ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the national discourse of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) in respect of the domain of culture and, more especially, on the topic of anniversaries and commemorations. The BCP downplayed communist reliance on the Soviet Union and the Red Army, legitimized communist projects of modernization and nationalization, and delegitimized and incriminated the opposition by placing them outside the nation as "traitors". Besides commemorating purely national events and figures, the BCP organized and supervised festivals with an international content. The BCP envisaged each national celebration as a visible, active embodiment of officially proclaimed values, which individuals were to internalize through participation in carefully organized community celebrations. At all these celebrations, the BCP presented its own imagining of the Bulgarian national past. Political agitation and propaganda of the BCP aimed to convince the Bulgarian people that the nation as an entity shared a common past and a common future.
