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Memories of socialist Bulgaria still resonate
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Once Upon a Time in Bulgaria by Mercia MacDermott (Manifesto Press, £11.95)
AFTER participating in the 1947 and 1948 NUS youth brigades in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and helped by her study of Russian and related Slav languages including Bulgarian, Mercia MacDermott took up a one-year English teaching post in Sofia in 1963.
Already familiar with Bulgarian history, as part of the British brigade in 1948 she had even met the communist legend Georgi Dimitrov, then Prime Minister of Bulgaria and universally loved and admired.
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