SOCIOLOGY IN BULGARIA AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Author: Stoyan Mihaylov

Editor's Note: Prof. S. Mihaylov has been principal investigator in the discipline since the inception of Bulgarian Sociological Association in the 1960s. Main organizer of the 7th World Congress of Sociology in Varna in 1970. He was continuator of the efforts of doyen Prof. Zhivko Ochavkov, and his principal biographer. Mass of the publications of the Institute of Sociology at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences from the era of Z. Ochavkov's most productive work remain to be reissued, ditto.

 

Sociology in Bulgaria

[1]  The key issue facing present-day Bulgarian sociology is the need to develop coherent conceptualizations and explanations of social dynamics. The ensuing task is to elaborate precise descriptions of processes on various structural levels of Bulgarian society in the context of global and regional trends. The major reason why sociologists are preoccupied with the description, explanation, prediction, and management of social development is found in social reality itself. Both everyday life and deep social structures in Bulgarian society are in flux because of the society’s overall transformation and the influence of all-embracing global trends. They put the patterns of hierarchical government in question and demand the introduction of flexible forms of governance. The dynamics of governance on various systemic levels of social reality casts doubt on sociology’s traditional focus on national society. Organizational structures in the societal system, as well as regional and global processes, attract the attention of research in their own right. Last but not least, trends of the destruction of social systems and cases of social disintegration demand that fundamental attitudes, values, norms, and behavior be rethought in terms of the requirements for sustainable development.

[2]  This new social and intellectual situation raises intense challenges to the social sciences. What are the implications for sociology? How do Bulgarian sociologists react to them? What are the intellectual and institutional prospects of the Bulgarian sociological community? The answers cannot be well founded without referring to the country’s tradition of sociology.

[3]  The establishment of the Bulgarian Sociological Association in 1959 and the first large-scale sociological surveys carried out during the 1960s mark the belated beginning of the national sociological tradition. These activities paved the way for the decision to hold the 7th World Congress of Sociology in Varna in 1970. The event was the turning point in the institutionalization of sociology in Bulgaria. The Congress signaled the end in Eastern Europe of ideological prejudices against sociology and other modern sciences.

[4]  New opportunities for research and teaching in the field of sociological theory and research were recognized and created by dedicated scientists. Zhivko Ochavkov organized the first national sociological studies on religiosity (1962) and on towns and villages in Bulgaria (1968). The latter study was based on the newly developed concept of the sociological structure of society. It focused on the interchange between four subsystems in the societal system: the production of material goods, the social reproduction of individuals, the production of culture and social management, and communications. This conceptual innovation was later praised as the mainstay of a Bulgarian school of sociological theory and empirical research. The claim was exaggerated, but the new concept helped to reach the level of intellectual coherence and professional self-identification needed for the institutionalization of the new discipline in the local environment. Consequently, some specific features of the national sociological tradition appeared in the Eastern European context:

[5]  First, the leading Bulgarian sociologists from the first generation made productive efforts to relate empirical studies to theoretical frameworks as consistently as possible.

[6]  Second, their research projects showed a clear preference for national representative empirical studies based on the concept of societal system (the concept of the "sociological structure of society", which some sociologists call the "sociological system").

[7]  Third, from the very beginning of modern sociology in Bulgaria, attempts were made to make explicit the potential socio-technological implications of sociological studies and to facilitate the practical use of their results.

[8]  These were the major orientations in theory and research at the Institute of Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (established in 1968) and at a number of other research centers active during the 1970s and 1980s. The Institute of Trade Union Problems, the Institute of Youth Studies, the Institute of Culture, and other organizations carried out high-quality sociological and interdisciplinary studies that received international recognition. Sociology was gradually introduced to university curricula. The first Chair of Sociology was established at Sofia University in 1976. Sociological book series appeared at the major publishing houses. Two journals - Sociologicheski Problemi (Sociological Problems) and Sociologicheski pregled (Sociological Review) - played an important role in the rapid institutionalization of sociology. In the mid-1980s, membership in the Bulgarian Sociological Association reached its highest level at about 1500. Industrial and agricultural enterprises, major state institutions (the Ministries of Culture, of Defense, of Science and Higher Education, etc.), and political organizations maintained research groups of social scientists, primarily sociologists and psychologists.

