Vernacular memorial museums: memory, trauma and healing in post-communist Bulgaria

ABSTRACT Shortly after the coup d’état of 1944 in Bulgaria, state-organized repressions began to take place against political opponents and dissidents. They included mass shootings, life imprisonment, incarceration and the establishment of gulag camps whose scale and longevity has been documented only recently. In the aftermath of Eastern European communism, untangling the memory of political violence without a formal process of restorative justice presented new challenges. This paper examines the processes of healing, reparation, processing and the preservation of traumatic memory of survivors and communities occurring within and through self-initiated and unofficial vernacular memorial museums. What possibilities do vernacular memorial sites hold for collective, collaborative and participatory reparative forms? How are traumatic memory and these difficult historical narratives presented, transmitted and preserved through these physical and digital commemorative spaces?