Krisenmanagement – Strategien des Umgangs mit ökonomischen Krisen in der bulgarischen Bevölkerung
People’s Strategies for Coping with Economic Crises in Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: Bulgaria – like other Southeast European countries – has a long history of economic crises which have their origins in (a) the Ottoman system of landownership and agriculture, (b) the neglect of, and conservatism in, agriculture after the liberation of 1878, and (c) the misguided industrial and agricultural policy of the socialist state. On the level of everyday life, people developed a variety of strategies and practices to cope with the almost permanent economic crisis. Under socialism, these practices and strategies of crisis management developed into a full-fledged system of “weapons of the powerless”, among them total reliance on personal networks, which made life bearable but also contributed to the collapse of the system. Given the deep economic crisis of the first decade of post-socialist transformation, most people, particularly the losers of transformation, had every reason to cling to their habitual practices. The present financial and economic crisis has given them new relevance for the losers, but ironically also for the winners of transformation.

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