BOOK DESCRIPTION
The book explores the intellectual history of Bulgaria between the 1960s and the 1980s at the intersections of the country's social and political history. Based on case studies, the research delves into three areas: the control and pressure mechanisms used on science and the university; the clash of ideas while performing the formal and hidden functions of academia in a communist regime setting; the processes whereby research and academia acquire a relative autonomy and alternative academic communities are being formed amidst the eroding ideological legitimacy of the regime.
Centred on the concept of the "incident", this setup allowed us to eschew the narratives around the role of the dissidents or "freedom as a gift" and interpret society's transformation as the outcome of intersecting and overlaying sectoral events, which gathered strength down the years and lay the ground for the eruption labelled here as the "Big Event of 1989".
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: On this Book's Nature and Objectives
1. Siezing power and Institutionalization of “The New Socialist Science”
2. The Zhelyu Zhelev case: Sinning Against Faith and the Party Themis
Theoretical Outcomes (1): A Sense of Community Awakens – Small Groups of Civic Engagement
3. The Ivan Slavov Case: Between the Threat of Social Exclusion and the Moral Sanction of the Group
Theoretical Outcomes (2): On Actions Committed under Duress and amidst Severe Freedom Shortage
4. The Nikolay Genchev case: Against Historiography as the Chambermaid of Politics or Life in Two Parallel Worlds
5. The Zhelyu Zhelev Case (continued): Between Truth and Authority – Creation of “The Revisionists”
Theoretical Outcomes (3): “Letters to the Chief” as a Genre – Social Communication in a Closed, Overcentralised Society
6. The Assen Ignatov Case: Beyond the Limits of the Officially Regulated Knowledge – Philosophy as a Way to Deliberate on the Human Condition
Theoretical Outcomes (4): The Correlation between Coercion and Free Action in a Totalitarian State
7. The Isak Passy Case: The Separation of Political and Intellectual Power – Theory and Information Breakthrough
Theoretical Outcomes (5): Academic Paradigm and Community amid the One-party Dictatorship
8. From Zhelyu Zhelev Case to the Case of 'Fascism' Anatomy of a Chain of Incidents
9. The Dobrin Spassov Case: A Clash between the Rejection of Totalitarian Practices and the Commitment to Social Utopia
10. The Ilcho Dimitrov Case: In Search of a Win-Win Game within the System – The Public Communications Craftsman
Theoretical Outcomes (6): Specifics of Social Criticism in Totalitarian Society – Social Criticism and Social Change
Conclusion: From the Big Event to the Incidents: A Reconstruction of the Event(ual) Identity of Historical Change
Abbreviations
Literature and archival sources
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AUTHOR
Ivaylo Znepolski is the Director of the Institute for the Study of the Recent Past in Sofia, Professor at Sofia University, Bulgaria, Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1994–2002), former culture minister (1993–1995), and an author of numerous books and edited volumes on the recent communist past of Bulgarian and Eastern Europe.
URL: https://www.routledge.com/Communism-Science-and-the-University-Towards-a-Theory-of-Detotalitarianisation/Znepolski/p/book/9780367895686
Preview (pdf download): https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2019-0-08106-5&isbn=9781003019879&format=googlePreviewPdf
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