Bulgaria: 25 Years After Democracy

February 25, 2015 | Pulitzer Center

Yana Paskova

A woman walks by an abandoned building adorned with street scenes of Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, on October 5, 2014. The European Union intermittently cuts off financial aid to the country when faced with mounting evidence of misappropriated funds, meant for construction and renovation. A recent finding by Study for Democracy, a Sofia-based think tank, labeled the country's level of corruption at its highest in 15 years, across civil and political sectors alike. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Protesters against bank KTB (Corporate Commercial Bank) gather around Grozdan Karadjov (partially seen on far left), a politician from the center-right political coalition Reformatorski Blok (Reformist Bloc), in front of the Bulgarian National Assembly in the capital Sofia, on November 6, 2014. KTB closed in June, its customers no longer able to access their money, as the majority owner Tsvetan Vasilev was indicted for corporate embezzlement in absentia and placed on Interpol's and Schengen's most wanted lists. Bulgaria's central bank subsequently discovered a 4.22 billon leva ($2.71 billion USD) hole in KTB's accounts, which is much higher than Bulgaria's debt ceiling. This is the nation's worst banking crisis in two decades. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Veselka Vasileva gazes off into space as the TV drones on at a grocery store in Sinagovtsi, a village of rapidly declining population in Bulgaria, on October 22, 2014. Bulgaria has the most extreme population decline in the world—much of it due to post-1989 emigration, high death rates and low birth rates. There are so few people of child-bearing age in the nation that population statistics project a 30-percent decrease by 2060, from 7.2 million to just over 5 million. In other words, Bulgaria's population declines by 164 people a day, or 60,000 people a year—60 percent of them aged over 65. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A woman sells geese from the trunk of her car, at an outdoor market in Vidin, Bulgaria on October 18, 2014. Many Bulgarians sell personal belongings, fruit and vegetables grown at home, or resell goods as a supplement to their primary earnings. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Boys rest under a poster for Bulgaria's Socialist party on a rusty bus stop on October 17, 2014, in Rabrovo, the only village with a hospital near Kanitz, a nearly abandoned village of six. Bulgaria has the most extreme population decline in the world—much due to post-1989 emigration, high death rates and low birth rates. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A man imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter in Belene pauses while in the prison chapel, on November 10, 2014. Many women and men (like my grandfather) who didn't belong to the Communist party in the 1950s languished in the gulag-like forced labor camp, an island on the Danube river. Belene still houses prisoners, some for petty theft, some for larger crimes. The section of the island that was once dedicated to imprisoning political dissidents, now crumbling, is a haunting reminder of the dangers once posed by an independent mind in Eastern Europe. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Kristiyan Stamatov serves drinks at SSSR, a USSR nostalgia restaurant and bar in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, in front of a portrait of Soviet communist leader Joseph Stalin, on October 4, 2014. Stamatov is wearing a red tie, symbolic of what was once called a "pionerche" (pioneer) or a Bulgarian student expected to serve the country and Communist party. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Protesters against bank KTB (Corporate Commercial Bank) gather in front of the Bulgarian National Assembly in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, on November 6, 2014. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Bozhidar Tomalevski, chairman of the political party Drugata Bulgaria (The Other Bulgaria, which represents Bulgarian emigrants), looks around in anticipation of the protest against bank KTB (Corporate Commercial Bank) before a planned picketing event in Bulgaria's capital Sofia on November 8, 2014. Despite widespread outrage over the bank's closing, only a handful of people arrived; the protest was canceled. "Democracy is a habit. And many here consider it a singular person's effort, not a collective one," said Tomalevski of this protest attendance. KTB closed in June, its customers no longer able to access their money, as the majority owner Tsvetan Vasilev was indicted for corporate embezzlement in absentia and placed on Interpol's and Schengen's most wanted lists. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Communist nostalgia is still very much alive in Bulgaria. Tato, a bar in Sofia (currently closed due to the death of its owner), is decorated with portraits of Bulgarian Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov (upper center) in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, on November 6, 2014. His nickname and bar's namesake "Tato" is a play on the word "dad" in Bulgarian. Zhivkov was the head of state of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from March 4, 1954 until the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 10, 1989, when he resigned under political pressure over the country's worsening economy and public unrest. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A look through the window of an abandoned school toward Dunavtsi, a town of waning population in Bulgaria, on October 27, 2014. Bulgaria has the most extreme population decline in the world—much of it due to post-1989 emigration, high death rates and low birth rates. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Hairdresser Pavlinka Paskova, 59, cuts the hair of Stanko Petrov Vulchev, 80, in Vidin, Bulgaria, on October 30, 2014. Paskova says she has very few customers in this town of waning population: "There's little hope of prosperity for the young here—they've all emigrated." Bulgaria has the most extreme population decline in the world—much due to post-1989 emigration, high death rates and low birth rates. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

