The Pursuit of Unhappiness: Bulgaria's Transitional ...

The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Puzzle of Bulgaria’s Transitional Pessimism (revised version)

Post-Communist Social and Political Conflicts: Citizenship and Consolidation in the New Democracies of South East Europe

International Symposium New Europe College Bucharest, June 1-3, 2007

“Indian masses in the second half of the nineteenth century did not die of hunger because they were exploited by Lancashire; they perished in large numbers because the Indian village community had been demolished. … Economically, India may have been – and, in the long run, certainly was – benefited, but socially she was disorganized and thus thrown pray to misery and degradation.” Karl Polanyi1

Bulgaria is a curious country. After a severe economic slump in 1996-97, it has enjoyed ten straight years of economic growth (typically over five per cent of GDP per year). Unemployment has declined to less than half of its levels from a few years ago, close to the West European average.2 Incomes have steadily increased. New chains of supermarkets, discount and electronics stores (some owned by large West European companies) have brought in a bewildering variety of consumer products to feed a growing demand (part of it driven by easier credit). Two successive governments completed their full four-year terms of office, and the current cabinet enjoys a stable parliamentary majority. Finally, on January 1, 2007, Bulgaria became a member of the European Union – a feat which a few years ago seemed a distant hallucination. Yet, against the backdrop of this rising prosperity, political stability, and much craved admission into the larger European family, one thing has changed very little. Opinion polls consistently suggest that most Bulgarian citizens have remained disappointed by the course of reforms, and pessimistic about the country’s future. Such attitudes form a key aspect of political culture understood not merely as a set of attitudes toward democracy and political institution, but as a collection of broader predispositions and orientations which underlie and affect the functioning of public institutions.3 Outside observers have often explained the gloomy attitudes registered in surveys as an unfortunate but understandable result of the unrealistically high expectations for rapid social improvement common at the start of the transition. Incumbent Bulgarian politicians, on the other hand, have usually dismissed stubborn Bulgarian pessimism as the unfortunate results of a media conspiracy aimed at sensationalizing limited social problems (like scavenging for food in the streets or murders prompted by family or other quarrels). Or they have at least accused the media of hiding from anxious citizens the uncomfortable truth that today’s painful reforms are a necessary price to pay for tomorrow’s prosperity. Intellectuals have traditionally offered a different explanation. They have argued that the Bulgarian national psyche has long been marked by excessive resignation, fatalism, and nihilism.4 Some Bulgarian scholars, pollsters, and other analysts and commentators have offered, however, more complex explanations of the apparent “paradox of the Bulgarian transition”5 registered in opinion polls. Some have argued that pessimistic mind-sets are a natural reaction to the largely unchanged low living standards of the majority of the population (linked to gross income inequalities) and to their loss of social status, despite positive shifts in macroeconomic indicators.6 The latter point has been related to the disintegration of the professional “middle class” created under the communist regime 7 – a theme captured by the proverbial story of the engineer who as a taxi driver makes more money but is deeply unhappy in his new role.8 Other observers have interpreted the apparent resignation registered in surveys as a natural outcome of the lack of any sense of personal efficacy and responsibility it the face of Bulgaria’s overbearing statist institutions which have largely carried over from the communist period.9 Yet others have emphasized sociopsychological mechanisms related to “relative deprivation” – perceptions resulting from unfavorable comparisons to members of higher-status groups or to personal experiences from the past (in this context, life under Bulgaria’s communist regime).10

1

If we leave explanations referring to rosy expectations, media conspiracies, and ethno-psychological syndromes aside, the more sophisticated interpretations of persisting pessimistic attitudes listed above fall into two general categories. One group of theories sees such attitudes as reflecting more or less accurately the declining income and/or social status of the majority of Bulgaria’s population. The other set of explanations present the prevailing patterns of negative thinking among Bulgarian citizens as a result mostly of misperceptions. They seek to identify biases, particularly in the self-assessments of upwardly mobile and high-income groups, as a result of which “perception drifts away from empirical reality.”11 Between these, the first set of explanations which do not question the validity of the experiences and judgments of Bulgaria’s unhappy majority seem less condescending and more credible. However, the social and socio-psychological mechanisms which underlie widespread negative attitudes need some further elaboration. They can be linked to the a prolonged social crisis related to the introduction of the market economy into Bulgaria’s previously traditional rural culture, and perhaps to processes of acute nationalist frustration and demobilization following costly military defeats in 1913-18. *** At first glance, the idea that most Bulgarian citizens do not understand accurately their own and their country’s predicament seems quite plausible. Opinion polls have registered degrees of disaffection and pessimism which are quite striking under almost any set of social circumstances. Some studies have found a modest upswing in “life satisfaction” scores after a low point in the mid 1990s (a trend similar to those observed in other transitional countries)12; or a moderate improvement in “social status self-assessment.”13 Yet, the last Eurobarometer survey (based on polls conducted in 2006) still indicates that only 39 per cent of Bulgarian respondents describe themselves as “happy” overall (as compared to 60 per cent in Romania,14 the next least happy country in the European Union). 15 While 17 per cent hope that their lives in general will get better over the next 12 months, 29 per cent expect that they will become worse, and 44 per cent do not anticipate much change (the result are slightly worse in Hungary at 17, 38, and 42 per cent, but Romania’s numbers are again rather more positive: 44, 16, and 34 per cent respectively).16 Twenty-one per cent say they “feel left out of society,” the highest number among the new EU member states (equaled only by Italy’s).17 In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in 2002, only 8 per cent of Bulgarian respondents expressed satisfaction with their own lives. That was the lowest number among the 10 European countries included, matched only by Tanzania’s among a total of 45 countries. Tanzanian respondents, though, evaluated much more positively the living conditions for their nation and the world (40 and 28 per cent were satisfied, respectively, compared to 4 and 12 per cent in Bulgaria).18 Other surveys carried out in Bulgaria have recently registered similar persistent views. For example, the European Values Study conducted in the spring of 2008 found that while life satisfaction had slightly increased (from a mean of 5.34 in 1999 to 5.82), trust in political institutions and other people, as well as faith in democracy, had in fact significantly declined.19 Moreover, almost 50 per cent of respondents point to social injustice as the most important factor for the existence of impoverished people who cannot support themselves. The authors of the survey who even speak of an erosion of the social fabric, and describe the country as “spiraling into a political catastrophe” – facing a vicious circle of civic disengagement weakening public institutions and fostering corruption, and these trends feeding even deeper resentment and distrust. The latest Eurobarometer still places Bulgaria last in life satisfaction among all EU member states with a result (40 percent) significantly lower than those of Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey (with 69, 65, and 59 percent respectively). It also registers a slight decrease in social optimism.20 Whatever small

2

improvements are found in these surveys lag behind all economic indicators for Bulgaria over the last decade and are likely to be cancelled by the fallout of the global economic downturn triggered by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. Such persisting troubling results appear surprising, particularly in comparisons to opinions observed in other transitional states and even in much more destitute and politically unstable countries like Bangladesh or Nigeria. They also contradict a tendency to overstate one’s personal strengths and social status which is so widespread around the world (at least outside of East Asia) that many sociologists and psychologists consider it an adaptive human universal.21 Pessimistic attitudes in Bulgaria are also very disturbing since they pose a threat to the legitimacy of reforms and of the elites and institutions responsible for those reforms. The temptation to attribute such views to biases and misperceptions may therefore be almost irresistible. This agenda is clearly stated in an analytical report (carrying the upbeat title “Optimistic Theory about the Pessimism of the Transition”) directed by Ivan Krastev, a highprofile Bulgarian political analyst heading a well-established think tank. Its authors declare that their “primary goal” is “to formulate a platform for the expansion of the social base of reformist policy.”22 They conclude that negative assessments by respondents result from several main factors: unfavorable comparisons to an (idealized) socialist past carry the greatest weight (in 2002, 66 per cent of respondents felt their social status had declined as compared to 1989, which remained a dominant reference point even for the younger generation), followed by media influences, negative associations of democracy with unemployment, crime, insecurity, poverty, anarchy, etc. (again in contrast to the perceived advantages of “socialism”),23 lack of a non-industrial vision of economic development and social modernization (one required by contemporary trends in the global economy), unflattering comparisons to West European countries (particularly for high-status groups), existence of “imagined majorities” of impoverished people while many individuals have in fact experienced upward social mobility, a peculiar inclination in some to be optimistic about their own life chances but pessimistic about the country as a whole, etc. This complex analysis leads the authors of the report to recommend abandoning previous policies relying on “budget populism” aimed at low-income groups and on PR spin. Instead, they argue that “people optimistic about themselves and pessimistic about the country are the most important target group from the point of view of expanding the social base of sustainable growth policy.” They consequently recommend a strategy “designed to give [this group] the largest possible political representation.”24 For low-income segments of the population, they advocate the provision of a high-quality education which could offer prospects for upward social mobility. Stoyan Sgourev, a US-trained sociologist originally from Bulgaria, offers a less politically charged interpretation. He, however, describes in even stronger terms prevailing attitudes in Bulgaria as a set of biased misperceptions. In his view, the “status devaluation” demonstrated by Bulgarian respondents stems from “the perception of status loss” as compared to “socialism” (an emphasis on a particular form of “relative deprivation” similar to that adopted by Krastev and his team). According to Sgourev, this (mis)perception is reinforced by more cohesive and static interpersonal networks (which skew the social information available to individuals) in the context of perceived personal insecurity amidst rapid and unsettling social change.25 Such interpretations seem to offer an elegant account of persisting glum attitudes in Bulgaria. They also hold the promise of specific policy adjustments which can rectify excessively pessimistic assessments and expectations. We may need, however, to take more seriously the downbeat views expressed consistently by the majority of Bulgaria’s citizens caught in Bulgaria’s troubled transition. In addition to specific disappointments or

