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Seventeen years after the fall of communism, a new exhibit in Sofia hopes to make Bulgarians talk about everyday life under the regime and even cast a smile on the vestiges of the country's troubled past.
An exhibit of communist-era objects entitled "An Inventory Storehouse of Socialism" opened in Sofia on Friday, on the anniversary of the fall of the regime on November 10, 1989, making Bulgaria the last country from the former communist bloc to open an exposition of this kind.
"Apart from the political, pathetic talk about communism, we have tried to show that there are also the everyday stories, the shared memories of the people as well as many traces, remnants of the communist time still present today as part of our lives," the project's creator Georgy Gospodinov told AFP.
"Besides, socialism was not only a lifestyle as many younger people view it now, but was also surreptitiously filled with ideology," Gospodinov said while arranging a piece in the exhibit, a doily emboidered with Lenin's profile. Up until 1989, communism was known as socialism in Bulgaria.
The "Storehouse" is just the latest in a series of projects by Gospodinov aimed at making people talk about and remember communism as a way of coming to terms with it. He said he hoped people will see that, like every story or object of the past, they need to shake off that period of history and "send it to the museum".
"Communism fell seventeen years ago but there are people in Bulgaria who still use their Socialist-era fridges, vacuum cleaners, cupboards, beds... And surrounded by these objects in their everyday lives, there is no way to get rid of the whole austere culture," Gospodinov said.
The objects on display prompted cheerful cries of remembrance Friday as visitors, most of them young adults, spotted a bottle of Coke still labelled with the Cyrillic "Koka-Kola" inscription and remembered the peculiar bubbly taste they cherished as children.
Coca-Cola was first produced behind the Iron Curtain in 1966 in Bulgaria's Black Sea city of Varna, after the beverage had for years been considered the very symbol of decadent capitalism.
"We tried to collect all these objects that are filled with memories here as a type of a common memory book," Gospodinov said.
But Coca-Cola is probably the only "Western" food most Bulgarians remember from communist times.
"It is not the same when you look at a 'Toblerone' chocolate bar for example. We did not know what a 'Toblerone' was back then. We even thought about setting up another museum with what we did not have, as privation was omnipresent," Gospodinov added.
During Bulgaria's communist era, which lasted 45 years until dictator Todor Zhivkov was toppled in 1989, hardly any "western" goods could be found on the market.
"Luxuries," like Swiss chocolate eggs, were sold in special shops that only accepted US dollars, meaning only buyers with connections to people in power could afford them, while ordinary people had to make do with window-shopping.
Another of Gospodinov's recent projects, a book of personal stories called "I lived socialism," also recalled how bananas were a favourite New Year's Eve food, only sold in Bulgarian grocery stores ahead of the holiday.
Hundreds of people -- many of them young adults who were children during the last years of communism, but also older Bulgarians -- contributed to the book. Some stories spoke of privation but many were also nostalgic of life under the regime.
"Our summer holidays were guaranteed. Tomorrow's bread also. As well as my grandma's medicine," 34-year-old economist Svetla Tsvyatkova wrote, hinting at the difficult transition period from communism that Bulgaria is still undergoing.
The Balkan state is scheduled to join the European Union in January 2007, when it will become the poorest country in Europe's rich club, with an average income hardly a third of the average income within the EU-25.
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AFPLifestyle-Bulgaria-culture-communism-anniversary
AFP 121330 GMT 11 06
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