This paper explores the Bulgarian movement against domestic violence since the fall of state socialism. To a large extent this movement exemplifies the post-socialist women’s movement in Bulgaria. Presenting materials from semi-structured interviews with members of the movement and state and political actors involved with this topic, I narrate the history of their struggles to promote legislation and services against domestic violence since the mid-1990s. I examine the roots and routes of the current women’s movement vis-à-vis the history of the feminist and women’s movement in the country. I pay attention to the contemporary conjuncture in which the movement operates: with relatively limited opposition and relatively high success to the domestic violence agenda, but with no significant mobilization on other women’s and feminist issues and with domesticated feminist rhetoric and mobilization frame. I claim that while the Bulgarian movement against domestic violence has been among the most successful ones in the region in terms of lobbying and legislation, it has not perpetuated but has arguably stifled the development of a strong feminist movement. As an increasingly professionalized field, it has accumulated recognition and statist capital: it developed a strong influence on policy-level, including a general claim on professional and administrative codes (Bourdieu 1994). Due to the increased proximity with state power the professional field which emerged from the movement has pressed the state to issue legislation and to supply funding for victims of domestic violence. Yet, it has remained mostly silenced in society beyond single-issue campaigns. The movement’s causes remain articulated in a vocabulary averting feminist frames of mobilization. Aggregating in the NGO sphere, its members have remained closeted feminists (Carroll 1984): feminists in their office, they mostly use non-feminist frames to speak to power-holders.