3

misjudgments, these dispositions may also reflect deeper existential anxieties which sometimes remain obscure to empirical social research. *** Optimism and life satisfaction or happiness may be regarded as discrete psychological orientations. Even optimism and pessimism can register as distinct postures in psychological questionnaires.26 From a macrosocial perspective, though, all these dispositions may be seen as part of an overarching cultural syndrome of social despair, dejection, negative thinking and emotionality, unhappiness, and lack of hope for the future – a widely shared intuition or conviction that social conditions have deteriorated, life has become almost unbearable, and things are unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future. In the case of Bulgaria, these attitudes are much stronger and more widespread than macroeconomic indicators would predict.27 They often puzzle foreigners visiting the country or living in it for longer periods of time. Some of the reasons underlying this syndrome are quite obvious. Members of lowincome groups have remained in a precarious economic situation since 1990 – even the “optimistic” study directed by Krastev acknowledges that 54 per cent of Bulgaria’s population are “long-term losers [from the transition], whose pessimism objectively reflects their socio-economic prospects.”28 This chronically grim situation is exacerbated by perceptions that reforms have benefited mostly politicians and business groups related to them, as well as organized crime, and have hurt the majority of “common people” (views shared by 36, 29, and 47 per cent of respondents respectively).29 The wealthy are seen as a nouveau riche elite whose members have accumulated property mostly by illegal and illegitimate means. A keen awareness of the luxuries and impunity they enjoy makes contentment with even decent living standards rather difficult. Moreover, the inhabitants of contemporary Bulgaria seem to live in “a social environment marked by an inefficient [state] administration [which moreover spends or otherwise redistributes an excessively large proportion of GDP], a judicial system which citizens make special efforts to avoid, a deadly healthcare system, an education system which has abandoned any quality standards, politically irresponsible elites, corruption which is now seen a norm, plus a general climate of amorality and the imposition of a militant vulgarity as a new cultural yardstick.”30 An upbeat mind-set under such social conditions might indeed seem an irrational exercise in denial and wishful thinking. Yet, these social problems are note unique to Bulgaria. What seems really exceptional is the depth, intensity, and persistence of Bulgarian pessimism in the face of unexceptional difficulties. In this context, theories presenting such lasting pessimism as an understandable reaction to a social, economic, institutional, and even cultural stagnation or even decline still seem preferable to the theories presuming pervasive biases and misperceptions. But even such more skeptical theories fall short of an adequate interpretation. As their opponents have noted, they are directly challenged by some of the available data. According to Krastev, “his polling has found that 20 percent of Bulgarians could be characterized as ‘winners’ from the post-communist transition, based on their upward mobility, income, consumption and other factors”; but “only 5 percent are willing to call themselves winners.”31 Sgourev has similarly discovered that that only 1.8 per cent of Bulgarian respondents claim “above average” material status (with another 30 per cent describing their “material welfare” as “average”) – a figure much lower than the respective “objective” number on the social scale, even under an excessively skewed income and wealth distribution.32 Krastev has attributed such discrepancies to the common assumption that economic success in Bulgaria could only be achieved through illegal means, and to the resulting bias against successful individuals among the public. Still, the notion that “objective” winners

4

have generally internalised the condemning verdict of society and are therefore unwilling to acknowledge their own economic and social success in anonymous questionnaires or even in face-to-face interviews seems insufficient as a general explanation of seemingly unjustified attitudes. We may therefore need to look for an alternative explanation accepting the validity of the downbeat understanding of their own predicament shared by large masses of individuals – people who find themselves daunted by the enormity of the existential challenge the transition has foisted upon them. *** This alternative viewpoint has already been adopted by a few Bulgarian and foreign sociologists. They have referred to Durkheim’s notion of “anomie” to describe social developments in post-communist Bulgaria alongside other transitional countries.33 In Durkheim’s usage, anomie signified the erosion of commonly accepted norms, values, and identities as a result of the rapid breakdown of traditional patterns of work and family relations. Individuals caught in this state of social flux and normlessness were said to experience a sense of estrangement and existential insecurity. In its initial use, the term referred primarily to a particular condition of society brought about by rapid industrialization and the expansion of the market economy.34 Later, it became increasingly psychologised and came to denote mostly maladaptive behaviors in reaction to a disjunction between existing cultural goals and socially conditioned personal capacities to achieve those aspirations. The original meaning which, in Bryan Cartledge’s words, “embraces the loss of both social support and of an overall moral order in society,”35 has nevertheless remained quite evocative. Nikolai Genov, a well-known Bulgarian sociologist, has sought to apply the concept of anomie in this original meaning or very close to it. He has concluded that transitional societies are unavoidably anomic. In the case of Bulgaria, he has attributed related feelings of disillusionment, aggressiveness, and escapism mostly to the acute political instability the country experienced in the 1990s. In his usage, political instability has a broader meaning. It is related to the breakdown of the previous state-centered mechanisms of social overintegration and to the absence of an alternative system of political integration. Genov has therefore argued that a visible improvement in the quality of life in the country can only be achieved through the gradual economic, political, and cultural reintegration of Bulgarian society.36 Marian Adnanes, a Norwegian sociologist, has more recently found a continuing acute sense of anomie in Bulgarian society, which he sees as a typical “risk society.”37 His survey has indicated that Bulgarian students tend to feel helpless in the context of the transition, and this feeling of powerlessness is supplemented by a sense of normlessness and nostalgia for the past. Adnanes has attributed such reactions to a condition of social strain resulting from socio-economic loss, low income, and general disappointment with the reforms. He has concluded, though, that such a response does not necessarily preclude broader support for democratic reforms, a degree of political engagement, and aspirations for a successful career.38 To understand more fully the implications of the social and psychological processes described in such studies, we may need to pay particular attention to one aspect of the processes of social transformation once described by Durkheim – the expansion of the market economy. His analysis could therefore be supplemented by a look at Karl Polanyi’s account of the establishment and growth of the market economy in Britain and its spread to other countries and regions in the 19th century.39 According to Polanyi, the market economy was imposed through state institutions and represented a completely new way of coordinating productive activities in society. Markets (as physical places) and commercial exchange had

