The war experience as a ‘recent past’: Memoirs, witness accounts and modes of representing the Second World War in Bulgaria during the 1940s and 1950s

Abstract

Abstract Almost immediately after the end of the Second World War, memoir reflections about the war years started to appear in Bulgaria and soon turned into a major form of historiographic reflection. The instances of such books increased particularly from the early 1950s, when core texts about the experience of different partisan groups emerged, laying the basis of central themes and representations of the war over the following decades. Representing historical events through the views of participants and witnesses of the war experience, such memoirs became not only a ‘subjective resource of history’, but also a primary material, from which the emerging post-war historiographic discourse drew locally ingrained inspiration, validity and power of persuasion. The goal of this article is to reflect on the representations of the war experience as a ‘recent past’ in memoirs published during the first decade after the end of the Second World War in Bulgaria. On the basis of an analysis of the main topics and narrative strategies applied in memoir texts from this decade, the text will address core issues related to the interpretation and commemoration of the war years. Focusing on the crucial role played by memoirs about the war in the emerging narratives of communist historiography, the article will outline how they shaped the subsequent conceptualizations of the history and patterns of remembrance of the war years in communist Bulgaria.