‘Ode to totalitarianism’, or, does the information society have a chance in Bulgaria?

This article analyses the paradox that the information revolution was one of the favourite ideas of the Bulgarian state over the last years of communist rule, and it was ‘discarded’ by the country's young democracy. The first part of the article is retrospective and considers informatization à la Bulgare and marks its specificities in comparison to the developed countries. The problems are discussed of the place of informatization in the ideological arsenal of the communist state, the causes hampering the implementation of the goals that the state had set itself. The second, prognostic, part presents two scenarios for the development of informatization in the transition period to democracy. The problems are analysed of the relative weight of the individual agents of high-technology development, of its specificities under a strong state power and of the role of the social sciences in elaborating social alternatives. In conclusion arguments are given for the answer to the question posed in the title.