By Christina Koikaran
I knew Bulgaria was “post-Soviet.”
Or at least, I thought I did.
In the way many students think they understand something because they once highlighted a PDF at 2 a.m. before a final exam…
I could tell you the broad strokes: the USSR, the Cold War, NATO, communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall. I took the classes and survived the lectures. I sat through enough university debates about realism, the West, and global security to confidently use phrases like “post-communist transition” without ever really interrogating what they meant in practice.
But then I arrived in Sofia and realized I did not actually understand what it meant for history to physically exist around you.
Not in textbooks. Not in theory.
In walls, churches, and metro stations.
On my first day here, I walked into the subway expecting an ordinary station. Instead, I found ancient Roman ruins sitting directly beneath the city. People moved casually past structures older than most countries, checking their phones and rushing to catch the next train.
It caught me completely off guard.
And then I started noticing it everywhere.
Roman ruins beneath glass panels. Ottoman influence in the architecture and food. Massive Soviet-era apartment blocks looming over trendy cafés. Orthodox churches with unmistakable Russian influence. European Union flags hanging beside buildings shaped by entirely different empires and political systems.
Everything here feels layered, not metaphorically, but literally.
Back home, in North America, history can sometimes feel strangely flat. Our cities are relatively young. Buildings are torn down. Narratives become simplified. Historical periods turn into neat chapters in a textbook.
But here, history feels less like something that “happened” and more like something people are still actively living inside of.
This realization has followed me into my work with the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law (BCNL). Many of the legal and political questions I am researching here feel impossible to separate from history. Conversations around civil society, democratic participation, institutional trust, and the role of NGOs are deeply shaped by the legacy of communism, the transition period that followed, and ongoing geopolitical tensions. The past is not simply background context; it continues to inform political discourse, legislation, and public attitudes toward civic engagement in visible and invisible ways.
Before coming to Sofia, phrases like “Eastern Europe” or “post-communist” existed in my mind mostly as political shorthand. But being in Bulgaria made those labels suddenly feel inadequate. This place is not just “post-Soviet.” It is also Balkan, Ottoman, Orthodox, Roman, socialist, European, modern, nationalist, and globalized all at once.
It is centuries of conquest, resistance, ideology, religion, and reinvention existing side by side.
Trying to make sense of that feeling, I started reading David Chioni Moore’s essay, “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?” Moore argues that post-Soviet societies are often excluded from postcolonial conversations, even though many experienced the same kinds of political domination, cultural restructuring, economic dependence, and identity crises associated with colonialism.
Reading this, then walking through Sofia, changed the way I looked at the city.
Because the “post” in post-Soviet does not mean the past disappeared. It means the past is still shaping the present.
Sometimes quietly.
Sometimes in the form of a church dome, a Soviet apartment block, or an EU flag hanging above a street built by an empire that no longer exists.
I felt that contradiction even more while reading Ana Luleva’s work on tourism in socialist Bulgaria. In “The Bulgarian International Tourism in Late Socialism – between the Class-party Ideology and the Economic Interest,” she describes tourism in socialist Bulgaria as a meeting point between ideology and economic necessity. The state publicly distrusted the capitalist West while simultaneously trying to attract Western tourists, foreign currency, and international legitimacy.
Gradually, parts of the city began to make more sense to me.
The giant socialist hotels. Aging infrastructure beside flashy new development. The coexistence of nostalgia, decay, capitalism, and national pride. It all felt less random and more like the physical aftermath of competing political systems layered on top of one another.
Political science gave me vocabulary. It taught me how states interact, how ideology spreads, and how power operates.
But it did not prepare me for the feeling of walking through a city where empires overlap block by block.
Or for the realization that history is not always past.
Sometimes it is the building next door.
Sometimes it is the metro station beneath your feet.
And sometimes, it is realizing that understanding a place requires far more than being able to define it in a classroom discussion.
I came to Bulgaria for work, research, and international experience. I expected to learn about law, civil society, and politics.
What I did not expect was how quickly the city itself would challenge the way I understood history, identity, and the lingering presence of political systems long after they formally disappear.
References & Further Reading
Moore, David Chioni. “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique.” PMLA, vol. 116, no. 1, 2001, pp. 111–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/463645. Accessed 13 May 2026.
Luleva, Ana. 2021. “The Bulgarian International Tourism in Late Socialism – between the Class-Party Ideology and the Economic Interest.” Balkanistic Forum 30 (January): 207–26. https://doi.org/10.37708/bf.swu.v30i1.13.