ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the most recent changes in Bulgarian rural life from the two perspectives presented above: history as 'separate', as a disjunction from communism, and history as organic, "a legacy of complex symbiosis" of aspects of the communist and post-communist periods. It illustrates ways that the social life of Bulgarian villagers has been altered substantially by recent changes and, exhibits strong continuities with both the communist and precommunist past. M. Todorova, in discussing the legacy of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, identifies the two differing historical perspectives on transition. The recently dominant 'separatist' perspective for studying transition minimises the influence of a displaced regime. Historians view transition as a broad and complex symbiosis of cultures with emergent properties. For rural households, perhaps the most important consequence of the recent transition has been the restructuring of agriculture away from state-run cooperatives and toward market-based private farming.
