Industrial Heritage without Memory: The Cotton Factory of Varna between Past and Redevelopment
Keywords:
industrial heritage; collective memory; institutional opacity; labour history; urban transformation; silence and forgetting; Varna (Bulgaria)Abstract
This article examines why one of Varna’s largest pre-socialist buildings – the Cotton Factory – remains materially intact while its industrial past has largely disap-peared from public memory. Drawing on site observation, archival fragments, interviews and online discussions, the study identifies a set of mechanisms through which memory erodes: fragmented sensory recollection, low occupational prestige, institutional opacity, shifting moral regimes after 1944 and 1989, urban discontinuity, spatial distancing and the emergence of neighbourhood myths. These forces converge, producing a durable silence around the factory’s social world. At the same time, certain residual attachments – belonging, aesthetic recognition and projected cultural aspirations – continue to anchor the building in collective imagination. The factory persists as a material form whose past cannot be fully narrated yet has not been culturally concluded.
References
Brown, G., Crossley, C., & Robinson, S. L. (2014). Psychological owner-ship: Theoretical extensions, measurement, and application to work outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(3), 306–318. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.583
Connerton, P. (1989). How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628061
Connerton, P. (2008). Seven types of forgetting. Memory Studies, 1(1), 59-71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698007083889
Creed, G. W. (1995). Agriculture and the domestication of industry in rural Bulgaria. American Ethnologist, 22(3), 528–548. https://www.jstor.org/stable/645970
Dawdy, S. L. (2010). Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity. Current Anthropology, 51(6), 761–793. https://doi.org/10.1086/657626
Denkov, S. (2024). Hronika na stopanskiya zhivot vŭv Varna ot Osvo-bozhdenieto do 1944 godina [Chronicle of the economic life in Varna from the Liberation to 1944]. Sofia: Izdatelstvo A.
Deyanova, L. (2005). 1948. Simvolna euforiya, simvolen teror [1948. Sym-bolic euphoria, symbolic terror]. LiterNet. Available at: https://liternet.bg/publish14/l_deianova/1948.htm
Douglas, M. (1986). How institutions think. Syracuse University Press.
Edensor, T. (2005). Industrial ruins: Spaces, aesthetics and materiality. Ox-ford: Berg.
Jansen, S. (2015). Yearnings in the Meantime: “Normal Lives” and the State in a Sarajevo Apartment Complex (1st ed.). Berghahn Books.
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qcxhw
Gachevska, K. (2012). Fighting organised crime as a security threat: The les-sons learnt from the case of Bulgaria. Journal of Regional Security, 7(1), 63–76. https://cis-fpn.rs/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Fighting-organised-crime-as-a-security-threat-The-lessons-learnt-from-the-case-of-Bulgaria.pdf
Getova, A. (2022). Social Legitimacy of Mass Privatization: The Case of Bulgaria. Bulgarian Journal of International Economics and Politics, Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 72-87. https://doi.org/10.37075/BJIEP.2022.2.05
Greenlees, J. (2016). Workplace Health and Gender among Cotton Workers in America and Britain, c.1880s–1940s. International Review of Social History, 61(3), 459–485. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859016000493
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Trans.). Universi-ty of Chicago Press.
Herzfeld, M. (1992). The social production of indifference: Exploring the symbolic roots of Western bureaucracy. London: Routledge.
Ivanov, M. (2021). Sreshtu techenieto. Bălgarskata tekstilna promishlenost, 1800–1912 g. [Against the current: The Bulgarian textile industry, 1800–1912]. Ciela.
Popova, D. D. (2019). Tekstilnata industriya vǎv Varnenskiya region (1878–1929) [The textile industry in the Varna region (1878–1929)]. Izvestiya na Sǎyuza na uchenite – Varna, Cultural Heritage of Varna and the Black Sea Region, 93–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.14748/isuvknv.v0i0.6571
Ricoeur, P. (2004). Memory, history, forgetting. The University of Chicago Press.
Tsing, A. (2009). Supply Chains and the Human Condition. Rethinking Marxism, 21(2), 148–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/08935690902743088
Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Tran-scripts. Yale University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1np6zz
Shentov, O., Todorov, B., Stoyanov, A. (2007). Organized crime in Bulgar-ia: Markets and trends. Center for the study of democracy. https://csd.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/publications_library/files/2007/2007_01_ENG_Organized_Crime_in_Bulgaria.pdf
Verdery, K. (1996). What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7rnmm
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 BALKANISTIC WORLDS
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
