ALIGNMENT WITH THE REGIME OF COMMUNISM – 20 YEARS LATER

Balkan Ethnology Department at Ethnographic Institute and Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Austrian Science and research Liaison Office in Sofia are organizing 3 days conference in Sofia.

24 prominent scholars from Austria, Bulgaria, FYROM, Iran, Russia, Slovakia and Turkey will look for the answers of several key questions:

- Who and how is shaping the reflections on the past in the present;
- What kind of political and cultural tools are most powerful in this process;
- How functioning of the political and cultural mechanisms allow articulation of different images of socialism in the society;
- What are the consequences of policies, leading to manipulation of the communist past at national and international levels;
- How differs the reflection of communism in different age, gender, ethnic and minority groups and to what extend it influences unification (or segregation) in both societies in the process of Euro-integration;
- Are the "artefacts from the past" just remains from former regimes or they form new subculture, powerful enough to shape new generation's mode of thinking and creating strategies.
- How the memories differ in different countries in the same region.

Special event on 09.11.2009 will be the presentation of Univ. Prof. Dr. Karl Kaser's book: Patriarchy after Patriarchy. Gender Relations in Turkey and in the Balkans, 1500-2000, LIT Verlag 2008.

The conference will be held at Room 19 of Ethnographic Institute and Museum, 6a, Moskovska Str., Sofia.