Bulgarian Workers Research Articles

Just Transition Policies, Power Plant Workers and Green Entrepreneurs in Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria: Can Education and Retraining Meet the Challenge?

This study seeks to shed light on the changes currently occurring in Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria on the energy transition process by examining the relevant consequences for power plant workers in the green energy market. The main aim of this paper is to explore the impacts of the implemented policies on the labour force of electricity generation stations and to identify learning needs for new skills and competences. Thus, it explores the possibility to achieve a just transition by employing workers from the high-carbon energy sector to the renewable energy sector. Qualitative research was carried out to explore the views and expectancies of the above-mentioned people as well as to trace the perceptions of the stakeholders of the green energy industry. A total of 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted in the previously mentioned three countries, which also investigated relevant training and upskilling programmes. The findings revealed various types of educational needs and techniques that can be applied by training providers in accordance to the power plant worker’s views as well as the disciplines and specialities of the workforce that are suitable to receive the further fit for attending such programmes. Workers in Greece and Cyprus appeared more optimistic for this possibility compared to Bulgarian workers. Green entrepreneurs were also optimistic but worried for the rate of investments in the green sector. The current findings describe the backdrop that challenges future retraining programmes with regard to achieving just transition policies for this workforce.

Between Ideological Loyalty and Political Adaptation: The “Agrarian Question” in the Development of Bulgarian Social Democracy, 1891–1912

At the end of the nineteenth century, European social democracy found acceptance among some circles of the Bulgarian intelligentsia. However, the social base of this new ideology, including industrialization and urbanization, was almost missing. This contradiction confronted the young party with the challenge of adapting to local social reality, not only leading it to a chain of internal ideological dilemmas questioning its social democratic identity, but also stimulating various political interactions with the public environment, culminating in a change of national politics. The present article lays out the problem of social democracy’s political adaptation by focusing first on the “Agrarian Question” debates among the party elite through investigation of the public discussions in the congresses, newspapers, and letters, and second, on political practice in the field of electoral politics through analyses of electoral statistics and mobilization discourses. The article’s main conclusions are that (1) dialectics between the intensive transfer of modern ideas and the complex process of their adaptation to national conditions is one of the “moving contradictions” of Bulgarian social democracy’s development in the Balkan peripheral context, (2) the Bulgarian Workers’ Social Democratic Party’s (BWSDP) experience confirms the more general tendency in Second International social democracy of a strong interdependence between electoral politics and ideological debates, and (3) the efforts for political mobilization of the petty peasants and artisans through Marxist language led to its evolution into a socialist-populist discourse that stimulated massification of political participation and encouraged but also opposed the early Agrarian movement.

Национальное и интернациональное в организации пространства болгарских поселений в Республике Коми

The paper examines the peculiarities of the formation of an environment with ethnic markers in the space of Bulgarian logging villages in the Udora district of the Komi Republic in the 70–80-ies of the twentieth century. The relevance of the research is determined by the issue of fixing the historical context and preserving the monuments of fine art reflecting the epoch and the communicative features of various cultural layers, as well as the interaction of personal and collective memory. The aim of the study is to identify the mechanisms of visual image formation in the international and national content of Bulgarian art in the Komi Republic. The authors payspecial attention to the culture of memory in relation to other commemorative practices based on the visualization of the objective world and cultural landscape. The importance of this topic is explained by the active movement of people between cities and countries and the erasing of spatial boundaries of the cultural landscape in the conditions of Soviet ideological attitudes of internationalism, in which national peculiarities are preserved, while a tolerant relationship in society is established. The results obtained allowed identifying the sources and conditions of formation of the spatial environment in Bulgarian workers' settlements and analyzing the context of national and international features of architectural structures and monumental painting and sculpture in the cultural landscape. The authors come to the conclusion that the Bulgarian workers' settlements of the Komi Republic attest to the fact that visual agitation in combination with other works of art was an effective means of shaping a cultural landscape with ethnic markers in terms of the international content.

Meaningful Volunteer Labor

I would like to present a specific kind of social structure – that of a community of about 50 Bulgarians who live in the St. Georgi Zografski monastery in the monastic republic of Mount Athos (Holy Mountain) within the territory of the Republic of Greece. Over the last 2-3 decades the number of inhabitants has increased so as the interest in it. The community is visited, except the pilgrims and volunteer Bulgarian workers, by the people who come for a week every month to donate their labor to the monastery. They are called charisans (volunteers). They come from different parts of Bulgaria to work for free, i.e. to donate their labor to a monastic community. To do so, they have to take a vacation, to pay for a visa and transport, which is not easy for inhabitants of the poorest EU country. Interestingly, their number is increasing from year to year. What causes these people to leave secular life forever or to come regularly with the cost of deprivation? I look for an answer to this question, apart from Orthodox and history evidences, (Metropolitan Hierophaeus (Vlachos) 2011) and through the anthropological method of participation – observation and interviews – conversations with monks, volunteers, pilgrims.

Effect of polymorphic variations of glutathione- S-transferase genes on carbon disulfide metabolism in Bulgarian workers from rayon factory

Effect of polymorphic variations of glutathione- S-transferase genes on carbon disulfide metabolism in Bulgarian workers from rayon factory

Der Balkan im Blick der Gewerkschaftsinternationalen (Vom Vorabend des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Weltwirtschaftskrise)

The Balkans drew the attention of the Trade Union International, founded as a separate institution in 1901 under social-democratic dominance and led by the German Carl Legien. It organised essential support for the development of the Balkan trade unions. At the same time, it tried to mediate in the conflicts which shook the Bulgarian workers' movement, with repercussions all over the Balkans. The consequences of the First World War led to the transformation of these organisational conflicts into political ones when the communist Red International of Labour Unions was founded. A bitter struggle was waged within the Balkan trade union movement which further undermined its weak position. The reconstruction of the intervention by the two trade union internationals not only shows the organisational consequences and the mutual interdependencies, but also highlights the difficulties of the 'gaze from afar', from the centre of the European labour movement, onto such an 'exotic region'.

Muhacir Bulgarian Workers in Turkey: Their Relation to Management and Fellow Workers in the Formal Employment Sector

This article is concerned with Muhacir Bulgarians in Turkey - Turkish term for immigrants from the Balkans, particularly from Bulgaria. It considers them as a distinct sociological presence in the formal manufacturing sector of the Turkish labour force and examines their employment, means of material support, their position in the labour market, and their relation to management, trade unions and other workers. Possible future developments are considered. The article focuses mainly on those employed in the Bursa textile industry, but reference is also made to other workers employed in the Izmit triangle and its environs who work in the metal goods sector. Where possible, comparison is made with Turks of non-Bulgarian origin.