The contradictory images of totalitarianism in contemporary bulgarian historiographies

The article proposes an explanation of the widespread memory anxieties related to the socialist past in post‑1989 Bulgaria and the role of mainstream historiographical research. It focuses on publications and the public interventions of the independent Institute for the Studies of the Recent Past (ISRP), founded in 2005 to counter alleged tendencies of “tacit rehabilitation of the Communist regime”. My main argument is that the dominant frame of studying and teaching history of socialism, namely through the notion of totalitarianism, and its promotion by mainstream academic research projects such as those of the ISRP, contain unsurpassable contradictions and enhance existing anxieties about social memory and national identity.