Чуждестранните приятели на социализма: механизми на расовизиране в „тихия“ режим на държавен антирасизъм. Част I
The Foreign Friends of Socialism: Racializing Mechanisms in the “Silent” Regime of State Antiracism. Part I

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the production of racializing mechanisms in relation to foreign nationals residing and working in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1973–1983), within the broader framework of antiracism and socialist internationalism. The article is structured in two parts, to be published in consecutive issues of Sociological Problems. The first part focuses on a specific episode concerning the presence of Vietnamese worker-trainees when the economic rationales of enterprise managers in certain industrial sectors began to diverge from the political „duty“ of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (CC of the BCP) toward the fraternal nation of Vietnam. Through analyzing a correspondence between the enterprises, ministries, the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and the CC of the BCP, the article traces the formation of racializing mechanisms that would eventually demarcate the Vietnamese workers from the dominant social group. The second part turns to state antiracism as a field of inquiry in its own right. It investigates the rationalities underpinning socialist internationalism and antiracism in order to delineate a contested terrain over the meaning and application of these principles. Within this terrain, processes of racialization appear as fluid, undisciplined, and unstructured – characterized by a persistent tension and ambivalence between ostensibly antiracist practices and racializing techniques. In this context, one observes a paradoxical dynamic: while racializing practices, behaviors, and mechanisms are undeniably present, they are simultaneously met with efforts to resist their consolidation into a stable form of systemic racism.

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