Паметта за социализма сред първото поколение български емигранти в Гърция
The Memory of socialism among the first generation Bulgarian emigrants in Greece

Summary/Abstract: The paper seeks to analyze the memory and recollection of the period of socialism (1944-1989) among a part of Bulgarian emigrants living in Greece. Ethnographic data collected with classical ethnologic methods as well as those registered using Life History method in Athens and Thessaloniki (2009-2010) during the author’s fieldwork are analyzed. The paper explores how the memory of socialistic past, shaped by shared collective memory and present personal needs functions. The aim is to trace how the recollection of socialism is constructed by emigrants between 45 and 60 years of age and how this recollection functions to face emigrants’ day by day strategies. The studied group consists of people born during the socialist period and who grew up with the socialist values. The remembrance of socialism for the interlocutors is quite strong and influential, but not one-sided. Memory and recollections of the past are seen as those elements of identity that create the feeling of stability over time and reaffirm the feeling of belonging to a certain group. In the text the process of recollections and recreation of the past is examined as a function of the present position and status of the respondents.

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