Communism and the Remorse of an Innocent Victimizer

For decades Americans imagined life under Communist regimes to be grim, frightening, and oppressive. Not so, Bulgarian-born Zlatko Anguelov reveals in this eye-opening memoir. For the most part, life was just normal. People adjusted; bread had to be earned; families enjoyed each other's company. If Communist governments were oppressive, that oppression became the norm for most people's lives. Yet in the morally ambivalent world of communist Bulgaria in which Anguelov grew up, everyone was both victim and victimizer. Few dissented; few intended evil. More typical were experiences of compliance, complicity, and informing on friends and neighbors just to get by.In moving but understated prose, Anguelov describes his own coming to terms with the harm done by compliance and his gradual shift into a more politically active stance. Through the stories of his own family and acquaintances, he illustrates the kinds of moral choices available to ordinary folk. The motives for collaboration ranged from those of his grand-uncle, who cooperated with the government because he believed fervently in communism, to those of his cousin, who cynically embraced the regime in order to prosper.In this provocative account, Anguelov challenges easy assumptions about communism, democracy, and Eastern Europe. His chilling insights into the costs of complicity under Bulgarian communism raise uncomfortable questions about the moral dimensions of "going along" in any system.