Iliyana Marcheva
Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 6, 2019, No. 2
Donations and donors
to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1944-1989
Iliyana Marcheva
Abstract. On the basis of documents from the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the author brings back from oblivion the donation gestures of scientists from various generations, common citizens and foreign researchers who continued the tradition of donating property, books and archives to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) during the communist regime. Those were neither numerous nor crucial for the functioning of the Academy and, due to the political realities, the donor’s will was not always observed, but they show that the tradition of support for science and intellectual pursuits was kept alive. A special attention is paid to the generous donation gestures of foreign scientists that assisted the Academy’s efforts to be a repository of national memory. The revival of the practice of private donations to BAS after 1989 demonstrates the significance of the preserved tradition of donating.
Keywords: donations, donors, BAS, communist regime