Ivaylo Znepolski (Editor) is Emeritus Professor at the University of Sofia and Director of the Institute for Studies of the Recent Past, Sofia, Bulgaria.Mihail Gruev is Head of the Bulgarian State Archive.Momtchil Metodiev is Research Fellow at the Institute for Studies of the Recent Past, Sofia, Bulgaria.Martin Ivanov is Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Sofia.Daniel Vatchkov is Head of the Institute of Historical Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.Ivan Elenkov is Full Professor at the University of Sofia, teaching the History of Bulgarian Modern Culture.Plamen Doynov is Associate Professor at the New Bulgarian University.

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• Introduction; Historical background; I: The times of high Stalinism; 1: Bulgaria in the shadow of Stalin; 2: Georgi Dimitrov and “the people’s democracy”; 3: Bulgaria in the years of classical Stalinism; 4: Building the communist economy in Bulgaria; 5: The Bulgarian village under communism; 6: The goryani; 7: The sovietization of Bulgaria; 8: State Security within the structure of the communist state; 9: Education and culture within the system of the communist state; 10: Communist Bulgaria’s foreign policy and the Cold War; Part II: From sheepish de-Stalinization toward the consolidation of the regime and its penetration into everyday life; 11: After Stalin; 12: The course toward accelerated economic development and reform of the economic model; 13: Sovietization in the shadow of Khrushchev and the Brezhnev Doctrine; 14: In search of a communist model of consumer society; 15: Processes within society; 16: The ghosts of national communism and pressure on Muslim communities; 17: The church on the periphery of society; 18: Processes within the culture of “real socialism”; Part III: The collapse and peaceful withdrawal of communism in Bulgaria; 19: The deepening crises and the paralyzation of the regime; 20: The limits of the communist model and an evaluation of the regime’s social policy; 21: Gorbachev’s perestroika and its influence on processes in Bulgaria; 22: The beginning of the Great Transition; Timeline of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria; Leading historical figures from the period