[9]  Reality was certainly more complex and complicated than this brief outline of the institutionalization of sociology in Bulgaria might suggest. Powerful efforts were made to ideologically direct sociological research and to use and abuse results of sociological studies for political purposes. Administrative means were used to promote the official ideology in research establishments and in higher education. However, sociologists managed to adapt to the authoritarian regime by strengthening their professional identity. The regime was also forced and able to develop a certain level of tolerance toward innovations and objectivity in the social sciences. Sociologists were usually involved in the preparation of political decisions on various organizational levels. Outstanding representatives of the professional community were promoted to the top of the party and state hierarchy, where they could influence decision-making on the industrialization and urbanization of Bulgarian society. They were able to shield the discipline politically, but at the same time exposed it to the potential critique of political submissiveness. Large-scale research projects were specially funded to substantiate major state decisions. In 1990, the results of more than 700 research projects were recorded in the National Archive of Sociological Studies.

[10]  Due to the rapid institutionalization of sociology and the relatively liberal political regime in the country during the 1970s and 1980s, Bulgarian sociologists were quite active on the international scene. They occupied positions in international organizations and helped to open up the country scientifically and culturally well before 1989. National delegations regularly attended the meetings of the International Sociological Association, the International Social Science Council, the International Federation of Social Science Organizations, and other international organizations of social scientists. Bulgarian sociologists were the organizers of the International Varna Sociological School, which facilitated cooperation between sociologists in Eastern Europe.

 

Legacy of Marxism-Leninism

[11]  Bulgarian society has a tradition of influential left-wing intellectual life and politics. It would therefore be inadequate to interpret the ideological domination of Marxism-Leninism in the country as only imposed by force after 1944. Marxism’s stress on the role of technological and economic factors in social development was widely regarded as a valid explanatory scheme long before. As an ideology, it was seen as a factor fostering belated modernization. The simplified version of Marxism-Leninism corresponded to traditional etatist preferences, while its appeal for social equality and social justice guaranteed its positive resonance in the poor and egalitarian Bulgarian society.

[12]  This historical background helps us understand the predominance of Marxism in Bulgarian sociology before 1989. Most of the founding fathers of the national sociological traditions were sincere followers of this ideology. Zhivko Ochavkov undoubtedly belonged to them, notwithstanding his schooling at the Sorbonne before the Second World War, or because of it. The analysis of his intellectual evolution, however, reveals that his ideas increasingly deviated from the orthodox visions of technological and economic determinism. His conceptual scheme of the sociological structure of society emphasized the interplay of technological, economic, political, cultural, and even personal factors in social processes. So it was not by chance that his efforts to legitimate sociology understood in this way met fierce resistance from orthodox followers of Historical Materialism.

[13]  It is difficult to assess the real influence of the Marxist theoretical legacy on present-day Bulgarian sociology, given the quick theoretical re-orientation of large parts of the sociological community. But patterns of this legacy can be identified in various publications. Moreover, trends of social differentiation in present-day Bulgarian society might even increase the use of Marxist ideas as explanatory tools - if not explicitly, then at least implicitly.

 

Pre-war conditions

[14]  The first society of sociology was established in Bulgaria in 1932 and continued its sporadic activities until the outbreak of World War II. Lectures in sociology were also sporadically offered at Sofia University. Most of the heated debates waged in the influential journal Filosofski Pregled (Philosophical Review) during the 1930s were basically sociological and less philosophical in nature. But there was no systematic research, teaching, and publication guided by an articulated disciplinary vision. Nevertheless, some roots of modern Bulgarian sociology are found in the pre-war conditions. For instance, the unique accomplishments of Ivan Hadzhiyski in the 1930s deserve special attention. A philosopher by education, he carried out valuable ethnographic and ethno-psychological studies on the Bulgarian family, craft, peasantry, military, etc. Although his research was not guided by any systematic sociological methodology, after his studies were rediscovered in the 1960s, they became a continual source of inspiration for sociologists whose research orientation was epistemological or phenomenological.

