The Late Socialist Good Life in Bulgaria Meaning and Living in a Permanent Present Tense

During the 1960s and 1970s, Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, bureaucrats, and subjects vigorously debated visions of the socialist humanist good life. Defining and living socialist humanism was a complex process questioning, among other things, the place of work and leisure, sex and pleasure, and the relationship between Bulgaria and the outside world. The Late Socialist Good Life in Bulgaria examines how socialism was lived in a time of transition through an examination of four programs intended to instill the values of a revitalized socialist humanism: the brigadier movement (work); the relationship between Haskovo, Bulgaria, and its "brother city," Tashkent, in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (international socialism); internal tourism (nation); and the exhibition of art in the Haskovo gallery (aesthetics).

Cristofer Scarboro is assistant professor of history at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.