one hears the words “communism” and “socialism” spat forth from the lips of Bulgarians with disgust, loathing, and sometimes shame.
So, just what is the legacy that socialism has left behind in Bulgarian consciousness and identity? The rough picture of an older generation disillusioned with the path toward capitalism and materialism that the country has taken since the end of communism, and a younger generation which embraces these “values” does not take into account the many threads of lived experience below the surface, all of which contribute to the often discordant tapestry of Bulgarian identity.
The ‘I lived Socialism’ website (www.spomeniteni.org) provides a platform for people to recount their personal experiences of living through socialism. The stories – some amusing, some moving, some just plain bizarre – give depth and colour to picture, helping to fill in the details of what socialism meant and means to Bulgarians.
Writer Georgi Gospodinov, journalists Diana Ivanova and Karin Manalov, and psychiatrist Rumen Petrov created the website which contains over 155 stories from Bulgarians living here and abroad, a selection of which may be read below.
The Vinegar Shop
Ivan Vassilev, 43, Varna
Varna, the summer of 1990. Friends of ours from Eastern Germany came to visit us in the summer. (The wall had fallen already but they were still quite poor and preferred the cheap vacation in Bulgaria.)
To their great dismay, in the summer of 1990 they found the absolutely empty shops (not that they were very full before), the prices were still not liberalised and the prime minister still had not said the famous phrase “For God’s sake, brothers, don’t buy”.
So one evening my guest, let’s call him Reiner, was telling me where they went and what they had done during the day and says: “So we were in the centre of Varna, you know the place, right next to it there is a vinegar shop.”
I tell him that he might have got it wrong because there is no such thing as a vinegar shop. He, however, persisted and looked insulted.
So we started arguing and got as far as leaving the table to go and see this wretched vinegar shop...
“So here it is,” Reiner said and pointed at a grocery store in the centre (now it’s a branch of the Post Bank).
In the shop there were two shop assistants, one cashier and lots and lots of vinegar lined up in neat rows on the shop shelves.
Vinegar and nothing else.
You know, Germans are serious and straightforward, so if there is nothing but vinegar in the shop, then this is a Vinegar Shop.
Smiles and Flowers
Doichin Gospodinov, 80, retired, Sofia
I have lived all of socialism. I outlived it.
I can still remember the years after the war as if it was yesterday. The beautiful Bulgarian girls were running through the bright wide Sofia streets. They were giving flowers to the soldiers and were smiling at them.
And how much light there was during socialism – popular joy. People were singing patriotic songs Katyusha1 and Stavai Strana Ogromnaya2 and other beautiful songs.
And now? Katyusha has long since hidden from the American depravity. She is scared. So am I.
I am scared for the young. Twelve-year-old girls used to play in the sand boxes and now walk around with skirts up to their waists and smoke as if people can’t see them. The boys are sitting at the back stairs of that Happy restaurant in Mladost 3 in Sofia and smoke some herb whose name I never could remember. We used to drink it as a herbal tea.
In December 1945 I met my dear Draga. I met her in the park. The street where I first saw her is called Nezabravka3.
Then this little street used to be in the outskirts of the city. Now it is turned into a construction site.
Big muscular boys are building modern metallic houses with dark windows and high barbed wire fences.
They ruined this beautiful little country in which we were born – our beautiful Bulgaria.
Yes, I lived socialism and now it’s all the same to me. But I am hurt when I see that for 16 years already Todor Zhivkov is gone from politics and nothing has improved. So what should I think? It is getting worse. Which means that during socialism it was better or at least that’s what I think. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe if I was 20 years old again I would have thought differently.
The Bomb
Yordanka Koleva, 33, doctor, Sofia
When I was a student in the secondary school it was standard practice to invite guest lecturers once a week to deliver speeches on “important matters”. Those guests were usually parents of friends. So, for instance, the doctor father of a classmate of mine delivered a speech on the hazards of smoking, while the mother of another classmate of mine, a nurse, told us about personal hygiene.
On one winter’s day in fifth grade the lecturer was some man in a suit. We did not know him. The only thing I can vaguely remember from his lecture was the following: “... the Americans have a bomb, which if they drop (and they surely intend to do so), can destroy us all immediately. They just need to press a button and it is launched. In six minutes it reaches us and destroys us. The Russians also have such a bomb. They have it to protect us and will launch it only if the Americans attack us. The Russians are good.” And so on and so forth till the end of the class.
