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I’ve just returned from a quick dash to Sofia to do some research in the National Library, celebrate my ex-mother-in-law’s 85th birthday, and write a little about how the country still celebrates 8 March as International Women’s Day. It was a very busy and over scheduled trip, with visits to three history museums, but I am always happy to be back in Bulgaria, even if only for such a short while.
The Editorial Board of the Slavic & East European Journal (SEEJ) has awarded my article on Bulgarian typewriters its 2022 best article of the year award. A very nice recognition for someone in my academic field.
Caught me while I was shutting off the sound on my phone
War, what is it good for?
This International Workers’ Day finds me just one country removed from war. According to Google maps, if I were to drive from Durankulak in the northeast corner of Bulgaria on the Black Sea to Orlivka, a border town in the Odessa Oblast of Ukraine, it would take me 3 hours and 19 minutes. It’s only 218 kilometers through a small strip of coastal Romania. More than 200,000 Ukrainian refugees have flowed into Bulgaria so far, and about 100,000 have stayed, largely because they have family connections here. (The Bessarabian Bulgarians are a historical minority in Ukraine who fled Ottoman oppression and settled in what was then the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly during the Russo-Turkish wars of 1806-1812 and 1828-1829.)
This war has profoundly divided Bulgaria. The Prime Minister and the President openly disagree on whether the country should send weapons to Ukraine, and ordinary people argue about the increasing presence of foreign NATO troops in their country. The United States maintains four strategic military bases here: the Bezmer Air Force base in Yambol, the Graf Ignatiev Air Force base in Plovdiv, and the Logistics Center Airforce base in Aitos. The biggest NATO staging ground is the Novo Selo Range Army Base near Sliven, and it would certainly be a key target if the war spilled over the borders of Ukraine…
And I found a great article about Alexandra Kollontai!
One of my favorite restaurants in Sofia, Pod Lipite, and some amazing Linden trees. It’s Eastern season in Bulgaria, and the Spring is almost here. The city is being watched over by the glorious peak of Mt. Vitosha.
“Second World, Second Sex,” delivered October 20, 2021 and chaired by the brilliant Juliane Fürst
Jacobin Radio, Long Reads: Kristen Ghodsee on the Lost World of Bulgarian Communism, September 25, 2021
Overdetermined: A Rethinking Marxism Podcast, Vol. 1, Episode 2, September 24, 2021
Alexander Nevski Cathedral
Sofia University
Ice Cream Stand in the park in front of the National Theater
Red Army Monument
The Roman Wall from above
Graffiti Priests on Shishman
White cheese and red wine
This morning I was looking through some old external hard drives and I found about an hour of video footage from various interviews I conducted with Elena Lagadinova in December 2014. For a long time I have been meaning to subtitle these and post them online, but I only know how to use iMovie and it is tedious work for which I’ve never been able to find the time. I did do one clip with subtitles, which is linked here.
Working women!
Дали при социализма жените са имали по-добър секс? Да, убедена е американската етнографка Кристен Годсий. В своята книга, излязла през 2019 в Германия, тя обяснява защо. Годсий задава и други въпроси.
So I spent a day in a village in the northwest of Bulgaria, near the town of Vratsa. This is a very poor part of the country where people live quite close to the edge, and is probably one of the poorest regions in the European Union. But it is also breathtakingly beautiful, and it is in this part of the country that many people maintain an allegiance to leftist ideals. I am always humbled and honored to be a guest here.
I found this photo from the summer of 1999 in Sofia. It is scary to think that two whole decades have gone by so fast.
I was cleaning through some drawers last weekend and found a nice stash of Bulgarian martenitzi to wear in advance of the “Baba Marta” holiday on March 1. Adds a nice dash of color!
From Wikipedia:
“A Martenitsa is a small piece of adornment, made of white and red yarn and usually in the form of two dolls, a male and a female. Martenitsi are worn from Baba Marta Day (March 1) until the wearer first sees a stork, swallow, or blossoming tree (or until late March). The name of the holiday means "Grandma March" in Bulgarian and the holiday and the wearing of Martenitsi are a Bulgarian tradition related to welcoming the spring, which according to Bulgarian folklore begins in March.”
This is one of the Bulgarian covers of a sexual education book that was translated from the German and first published in Bulgaria in 1979.
In my research on the Bulgarian typewriter factory in Plovdiv, I stumbled across a couple of earlier models. The German Erika is probably from the 1920s, and I bought it and brought it home with me to the United States to add to my growing typewriter collection. It needs a good clean up, but otherwise it works like a charm.
Some scenes from Plovdiv. The first image shows that Plovdiv was once the sister city of a place called Leningrad.
