The Inclusion of the Communist/Socialist Heritage in the Emerging Representations of Eastern Europe: The Case of Bulgaria

Abstract

After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the communist/socialist regimes many Eastern European countries sought to establish new separate, unique identities as part of the Western World and the European political and economic organizations. The old totalitarian identities, histories, and heritages have mostly been excluded from the desired and preferred representations about and of these countries and in many instances even silenced and suppressed. Tourism as major creator and mediator of knowledges and images about places, peoples, and pasts is an important factor in these processes of identity making, inclusion, and exclusion. In the case of Bulgaria, the communist/socialist heritage has been marginalized and silenced in the past 20 years as the country's new European identity has been made, established, mediated, and announced. However, in the past 5 or so years with the hardships of the transitional period still continuing and with an emerging sense of nostalgia towards the socialist/communist period, the totalitarian heritage has slowly started to become visible in the public discourse. Moreover, there has been registered desire by authoritative agents in the country to revisit that part of the Bulgarian history and include it through heritage sites in the exhibited and represented images of Bulgaria including through/in tourism. The proposed article offers an examination of these slow and contested processes of inclusion of the communist/socialist heritage and how this inclusion (or continued exclusion) is the interplay of power, identity, and tourism. These issues are examined within the context of a qualitative critical interpretive study of Bulgaria.