The roof of the metallurgical factory in the town of Pernik (near Sofia) collapsed. An eyewitness remembers a worker hanging off a beam 30 feet in the air, screaming for help. The safety officer, who arrived right after the incident, yelled at him, “Why are you screaming! You’re just scaring people!”
This incident is a poignant illustration of communist authorities’ attitude to occupational accidents and emergencies. These were never reported out of concern that people would worry. This is one reason Bulgarians today widely believe that the socialist period in the country (1944–1989) was a safe, peaceful time when the government took care of citizens. Accidents and Crashes: A Chronicle of Socialist Industrialization by Daniel Vachkov is the first thorough study shedding light on this misconception.
Industrial accidents were a “constant and salient feature of the socialist economy,” one that was kept secret out of fear that disclosure would tarnish the public image of the regime. In cases where information would surface, authorities put it down to sabotage.
The statistics tell a very different story: every day in the 1970s and 1980s in Bulgaria, two people died in accidents, and two remained disabled for life. These numbers do not include people who developed severe illnesses as a result of poor working conditions, deaths among enlisted men working in construction, or casualties in the so-called student brigades (mandatory “internships” during communist times, which involved heavy manual labor). The situation with premeditated murders was similar: there were 200 per year on average. This number dropped dramatically in the 21st century (murders went from 150 annually down to about 100 per year between 2005 and 2015).
Among the reasons for the frequent accidents were extended workdays, the introduction of overtime, the use of unreliable, poorly maintained equipment, lack of training for workers, and poor work organization.
Vachkov used communist party, trade union, ministry, and business organization archives for his research. The Committee on Classified Files was also a rich source of information. The author believes that the actual number of accidents is probably higher than the evidence he has found suggests.