When I heard about this bomb I went numb with fear and I could not think of anything else but the bomb. After the end of school I started for home and kept on thinking: “What if the Americans have already launched the bomb when the class ended, I will never see mom and dad.” (The distance between the school and the apartment building was five to six minutes’ walk).
Now, I wonder, I don’t remember what the effect of this scary information on my family was. Whether they laughed at me? Whether they consoled me? Whether I told them at all?
A Little Pedagogical Poem
Vladislav Atanassov, 35, librarian, Rousse
The applying to an elite school led to the inevitable fabrication of pedagogical characteristics of the applying students by their class teachers – tilted letters of a typewriter, yellowish sheets of paper, inevitable spelling mistakes and comical contents.
So here I have to show you one such Little Pedagogical Poem dedicated to me:
PEDAGOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Of Vladislav Dimov Atanassov student in the sixth grade of the Hristo Botev school in Rousse
Vladislav Dimov was born on September 28, 1970 in Rousse. His parents are employees. His father is a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, his mother is not.
The student takes his studies very seriously. Systematically and in great depth he acquires the taught material. Single-handedly organises and prepares his lessons and homework. Has very well-developed logical thinking, steady memory and stable attention.
He has a very positive attitude towards physical labour. Has developed enduring labour habits and practices. At the agrarian labour brigades he overfills his plan and helps his comrades.
Shows interest towards nature and technical sciences. Actively participates in extracurricular classes in mathematics and participates and presents himself very well at mathematical competitions. Reads a lot, various fiction literature. Has rich and emotional speech.
He is modest, self-criticising and communicative. Has well-developed sense of humour. In his work he is persistent, independent and has initiative.
He actively participates in the life of the pioneer organisation.
Has very good relations with his comrades and has authority among them.
His health is good. Has not aberrations in his physical development.
The student can continue his studies at the mathematical high-school.
One Day At School
Konstanin Tosev, 26, student, Vienna
Communism managed to leave a trace only on my childhood and for me meant the time when Isaura The Slave5 emptied the streets, and the “tulumbichka”6 was the highest achievement of confectionery art. Also as the time when I won third place in a competition on reciting poems about Georgi Dimitrov7 (I recently found the prize – a book with tales about the communist guerilla fighters). Only years later I found about the camps and the $ 9 billion foreign debt.
So this is how a typical school day went by in the Hristo Botev school in Sofia.
6.50am: Waking up, with the fairy tale on the radio Horizont. During breakfast I was listening to the news and the show Bulgaria – Deeds and Documents which always told of the heroic deeds of the guerilla squads and which, for inexplicable reasons, I loved very much.
At 7.30am I had to be in the school yard for the mandatory physical exercises. If, god forbid, one was late for that, he or she was stood up and condemned in front of the entire school. The older students did not care much but we were very ashamed at the prospect.
And the physical exercises were a pure inquisition – leans to the left, leans to the right, jumps, “duck walk” and for dessert three circles around the school. When we were complaining the reply was always the same: “What mothers/soldiers you’ll become”, depending on whether it was girls or boys complaining.
At 7.45am classes started. In literature classes, for instance, at the end of the year we always had a list of mandatory reading for the summer. Thanks to it we were acquainted with such literary masterpieces as The Son of The Squad about Mitko Palauzov8 (later it transpired that he was a fictitious character), Son of the Party, about Georgi Dimitrov, Kalitko The Shepherd9 (my total favourite), the Story of the Six Yastrebino Kids10, Timur and His Team11, In The Squad, In The Brigade and many other books praising the Party, the Guerilla Fighters, the Harbourers, the Activists and their (of course) “great” deeds.
In Russian classes the teacher used to bring in an old tape recorder and play Russian songs and Soviet military marches for us.
Sometime in 1986 the Japanese electronic games Casio came into fashion. They were sold for a few dollars but only in Korekom12. They came in two versions – one was a duck feeding its ducklings and the other was a giraffe eating leaves. One such gadget increased the image of its owner immensely and every kid dreamed of having one.
To find out more about the project and read more socialist stories, go to www.spomeniteni.org.
Readers may also find Philip Ward’s book, Bulgarian Voices: Letting the People Speak (1992), of interest (available from the British Council library).
