12/04/2004|||110217809209728381||||||

A CAUTIONARY TALE

If you happen to have money to invest in property (I wish I did) the word is that Bulgaria is the "new Tuscany". Think again. In a sobering account in The Independent, would-be carpetbagger Marcus Tanner and a fellow-adventurer encounter the realities of a statist landscape in which blight and bribery are the norm:

"I have seen a lot of Eastern Europe, including eyesores such as eastern Kosovo, but nothing prepared me for this dismal jumble of pylons, disused factories and rubbish dumps, nor for a skyline which was dominated by crumbling tower blocks.

"It dawned on me now that Bulgaria was not any old ex-Communist country, like Yugoslavia, or Poland, but an ex-Soviet-style state. And just like the USSR, Bulgaria had experienced the full-scale collectivisation of the land, virtually wiping out the old peasant order that had survived under Communism in Serbia or Poland. The results of that vast social experiment had permanently reshaped the Bulgarian countryside - with catastrophic results.

"Skirting Plovdiv, John and I mumbled that it was "bound to be better" in the mountains, as we turned south and uphill towards Greek Macedonia. It was better, in the sense that filthy, rubbish-strewn canals gave way to rushing streams. But we soon realised that the full effects of Bulgaria's Soviet-style revolution had not stopped short at the edge of the plains. The hill villages, too, had felt the full blast of Leninist doctrine, which demanded the creation of an urban, industrial proletariat in the remotest hideaways. Ruined, dingy tower blocks and empty factories, like those I had seen in Kosovo, lay scattered here too.

Smolian took our breath away for all the wrong reasons. Right up in the mountains, in what must once have been the haunt of wolves and bears, the authorities had planted a large industrial town that was in the process of falling to pieces. "Goodness," said John, in a tone of wonder, as we drove to our meeting with Liam. "That's unusual - real slums in a mountain range."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/12/cautionary-tale-if-you-happen-to-have.html|||12/04/2004 04:20:00 pm|||||||||

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