Living Socialism: The Bulgarian Socialist Humanist Experiment

"This dissertation investigates attempts by Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, bureaucrats and subjects to model, disseminate, and appropriate a local version of the ""homo-sovieticus,"" or new soviet man and woman, during the 1960s and 1970s, a period I have termed socialist humanism. Four sites of investigation frame my work, each linked with the values that socialist humanism sought to instill: the brigadier movement (work); the workings of the brother-city relationship between Haskovo in Bulgaria and Tashkent in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (international socialism); internal tourism (nation); and the exhibition of art in the Haskovo gallery (aesthetics). The socialist system, in these and other programs, invested tremendous resources to direct the movements of its population, at least in part, in order to transform it subjectively. This dissertation is a study of attempts of Bulgarians in Haskovski okrug to navigate the dynamics of their intended transformation from early Bulgarian socialists to socialist humanist Bulgarians."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Scarboro, Cristofer A.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hitchins, Keith

• History, European

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3301223

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/84688