5

existed in the past, but had played a peripheral role and had been imbedded in larger frameworks of social reproduction and regulation. The establishment of the market economy, though, entailed a radical transformation of society. In order to function properly, the selfregulating market had to turn into commodities labor and land (i.e., human beings and their natural environment), as well as money. Ultimately, it had to subordinate to its own logic the totality of social life. It thus worked to destroy pre-existing rural communities and sets of cultural norms, a tendency mostly overlooked by modern conservatives. The conversion of land and labor into commodities resulted in the overall immiseration and degradation of the laboring masses and a threat to the environment. Mass destitution was worsened by the commodification of money which contributed to chronic and erratic economic fluctuations. Those entailed periodic unemployment for masses of people deprived of any alternative means of subsistence in the cities.40 Polanyi saw a clear parallel between the fate of the destitute masses in Britain and the cultural collapse of traditional communities in British colonies and the United States as they came into contact with the machinery and logic of the market. The main problem they faced was not economic exploitation. Rather, the disruption of their traditional patterns of subsistence and communal sharing created a social and cultural vacuum in which masses of natives lost their sense of social orientation and perspective. Ultimately, they were left without social status and tended to degenerate into a state of existential stupor. They lost much of their original vitality and became easy pray to alcoholism and an array of other social ills and vices. Their lives were deprived of meaning, an existential crisis of almost unfathomable proportions. This sad predicament was best summed up in the words of Plenty Coups, the last great chief of the Crow Nation in the United States: “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.”41 Polanyi in fact regarded the fate of Native Americans in the United States as “the outstanding case of cultural degeneration on record.”42 The process started when tribes were herded into reservations where they could no longer practice their traditional way of life. It was greatly exacerbated, though, by efforts to improve their material condition. In the late 19th century, Native American communities on reservations seemed to face an acute crisis which prompted worries about their long-term survival. As a result, in 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act which divided commonly-held land in the reservations among Native American families (each receiving a little over 60 hectares). The goal was to help them develop what would now be called a “functioning market economy” based on private property over land. That form of ownership was seen as natural and obviously superior to communal patterns of land-holding. The effects of this attempt to facilitate a rapid transition to an economy based on private enterprise were nothing short of disastrous. Alcoholism, crime, other forms of social deviance, as well as various diseases spread as never before. Within a few decades, Native Americans lost to speculators three-quarters of the land allocated to them, and seemed destined for extinction. After much hesitation, Congress sought to reverse those disturbing trends by passing the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. In Polanyi’s judgment, the 1887 bill had “all but destroyed the race in its physical existence.”43 Its repeal a few decades later saved Native American nations by reintegrating their land holdings and thus revitalizing their culture.44 Still, more than seven decades later these communities have often been unable to completely overcome the initial cultural collapse they suffered. They have remained plagued by disproportionate levels of alcoholism, suicide, crime, and other forms of antisocial behavior. Psychiatrists have even suggested that periods of unsettling social and economic change can induce a degree of neural disintegration in individuals. The result may be a

6

tendency toward “milder neurotic and personality trait disorders”45 and an acute subjective sense of anomie.46 Chronic social stress could perhaps also impede the gradual ascent to a predominant position of the left hemisphere of the human brain in affected individuals – a process Western psychologists usually see as necessary for personal maturation.47 In fact, stronger activation of the left hemisphere correlates robustly with feelings of personal efficacy, extraversion, positive emotionality, well-being, happiness, and optimism48 – even a “falsely heightened sense of individual will.”49 Weaker activation on the left side of the brain (which, for example, “neurosociologist” Warren TenHouten has found among Aboriginal subjects in Australia50) could therefore be associated with the opposite set of attitudes discussed in this study. *** Most Bulgarians would be offended by a suggestion that this account of the cultural breakdown which once befell aboriginal communities in faraway places applies in any way to their own situation. The similarities, though, seem uncanny.51 They were quite obvious to perceptive Bulgarian writers like Aleko Konstantinov, St. L. Kostov, Elin Pelin, and others. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries they dissected the acute social and cultural crisis resulting from the intrusion of more extensive market relations into Bulgaria’s traditional rural and small town communities. This was an enormously disruptive process which provoked an intense sense of social malaise among the majority of peasant small-holders, craftsmen, and much of the intelligentsia. Polanyi’s analysis may in fact be better suited to the rapid and drastic shifts experienced by a truly traditional, tightly knit and egalitarian rural culture like Bulgaria’s, rather than to Britain which had developed stronger commercial relations since the middle ages. It took Bulgaria over a century, though, to come fully face to face with the unforgiving imperatives of the market economy. Bulgarian peasant small-holders had often taken loans to buy land from Turkish owners leaving the country. They also faced rather high levels of direct and indirect taxation.52 The income these taxes generated was sorely needed for building a strong modern state with its own industrial and commercial basis along the lines of successful West European models. Such a state also seemed essential for a nationalist agenda of territorial expansion which enjoyed broad popular support. This expansion was to incorporate into Bulgaria territories inhabited by what were generally regarded as ethnic Bulgarian majorities. The main problem craftsmen faced was the import of cheaper industrial products from Western and Central Europe. As a result of those trends, most peasants and craftsmen lived in poverty and had little prospect for long-term improvement. They, however, rarely sought to better their lives by using the opportunities for entrepreneurship opened up by the market economy. Instead, they typically tried to escape the vagaries of the market by establishing cooperative schemes. As Bulgarian banker and economist Stoian Bochev once noted, while in other countries such schemes were introduced as a corrective to market imbalances, in Bulgaria they were regarded as an alternative to capitalism.53 Peasants sometimes placed their hopes on plans for land redistribution and even more radical social transformations advocated by agrarian leaders. While such hopes remained unfulfilled, cooperative schemes in fact received support from the state which generally pursued rather paternalistic economic policies. The Bulgarian state did make efforts to cultivate a new bourgeois class,54 but it did not attempt to impose a true market economy on the population as Britain’s governing institutions had done in the 1830s-40s. Those more cautious policies took into account Bulgaria’s rural “backwardness” and were in line with an international shift away from market puritanism after the 1870s.55 The sense of an overall crisis was deepened by Bulgaria’s series of costly defeats in wars aimed at territorial expansion between 1913 and 1918. Following those defeats,

7

Bulgarian writers and historians developed a tendency to seek the roots of the country’s misfortunes in features of the Bulgarian “national character” – the alleged passivity, fatalism, and spirit of “nihilism” typical of “the Bulgarian” which they traced to the centuries of life under the “Turkish yoke” and even to the medieval period.56 This fashionable cottage industry was challenged in the late 1930s by a gifted Marxist proto-sociologist, Ivan Hadzhiiski. He argued that the widely reiterated lamentations about typical Bulgarian character flaws were misplaced. In his view, such failings were to be attributed not to any inherent features of the Bulgarian psyche, but to the country’s catch-up model of social and economic development. They were common to societies experiencing such belated and accelerated development following foreign models. Hadzhiiski hinted that those difficulties could be resolved by a socialist transformation of society on a global scale (a claim which official censorship would not allow him to make explicitly). He therefore gave his article the upbeat title “Optimistic Theory about Our People.”57 Such a vision had wide popularity among the mostly leftist intelligentsia and Bulgaria’s fledgling urban proletariat who were disturbed by the apparent intrusion of predatory forms of capitalism. It supplemented the peasants’ longings for adequate land ownership, stable income, and social fairness. As a result, before WW II Bulgaria produced the most developed cooperative movement, the strongest and most radical agrarian party, and the best organized communist party in Southeastern Europe. Bulgaria maintained a predominantly rural population of small-holders involved in a mostly subsistence economy. Capitalist industrialization never really took off, despite successive government programs to stimulate local manufacturing.58 Toncho Zhechev, Bulgaria’s preeminent contemporary literary critic and historian, has suggested that the leftist opposition movements which arose in Bulgaria in the late 19th century drew strength from the continuing influence of traditional notions of social order and fairness among the peasant masses, the urban proletariat, and the intelligentsia.59 Those lingering social instincts later ensured a degree of legitimacy to Bulgaria’s communist regime in the first decades of its existence. They, however, also precipitated its crisis in the 1980s when it had patently failed to live up to its own promise of shared prosperity and social justice. Bulgaria’s communist regime pressured or induced large masses of peasants to move or send their children to the cities. There, they would obtain better education and work in factories or pursue professional careers. Most individuals caught up in this giant social experiment, despite all the political oppression and intrusive social regulation, had a sense of expanding social horizons, upward mobility, and improving living standards. 60 In this context, it is hardly accidental that Bulgaria did not develop until the late 1980s a credible dissident movement similar to that in some Central European countries. What the communist regime in effect did was impose on society a kind of quasi-market, centrally planned economy within which individuals were ordered to sell their labor to the state at fixed prices. Stripped of its ideological trappings, this system was somewhat similar to the framework of universal social protection introduced in Britain with the Speenhamland Law of 1795. That law guaranteed a minimum income to the poor regardless of their earnings and thus sought to protect them from excessive exposure to the brutal logic of the market. This paternalistic social regime (which was abolished in 1834) coincided with much of the industrial revolution in Britain. According to Polanyi, it inadvertently exacerbated the general demoralization of the laboring masses whose plight it sought to alleviate. In a somewhat similar fashion, the overall system of employment imposed by Bulgaria’s communist regime strived to combine rapid industrialization (conducted by the state as opposed to Britain’s reliance on private entrepreneurship) with a degree of social protection and regulation for masses of people separated from the land and their traditional lifestyles. Like the British prototype, it lasted several decades, and produced a sense of