[15]  Although quite different in their intellectual style, the two most influential intellectuals during the 1930s, Dimitar Mihalchev and Todor Pavlov, facilitated debates with strong sociological ingredients. Both were indebted to Historical Materialism for their approaches to social reality. In the Russian edition of his "Theory of Reflection" (1936), Todor Pavlov described sociology as the major science of society. Underdeveloped as it was, this view still became an important reference point for younger scholars during the heated debates on the specifics of sociology that were waged in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Impact of Western theories

[16]  The influence of Marxism came to Bulgaria via both Russian and German sources. Thus, Bulgarian sociology has firm roots in the European Enlightenment. More directly, the influence of Western (American and Western European) sociological ideas arose in the very process of the emergence of the Bulgarian national sociological tradition. During the 1970s and 1980s, ideas of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and other classical or contemporary thinkers were rediscovered and became increasingly known in the expanding Bulgarian sociological community. Rare as they were, fellowships at Western European and North American universities facilitated the transfer of sociological ideas. The major libraries in the country were relatively well equipped with sociological books and journals. Participation in international meetings of sociologists was conducive to the flow of professional expertise to the Bulgarian sociological community. Valuable information was transmitted in university courses. As a result, modern theoretical ideas and methods of empirical research guided studies of social development, social inequality, the family, science, communications, the quality of life, social rationality, etc.

[17]  Nevertheless, although dozens of Bulgarian sociologists were pretty well informed about trends in Western theory and research, until 1989 the majority of the national disciplinary community did not have first-hand access to the intellectual resources of world sociology. One important reason for this was the lack of command of Western languages. There were regular translations in the journal Sociologicheski Problemi, but these could not fill the information gap. For large segments of the national sociological community, the influence of Western ideas came through secondary sources and in some cases in a rather distorted form.

 

Oppositional activities

[18]  In some Eastern European countries, sociology developed as an oppositional force against the dominant ideology and politics after World War II. This was not the case in Bulgaria. The emerging sociology was basically supportive of the regime, despite frictions at the beginning of the discipline’s institutionalization. Moreover, Bulgarian sociology seemed to be well domesticated by the ruling elite, which was willing to support it in exchange for political conformity and for the use of sociological expertise. Some limited oppositional activities involving sociologists started as late as the very end of the 1980s in the context of looming environmental debates. Indeed, even at the end of the 1980s, Bulgarian sociologists typically favored change in the framework of the existing social order. The delay of Perestroika was still the relevant issue for the country’s intellectuals. There was practically no organized opposition seeking to change the political and economic system immediately and profoundly. Some sociologists were persecuted at the end of the 1980s, not because of their professional but because of their political activities. The lack of real intellectual or political opposition among sociologists as professionals is indirectly proven by the fact that practically every professional manuscript could be published before 1989 in one way or another.

 

Redefinition of the discipline since 1990

[19]  The weakness of the internal opposition notwithstanding, processes in the small Bulgarian society could not help but follow the rapid disintegration of the old regime all over Eastern Europe after 1989. Under the given circumstances, the nation was not prepared for such a dramatic change in the patterns of orientation, decision-making, and action. A decade of political instability, economic crisis, and far-reaching value-normative disorientation followed the euphoria that accompanied the beginning of the new social experience. The man in the street was faced with rapid economic differentiation, a rise in crime, and a general destabilization of everyday life.

[20]  This controversial development deeply affected sociology and sociologists. There are certainly no more political and ideological limitations on sociological studies. There are no topics that can be regarded as taboo, as the topic of inter-ethnic relations was in the 1980s. Sociologists may freely exchange information with colleagues from abroad. Provided there is funding, everybody can publish books and journals or organize any kind of scientific events. Sociology is present in the curricula of all universities. The newly established private universities in Sofia, Varna, Bourgas, and Blagoevgrad are open to the social sciences. Relying on generous funding from abroad, private agencies for the study of marketing, public opinion, and political processes have conquered markets and attracted public attention. They are usually presented as agencies for sociological studies. Seen from this point of view, one can claim that sociology has become a real factor in shaping public opinion and decision-making on various levels.

[21]  But the changes have their other side, too. Important research centers from the period before 1989, e.g. the Institute of Youth Studies, no longer exist. Other research centers, like the former Institute of Trade Union Problems, still exist under a different name, but with reduced research capacities. Sociologists in enterprises were among the first to lose their jobs at the start of the reforms. State subsidies for science in general and for social sciences in particular have declined sharply. Only in very exceptional cases can local public money make it possible to conduct a major empirical study or participate in a scientific meeting abroad. The supply of foreign scientific literature has become scarce, and scientists are poorly paid. The prestige of scientific organizations and of the science profession has declined. It is difficult to attract talented young people to the professional career of academic sociology. Thus, new questions have arisen whose theoretical and practical relevance cannot be underestimated: What are the real moving forces behind the current transformation of Bulgarian society? How can sociological knowledge contribute to the rational management of the transformation of society?

