Die sozialistische Lebensweise. Ideologie, Gesellschaft, Familie und Politik in Bulgarien (1944 - 1989)

This book discusses the attempts of the Bulgarian Communist party, which ruled from 1944 until 1989, to establish a "socialist way of life", which meant the patterns of daily routines and social reproduction that would characterize life in socialism. This was an all-encompassing project addressing all walks of life and providing a powerful stimulus for wide-ranging societal politics, which eventually would turn the citizens into "New Men". Social practices, though, often fell apart from ideology and many policis resulted in unintended consequences, which again had to be addressed by new policies. Socialism, therefore, became a never ending project. The policies of the "socialist way of life" were at the very heart of this dilemma because on the one hand, they aimed at making people socialist but, on the other hand, had always to reflect on the discrepancies between idelogy and reality. Making life socialist was thus a powerful motive for the intrusion of the party-state into the private as well as for its strive to know about everyday life problems. My book points to different approaches towards the "socialist way of life". During the first decade of communist rule the dominant belief of the party was that a socialist way of life would automatically emerge from the mobilisation of the masses and the creation of new material realities. This approach is evident in the youth brigadier movement (late 1940s), the construction of the socialist town of Dimitrovgrad (startin in 1947) and of the huge steel plant of Kremikovci (decided in 1956). During the later 1950s, however, party leaders and cultural agitators became increasingly aware that the "socialist way of life" was not automatically created by socialist relations in production. An extensive discussion about deviations from the socialist template set in, which was also a reaction to the massive immigration from peasants to the cities and the ensuing social transformation. The countrys largest mass organisation, the Fatherland Front, was charged with propagating the ideals of the "socialist way of life" among the masses and to provide templates for correct - i.e. socialist - behaviour for all aspects of life. The final part of the book analyses in depth two central instances of the party-states intrusion into the private lives of its citizens: familiy and reproduction policies. Both examples, though prove the inability of the regime to make social and individual practices correspond with ideological prescriptions, despite great propaganda and financial efforts. The discussion of these policies and the popular reactions aim at an ethnography of the socialist state. Such an approach makes clear that state, on the one hand, and society as well as the private realm, on the other hand, were interdependent and interwoven. This made the socialist system flexible to a point but also essentially non- reformable as the inherent contradictions increased in the 1980s.