“Unequal under Socialism. Race, Women, and Transnationalism in Bulgaria” by Miglena S. Todorova is an outstanding scholarly contribution to the studies of socialism and post-socialism, studies of gender, race and beyond. Todorova is a social scientist whose research encompasses historical power relations, social differences, and violence in the former socialist countries in Eastern and Central Europe, and the Balkans as well as these phenomena in the context of Canada and the United States. In this work she presents us with a well-put-together study of the particularities of socialism, post-socialism and Eurocentrism as well as the notion of otherness as it relates to gender and race and its dynamics in relation to the official discourse. By using the cases of socialist and post-socialist Bulgaria, Todorova invites us to a deep delve into these notions and phenomena, exposing the need for their re-evaluation.

The introduction, which itself is enhanced with touches of the author's personal reflections on her experience in socialist Bulgaria, is followed by five chapters. In chapter one, Todorova reflects on the debates as they relate to race and gender in the 1930s and 1940s. “[T]he loud public debate about the relationship between people’s biology and capacity for culture among leading Bulgarian scientists in 1930s” (p.18) is juxtaposed with the women’s movements and activism. It is also placed side to side, among other issues, with racial themes, the day-to-day realities and relationships of local Muslim and Roma people, and the political mobilisation as it relates to the treatment of the Jewish people during World War II. Here, Todorova calls for a re-evaluation of concepts and theories, suggesting that the “racial formation theory developed within the historical context of the United States […] does not capture the complexity of race’s itineraries in Bulgaria, and probably in other Balkan countries” (p.18). Chapter two, “Socialist Radicalism: Desired and Undesired Genres of Women, and the Paradoxes of Socialism”, speaks of a conceptual paradigm that resulted in an ideology referred to by the author as “socialist racialism”. The term itself is regarded as a reflection of the overall hegemony of “the West” and Eurocentricity. However, it also relates to Marxism and Bulgarian socialism that was directed towards “the erasure and forceful inclusion of ‘belated peoples’ into the socialist project” (p.18). For instance, when it comes to the Roma community, the state is seen as having framed them “as a major ideological and political threat that had to be managed, controlled and eliminated” (p.63) for what was regarded as their refusal or inability – to grab and own their history in the socialist terms. When it comes to the gendered aspect of the phenomenon of socialist racialism, the author suggests that it involved targeting or racialising women who, according to the contemporary socialist discourse deviated from the desired ideal. These were the women who were not perceived as “white” as well as those not engaged in reproduction of what was regarded as socially useful labour, fell into the category of devalued types of womanhood what were seen as threats to the socialist state project as well as the tenets of Marx and Lenin.

In chapter three, “Women’s Work: Gendered and Radicalized Socialist State Governmentality”, the author takes on the challenge of examining the way the socialist economy had constructed and positioned women as it relates to work, as well as their relations to one another. The inquiry, a primary subject of this chapter, indeed goes beyond transnational feminist theories as they relate to women’s work whilst also providing new and enhanced perspectives of the experience of different women with regards to their labour in the context of social political economy. Todorova concludes that “[w]omen and their work in socialist Bulgaria were not equal and equally valued, and that history demands historiographies that recognize how and why we worked, lived, and loved under socialism differently” (p.100). Chapter four “Second and Third World Women: Socialist State Feminisms and Internationalisms” is built around the reflections on two archives that have been preserving the history of the engagements of Bulgarian state feminists with and within the international space between the 1960s and 1980s. The first of the two archives is that of “Zhenata Dnes” (Woman today), an influential and state-supported journal, whilst the second one is that of Lyudmila Zhvikova, a senior Bulgarian Communist Party functionary and daughter of Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhvikov as well as an avid patron of culture and arts, who is controversial today, even though she was a prominent figure. The rationale behind choosing these two case studies as well as the purpose of the chapter was to challenge the “claims that feminism hardly, if ever, existed in socialist states such as Bulgaria” (p.103) by employing an autoethnographic approach. One of the core findings here is the lessons that we can learn from the shortcomings of state feminism in the context of socialist Bulgaria. For instance, the importance of directing the focus on the local level. According to the author, this is where women’s internationalism should begin – “by acknowledging and addressing the oppression of those women whose racialisation, religion, and culture stand between them and full membership in the nation” (p.127).

The last chapter, “Challenging the Modern/Postmodern Duality: Race, Socialist Masculinity, and Global American Culture” engages with the phenomenon of the popularity of “the Western”, especially American, action movies among male youth in 1980s socialist Bulgaria. The chapter challenges the idea of the duality of cultures – the modern socialist East versus postmodern capitalist West – the binary promoted by the works of Zygmunt Bauman, a prominent Polish-British social theorist and philosopher, and American literary critic and political theorist Fredric Jameson. Questioning and challenging this binary, as put by Todorova, “involves resisting the raceless, genderless, and universalised masses of Western and Eastern citizens reduced to ‘consumers’ of capitalism or ‘subjects’ of state socialism [...]” (p.130). Thus, using the medium of cinema, the author effectively projects the light onto the intertwined nature of the relationship between the local cultural production and the imported American popular culture in 1980s Bulgaria. The author skillfully exposes the intersectionality between these two cultures, the intersection being the crisis of masculinities, which itself also sheds light on other important intersections between the two often juxtaposed cultures in the context of the Cold War. The book concludes with a call for more extensive critical discussion and overall focus on the history shared by women in socialist and post-socialist Bulgaria as well as transnational feminists of colour, so that, as the author puts it, “we can dream up and realise societies where all citizens prosper” (p. 20).

Overall, the book presents us with an original, powerful and engaging study that would be of interest to not just to those primarily engaged with the studies of socialism or post-socialism. It is a substantial work of broad and global applicability for its input and insights on gender, race, intersectionality, Eurocentrism and otherness. It invites the reader for a much-needed re-evaluation of the concepts and phenomena which are viewed as an indelible part of the history of the former socialist states as well as the broader international space.