Few of the developments of the post-1989 transformation in Bulgaria were a result of popular democratic politics, much of it being part of the global turn toward neoliberal globalization. In some popular accounts, the political changes were not even particularly revolutionary. Many see the period as a political-economic adaptation and entrenchment of former elites — an account which has kept a persistent and often visceral anti-communism alive, despite the death of the state socialist regime thirty years ago.

If common political, media, and popular narratives in the country disagree over whether the changes have produced too much capitalism, too little capitalism, or not the right kind of capitalism (but rather a Balkanized, defective version), there is a fairly broad consensus that the transformation has failed to deliver on its promise for prosperity. Thirty years of “reforms” applied in Bulgaria — often chaotic and experimental in practice, but consistent in their neoliberal logic — have effectively meant a period of uncompromising austerity politics hell-bent on clearing the way for doing business.