8

overarching social crisis and general demoralization. This crisis, however, was not as acute as Britain’s during its industrial revolution because of the higher living standards and better social conditions available even in Bulgaria a century and a half later. In the 1990s, the dysfunctional social arrangements imposed by Bulgaria’s communist regime were removed and Bulgarian society was finally forced to face up to the realities of the market within a largely disorganized social framework. Still, the origins of the overall social crisis set off by the collision of a rural, traditional culture with the imperatives of the market economy can be traced back for at least a century.61 In Rumen Avramov’s words, “the parallel between [public] attitudes on the eve of the new [20th] century and at its conclusion leaves the discouraging impression of a completed circle. History comes closer to the myth of Sisyphus than to some imaginary gradual progression or irreversible regression.”62 *** Seen in this light, the degree of desperation and pessimism reported consistently by large numbers of Bulgarian citizens in response to survey or interview questions seems less puzzling. A look back at the insights of Durkheim and particularly Polanyi can help us grasp the depth and proportions of the overall crisis which has gripped Bulgarian society and the widespread dejection it has provoked.63 These processes are deeply disturbing. They are probably complicit in the extremely high levels of mortality from cardiovascular deceases registered in Bulgaria (commonly associated not only with poor health habits and nutrition, but also with chronically elevated levels of social stress64), and the general demographic crisis the country has experienced since the 1990s.65 The latter has been exacerbated by a huge outflow of human capital in the form of highly educated and ambitious young people who have left and are still leaving the country in search of a more rewarding life in the West.66 Bulgaria thus seems to face a “catch 22”: the deep social crisis it has experienced and the resulting sense of resignation among much of its population tend to undermine the very conditions needed for successful economic and social development; and without such development, problems can only grow deeper and more daunting. Social pessimism has also fueled anti-incumbent voting patterns (a common trend in post-1989 Bulgarian national elections), and support for newly created populist parties. This trend was best illustrated in 2001 when Simeon Sakskoburggotski, who had been tsar of Bulgaria in his childhood in the 1940s, returned to Bulgaria with strong political ambitions. Two months before the elections, he surprisingly appeared on TV to make a solemn promise: if Bulgarian citizens lent him their support, within 800 days they would see tangible improvements in their living standards. He founded a loose political movement named after him (National Movement for Siemon II, known by its Bulgarian acronym, NDSV) to contest the coming parliamentary elections. A few months later the new formation swept 43 per cent of the vote and formed a coalition government headed by Simeon. In 2005, however, more than half of the voters who had backed the new party at the polls in 2001 abandoned it. Some of them switched their support to a new extreme nationalist coalition, Ataka. As a result, it received nine per cent of the vote – more than any of the center-right parties formed on the basis of the broad anti-Communist coalition which had governed in the late 1990s. Ataka was then transformed into a single party and, despite splits and defections by a few MPs, its flamboyant leader Volen Siderov was able to reach the second round at the October 2006 presidential elections. Meanwhile, many disappointed voters have switched their hopes to a new populist formation. Its name, a product of political marketing, is Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (which conveneintly forms an evocative acronym in Bulgarian). The pompous label aside, it represents a loose grouping of barely concealed business interests (and a few worn-out politicians seeking to changed horses) gathered around Boyko Borisov, a charismatic figure with populist appeal.67

9

In addition to such excessive voter volatility, pessimistic attitudes can also be associated with strong cynicism and mistrust of public institutions. In a poll conducted in 2002, only 14 per cent of respondents expressed trust in Bulgaria’s main political institutions: the parliament, the government, and political parties and citizens’ organizations.68 Also, surveys indicate that Bulgarian citizens tend to have the lowest inclination in Southeastern Europe to trust people who do not belong to their extended family or a limited circle of close friends, a reluctance deepened under conditions of insecurity and social disorganization.69 Such high levels of rust of institutions and strangers were once related to the continuing predominance of “personal morality”70 (or, less euphemistically, “amoral familism”71) in modernizing societies. Similar value orientations have been associated with a crippling deficit of social capital. This deficit is often said to foster widespread corruption and to generally undermine the capacity of public institutions to apply formal rules effectively and uniformly to individual citizens regardless of any personal loyalties or obligations. The absence of such firm rules, particularly ones related to the protection of property rights and the enforcement of contracts, alongside the high transaction costs generated by low levels of interpersonal trust, can be seen as a formidable obstacle to economic development. 72 Such difficulties exacerbate the vicious circle described above and seem to call for urgent solutions. These general worries are sometimes reinforced by anxieties related to the potential rise of extremist political parties. Such parties have sprung and done well at polls in many West and East European states, and Ataka seems to follow this general trend. The threat of a vigorous and assertive nationalist party gathering further momentum in Bulgaria, though, seems rather remote. Bulgaria is the only country in Southeastern Europe where assertive nationalism largely fizzled in the aftermath of the crushing military defeats of 1913-18. Despite continuing nationalist indoctrination in the state-run schools and the army, and an unceasing stream of irredentist pamphlets, in the 1920s and 30s Bulgaria’s peasant masses generally lost interest in “the cause of Macedonia.”73 Agrarian leaders had their eyes set mostly on domestic reform. The urban proletariat and their communist leaders, on the other hand, pursued an internationalist agenda. The communist regime established following WW II initially maintained that internationalist posture. Then, after Tito’s split with Moscow, it gradually moved to a more nationalist stance, particularly with view to the interpretation of Macedonian history and identity adopted by Yugoslav communists. According to Maria Todorova, a prominent historian of Bulgarian origin working in the United States, in fact “the so-called communist nationalism [in Bulgaria] was nothing but a transvestite, ordinary nationalism” disguised only by “an obligatory minimum of Communist formulae.”74 Todorova has even described the period of Communist rule after the mid-1950s as part of a “nationalist continuum throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”75 Todor Zhivkov’s regime condoned and even encouraged the publication of nationalist propaganda since it saw in the rehabilitation of the great rulers of the medieval Bulgarian state “the ideal legitimation of its authoritarian and, often, totalitarian ambitions.”76 Ironically, nationalist historical writings often had an aura of dissidence. They were seen as means for countering the pernicious effects of what was defined as ‘national nihilism’ and overcoming what seemed to these scholars the anonymous, anti-individual, deterministic, and overly schematic methodological approach of socioeconomic Marxist history.77 Todorova has noted, nonetheless, that the nationalist propaganda contained in the writings of Bulgarian historians and other intellectuals during Zhivkov’s rule was of a rather peculiar kind. It reflected mostly a new kind of “status quo nationalism.”78 Stripped of its previous irredentist thrust, the latter was turned inward and devoid of any ambitions for imminent territorial expansion.

