Speaker Series | Lilia Topouzova book launch | Unsilencing: The History and Legacy of the Bulgarian Gulag
When? Thursday, 11 December. 10:15.
Where? Room 017, Landshuter Str. 4 (IOS / Graduate School)
Lilia Topouzova (Toronto) will discuss Unsilencing, her new book on the history of the Bulgarian Gulag, a work that appeared with Cornell University Press in summer 2025.
- This event is part of the Margins of Memory Speaker Series, which runs throughout the winter semester 2025/26. It is organized by the co-spokespeople of the Margins of Memory Early Career Research Network supported by the ScienceCampus, Volha Bartash and Tatiana Klepikova. Find the full programme here. This session takes place in cooperation with the Zentrum Erinnerungskultur | Centre for Commemorative Culture at UR.
Book Description | Unsilencing provides the first comprehensive study of Bulgaria's forced-labor camps, a network of repression that operated throughout the communist era from 1945 to 1989. Lilia Topouzova uncovers the hidden histories of these camps, often referred to as Bulgaria's "Little Siberia," where thousands were interned without trial, subjected to inhumane conditions, and silenced for decades.
Drawing on two decades of archival research, oral history interviews with survivors and perpetrators, and an array of primary sources, Topouzova reconstructs the harrowing reality of life behind barbed wire. She explores how the communist regime systematically used these camps to suppress dissent, target minority groups, and instill fear across the population. Unsilencing presents detailed accounts of key sites like the Belene and Lovech camps, revealing the brutalities endured by prisoners and the lasting scars these places left on Bulgarian society.
More than a historical recounting, Unsilencing examines the post-1989 period and how Bulgaria has grappled—or often failed to grapple—with its recent past. Topouzova assesses the country's efforts at transitional justice, including the short-lived truth commission and trials that sought to hold perpetrators accountable. She argues that the legacy of the gulag has been largely forgotten and deliberately obscured, leaving a vacuum in Bulgaria's collective memory that continues to affect its society and politics today.
Lilia Topouzova is Assistant Professor of History and Creative Nonfiction at the University of Toronto. As a writer and a documentary filmmaker she explores the relationship between remembering and forgetting. Her academic expertise spans Eastern European communism, gender studies, and transitional justice, reflected in her contributions to journals like the American Historical Review, Gender & History, Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, Journal of Visual Literacy, and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice. She is the scriptwriter of The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories, cowriter and codirector of Saturnia, and coauthor of The Neighbours, a multimedia installation showcased at the Venice Biennale. She was a visiting fellow at the Leibniz ScienceCampus in May 2024.