[22]  If there is any consensus concerning the transformation, it is the shared understanding that evolutionary differentiation was already urgent need in the 1970s and 1980s. To put the point in Durkheim terms, the growing complexity of the advanced division of labor could no longer be managed by the mechanical solidarity of political over-centralization. Efforts to achieve this result before 1989 were futile. It was necessary to distribute initiative and responsibilities legally in the way characteristic of modern organic solidarity. The most important feature in the new round of modernization was therefore differentiation between economy, politics, and culture, as well as a change in focus from the satisfaction of collective needs to the satisfaction of specific individual needs. Sociology has to conceptually cope with the emerging institutionalized individualism, which has to resolve the acute problems of individual initiative and responsibility.

[23]  This consensus notwithstanding, it became clear during the 1990s that the transformation was much more complicated than Bulgarian sociologists had assumed at the beginning of the reforms. Facing this new challenge, they went through an intense learning process.

 

Change of paradigms

[24]  The understandably naïve vision of a fast and smooth adjustment of Eastern European institutions to Western European institutional patterns soon turned out to be an illusion. The individual and collective actors learned that the concept of clearly defined paths and goals in a basically universal transition from state socialism to a market economy and democratic politics was a simplification, if not merely a metaphor. The technological, economic, political, and cultural starting points of the changes differed from one specific Eastern European society to another. Even more important for the ensuing divergences were decisions that introduced far-reaching changes in deep structures of each of these societies. They developed increasingly differentiated patterns of adjustment to dynamic domestic and international environments. In some national cases, the geostrategic situation was conducive to the reforms; in other cases, this influence was obviously detrimental.

[25]  Seen from another angle, sociologists learned that the countries of Western Europe and North America exhibited a large number of different national patterns of market economy and democratic political institutions. Therefore, a new conceptual framework had to be formulated in order to reproduce the new experience, which was marked by growing complexity, vagueness, and high risks. This is why it was not the concept of transition, but rather the concept of a multi-dimensional macro-social transformation that corresponded to this new theoretical and practical situation of diversified and rapid social development. In the theoretical context of the transformation, various ideas and research projects focusing on changes in micro-social structures and processes arose as well.

***

 


Comments on Bulgarian sociology in the nineties

[1]  The report presents the profound reflection of a sociologist on the development of Bulgarian sociology in the period after 1989 to the present. The author’s analysis of the changing profiles of sociological knowledge and of the new forms of presence of social science in Bulgarian society has been carried out in a way that perfectly corresponds to the general framework of the Collegiums project. Moreover, the text is based on a clear and well-argued conception of the nature and character of the specific political, economic, and social transformations of post-totalitarian society in Bulgaria. The two fundamental processes characterizing the last decade of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, i.e. the radical transformation of the political and economic pattern of the communist totalitarian societies, and the growing globalization, are presented in their connection with the specific social and intellectual history of Bulgarian society. Thus the context common to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe is shown to assume specific local characteristics and serves as a reliable prism in analyzing the cognitive and social evolution of Bulgarian sociology. On the other hand, social science is not viewed here as a merely passive product of the changing social environment. Highlighting the new thematic, conceptual and methodological changes in orientation whereby sociology seeks meaning in, interprets, and explains the development of contemporary Bulgarian society, the author convincingly demonstrates that this science is an agent of change. In other words, the new social reality is presented in the report as being both a touchstone for estimating the cognitive potential of Bulgarian sociology and as a field of new opportunities for its growth as a science.

[2]  This extensive panorama of Bulgarian sociology, drawn with high professional competence and an unquestionably successful analysis/synthesis approach, facilitates to a considerable degree my task of commenting the report. Hence my commentary will rather serve to supplement the presented facts, theses and interpretations so as to present in a more differentiated and varied way the trends, problems and prospects of development of Bulgarian sociology in a period of restructuring of the economic and political model of society, and transformation of value systems and mental orientations.