10

The official nationalism cultivated by the Communist regime culminated in the campaign to force Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish minority to adopt Bulgarian names in 1984-85. This campaign was prompted by fears that the country’s growing Turkish population could act as a fifth column for a newly assertive Turkey in the aftermath of the 1974 Cyprus crisis. It was justified with the claim that Turks were the descendants of Bulgarians who had been forcibly converted to Islam centuries ago, and were therefore properly ethnic Bulgarians – regardless of their own misinformed self-identification. The whole operation required the mobilization of massive police and military forces, and involved much brutality. It demonstrated that in Bulgaria a nationalist agenda could ultimately fuel callous repression and state-sponsored violence against a peaceful and generally loyal minority group. Nevertheless, over the decades Bulgaria has experienced a striking degree of spontaneous nationalist demobilization in the face of continuous nationalist propaganda and indoctrination. The “national nihilism” decried by generations of nationalist intellectuals, reinforced by an acute sense of social inferiority as measured against the image of a “civilized” Western Europe, have remained pervasive cultural features. 79 This utter frustration of nationalist ambitions has contributed to the larger cultural syndrome involving general sullenness and dejection in reaction to a prolonged phase of social disorganization and normlessness. Most Bulgarians still hold to ethnic definitions of nationhood and national statehood common to Central and Southeastern Europe. They are thus vaguely receptive to slogans along the lines of “Bulgaria for the Bulgarians.” Still, they are unlikely to rally in growing numbers behind an aggressively nationalist and xenophobic party like Ataka. In fact, much of the support for Ataka has reflected a general disillusionment with Bulgaria’s transitional elites rather than a genuine shift to radical nationalism.80 This tendency is corroborated by the results of the elections for the European Parliament held in May 2007. While in those elections Ataka received 14 per cent of the vote, Boyko Borisov’s formation came in first with 21 per cent – without much effort, an expensive campaign, or an elaborated ideological platform.81 Also, whatever disappointment with the EU sets in,82 Bulgarian voters are unlikely to develop attitudes to Brussels that are more skeptical than their view of Bulgarian elites and institutions. The problem is that the unwillingness of most Bulgarians to be mobilized for a nationalist cause is part of a more general reluctance to participate in any public undertakings (other than those serving their immediate private interests like strikes for higher wages or protests against limitations on construction and other economic activities in protected areas) and in the democratic political process. It is this generalized negativity and disengagement in most Bulgarian citizens which calls for attention and interpretation, rather than the incidental levels of support Ataka has been able to derive from it. While problematic, such widespread attitudes should not be dismissed as annoying complaints unnecessarily tarnishing Bulgaria’s road to a beckoning democratic future. They may be understood as a reaction not just to a broader collapse of the morel order which should underlie any society. That overall crisis has also entailed a crucial institutional failure. John Stuart Mill once highlighted the perennial apprehension that in any society there will inescapably be “innumerable vultures” – individuals who are excessively strong, ambitious, ruthless, uninhibited, and aggressive. Such individuals have to be somehow kept in check so they would not prey on the weaker members of society and abuse or exploit them for their own benefit. In political communities transcending direct kinship ties, initially such control was placed into the hands of an absolute monarch (apart from a few experiments with protodemocracy in ancient Greece and Rome). Such bigger “vultures,” though, often tended themselves to prey on the subjects they were supposed to protect and thus provoked demands for some limitations on their authority. In some countries those demands resulted in

11

arrangements where monarchs agreed to observe some basic “liberties” and govern within the limits of the law of the land which was not entirely of their own making. In a few cases they even accepted to seek approval for some of their policies from assemblies of nobles, clergymen, and the lower “estates.”83 England, with the 13th-century Magna Charta, a parliament which early on held the strings of the state budget, and (after the civil wars of the 17th century) its limited, constitutional monarchy offered the best example of this political evolution. Then the eve and aftermath of the French revolution ushered in the idea of popular sovereignty which entailed that legislative assemblies need to be elected in order to represent the interests of the whole nation as opposed to those of the higher estates. Mill himself sought a more moderate formula of “representative” government which would not entail universal suffrage and would thus avoid the danger of a “tyranny of the majority” who for the foreseeable future would be composed of the uneducated and vulgar masses of the poor. While the idea of popular sovereignty lived on (with the “people” presumably entitled to it often conceived in ethnic terms), since WW II Mill’s concerns have been to some extent vindicated by efforts to replace in parts of Europe and elsewhere dictatorial or even totalitarian regimes with a set of political arrangements described as “liberal democracy” – a political system which would combine the majoritarian elements associated with popular sovereignty with a rule of law and strong protection for individual rights and freedoms.84 The old idea described by Mill that one of the central tasks of any central authority should be to keep in check the “innumerable vultures” and offer protection to the weaker members of society (as well as help overcome problems related to collective action and the provision of public goods) remains as relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago. In fact, for large masses of people who have been separated from the land and depend for their (and their families’) livelihood, health, survival and social advancement on complex urban infrastructures it may be even more relevant than in the past. After the devastation brought about by the Great Depression and World War II, and within the framework of the Cold War, the need to ensure a degree of social protection against perceived exploitation and the vagaries of the market found expression in the institutions of the welfare state. It was also reflected in the understanding that the rule of law is an indispensable element of any legitimate political regime, including liberal democracy. In the absence of even a rough approximation of the rule of law and credible social protection for the majority of the population, elections and all the other formal trappings of democracy are bound to become meaningless for the majority of citizens who will feel exposed, exploited, deeply insecure, and will generally see themselves as victims of gross injustices. In Bulgaria, this sense of victimization and injustice is reinforced by an abundance of oversize SUV’s and other ultraexpensive luxury cars with vanity license plates and dark windows (in defiance of existing traffic regulations) driving aggressively and parking illegally with perceived impunity. They are often owned by individuals with little legal income yet employing menacing bodyguards with thick necks clad in black t-shirts and jackets, and living in massive, well protected houses surrounded by thick brick walls.85 While Bulgaria’s new business elite undoubtedly includes many individuals who have succeeded because of their drive and ingenuity, it is those who have enriched themselves at the expense of others and of Bulgarian society in general who are generally perceived as setting the tone of social life. In this context, the absence of strong political institutions which can enforce impartially rules, maintain law and order, protect property rights, enforce contracts, provide basic public services, maintain vital social infrastructures (most importantly, health and education), provide acceptable benefits to deserving unproductive members of society (particularly pensioners), and generally keep in check all kinds of socially irresponsible and

12

even sociopathic “entrepreneurs” can only produce a sense of general demoralization. The much discussed crisis of democratic representation and legitimacy epitomizes only one, though significant, aspect of this social malaise. The overall deficit of institutional “capacity” underlying and reinforced by these endemic problems is also detrimental to economic growth and healthy economic restructuring. This is the overall situation faced by Bulgarian society at the start of the new millennium. Behind all the trappings of pro forma democracy, to most of its citizens Bulgaria looks like a country where the political elite and state officials are perennially engaged in the abuse of public office for private gain, and lack the will to enforce impartially and efficiently any set of rules and to work for the public good, however that is defined. This lack of will is reflected most obviously in Bulgaria’s perceived levels of corruption, organized crime, and endemic tax evasion, with individuals involved in suspected illegal activities often flaunting their unaccountable wealth and status. Bulgaria’s political paralysis is also indicated by the lack of any obvious efforts to address deeper social and political problems: a slow and unwieldy legal system, a recently introduced and haphazardly enforced system of regressive taxation (with a 10 per cent flat tax on personal income and profits, and social security contributions capped at a relatively low level), poorly planned, densely built and congested cities and major resorts (with some new smaller resorts going up in areas which courts ruled could no longer be protected natural preserves)86, inadequate and poorly maintained infrastructures, crumbling health and education systems (with doctors habitually receiving payments under the table and drug dealers lurking in the vicinity of schools), lack of any standards of public decency, widespread lawlessness (from illegal parking to different forms of extra-legal settling of scores and intimidation), etc. Under these conditions, the majority of Bulgaria’s citizens live with a sense of a deep social crisis, acute injustice, and overall hopelessness that any electoral results or public action can be really meaningful. *** When we approach such larger problems with a set of feasible solutions in mind, we may be tempted to frame issues in a way that makes them amenable to the available solutions. The “optimistic” report on Bulgaria’s transitional pessimism cited above seems to have fallen into this trap. As a result, the prescriptions it offers are seemingly sensible but ultimately unrealistic.87 It is not quite clear how the group of Bulgarian citizens who are optimistic about their own prospects but pessimistic about the country can be “given” much larger political participation or representation in the context of endemic corruption, public cynicism, and habitual protest voting. It is even less obvious how low-income groups can be provided with high-quality education in an environment of social disorganization, a moral vaccuum, and a chronic shortage of public finance. This last point, the long-term underfunding of public services and infrastructures in Bulgaria, deserves particular attention. Through creative accounting, depressed salaries in the public sector, retreat from responsibility for the healthcare and pension systems, and reliance on EU funding for infrastructural investment, Bulgarian governments have in recent years been able to report budget surpluses.88 Nevertheless, in a country like Bulgaria (where much of the economy is based on small companies operating on the basis of personal trust and undocumented cash transactions, and most citizens do not feel an overwhelming obligation to contribute to the public good), the collection of the taxes and social security fees needed to maintain and improve complex social infrastructures and to provide vital public services like health, education, and law enforcement seems an impossible task. These aspects of economic development, associated mostly with the persistence of “personal morality” noted above, may even be reinforced under conditions of social disorganization and general malaise.89 The whole set of problems is perhaps best illustrated by Greece’s chronic budgetary woes after 26

