Andrey,
Great post. Very informative and interesting. My girlfriend is originally from Bulgaria - her uncle left there about 30 years ago and she came to the US in the early 90s. She has great memories of the family gardens that they had there, and in particular, the many gardening lessons she learned from her grandmother. I understand that they did save seed for some vegetables the part of Bulgaria where she grew up (Novi Han, north of Sophia). They did have some things done collectively, as she describes how the men of the town would work together, bringing crops to market.
A somewhat funny thing is that her grandmother loved to use DDT, long after it was banned even in Bulgaria. I guess it worked like nothing else for the Colorado Beetle, which attacked potatoes. When I first met her, Galina told me such great things about the food in Bulgaria, particularly the peppers. I had a hard time believing this, though, because everything I had read here in the US about food during the Communist era was negative: long lines waiting to buy rotten fruit and vegetables, things like this. That may have been true is some places, but probably not as pervasive as our own propoganda made it seem.
Another funny thing is the name of the Bulgarian pepper lots of people grow: Chervena Chushka, which means, "Red Pepper". I can picture some American or western European seed saver asking a market merchant in broken Bulgarian what the variety name is for this wonderful pepper, and getting a response like: "What, that? What's it look like to you? It's a red pepper!" ... and the seed saver dutifully notes, Chervena Chuska.
Jim
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