 

Pre-1989 situation of sociology in Bulgaria

[3]  The state of sociology in Bulgaria prior to 1989 is accurately described through the presentation of the conceptual, institutional, organizational and socio-practical innovations in the discipline. In order to appreciate the “originality” of these novelties in and for the Bulgarian context, one would have to focus attention on the scientific and social environment in which sociology developed during the period from the Second World War to 1989. On the one hand, this environment was comparatively similar to that of the other countries in Central and Eastern Europe and retained its structure-determining characteristics to the very end of the communist regime. The mainstay of this society, founded on the merging of state governance with the monopoly of domination of a single political party, were the political-administrative power and the functioning of Marxism, represented as the only objectively valid, true and socially accepted model for describing, interpreting, explaining and changing the world. Hence the way of being, the cognitive horizon, the models of reasoning and the social intervention of sociology consisted in a constant conquest and defense of territories from the politically modeled and structured society at large and from the area of politically sanctioned and controlled knowledge. On the other hand, the practical implementation of the communist project common to all these countries passed through various stages and was marked by specific national features in each country. Bulgaria proved to be the only country in the former socialist camp in which the ambivalence of sociology, most strongly displayed in the symbiosis of personal power positions held simultaneously in science and government, is a distinctive feature in our discipline, a feature that had a decisive impact on its contents and social role before 1989, and a lasting influence on the development of sociology in post-totalitarian society as well. Throughout the various periods, from the initial efforts for scientific and institutional legitimization of sociology (in the late 1950s and early 1960s), through the large research projects (of the 60s and 80s), and to the growing presence of sociology in various spheres of society (the second half of the 70s and early 80s), Bulgarian sociology did not simply pass through the interaction, inevitable in this type of society, with the State-Party; it incorporated itself in the power structures of the state through a number of leading sociologists (Niko Yahiel, Stoyan Mihailov, Mincho Draganov, Mincho Semov, and others), people who used their positions to raise a protective shield against this scientific institution, but also placed a restrictive ideological boundary on its intellectual freedom. Along with this, precisely because of their ambivalent position, these leading figures made sociology a tool for reforming the system from the inside, so that the role of social science, whether constructive and legitimizing or destructive, followed the fluctuation of tolerance and receptivity of the political regime toward the conclusions of sociological analysis.

[4]  We believe that by taking into account these circumstances, the specific features of Bulgarian sociology up to 1989, as pointed out in the report, become clearer and more comprehensible to readers, be they young Bulgarian sociologists or foreign colleagues, who have not been participating in its development. Thus, the disciplinary separation of sociology from historical materialism and its institutional expansion as a discipline during the 1960s would be inconceivable without the coinciding interests in that historical period of the holders of political power and the emerging new scientific community. The concept of the sociological structure of society, accurately presented in the report as a conceptual innovation, as a scientific program and educational matrix for generations of Bulgarian sociologists, functioned as such not only because it offered a systemic viewpoint on the nature and mechanisms of society. We must take into account the professional and political-administrative status of the authors of the conception, but also the fact that structural functionalism, influential at that time and incorporated into the conceptual framework in question, was the only digestible and acceptable non-Marxist paradigm in the ideological and political context of the times. Moreover, at its beginnings in the 1960s, modern Bulgarian sociology built upon a double epistemological break, both with the tradition of Western sociology as an autonomous science and with Bulgarian sociological thought before the Second World War. Although prior to the World War Bulgarian translations came out of Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, and although the initiator and “architect” of modern Bulgarian sociology, Zhivko Ochavkov studied at the Sorbonne in Paris during the 1930s, the key figures in the history of world sociology were long passed over in silence or mentioned only to be rejected as bearers of idealistic, reactionary or unscientific views on society. Knowing the features of totalitarian society, we may seek a hidden motive for this display of “ignorance” or radical rejection of the sociological tradition in the specific context of justification where the dominant scientific paradigm of the social world was guaranteed and sanctioned as correct by the subject holding the monopoly of power. Social coercion continued to assume the form of logical coercion in the 1970s and 1980s, when various stratagems were devised for adopting (or incorporating) the so-called bourgeois sociology (e.g. introducing a regular series of translations of classical Western “Sociological texts with critical commentary” in the journal Sociologicheski Problemi, translations of publications from other socialist countries, especially Poland and Hungary, that had greater and freer access to Western sociology, the Marx Seminar at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ochridski”, a workshop that became a forum for dialogue between various sociological traditions). Given the specific form that totalitarianism assumed in Bulgarian society (relatively tolerant political power, lack of civic pressure on the regime, the intertwining of sociology in power structures), it is easier to understand the lack of active opposition among Bulgarian sociologists and the absence of an underground sociological press, unlike the situation in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the fact that Bulgarian sociology remained unaffected by the Spring of Prague, the Polish Solidarity movement, etc.