13

years of EU membership. As in the case of Greece, some of the holes in Bulgaria’s public finances could be plugged with EU funding. At the current phase of EU enlargement, however, there is less such funding to go around, and its clean and efficient appropriation is bound to be obstructed by the general problems besetting the overall functioning of Bulgaria’s public institutions. Genov, who sees the problems he analyses in terms of social anomie, recommends a more comprehensive solution. But the overall economic, political, and cultural reintegration of society he advocates is easier said than done. It would require a radical social transformation for which there are no available blueprints. When Polanyi addressed this issue in the mid-1940s, he argued that societies could not really remain resigned to the disruptive effects of the market economy. They would typically struggle to protect their fabric and the environment by reimposing new forms of economic regulation. Such attempts at regulation, however, contradicted the very logic of the market which needed to be entirely self-regulating in order to function properly. They therefore exacerbated natural economic fluctuations and contributed to a series of economic crises, great power rivalries, world wars, social breakdowns, and the rise of totalitarian regimes. Against this background, Polanyi advocated some vaguely defined form of socialism which would re-embed the system of productive activities into the social fabric.90 Today, such a solution seems quite unrealistic and is maybe unnecessary. A number of Western countries have been able to achieve high levels of prosperity and life satisfaction based on a balance between market imperatives and a degree of state and social regulation. Some, like Ireland, have jumped from near poverty to enviable affluence in the lifetime of a single generation. Bulgaria, though, may belong to a group of societies which have found it much more difficult to adapt to the logic of the market and to develop proper forms of social reintegration – or at least to take deep social problems with the light-heartedness typical of some African and Latin American societies.91 After two failed modernization projects (one under a monarchist, and one under a communist regime) the country is now making a third make-or-break attempt to adapt to Western modernity. Paradoxically, the task may now be still harder in the context of a rapidly globalizing economy. This process is spurred by the unleashing of market forces on a global scale and entails increased social flux, a global rat race, and heightened precariousness of individual existence. These trends may undermine even the hopes sometimes placed on generational change.92 We thus seem caught between the appeal of unrealistic projects of social engineering (or less radical policy solutions) and hopeless skepticism. While the former approach chimes with generally positive outside assessments (some of which ensured Bulgaria’s early accession to the EU in defiance of local skepticism),93 the latter comes close to typically pessimistic Bulgarian reactions to the complexities of social and economic change. Ideally, we should be able to strike a compromise between these too opposing viewpoints. This compromise, though, can only be based on a clear understanding of the true nature of the daunting problems Bulgaria and its apparently tormented population are facing. Such an awareness can best be derived from a renewed appreciation for the insights of Durkheim, Polanyi, and Mill into the acute social crisis many modernizing societies have experience. This overall crisis has been brought by rapid industrialization, marketization, the consequent breakdown of traditional communities, lifestyles, and systems of values, as well as the unobstructed social ascent of various “vultures.” It has been reinforced in the case of Bulgaria by the severe frustration of past nationalist ambitions and a sense of inferiority visà-vis the “West.” For the time being, though, we should recognize the existential depth of the pessimism and dejection widely shared in Bulgarian society.94 As the Bush administration’s policy over Iraq has demonstrated, unwarranted can-do optimism can easily slip into wishful

14

thinking and unrealistic strategy.95 Yet, the excessively gloomy resignation found in Bulgarian opinion polls seems to fall in the opposite extreme. It can potentially continue to operate as a self-fulfilling prophesy. It can motivate a degree of public disengagement which will make it difficult for Bulgaria to acquire any time soon legitimate governing institutions capable of enforcing the rule of law, collecting taxes, providing essential public services, protecting basic social rights, and encourage an overall faith in social fairness. In this context, politics will remain an arena mostly of private interests dressed up in an empty rhetoric of social foresight and responsibility. And talk of Europeanization, increased state capacity, and democratic consolidation would be a mockery akin to the praise of the accomplishments of “really existing socialism” in the past.96 These are deep problems which are not amenable to quick political or economic fixes, much less to well-intentioned calls for a more positive and optimistic public outlook.

Notes: 1

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957 [1944]), 159-60. In April 2007, Bulgaria’s official unemployment rate was 8.37 per cent; see “Bulgaria’s Unemployment Rate Hits Record Low in April,” http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=80460, accessed 21 May 2007. 3 See Ivelin Sardamov, “Burnt into the Brain: Towards a Redefinition of Political Culture,” Democratization 14: 3 (2007): 407-24. 4 Such views are often shared even by prominent Bulgarian social scientists. For example, sociologist Nikolay Tilkidjiev has attributed lingering pessimistic attitudes to the existence of a lasting “ethno-psychological complex” in the minds of Bulgarians; see Bulgarian National Radio, “The Bulgarians Turning to Positive Thinking,” http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emission_English/Theme_Lifestyle/Material/ positthinking.htm, accessed 7 May 2007. In a massive study of Bulgaria’s economy from the late 19 th to the late 20th centuries, economist and economic historian Rumen Avramov has described a set of rigid collectivist orientations. Those, in his view, invited excessive state interventionism into the economy even before WW II, and created fertile ground for the later experiment at socialist industrialization. See Avramov, Stopanskiiat XX vek na Balgaria [Bulgaria’s Economy in the 20th Century] (Sofia: Center for Liberal Strategies, 2001). Such comments can in fact be seen as an ironic reflection of the general negative and skeptical mind-set they seek to illuminate. 5 Ivan Krastev et al., “Optimistic Theory about the Pessimism of the Transition,” http://www.clssofia.org/uploaded/1144746138__optimistic_theory_about_the_pessimism_of_the_transition-en.pdf, accessed 26 Febuary 2007; see also Stoyadin Savov, “The ‘Bulgarian Paradox’: Economic Growth Which Gives Rise to no Optimism,” Ikonomicheska misal [Economic Thought] (July 2004): 96-117. 6 Savov, ibid. 7 See Andrei Raichev and Kancho Stoichev, Kakvo se sluchi? [What Happened?] (Sofia: Iztok-Zapad, 2005). 8 An example quoted by Ivan Krastev at the symposium “Post-Communist Social and Political Conflicts”; see n. 1. 9 Georgi Dimitrov, “Niakolko argumenta za neobhodimostta ot nova konstitutsiia” [Arguments in Support of a New Constitution], unpublished manuscript. 10 Stoyan V. Sgourev, “Lake Wobegon Upside Down: The Paradox of Status-Devaluation,” Social Forces 84: 3 (2006): 1497- 1519. 11 Sgourev, ibid., 1514. 12 Peter Sanfey and Utku Teksoz, “Does Transition Make you Happy?” (EBRD Working Paper), http://www.ebrd.com/pubs/econo/WP0091.pdf, accessed 10 March 10 2007. 13 Krastev et al., “Optimistic Theory,” 7. 14 The World Values Survey, though, gives Romania and Bulgaria similar happiness scores for 1999. In Bulgaria, 8.0 per cent of respondents described themselves as “very happy,” and 37.5 per cent said they were “quite happy.” The corresponding numbers for Romania were 3.6 and 43.7 per cent. Albania’s scores were a bit higher, and results for all other Southeast and Central European states were considerably higher. In fact, only a few former Soviet republics (including Russia) and troubled developing countries scored lower. Results are available from http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org. 15 European Commission, Special Eurobarometer 273: European Social Reality, 5, http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_273_en.pdf, accessed 22 April 2007. 16 Ibid., 48. 17 Ibid., 67. 2

