Since the forced resignation of Todor Zhivkov in November of 1989, Bulgaria's transition to democracy has been marked by good beginnings ending in frustration or disappointment. It has avoided the violent ethnic confrontations that have characterized much of the "post-Communist" Balkans, but has also seen the development of an influential criminal
This book provides a comprehensive survey of Bulgaria's transition to democracy from its position as perhaps the most stable communist regime in Eastern Europe.
'Bulgaria and Europe: Shifting Identities' offers a comprehensive analysis of Bulgaria's relationship with the European continent, focusing particularly on its accession to the EU and the aftermath.
Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past.
Former communist countries face unique issues in developing and marketing tourism businesses, communities, and attractions because of centralized polices that discouraged international influences. While soviet economies relied on state policies to facilitate community development, the success of capitalism lies in access to a variety of resources, such as the environment, fiscal services, infrastructure, and market knowledge at the local level. Moreover, communal societies potentially possess social capital that can provide unique economic development opportunities. This book incorporates a regional perspective that widens the tourism development debate to include theoretical analyses, applied research, and case studies that document the broader successes and challenges that affect tourism stakeholders and addresses the necessary elements that facilitate a comprehensive tourism development strategy in emerging and transitioning former communist countries.
The book traces the history of communist Bulgaria from 1944 to 1989. A detailed narrative-cum-study of the history of a political system, it provides a chronological overview of the building of the socialist state from the ground up, its entrenchment into the peaceful routine of everyday life, its inner crises, and its gradual decline and self-destruction. The book is the definitive and the most complete guide to Bulgaria under communism and how the communist system operates on a day-to-day level.
Providing a detailed empirical account of the ongoing political, social and economic transformation of the country, this book assesses the post-communist period in Bulgaria and examines the development of the democratization process so far.
The collapse of state socialism in 1989 focused attention on the transition to democracy and capitalism in Eastern Europe. But for many people who actually lived through the transition, the changes were often disappointing. In Domesticating Revolution, Gerald Creed explains this unexpected outcome through a detailed study of economic reforms in one Bulgarian village.
This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe. She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated perspective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.