[5]  In other words, in Bulgaria the relation between sociology and power before 1989 proved, to a much greater degree than in other socialist states at that time, one of the basic determinants of the scientific and social being of sociology. Social science occupied an intermediate position between science and politics, or rather it was both a science and a tool of power at once, subordinating its cognitive function to the objectives of social-political action and attempting to soften the pressure exerted by the administration, and to make the system more “human” using its resources as a science. The full complexity and ambiguity in the development of sociology prior to 1989, lies precisely in the “dangerous proximity between sociology and power”.

 

Redefinition of the discipline since 1990

[6]  A starting point for the analysis of Bulgarian sociology after 1990 is the “shared understanding” of a “need for evolutionary differentiation” in a qualitatively new context after the break-down of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the ensuing radical changes in the economic, political, and social organization of society. The particular features of the “new round of modernization” of Bulgarian society occurring under the strong pressure of globalizing processes, are putting to a test the theoretical framework of sociology, the forms in which it organizes research activities, and the means by which it tries to exert influence on society. In order to clarify the redefinition of sociology in all its aspects - themes, paradigms, methodology, institutions - it was chosen and cogently demonstrated a conceptual perspective referring to processes of transformation, not transition processes, a term that long prevailed in East and West European analyses of post-totalitarian societies. This change of perspective permits encompassing the attempts of Bulgarian sociology to study macro-social changes, but it also restricts the capacity to include the micro-social studies that attempt to reveal the concrete impact of macro-social transformations on separate groups and individuals, their meaning and significance at the everyday level (economic strategies of Bulgarian households, problems of the family and women, of invalids, of lonely and homeless people). In fact the role of these studies in Bulgarian sociology is growing not only in quantity (one reason for their proportion may be found in the limited financial means available for the kind of large representative studies that were typical for the period prior to 1989), but produces more detailed, precise and varied knowledge on the meaning and directions of the current changes.

[7]  In the report, four new paradigmatic models have been pointed out as replacing the conception of sociological structure of society that was dominant up to 1989. The validity of these models is substantiated through their potential for generating knowledge both on integration and on innovation, on system and action, on structures and actors. But in the way they are presented in the report, the four models - systematic and action dimensions of transformation, organizational rationalization, individualization, and controversial value changes - are rather of the nature of new problem fields than of definite theoretical approaches to social reality. For there is no doubt that phenomena such as the adjustment of the national economy, of organizational and political culture, and of the normative system to world models, the role of the state, the balance between individual and collective values, ultimate and instrumental values, the capacities for sustainable development, etc., can be studied from different theoretical perspectives. But if these phenomena are not critically re-thought for the purposes of each concrete study, the result would be eclecticism, a feature pointed out in the report as characteristic of contemporary Bulgarian sociology.

[8]  Among the new institutional changes in sociology, I should also mention the swift growth of non-governmental organizations, whose activity directly or indirectly had a bearing on sociology. Inasmuch as NGOs realize projects addressing serious social problems in various sectors of Bulgarian society, they not only mobilize the efforts of specialists in different social sciences, but produce complex knowledge about the current transformations as well.

[9]  In Bulgaria, unlike other countries of Central and Easter Europe (Slovakia, Russia, Hungary) no stable tendency of a return to the works of pre-World War II social thinkers and their reintegration in the national sociological tradition can be observed. Not counting the interest of sociologists for the works of Ivan Hadzhiyski and Dimitar Mihalchev, well-known authors even before 1989, the incidental attempt of the journal Sociologicheski Problemi to introduce a regular series of articles under the heading “Rehabilitated names in science” and the published anthology of excerpts from works by a few elite Bulgarian intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s, there was no purposeful exploration and revival of the pre-War scientific legacy on the part of present-day Bulgarian sociologists. The analysis of the combination of causes for this attitude of Bulgarian scholars would require separate research.

 

 

Copyright © 2007 by the author.