Letters from Bulgaria introduction

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN –LETTERS FROM SOFIA

This blog is collection of letters written by an English husband and wife team working for ICL (International Computers Limited) behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1970s.

It is a follow on to the blog ‘Behind the Iron curtain- letters from Prague’ which charted out first 12 months behind the Iron curtain based in Prague and Brno. The letters were sent to Gill’s parents and were kept by her mother until her death in late 1990s. Gill and Tony have added comments from their 40+ year old memories of working and living behind the Iron Curtain.

Looking back on a year in what was then Czechoslovakia, we can easily recall the warmth & enjoyment of the kind & cultured Czech people, the lack of materialism, the feeling that the state was looking after everyone with equanimity from cradle to grave, and that perhaps communism had something to offer the rest of the world. That view was to change quite rapidly during a further year in Bulgaria and Romania. Here were nations of people brainwashed to think they lived in utopia, never travelling to other countries not just because they had no hard currency but because they genuinely believed they lived in the garden of Eden (and frequently said as much), who walked slowly and quietly to major football matches fearful to even smile let alone cheer in case the ever present police might arrest them, who distrusted foreigners in their midst, and who were ruled by a ruthless  authoritarian hereditary oligarchy running a police state.

We had come to Eastern Europe a year earlier with generally a left wing British Labour Party outlook. We had seen both positive and negative aspects of communism in Czechoslovakia that left us still reasonably sympathetic to the idea. The Bulgarian experience, and to some degree the early Chouchescu years in Romania, were to lift the veil for us. But initially at least our impressions were favourable.

Bulgaria was, and is, a very beautiful country. There were mountains, lakes, fields of roses, ancient monasteries and churches. The superb golden onion domed churches, the cleanliness of the glazed yellow-tiled streets in central Sofia, the sunshine and lack of pollution, the mountain ski resort on our doorstep, the (then) brand new Black Sea holiday resorts just a few hours car drive away, all initially beguiled us.

The food in shops was more plentiful than in Czechoslovakia especially in the local markets where people from the countryside came to Sofia with their fresh home grown products and sold them on the black market. The supermarkets often had whole shelves just with Cuban sugar bags for sale. The wine was cheap and of good quality. The hotel food was very good but the service was more like Russia and very very slow. We took to playing cards and dice in between courses and it was quite common for it to take two hours to serve a two course meal. We had a group of local shops about a hundred metres from our first flat and if you could buy fresh bread it was wonderful for the first 6 hours but rapidly went stale and by the next moring you could build a house with it. The shops also sold the local natural yoghurt in little earthenware pots. At first we had to add fruit or jam to sweeten the yogurt but eventually got the taste for it. We were used to the sweeter Smetana crème sold in Prague.

In Bulgaria there was fewer ICL staff so we did get to know the Embassy staff but mainly from the American, French and Austrian embassy. The British embassy had a club for ex pats on a Friday night and both the American and British embassy showed English films which were much rarer in the Bulgarian cinemas. Sofia was a meeting of roads between the West and East with a culture somewhere between the two. Many interesting people passed through Sofia on their way to other places. The customs guards were fierce and vigilant always on the look out for people and drug smugglers. It could take quite a while to get through the border.