Comments | tilia_tomentosa: Bulgaria in 1997

tilia_tomentosa

Bulgaria in 1997 - the Street Revolution

Nov 11, 2009 23:00

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bulgarian economy

Comments 9

paterson_si November 11 2009, 22:22:01 UTC

I am really happy Slovenia took the path it did and that things are as they are now....

tilia_tomentosa November 11 2009, 22:46:00 UTC

I wish Bulgaria had managed to develop as Slovenia did... but what's done is done. And my generation will never forget.

Looking back at the past is painful, but at least it helps me to understand the fears and insecurities that I'm still struggling with. I just matured in a world in which nothing was stable.

paterson_si November 11 2009, 23:11:02 UTC

Just make firm foundations of your own little private world and move from there on. That's what I did.

tilia_tomentosa November 11 2009, 23:30:26 UTC

I tried unsuccessfully several times. And now I'm starting it all over again. But at least I have you all on LJ. That's a more or less stable social environment, never mind that you are scattered over the planet.

I've noticed that you all think of food in terms of cuisine, and I think very much in terms of "I'm grateful that I have enough to eat". That's one of my deformations.

Thread 6

bear_left November 11 2009, 23:42:16 UTC

Thanks for posting this article (will check out the video part when I'm home). The Russian economic collapse under Yeltsin got some coverage here, but not Bulgaria's, so I appreciate this. Most of the Bulgarian news I've had in the past few years has come from the BBC or the Guardian reporting on the EU accession. How is Bulgaria doing relatively speaking with the current global recession? I was just reading an article in The Nation on Latvia's crisis. I'm glad that things aren't quite where they were in the 1990s at least.

tilia_tomentosa November 12 2009, 00:02:49 UTC

Unemployment is on the rise here again as a "reflection" of the global crisis. Especially with construction workers and export-oriented businesses. Otherwise it's difficult to notice any direct consequences around me. But we haven't felt the full impact yet.

The video commentary is somewhat naive and propagandist, but the video itself is good enough. That hand-written sign at the shop means that they didn't sell more than two loaves of bread per person. The article is old and over-optimistic, but the part I quoted is absolutely accurate. We did have the hyper-inflation and all. Later on we had a denomination of the national currency - 1000 old levs (BGL) were reduced to one new lev (BGN) in 1999.

tilia_tomentosa November 12 2009, 00:08:58 UTC

We were in CNN news.
Here is one report I found:
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9701/13/bulgaria/index.html