The Scorpions’ and their Wind of Change, a song that came to be the symbol of the fall of the Berlin wall. Twenty-six years ago it sounded like the promise of a rosy future. Our dream was a simple one – to have this same wind of change blowing through this country.

Twenty-six years ago, one day after the Berlin wall fell, dictator Todor Zhivkov was ousted after spending more than three decades at the helm of the country. Back then we believed this marked the end of a time when a small group of people robbed everyone else, in the name of a future communism. We believed that at long last, the work of the willing and able would be judged by its merits. And that they would make Bulgaria into “Switzerland on the Balkans”. But what happened?

Every year on 10 November Bulgarians go back to the choices they made. As the years went by, this date was tarnished and lost much of its luster. Much of the Bulgarian transition is controversial – its end but also its beginning. Should this beginning be taken as 10 November or perhaps 7 December, when the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) was set up, or perhaps 15 January 1990, the starting date of the round table that discussed and carried through a number of steps – abolishment of article No.1 of the constitution that cemented the “guiding role of the Bulgarian Communist Party”, the  depoliticization of the army, the courts and the prosecutor’s office, or 4 February 1997, when, after skirmishes in the streets around parliament building, the UDF took power.

But maybe the beginning goes even further back, to the time before 10 November 1989? The start and the finish of the transition may seem controversial, but who the players are now seems clearer than ever – party technocrats, people from the former security services and sportsmen. The agents of the “change” proved to be agents in a different sense altogether. So, how did the dreams born in the city squares come to nothing?

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English version Milena Daynova