"I Have Lived through Socialism" - a storytelling Internet experiment in

By: Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio

---

Do we need to recollect and review the socialist past - this is still a question looked upon from political point of view in Bulgaria. The question is whether the Bulgarian society is mature enough to reconsider a time which still divides the nation into a nostalgic left-wing minority idealizing the past and a majority of people who blame the socialist period for all the hardships of today. It is interesting to monitor what the young generation knows about a time it barely has experienced, is it a victim of some modern myths about a totalitarian period of history when the freedom of expression was violated, the planned economy produced poor-quality goods and unemployment did not exist.

The project "I Have Lived Through Socialism" started as a website in 2004 and was the first for personal recollections from the socialist years in Bulgaria. Last week a book with the same title appeared on the book market. It is a collection of the best stories which have been published on www.spomeniteni.org. Svetlana Dicheva from the Bulgarian National Radio asked Diana Ivanova from the project team why this storytelling is so attractive to the public.