A book on the 10th congress of the Communist party, center, in an abandoned home in Kanitz, a mostly empty village in Bulgaria….

A book on the 10th congress of the Communist party, center, in an abandoned home in Kanitz, a mostly empty village in Bulgaria. Of approximately 50 houses, only 3 are inhabited - totaling its population to 6. Bulgaria has the most extreme population decline in the world - mostly due to post-1989 emigration, and visions of severe structural and industrial decay are becoming increasingly common across the country. There are so few people of childbearing age people here that population statistics project a 34% decrease by 2050, from 7.7 million to 5 million.
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. This project was supported by a grant from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Photo by @yanapaskova in October. #bulgaria #depopulation #communism #autocracy #berlinwallanniversary #1989 #pulitzercenter (via http://instagram.com/p/u_w4B7luk4/)