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Continuity and Change in Two Bulgarian Communities: A Sociological Profile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Roger Whitaker
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The ways in which members of a community think, act, or believe are always changing. Sometimes the pace of change is imperceptibly slow; at other times it is so rapid that it can distinguish an era from its recent past. The rural communities of Bulgaria have experienced rapid change over the last three decades. It began on September 9, 1944, when the Bulgarian monarchy was overthrown and the Bulgarian Communist Party emerged to lead Bulgaria on a path of socialist development. The seizure of power was a revolutionary act but, more important, from a sociological point of view, it was an act that made revolutionary change possible. My purpose is to illustrate several ways in which Bulgarian rural communities have participated in the revolutionary transformation of community and family life in the 1970s.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 259 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

References

1. The research was made possible by the International Research and Exchanges Board, New York, and in cooperation with the Institute of Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

2. Sanders, Irwin T., Balkan Village (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1948.Google Scholar

3. The remaining thirty respondents were selected by a random sample drawn from the local council's registry of residents. The sample was stratified by age.

4. Dragalevtsy is now a part of the seventh district of Sofia which includes thirteen outlying communities that surround the capital city. The district has 120, 000 residents.

5. Forty-seven Obnova residents were interviewed. They were selected by a random sample drawn from the village's registry of residents. The sample was stratified by age.

6. In 1946, the population of Obnova was 5, 600; in 19S6, 5, 400; in 1965, 4, 254; in 1975, 3, 511. In 1934, the population of Dragalevtsy was 2, 204; in 1946, 3, 296; in 1956, 3, 111; in 1975, 3, 986.

7. The various responses of Bulgaria's socialist leaders to selected presociaHst traditions are discussed in Roger Whitaker, “Experiencing Revolutionary Change: The Role of Tradition,” paper presented to the Second International Conference on Bulgarian Studies, in Varna, Bulgaria, June 1978.

8. Between 1934 and 1944, the number of homesteads increased by 22.6 percent, and the total number of fields reached twelve million (see Mincho, Kyurkchiev, Bulgarian Agriculture Today and Life in the Villages [Sofia, 1974], p. 9).Google Scholar Estimates of the surplus agricultural population before World War II suggest that as much as one-third of the agricultural population was redundant (see, for example, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan's estimates referred to in Robert, Wolff, The Balkans in Our Times [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974], pp. 50–51 Google Scholar; Pawel Egoroff's estimates cited in Alexander, Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966], pp. 224–25 Google Scholar; or Kyurkchiev, Bulgarian Agriculture Today and Life in the Villages, p. 10).

9. Ninety-one percent of the farmers in Dragalevtsy in 1934 were working land that they had inherited from their fathers.

10. For a brief description of the phases of agricultural reorganization, see Vassil, Baev, A Glance at Bulgaria (Sofia, 1975).Google Scholar

11. Mellor, Roy E. H., Eastern Europe: A Geography of the Comecon Countries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, p. 309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. A hectare is equal to two and a half acres.

13. State authorities forecast that personal plots will not be necessary or desirable once cooperative farms are able to satisfy all of the needs of their members. For the foreseeable future, however, the personal plots are recognized as a valuable supplement to Bulgaria's agricultural production.

14. Pension benefits and regulations are detailed in Legal Status of Women in Bulgaria (Sofia, 1976), p. 40.

15. Dragalevtsy is one of six villages which make up the Vitosha cooperative farm, formed in 1957 by merging the various village cooperatives. In 1974, the Vitosha cooperative farm merged with twelve other cooperatives to form what is called the Sredets “agroindustrial complex.”

16. Thirty-eight of the sixty households interviewed in Dragalevtsy have auxiliary plots that average 877 square meters in size. All forty-seven households interviewed in Obnova have auxiliary plots that average 3, 710 square meters in size. The smaller plots available in Dragalevtsy are an outcome of the land use policies of the capital city and its surrounding areas.

17. A time-budget study conducted in 1970-71 also shows that there is a clear relationship between age and the amount of time a person spends working on the auxiliary plot (see Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, Budzhct na vrcmeto na naselenieto v N.R. Bulgaria prez 1970-71 (Time Budget of the Population of the People's Republic of Bulgaria during 1970-71) (Sofia, 1973), p. 16.

18. Velichko, Dobrianov, “Changes in the Socio-Economic Structure of Bulgaria” in Butler, Thomas, ed., Bulgaria Past and Present (Columbus, Ohio: AAASS Press, 1976), p. 152.Google Scholar

19. In 1970, 15 percent of the rural population and 31 percent of the urban population in Bulgaria was aged fifteen to twenty-nine (see figures cited by Huey Louis Kostanick, “Demographic Structure and Change,” in Butler, Bulgaria Past and Present, p. 144).

20. According to Cyril Black, over one million persons were transferred from agricultural to nonagricultural employment between 1950 and 1968 (see Cyril Black, “The Process of Modernization: The Bulgarian Case,” in Butler, Bulgaria Past and Present, p. 124). In 1934, 79.6 percent of Bulgaria's population lived in rural communities (see Statisticheski godishnik na Narodna Republika Bulgariia, 1974 [Sofia, 1974]). Today this figure is 42 percent (see Rabotnichesko delo, January 28, 1976, p. 2).

21. The population in Dragalevtsy in 1934 was 2, 204. In 1975, it was 3, 986.

22. Irwin T. Sanders, “The Sociology of a Bulgarian Shopski Village” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1938), p. 105.

23. Of the 432 letters delivered to Dragalevtsy, 178 originated in Sofia. Of the 225 letters mailed from the Dragalevtsy post office, 121 were mailed to addresses in Sofia.

24. Of these 649 subscriptions, there were 31 subscriptions to 10 different German magazines, 24 subscriptions to 8 different Russian newspapers, and 156 subscriptions to 81 different magazines and journals from the Soviet Union.

25. The dispersal of services and professionally trained personnel to rural communities is assisted by a program of labor distribution that is administered by the Ministry of Labor and Social Care and the Committee for Scientific and Technical Progress. The first plan to allocate specialists was made in 1950. Today about fifteen thousand specialists who graduate from universities or secondary technical schools are annually assigned to work for three years in places that demonstrate a need for particular specialists. Over one-fourth of these specialists are assigned positions in Sofia, and other large towns also receive a large share of new professionals. But rural communities such as Obnova are supplied with the teachers, doctors, nurses, or other service and technical personnel considered necessary by local institutions and agencies

26. This figure has been determined from Obnova post office records.

27. Cited by Sanders, “The Sociology of a Bulgarian Shopski Village,” p. 161.

28. In 1976, one lev was said to be worth ninety-seven cents.

29. Sofia Nezvs, February 19-25, 1976, p. 1.

30. This number excludes students and women on temporary leave from work for childcare purposes.

31. Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, Budshet na vremeto, p. 10.

32. As quoted by Hilda, Scott, Does Socialism Liberate Women? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974, p. 169.Google Scholar

33. At the time the research was conducted, 85 percent of the sampled households in Dragalevtsy and 87 percent in Obnova had washing machines, 55 percent in Dragalevtsy and 26 percent in Obnova had vacuum cleaners. These conveniences undoubtedly lighten certain traditional household chores but probably do not significantly lessen the time spent on such chores.