Summary: The article aims at systematizing the findings of leading Bulgarian scholars in the field of modern history, outlining the parameters of the Bulgarian geopolitical reorientation from the East to the West. It is exactly this perspective, which the author uses to derive the concept of the “transition”, the well-known theses in the Bulgarian historiography being analysed in the context of the dynamic spatial transformations of the international system after the collapse of the socialist integration model. The general conclusion is that the existing studies have already revealed many of the politico-economic and military-political dimensions of the transition processes, especially regarding their initial stage of development, starting at a certain point in the late 1980s and ending somewhere around the mid-1990s. The period of the Bulgarian transition, however, remains a challenge to historians, especially bearing in mind the discovery of newly declassified documents, the transfer of archival storage of the working documentation of a number of ministries and other state institutions, as well as the growing volume of newly published memoirs.
Keywords: transition, reorientation, Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, Cold War
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