15

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “How Global Publics View Their Lives, Their Countries, the World, America,” 6, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/165.pdf, accessed 24 May 2007. 19 On a scale of 1 to 4, no Bulgarian political institution scores above 1.85; 82.3 percent of respondents say they would not trust other people (as compared to 73.1 percent in 1999); 90.1 percent are dissatisfied with the development of democracy in the country (a view shared by 72.5 per cent in 1999), and only 28.9 percent fully endorse the position that, with all its problems, democracy is still better then any other form of government (a statement supported by 43.3 per cent in 1999). Results from the survey and the press release offering an analysis can be found at http://bsa-bg.org/documents/evs_2008_presentation.pdf and http://bsabg.org/documents/evs_2008_press_release.pdf. 20 Results can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb69/eb69_bg_nat.pdf. 21 See Sgourev, “Lake Wobegon,” 1497-99. 22 Krastev, “Optimistic Theory,” 2. 23 According to the authors, “we live in a society in which the vast majority of people do not know what is good about democracy and have forgotten what is bad about socialism.” Ibid., 16. 24 Ibid., 31. 25 Sgourev, “Lake Uobegon,” 1501-2, 1502-04. 26 See Edward Chang, ed., Optimism and Pessimism: Implications for Theory, Research, and Practice (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000). 27 Economic research on happiness has established that once a country overcomes general poverty, further increases in GDP per capita are not significantly correlated with the proportion of people who define themselves as happy. This paradox is usually attributed to “relative deprivation” or rising aspirations in more affluent societies; see Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005). 28 Krastev et al., “Optimistic Theory,” 29. 29 Unpublished OSI study cited in n. 20 above. The numbers for 2002 are 55, 37, and 36 per cent respectively – indicating maybe slightly less sceptical judgments. 30 Dimitrov, “Niakolko argumenta,” 2. 31 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, “NATO Invitation Is the End of a Long Road for Bulgaria,” http://www.mfa.government.bg/index.php?tid=6&item_id=2004, accessed 27 April 2007. 32 Sgourev, “Lake Wobegon,” 1499. 33 See Wil Arts, Piet Hermkens, and Peter Van Vijck, “Anomie, Distributive Injustice and Dissatisfaction with Material Well-Being in Eastern Europe,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 36, nos. 1-2 (1995): 1-16. 34 Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1984 [1893]) ; Suicide: A Study in Sociology (New York: Free Press, 1997 [1897]). 35 Bryan Cartledge, Mind, Brain, and the Environment: The Linacre Lectures 1995-6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130; cf. Anthony Wallace, Culture and Personality (New York: Random House, 1970), 230. 36 Nikolai Genov, “Transformation and Anomie: Problems of Quality of Life in Bulgaria,” Social Indicators Research 43, nos. 1-2 (1998): 197-209. 37 See Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992). 38 Marian Adnanes, “Social Transition and Anomie among Post-Communist Bulgarian Youth,” Young 15, no, 1 (2007): 49-69. 39 See Ivelin Sardamov, “‘Civil Society’ and The Limits of Democratic Assistance,” Government and Opposition 40: 3 (2005): 391. The suggestion that Polanyi’s analysis of the social implications of marketization can be applied to Bulgaria was first outlined in Ivelin Sardamov., “Za duhownata kriza na balgarskoto obshtestvo,” [“The Spiritual/Cultural Crisis of Bulgarian Society”], Kultura (May 31, 2002), http://www.online.bg/ kultura/my_html/2230/kriza.htm, accessed 10 June 2002. 40 See Polanyi, Great Transformation. 41 Quoted in Charles Taylor, “A Different Kind of Courage,” The New York Review of Books, 26 April 2007, 4; cf. n. 2. 42 Polanyi, Great Transformation, 160. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 293. 45 Drew Westen, Psychology: Mind, Brain, and Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), 230; cf. Michael L. Blakey, “Beyond European Enlightenment: Toward a Critical and Humanistic Human Biology,” in Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology, ed. Alan H. Goodman and Thomas L. Leatherman (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 394-6. 46 See Cartledge, Mind, Brain, and the Environment, 130. 18

16

See Jane M. Healy, Your Child’s Growing Mind: A Practical Guide to Brain Development and Learning from Birth to Adolescence (New York: Broadway Books, 2001), 28. 48 See Daniel Goleman, “Finding Happiness: Cajole Your Brain to Lean to the Left,” The New York Times, 4 February 2003, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res= 9501E3DC1038F937A35751C0A9659 C8B63, accessed 5 February 2003. 49 John McCrone, “A Bifold Model of Freewill,” in The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will, ed. Benjamin Libet et al. (Thorverton: Imprint Academic, 1999), 253; see also Cozolino, Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, 158-59. 50 Warren TenHouten, ‘Neurosociology,’ Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, Vol. 20, No.1 (1997), EBSCOhost online database (http://www.ebscohost.com); accessed 22 March 2004. Such patterns of brain activation may in fact be typical of most non-Western, less individualistic cultures which (with a few exceptions) are generally characterized by a less optimistic outlook; see Chang, “Cultural Influences on Optimism and Pessimism,” in Optimism and Pessimism, ed. Chang. This is a larger issue which may in the future be addressed by a new generation of scholars trying to apply findings from neuroscience to the study of society, culture, and politics; see Sardamov, “Burnt into the Brain.” 51 These similarities were not unique to Bulgaria. They were perceptively captured by the description Rebecca West gave to a group of young Serbian monks she met in Kosovo in the 1930s. According to her, their clothes were soiled and shabby, their faces were empty and expressed nothing but boredom. She said she wouldn’t criticise any monk who neglected his outer appearance because he had dedicated himself to higher spiritual pursuits. But in the face of those monks she saw merely young people who had been released from he discipline imposed in he past within peasant families without being submitted to any other form of discipline. See Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (New York: Penguin, 1994 [1941]), [p.]. 52 For example, between 1887 and 1897 taxes on peasants almost doubled. See Richard J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 126. 53 Stoian Bochev, Kapitalizmat v Balgaria [Capitalism in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Balgarska nauka i kultura, 1998), 253. 54 See Crampton, Bulgaria 1878-1918: A History (Boulder: East European Monographs; New York: distributed by Columbia University Press, 1983), 514. 55 Bochev wrily noted that Bulgarian society apparently wanted to obtain the benefits of capitalism without embracing capitalism itself; see Bochev, Kapitalizmat v Balgaria, 253. 56 See Ivan Elenkov and Rumen Daskalov, eds., Zashto sme takiva?: V tarsene na balgarskata kulturna udentichnost [Why Are We the Way We Are?: In Search of Bulgarian Cultural Identity] (Sofia: Svetlostrui, 1994). 57 Ivan Hadzhiiski, “Optimistichna teoriia za nashiia narod” [“Optimistic Theory about Our People”], in Hadzhiiski, Grazhdanska smart ili bezsmartie [Civil Death or Immortality] (Varna: Georgi Bakalov, 1986), 5677). The study directed by Ivan Krastev (cited in n. 6) alludes to this well known title. 58 See Gerschenkron, “Some Aspects of Industrialization in Bulgaria, 1878-1939” in Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press [Harvard University Press], 1962); Avramov, Stopanskiiat vek. 59 Toncho Zhechev, Literatura i istoriia [Literature and History], vol. 2 of Izbrani proizvedeniia [Selected works] (Sofia: Bulgarski pisatel, 1989), 272. 60 See Herbert Kitschelt et al., “Historical Legacies and Strategies of Democratization: Pathways toward Post Communist Polities,” in Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), [p.]. 61 Bulgarian philosopher Ivailo Kutov writes of an overall cultural crisis affecting the Bulgarian nation over the last 150 years – a crisis set off by the clash of the old Bulgarian patriarchal tradition with the individualist disposition imported from Western Europe; see Kutov, “Kulturni i politicheski koreni na balgarskiia pesimizym” [Cultural and Political Roots of Bulgarian Pessimism], in Shte otselee li balgarskiiat narod prez XXI vek? [Will the Bulgarian People Survive in the 21st Centyry?], ed. Vasil Prodanov (Sofia: Zaharii Stoianov; Sv. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2006), 149-50. This crisis can be better understood by taking into account the social effects of the market economy described by Polanyi; see Polaniy, Great Transformation. 62 Avramov, Stopanskiiat vek, 49. 63 In 2004-2005 psychologist Nina Pehlivanova conducted 90 biographical interviews with men and women from 40 to 55 years old. Sixty per cent of them said that was not “their time,” and most gave clear indication that for them that was a period of “psychological discomfort and emotional stress”; Pehlivanova, “Predstavite za minaloto, nastojashteto i badeshteto v konstruiraneto na sotsialnoto vreme: situatsiiata na 40-55 godishnite hora” [“Concepts of the Past, Present, and Future in the Constitution of Social Space: the Situation of the 40-55 Year Olds”], in Shte otselee li balgarskiiat narod, ed. Prodanov, 186. 47

