Reclaiming Memory: The History and Legacy of Concentration Camps in Communist Bulgaria

In the immediate aftermath of 1989, following the collapse of the Eastern European communist regimes, it was revealed that communist Bulgaria had operated one of the most extensive and repressive forced-labor camp networks in the entire socialist bloc. In a country of 7 million people spread across 111,000 square kilometers, there were close to forty camp complexes where people were interned, often without trial during different stages of the communist regime. The camps were fully operational from late 1944 until 1962. Furthermore, the Bulgarian camp network was never completely dismantled and camps continued operating into the 1980s, albeit at a significantly diminished scale and with reduced visibility. In early 1990, news of the atrocities committed in the camps attracted the attention of local and foreign media, earning Bulgaria the rather sinister moniker "Little Siberia." The revelations of human rights abuses prompted post-communist Bulgarian governments to attempt various transitional justice initiatives aimed at overcoming the repressive legacy. To date, however, the history of the Bulgarian concentration camp system and its aftermath remain largely untold. This dissertation focuses on the camp system as a way of exploring the experience of political violence in Bulgaria during the communist era and the diverse post-communist forms of representing this experience. The study uses a wide variety of sources, including recently declassified archival material, private archival collections, oral history interviews, memoirs, unpublished manuscripts, films, and media investigations. More than thirty interviews were conducted with individuals impacted by the Bulgarian camp system, over twenty of which with camp survivors. Archival research was conducted in the collections of Bulgaria's Ministry of the Interior (AMVR) in Sofia, the Central State Archive (TsDA) in Sofia, the National Archives in London, UK, and the Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary.Ph.D.2018-03-31 00:00:0