The Road to Socialism

We build the road, the road builds us! Highways and identities building in socialist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria

The book is the first comprehensive empirical study of transport infrastructure in two socialist countries in the years 19451989. In the case study of Yugoslavia, the construction of roads was interrelated with building socialist and trans-ethnic identities, uniting all federal republics. In practice, the Brotherhood and Unity Highway was an artery linking the capitals of the most industrialized republics, neglecting Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and parts of Macedonia. In socialist Bulgaria existed a clear ideological link between transport and nation building. Bulgarian roads' disintegrative function was best seen in the example of the Highway Ring which, constructed as an inner circle, isolated the border regions and areas inhabited by Bulgarian Muslims and Turks.

Auteur
Dr Lyubomir Pozharliev is a research associate at the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography) in Leipzig. He is working within the Leibniz Junior Research group Contentious Mobilities: rethinking mobility transitions through a decolonial lens with a focus on mobility modes in Central Asia and other post-socialist countries. Between 2018 and 2020 he was a postdoctoral researcher within SPP 1981 Transottomanica. He received his doctorate in history and cultural studies (2018) from Justus-Liebig University, Giessen at the Department of Eastern European History.