Комунизам и хомосексуализам у Бугарској (1944–1989)
Communism and homosexualism in Bulgaria (1944–1989)

Summary/Abstract: Reconstructing the relationship between the communist regime and the homosexuality is a limited projection of the overall discourse concerning the sexuality in this historical period. This phenomenon was perceived as something hidden and prohibited; something in the po- wer of authorities and medicine. This attitude towards these problems is still dominant in the Bulgarian society on the whole, and in the social and humanistic sciences which deal with the intimate space of the individual. Thus, in Bulgaria the retrospective study of the different kinds of sexuality is in at the very start. This article is a moderate attempt to present some details from the “hidden” Bulgarian everyday life in the years that followed World War Two. The author is aware that his contribution is far from exhausting the question. His goal has been a mere definition of the problem. According to M. Gruev this could be only possible if the subject is analysed in a proper context. In such a way it should be positioned in a certain historical period when the sexuality officially had been discussed only as a mean of reproduction, than in the “masculine” intimate world of Bulgarians and at last in the process of that phenomenon’s self organization. The article is based on the documentary sources representing some of the actions of Bulgarian authorities and Secret Services concerning the homosexuals. Due to some of the legal limitations present in Bulgaria, this kind of sources has been labeled as “personal archive”. The available documentary sources have been compared to the interviews and journalistic research that appeared in Bulgaria after so-called “great change”. Part of the study is dedicated to the traditional attitudes of the Bulgarians toward the homosexuals and how these attitudes later took part in the commu- nist iscourse related to the problem. The important influence of the Soviet policy regarding homosexuals has also been mentioned by the author.

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