From today, November 7, to November 9, including at Moskva Park Hotel in Sofia, scientists from three continents will discuss the subject of state socialism in Europe - 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. This was announced by the BAS Press Center.

The International Conference (Re)thinking Socialism. Knowledge, memory and oblivion of the socialist past brings together over 100 scholars from Europe, Asia and North America. They are representatives of different scientific disciplines - ethnology, anthropology, history, political science, art, literary history and other sciences. The forum is organized by the Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The conference will discuss topics such as everyday culture and lifestyle in socialism - material culture, nutrition, fashion, cinema, music, leisure and recreation, gender relations, childhood and youth cultures, the working world, religion and atheist politics, culture of memory for socialism - memories of political repression, meanings of socialist monuments and socialist heritage in urban areas, museums through socialism, approaches to the study of state socialism. The program highlights both the distinguished names of scholars and young researchers, whose contact with socialism is entirely through archives, narratives and art.

Thirty years after the end of state socialism, the need for knowledge about it is still urgent. Although to varying degrees, the post-socialist societies in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe are still divided in their attitude to the recent past. The politics and culture of memory for socialism continue to be a field of tension and debate between politicians and between different social groups. The goal of the international interdisciplinary conference is to discuss various aspects of socialism/communism and its impact on the present. The emphasis is on (re)thinking – it is our aim to thematize the state of research on socialism, to illuminate new fields and to add new details to the knowledge of the period, the organizers said.