17

64

Economist David G. Blanchflower has found that happier nations tend to have lower levels of hypertension; see Blanchflower, “Hypertension and Happiness Across Nations,” http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/ pressreleases/germany_portugal_come/hypertensionnationsfeb07.pdf, accessed 27 May 2007. 65 Since the 1990s, Bulgaria has registered one of the highest levels of “negative population growth” in Europe – around -0.5 per cent in recent years, not counting emigration; see Rossen Vassilev, “Bulgaria’s Demographic Crisis: Underlying Causes and Some Short-Term Implications,” Southeast European Politics 6: 1 (2005), 14-27. 66 The proportion of highly-skilled workers among Bulgarian emigrants has been the highest in Europe; see Yoanna Dumanova, “The Balkan ‘Brain Drain’ in the Balkans: A Comparative Analysis,” in “Four Accounts of ‘Brain Drain’ in the Balkans,” 12, http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=23F05537-FF954FE5-8782-D192CE01BBE3, accessed 20 April 2007. Bulgaria also has the highest proportion of university students abroad. It ranks fifth among all countries represented within Harvard’s population of international students. 67 Designated chief crime fighter within Simeon’s previous government and current mayor of the capital Sofia, widely rumoured to have had connections to organized crime. 68 See Krastev et al., “Optimistic Theory,” 3. 69 See Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Deconstructing Balkan Particularism: The Ambiguous Social Capital of Southeast Europe,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 5: 1 (2005): 49-68; Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos, “Positive and Negative Social Capital and the Uneven Development of Civil Society in Southeastern Europe,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 5: 2 (2005): 243-56. 70 See Paul Stirling, “Impartiality and Personal Morality,” in Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology, ed. J.G. Peristian (Paris, Mouton, 1968). 71 See Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe: Free Press, 1958. 72 See Francis Fukuyama, “Social Capital and Development: The Coming Agenda,” SAIS Review 22: 1 (2002): 23-37. 73 Crampton, Bulgaria, 517; see also Marin Pundeff, “Bulgarian Nationalism,” in Nationalism in Eastern Europe, ed. Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer, 2nd ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 143. 74 Todorova, “The Course and Discourses of Bulgarian Nationalism,” in Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Peter F. Sugar (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1995), 91, 96. 75 Ibid., 76. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 92. 79 For a hilarious collection of self-deprecating satirical columns, see Stanislav Stratiev, Bulgarskiiat model [The Bulgarian Model] (Sofia: Ivan Vazov, 1991). 80 Grigore Pop-Eleches has reached a similar, more empirically grounded conclusion regarding the strong showing of the Greater Romania Party and its leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor in the previous round of Romanian national elections a few years ago; see Pop-Eleches, “Romania’s Politics of Dejection,” Journal of Democracy 12: 3 (2001): 156-69. 81 NDSV and particularly the Bulgarian Socialist Party were perhaps hurt by fresh corruption scandals on the eve of the elections. At the same time, a few weeks earlier the Bulgarian media had circulated widely allegations about Boyko Borisov’s links to organized crime coming from a US source (Jeff Stein, “Bush’s Bulgarian Partner in the Terror War Has Mob History, Investigators Say, Congressional Quarterly, March 22, 2007, http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002461932.html, accessed 10 March 10 2007. Boyko Borisov’s popularity, however, remained undented. Voter turnout in the elections was below 30 per cent, disappointingly low though similar to numbers in some other new EU member states. 82 See Venelin Ganev, “Ballots, Bribes, and State Building in Bulgaria,” Journal of Democracy 17: 1 (2006): 88. 83 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty 84 See John Stewart Mill, On Liberty, ed. David Spitz (New York: Norton, 1975 [1859]); Marc F. Plattner, “Globalization and Self-Government,” Journal of Democracy 13: 3 (July 2002): 54-67. 85 See Doreen Carvijal and Steven Castle, “Bulgarian Corruption Troubling the European Union,” International Herald Tribune, 15 October 2008, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/15/europe/bulgaria.php, accessed 29 October 2008. 86 Such rulings were based on flimsy legal grounds, and provoked vigorous public protests by environmental activists. In response, the parliament passed a law which stipulated that administrative decrees designating natural preserves could not be challenged in court – an apparent attack on the separation of powers that would be unlikely to survive a challenge before the Constitutional Court. 87 There is in fact a general tendency around the world for respondents to express stronger satisfaction with their own lives as compared to the quality of life in their own country, and to rate life in their country higher than the perceived state of the world; see Pew Research Center, “Global Publics,” 6.

18

88

The accumulation of such predictable surpluses is partly motivated by a desire on the part of governments to have access to discretionary financial resources outside of the budgetary parameters approved by parliament. 89 See Sgourev, “Lake Wobegon,” 1502-04. 90 See Polanyi, Great Transformation. 91 Such difficulties are probably related to the socio-cultural peculiarities of Bulgaria as a previously underdeveloped country dominated by small-holding subsistence agriculture, egalitarian attitudes, and extremely strong kinship structures. There may be, however, some additional exacerbating factors. For example, a version of a serotonin-regulating gene has been linked to an impaired ability to deal with stress, setbacks, and misfortune in individuals carrying it; see Sylvie Dethiolaz, “5HTT: So Is Happiness All a Question of Length?”, Prolune 10 (Sep. 2003), http://expasy.org/prolune/pdf/ prolune010_en.pdf, accessed 24 May 2007. In some countries (for example, Japan), larger proportions of the population carry this version, and may consequently have weaker coping abilities in the face of unsettling social change. They may thus be prone to higher levels of neuroticism and negative emotionality; see Michael Minkov, What Makes Us Different and Similar: A New Interpretation of the World Values Survey and Other Cross-Cultural Data (Sofia: Klasika i Stil, 2007), 155-56. Drawing such links between biological and cultural features, though, is still considered politically incorrect because of a suspected link to racist theories. It also runs counter to dominant approaches in the social sciences and to common Western beliefs which emphasize individual agency or institutional factors – in any case holding the promise of personal achievement, individual or group agency, and a degree of social engineering. 92 If economic development geared toward the opportunities presented by global markets can foster higher levels of individualization among coming generations in Bulgaria, it could potentially give rise to a more optimistic outlook; see Chang, “Cultural Influences on Optimism and Pessimism.” To produce such results, though, individualization must go hand in hand with proper socialization. These two tendencies may in fact be coming under increased strain even in some prosperous Western societies. 93 Adnanes provides a symptomatic example of an upbeat Western assessment; see Adnanes, “Social Transition and Anomie.” 94 To avoid an ironically hopeless conclusion regarding Bulgarian pessimism and dejection, we should note that even during the severe economic slump of 1996-97 most Bulgarian citizens maintained their dignity and sense of propriety. For a comparison, an Argentine documentary has revealed that during the financial crisis in the country in 2001-2002 some middle-aged middle-class women turned to prostitution in order to make end meet; see BBC World Service, “Argentine Pensioners Turn to Prostitution,” July 19, 2007, http://news.co.uk/2/hi/americas/ 2136564.stm. In Bulgaria, economically inactive women (and men) with no long-term prospects for improvement have endured stoically similarly dehumanising degrees of material deprivation. Also, Bulgaria is not among the countries with the highest suicide rates in Europe. 95 See Patrick Cockburn, “Bush's optimism is impossible to square with the situation in Iraq,” The Independent, 13 July 2007), http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2765574.ece, accesed July 15, 2007. 96 In 2002 Thomas Carothers, an influential member of the US democratic assistance community, gave Bulgaria (alongside Romania) as an example of a country “teetering on [the] edge” of what he loftily called “feckless pluralism” – a syndrome marking “shallow and troubled” democracies beset by state weakness, thorough delegitimation of their political elites, and overwhelming public disaffection and disengagement; see Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13: 1 (2002): 10-11. Five years later, Bulgaria does not appear to have shaken off those adverse social and political attributes. Ganev, on the other hand, offers the upbeat assessment that the spread of more impersonal forms of corruption in Bulgaria amounts to state building; see Ganev, “Ballots, Bribes, and State Building.”

19