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Pulitzer Center Update
This Week: Putin's Policies Leave Human Rights Under Siege
In Vladimir Putin's Russia, and in occupied Ukraine, a rough road for LGBT activists and intravenous...
November 19, 2014 -
A look at the intended—and unintended effects—of democracy on Bulgaria, a nation still undergoing...
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The Black Sea region has become the focus of heated geopolitical contention, but local environmental...
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Project
Crimea: The Human Toll
Russia's military annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine has already upended many lives...
![](/sites/default/files/styles/510x315/public/11-07-14/screen_shot_2014-11-07_at_4.26.59_pm.png.webp?h=a0ccd589&itok=2U96dCkH "Hello, this is NYC-based photojournalist @yanapaskova posting from Bulgaria, my homeland until the age of 12, where I’ve returned each year for a visit. Follow me this week as I bridge Bulgaria’s communist past with photos gleaned from family albums, to its current state of democracy 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (the anniversary being Nov. 9th.) The Communist party trained its youth early; membership was a requirement for every schoolboy and girl. None of my family members were communist by ideology, but abstaining from party activities pre-1989 meant heavy social stigma, marked dossiers, sharply diminished employment opportunities, and at worse, imprisonment. This is a picture from my elementary school years, showing my classmates and I (second from right) as “pionercheta," or pioneers, with red ties, and a younger "chavdarche" with a blue tie. The labels and tie colors signified the level of advancement through the children’s Communist Party.")
