Bulgarian Communism: Critical Readings
or
Virtual Catalogue and Informational Centre for Critical Readings of Communism

Project Necessity
During the last decade Bulgarian universities, research centres, academic and public NGOs have hosted and stimulated significant research interest and have attained considerable knowledge in the field of the communist past in Bulgaria. At the same time these growing efforts and activities are still relatively isolated from each other due to the lack of sufficient publication, dissemination and even preservation resources. The accumulation of scientific materials and archives has already reached its critical mass beyond which wider presentation and catalogue of the communism research field in Bulgaria is essentially needed. Both for local and for international research networks is very important to freely access research resources and materials, archives, actual information about the organization and popularization of public events, conferences, electronic and hard copy publications, etc. Our initiative aims at the systematization and optimization of the efforts of the academic community and offers more and easily accessible information to wider audience interested in communist past.

Project Idea
The basic idea behind the project is through modern communication and internet technologies to create and develop catalogue of the contemporary critical readings of Bulgarian communism in the social sciences and the humanities. This is a form of “soft” academic policy for the creation of informational premises able to activate and strengthen the capacity, the ideas and the contacts of the researchers working in this scientific area.

Strategy
- to catalogue existing information and knowledge about the communist period;
- to optimize the information exchange among various research centres;
- to organize public and scientific events;
- to create technical and know-how resources for the preservation, growth and emancipation of the academic and public interest in the country and abroad.

Aims
- the development and maintenance of accessible data base with internet applications both in Bulgarian and English, containing information about research projects dealing with communist past, their research teams, topics, research archives and materials, contacts;
- the maintenance of NEWS directory giving information about present events, initiatives, achieved results, publications, etc.;
- to lay the basis for future digitalization of archives and other research resources;
- the organization of regular interdisciplinary workshops, the formation of research groups and teams;
- the organization of an international conference presenting the participating projects and organizations.

Participants
In May 2005 at the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia took place a preliminary meeting during which the representatives of different research organizations and communist projects agreed on the idea for Bulgarian Communism: Critical Readings Project.

• Centre for Advanced Study Sofia;
• Open Society Institute;
• New Bulgarian University;
• Centre for Liberal Strategies Sofia;
• www.spomeniteni.org Project;
• Institute for Critical Social Research;
• History and Theory of Culture Department at Sofia University;
• Cultural Studies Department at South-West University Blagoevgrad;
• Institute for the Research of Communist Crimes.