Comment by Evgeniy Dainov:
There is a wonderful American question to the ever-present being: What just happened? ("What just happened?"). This question has gained the power of a meme, as it is short, precisely targeted and allows for clear and precise answers.
The December 1st protest: What just happened?
The short answer: all the statements that we took for granted until the evening of December 1st were no longer true the next morning. And they were not true, because the observed reality to which these statements refer changed its nature. The protest turned into a revolution.
What's the difference? Protests demand that something specific happen or something that is happening stop happening. An example is the protests for the release of Blagomir Kotsev, which stopped the moment he was released from detention. It was clear from the protest on November 26 that it was not just about the budget, and that withdrawing it would not bring people home. On the contrary, the protest, which (at least) tripled in attendance and spread across the country, turned into a revolution: a demand to tear up the current social contract and draw up a new one, to be implemented by different people than before.
As never before, all my students attended both protests, and I didn't pester them. In the days after the big protest - Tuesday and Wednesday - I discussed with them the question of what happened. Here's what they told me:
Ending injustice and alienation
We pretty quickly agreed that because they didn't want one thing to change, they weren't going to go home. They wanted everything they grew up with to change. In short: the impudent, thieving and uncontrollable government should become decent, honest and accountable (we speak a mixture of languages, since they easily swim in the linguistic waters in which their parents mostly drowned).
By the time of the discussion, they had already read, thought and written enough to be able to clothe their analysis in the clothes of political philosophy.
From John Locke and the Declaration of Independence they derived the basis of their protest:
"When a long series of abuses and plunders, pursuing invariably the same object, say that this people is in danger of being placed under the power of an absolute despotism, then it is their right and their duty to reject such government and choose new guardians of their future security."
According to the students, they otherwise except for a long string of abuses and plunders they do not remember and therefore want to interrupt them, so as not to fall under the rule of despotism. And hence - the requested new social contract excludes abuses, plunders and despotic rule. What is required is decency, honesty and democracy.
From Adam Smith, the students derived the importance of justice for the existence of a society:
"Justice... is the main supporting beam on which the entire structure rests. If it were removed, the huge, vast fabric of human society... would instantly disintegrate into atoms."
According to the students, it is precisely the lack of justice that has caused their lives so far to pass into a society engulfed in chaos and alienation. Again, they draw their legitimacy for taking to the streets from Smith: "Every appearance of injustice... instills anxiety in the citizen, and he rushes to stop its progress, which will quickly take away everything he values."
A holy and pure republic, as is Levski's testament
This is exactly what happens at the moment when the protest grows into a demand for a new social contract: people rush to stop the progress of injustice. Hence the demand that the coming social contract restore justice so that we can live in society at all.
From Vasil Levski, the students had understood that the Republic is not simply a construction of laws and rules. It is a moral phenomenon, therefore it is "pure". If it is not inhabited by moral subjects, it cannot happen. Hence the demand that the new social contract ensure that the Republic is governed and even managed on a daily basis at all levels by moral, decent, honorable representatives of the citizens.
Again from Levski, the students had taken the position that freedom is not just an individual right, but also a common duty - you cannot be free if you do not also fight for the freedom of others. Hence the demand that the new social contract have freedom, understood as a universal phenomenon, at its core.
Does the revolution have a chance of success?
We are not in a protest that will stop when the demands are met. We are in a revolution. We want a new social contract that is different from the current one in every way. A contract based on the cessation of abuses and despotic rule, decency, honesty and democracy, as well as on the introduction of morality, justice and freedom as real, empowered, daily functioning principles of the Republic.
This is not new for Bulgaria. We have done it - in 1989-90, in 1996-7 and partially in 2020. It is not an unprecedented miracle. We know how it is done. With the entry of the new generation - and with the inclusion of cities outside Sofia in the revolution (the young people sincerely do not understand the incantation "Sofia is not Bulgaria") we have serious chances of success.