Let us ponder the 1980s, geopolitically, economically, and thermodynamically. Ronald Reagan had called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in 1983, though it was an empire so decayed, we would later discover, it barely appeared scary enough to justify another year’s increase to the defense budget. It was a time that would later be called “the height of the Cold War.” The Soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan, the US was arming the Taliban, and Manhattan, where I lived and worked then, was awash in cocaine and disco. Artists went sour and turned on their patrons. It was the zeitgeist, they said. “I’d sell them shit if I could,” said Andy Warhol, whose gnostic snarl recalls us to the point: Soviet Russia and the Eastern Bloc nations were widely perceived as the great counter system to imperial capitalism, and as Uncle Sam’s rival for the hearts and minds of the third world.  This is all by way of setting the stage for a personal account of my visit to Bulgaria at the height of the Cold …