(L-R) Katya Petrova, 34, embraces her two-year-old daughter Ivana Nikolova, 2, next to her friend Minka Petrova, in Vidin, Bulgaria, on October 30, 2014. Katya decided to open a bar with help from mom, after being refused employment following the birth of her child. To supplement her family's income, Katya's mother has worked in Italy as a hospice worker for the past 14 years. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Georgi Petrov, 59, looks up to a bird house he constructed in his garden in Sinagovtsi, a village of rapidly declining population in Bulgaria, on October 22, 2014. Petrov, who used to work at a local mill but is now unemployed, hasn't been able to afford plaster for his home for several decades. He recently buried his mother, making the cement monument himself, also due to lack of funds. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Art during the Communist years was highly sanitized—and artists who chose not to show a utopian view of the country were censored and punished. The post-1989 years of Bulgarian art history renewed creativity of expression in its community—a gift especially to those who sought to express a variety of political ideas, or a non-idealized view of their society. A painting that used to decorate a school during the Communist era now hangs in the hallway of the Factory for Urban Art, seen in Bulgaria's capital Sofia. The factory is a former wholesale warehouse where artists now rent studios and create for much lower rates than in the rest of the city. The art collective Destructive Creation, the same which recently spray-painted Sofia's Monument to the Soviet Army in Western superhero outfits, initiated the idea for the factory. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Today, October 5, 2014, is Midterm Elections day in the States—its multi-party ticket an unimaginable reality in autocratic Bulgaria pre-1989. (R-L) Simona Kostova, from Bulgaria's voting commission, watches as a woman prepares to place her vote in the ballot box during Parliamentary elections in the nation's capital, Sofia. Despite a month-long vacillation on the make-up of their political coalitions and their new prime minister and that only 49 percent of the population turned up to vote today, party leaders narrowly avoided re-elections, with former prime minister and leader of center-right party GERB Boyko Borisov reinstated at the post. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A goat looks out of a window of a crumbling building in Belene on November 10, 2014. Many women and men (like my grandfather) who didn't belong to the Communist party in the 1950s languished in the gulag-like forced labor camp, an island on the Danube river. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A man sells broomsticks from the roof of his car, near an outdoor market in Vidin, Bulgaria, on October 18, 2014. Many Bulgarians sell personal belongings, fruit and vegetables grown at home, or resell goods as a supplement to their primary earnings. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A man stands on a rooftop below a handmade electrical grid hanging over a Roma village, as people turn up to vote in October's parliamentary elections in the nation's capital, Sofia. Today, October 5, 2014, is also Midterm Elections day in the States—its multi-party ticket an unimaginable reality in autocratic Bulgaria pre-1989. Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

A woman walks by graffiti of the fist that came to symbolize civic protests against political corruption in 2013, seen in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, on October 4, 2014. The fist has been crossed off by a second layer of graffiti, with an adjacent sign that reads, "Communism, but not a Colony," in likely reference to what some political parties decry as Westernization of interests in the country." Image by Yana Paskova. Bulgaria, 2014.

Each block that crumbled from the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, foreshadowed the coming of forbidden freedoms to Soviet satellite nations sprinkled throughout the Eastern Bloc. Twenty five years later, the promise of democracy is but an ironic whisper in the minds of many in Bulgaria, my homeland until the age of 12.

The story of democratic Bulgaria at age 25 is a cautionary tale about transplanting one-size-fits-all Western values to a nation still undergoing social and economic upheaval. And there's a division in the way people remember their Communist past.

Communism didn't die in 1989: It lives in people's minds, surviving political factions and visual remnants across the nation—still-standing Soviet monuments, nostalgic graffiti, decaying factories. The country’s dark political past reanimates when visiting forced labor camps, also in ruins, where political prisoners once languished.

Most shudder at the memory of the regime’s brutal ideologies and closed borders; yet just as many, turned sour from post-1989 political corruption, brutal job market and crimes of desperation, equate democracy to disaster.

This is because Bulgaria is still one of the poorest, most corrupt nations in the European Union, its hopes of change wilted by this chronic political instability, high crime rates and skyrocketing inflation. While Bulgarians can now freely vote and protest without much threat to their freedom—with a rise in groups supporting the rights of the LGBT and long-oppressed Roma communities—corruption has become the new oppressor to prosperity. And it is at a 15-year high, across political and civil sectors, according to a finding by the Sofia-based think tank Study for Democracy.

The country also has the most extreme population decline in the world—much of it due to post-1989 emigration, high death rates and low birth rates. There are so few people of child-bearing age in the nation that population statistics project a 30-percent decrease by 2060, from 7.2 million to just over 5 million. In other words, Bulgaria’s population declines by 164 people a day, or 60,000 people a year—60 percent of them aged over 65. As depopulation further saps the nation of its men and women, visions of severe structural and industrial decay become increasingly common, and so, with each visit, I witness more and more of my country’s disturbing vanishing.

What gripped me just as much is the ennui, so casually etched on the passerby's face that it becomes routine, one that fits in sadly well against this startling backdrop of rotting architecture, joblessness, and waning population. It seems that despite what democracy has changed in Bulgaria, the daily struggles of its populace have largely stayed untouched, trapped in a post-communist time capsule. But I believe hope for the country remains with those who are willing to believe in and fight for its still-nascent democracy.