The publication of Bulgarien (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), volume VI in the series Südosteuropa-Handbuch, concluded the nearly twenty-year effort of Klaus-Detlev Grothusen to produce comprehensive area studies of the Southeast European states. Published in English and German, it includes the work of thirty-five social scientists from six Western countries. Beginning with sections on Bulgaria's geography (Ian M. Matley) and prewar history (Richard J.Crampton) and postwar surveys of domestic politics (John D. Bell) and foreign policy (Klaus-Detlev Grothusen), it presents specialized studies on the political and legal systems, economy, society, and culture, and includes an extensive section on bibliography. Although with the collapse of the Zhivkov regime, much of its material became instantly dated, Bulgarien is the most thorough reference work on Communist Bulgaria that we are ever likely to have.
Information Bulgaria: A Short Encyclopedia of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (Elmford, New York: Pergamon Press, 1985) contains over 1,000 pages of articles prepared by members of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. A bibliographic survey of Western analysis of postwar Bulgaria is presented in John D. Bell "Bulgaria," in Raymond C. Taras, editor Handbook of Political Science Research on the USSR and Eastern Europe (Westport, Conn. & London: Greenwood Press, 1992).
Dr George I. Paprikoff performed a labor of love compiling an extensive bibliography of books, booklets, and dissertations written by Bulgarians in emigration or exile. Published posthumously as Works of Bulgarian Emigrants: An Annotated Bibliography (Chicago: Privately printed, 1985), it provides descriptions of 1,579 works published by Bulgarians in twenty-seven countries outside the Soviet bloc.
Bulgaria in Its Balkan and European Contexts
After World War II Bulgaria may also be viewed from the perspective of "Eastern Europe." There are several works that provide excellent coverage of East European Communism with particular attention to its final years. These include: Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1992) with a strong focus on intellectuals and dissent; Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993); Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Joseph Rothschild Return to Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Of these, Joseph Rothschild's book pays the greatest attention to Bulgaria, and all are the result of careful thought and scholarship. In Social Currents in Eastern Europe: The Sources and Meaning of the Great Transformation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991) Sabrina Petra Ramet examines changes in religious, ethnic, and gender relations in the post-Communist era.
The recent dramatic events in the Balkans have also inspired a number of journalistic accounts that provide a vivid sense of immediacy, but too often at the expense of superficiality and a reliance on misleading stereotypes. In this category fall John Feffer's Shock Waves (Boston: South End Press, 1992) and Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
