ABSTRACT

The present article shows how a particular historical event, namely the collectivisation of agriculture in Bulgaria from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, which dramatically changed several generations’ lives, has been thematised in biographical interviews. In the narratives, collectivisation has been outlined as a realm of collective memory. Using the biographical method of Gabrielle Rosenthal, which allows for the reconstruction of the past through biographical memory, this article focuses on the narrative images of the agents of social change, that is, the ways in which people (re)construct past events in the present through narrative and how they discussed and/or conceptualised their own behaviour during the process of collectivisation. In the analysis, the emphasis is on the presentation of collectivisation on an everyday, micro-level.