Madlen Nikolova: On the Bulgarian post-socialist Left ||| 19th October 2013
Channel: SkriptaTV
Date: 2013-12-26

Organizacija: Centar za radničke studije (CRS) / Organized by: Centre for labour studies (radnickistudiji.org)
Saturday, October 19th, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb 16.30-18.00
Conference_Predicaments of the Left: Conjunctures, Strategies, Perspectives / Konferencija_Dileme ljevice: poteškoće, strategije, perspektive
6th panel
Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, From Oppositional Coexistence to Liberation in Eastern Europe
Madlen Nikolova, On the Bulgarian post-socialist Left

Moderator: Stipe Ćurković

Madlen Nikolova, On the Bulgarian post-socialist Left

In this presentation I will briefly trace the main developments of the post-1989 Left in Bulgaria, and by that I mean both the transformation of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) into Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), currently dominating the Left political spectrum, as well as various alternative attempts to articulate a radical Left critique. The latter are, on the one hand, a variety of splinter-parties from BSP, and, on the other hand, extra-parliamentary autonomous movements and groups that started to be formed particularly in early 2000s. My goal is not to list the peculiar groups and organizations, frequently changing their concrete organizational forms and names, but rather to reflect on the wider political trends. As for BSP, it had undergone quite radical transformations itself, from the dramatically failed attempt to engineer a transition with a human face in the 1990s, to outright neoliberalism from the early 2000s onwards. I will place those developments on the Left in the context of the capitalist restoration of the 1990s. In the final part of my presentation I will end on a more general note, reflecting on the prospects and limitations of the radical Left in the current political crisis in Bulgaria, which, I believe, hold certain key lessons for the European Left as a whole.

Madlen Nikolova is in her final year of BA in Cultural Studies. She is а founding member of social center Haspel (Sofia) and of New Left Perspectives collective. She also writes for Hysterical Parrhesia (blog for Marxist critique of ideology).

http://radnickistudiji.org/?p=207%2F