This has been a hot political summer in Bulgaria – for more than a month thousands of angry citizens have poured into streets and squares in Sofia and the big cities, calling for ‘resignation’ and ‘prison.’
Summer 2020 has innovated civic activism in two fundamental ways. Firstly, these are the first mass protests in Bulgaria which are not anti-communist. They are the fourth wave of big mobilizations. Hundreds of thousands gathered in the streets in 1989 claiming and celebrating the end of communism and the chance to build both a democratic agora and the new post-communist citizen. The collapse of the economy, hyperinflation and the failure of the socialist government to manage the crisis provoked the second wave of mass protests in 1997, which led to the triumph of the Union of Democratic Forces. The nomination of an oligarch for director of the National Agency for National Security triggered the third wave of huge street protests in 2013. That nomination lasted a day, but the protests against the coalition government led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party were active for almost one year. 2020, however, is the first protest against post-communist state capture.
Secondly, a new generation of civic activists has entered the contestatory agora. Who are these mobilized citizens? This article draws their portraits though their own claims, values, visions, passions.
