Социализмът като модернизация (наблюдения върху България)
Socialism as Modernization (The Example of Bulgaria)

Summary/Abstract: Socialism was a project of modernisation and the study of modernisation under socialism is important as a key to the analytical mastering of its nature. This is the purpose of the present article. Author addresses here the problem of the modernising renovation of Bulgaria, also including the aspect of the “scientific and technological revolution” and the “scientific and technologial progress”, which was an enduring emphasis in Todor Zhivkov’s rule (1956-1989). Modernisation as a whole, and the technological renovation, in particular, have had lasting presence in the official discourse of the period. This is due to several reasons, some of which hold good for socialism generally, while others refer specifically to Bulgaria. I shall discuss the problem of modernisation, aimed at the technological renovation of Bulgaria: 1) during the early period of socialism; 2) the policy in the sphere of the scientific and technological revolution/ progress. The second problem will be studied on two levels: a) on the macrolevel I shall present the Party and state policy in the sphere mentioned; b) on the microlevel my analysis will deal with the everyday lifestyle strategies of the so-called “technical intelligentsia”, who were called upon to give life to the decisions of the elite. For this purpose I shall compare two kinds of sources: on the one hand – data from interviews, taken in 2001-2003 from designers and engineers from Sofia, and on the other – several kinds of written sources: archive documents, textbooks, publications carried by the periodical press, published Party and state documents, memoirs dedicated to the socialist period.

• Details
• Contents