Property trajectories in socialism: The Bulgarian case
Property trajectories in socialism: The Bulgarian case

Summary/Abstract: The text presents and analyses the traumatic history of forcible ownership deprivation of the so-called “former people “conducted by the communist Bulgarian rulers.Urban properties, houses and industrial sites were nationalised or partially taken “in the name of the people“; village landowners were forced to give their land to cooperatives.The state policy of “squeezing the city population” ensured homes for thousands of people coming from the countryside. Through in-depth interviews and biographical methods, the victims’ emotions are reconstructed; their ways of coping with trauma and this specific type of personal crisis are shown. Effects on individual identity formation are also traced.The second part of the text examines changes in objects and possessions that occurred after forcible appropriation. Following Appadurai’s concept of the social life of things, the biographical trajectories of these objects and the physical transformations they underwent due to the forcible transfer from their original owners - city dwellers to the former villagers new urban settlers, members of the Communist party are analysed.

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