MyCentury

06/08/2025

Communist Bulgaria was extremely popular with tourists from East Germany/GDR. They loved its sunny beaches and mountain peaks, the countryside as well as the cities. As a matter of fact Bulgaria was the southernmost destination East Germans could travel to, the footpath in Melnik for instance was lined with warning signs in German, that beyond was a border zone and trespassers will be shot.

Tourists from Germany's eastern parts wrote back home, often ecstatic about their stay in Bulgaria. Some of these postcards have now found their way into the interactive DDR Museum in Berlin. Here are a few of them.

/1970s-early 1980s/

Danke, DDR Museum

#България

30/07/2025

First photo album of Sofia after World War II.

#София #България

A piece of visual history - the first photo album of the Bulgarian capital after the Communist takeover in 1944. Most of the over 100 photographs were taken by Architect Nikolay Popov and Pencho Balkanski, both established internationally in the 1930, with exhibitions in Vienna and Belgrade.

28/07/2025

How Communist Bulgaria tried to silence Radio Skopje.
Заглушителите на Радио Скопие в живкова България.

11/07/2025

Srebrenica 11 July
https://mycentury.tv/balkani/146-srebrenica-11-july-2010.html

07/07/2025

https://impressio.dir.bg/litsa/ne-moga-da-si-predstavya-che-e-imalo-chovek-koyto-ne-go-obicha-kazva-nikolay-binev-za-stefan-voronov

Днес се навършват 80 години от рождението на певеца и актьор Стефан Воронов

06/07/2025

Sarajevo, Spring 1996. End of the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare, lasting for 1424 days.

The Bosnian capital was besieged by about 13,000 Serb troops on the surrounding hills. They terrorised round the clock the civilian population of Sarajevo, killing nearly 10,000 people, including over 1,500 children.

In late February 1996 Bosnian Serb forces left positions in and around Sarajevo, followed by tens of thousands of local Serbs. They took all of their belongings with them, damaging property and in many cases leaving behind in their old homes concealed explosive devices.

05/07/2025

Along the Jadranska highway - 1974.

A showcase project of Titos’s Yugoslavia, the Adriatic highway was intended to demonstrate the success of the country’s own Communist model and its openness to the West. While also attracting foreign tourists, and more specifically their foreign currency, so badly needed for Yugoslavia’s economy.

Construction on a scenic route from Koper in Slovenia on the Italian border to the Croatian towns of P**a, Rijeka, Split, Trogir, Dubrovnik, and further on to Montenegro and Ulcinj on the border with Albania, began towards the end of the 1950s. The real push came between 1963 and 1965, when 11 teams of 6,000 workers with significant machinery managed to complete the stretch to Montenegro.

Some Yugoslav politicians called the Jadranska highway just the “seaside section” of the road Ljubljana - Skopje, but the highway never connected beyond Montenegro to Kosovo and Macedonia.

As scholars like Dr Lyubomir Pozharliev of the University of Gießen point out, “like the Brotherhood and Unity highway, the Jadranska highway failed to become a pan-Yugoslavian symbol. To this day it remains mostly a Croatian privilege and a sign of Croatia and Slovenia’s link to Europe across the borders with Italy and Austria.”

Do you remember travelling on that highway in the old Yugoslavia ? Or were you perhaps involved in its construction effort? We’d love to hear from you. Here or on https://mycentury.tv
Photographer unknown

24/06/2025

Sofia radio, purchased 1941.

Hard to overestimate the power of radio for closed societies in pre-Internet times. This 'Mende' was widely used in Bulgaria during WWII – despite being locked & sealed by the Nazi-allied government in Sofia onto local radio stations. And during the Cold War - despite the jamming by the Communist authorities.

Apart from bringing news, old radios also told stories of cities long vanished from the maps 🙂

23/06/2025

Our new educational film, Quiet Heroes.

The story of Dimitar Paskov Димитър Пасков, a Bulgarian medical doctor, one of the founders of experimental pharmacology in his country.

A child refugee from the Balkan Wars of the early 20th Century, Professor Paskov dedicated more than 50 years of his life to medical research and is famous around the world for extracting an ingredient from Bulgarian snowdrops and using it to create "Nivalin" - a revolutionary medication for the treatment of polio, but today also of Alzheimer and other forms of dementia.

22/06/2025

In Memoriam: Atanas Nasko Kiryakov

Днес си е отишъл Атанас Киряков, съобщиха на БТА негови близки. Той е режисьор, сценарист и актьор, автор на повече от сто документални заглавия.

20/06/2025

The Crimean Tatars of the Black Sea.

The Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea. The formation and ethnogenesis of Crimean Tatars goes back as far as the 13th century. On the 18th May 1944, on Stalin's orders, the entire nation of the Crimean Tatars was deported. They were forced to leave their homes by the Black Sea and were dumpe...

06/06/2025