Uneasy Solidarities: Bulgarian ‘Greens’ from Socialist Revisionism to Neoliberal Anti-Communism
Uneasy Solidarities: Bulgarian ‘Greens’ from Socialist Revisionism to Neoliberal Anti-Communism

Summary/Abstract: The paper traces the development of the Bulgarian ‘green’ movement from the end of the 1980s to the present day. It discusses the concrete events that have led to its inception and its ideological embeddedness within discourses of glasnost, humanism and international solidarity that underlined the demands of the first ‘green’ activists in the country.By spotlighting recent environmental mobilization, and the ‘#SavePirin’ campaign in particular, the paper reflects on the problematic entanglements marking the post-socialist trajectory of Bulgarian environmentalism that has been closely aligned with the process of neo-liberalisation of its economy and the public sphere. The formulation of a narrow protest rhetoric, the inability to build alliances, the continuing support for market-driven growth and the professionalization of the environmental cause are identified as important factors. They mark the weakened political potential of the movement and its inability to offer a meaningful critique of the effects of Bulgarian ‘transition’. Completely erasing the history of the early environmentalists, today’s Bulgarian ‘greens’ operate in an established and extremely limited ‘post-political’ discursive spectrum and advance agendas that are neoliberal capitalist, and in many instances carrydiscernable nationalistic, anti-class, and anti-democratic nuances.

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