Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the troubled trajectory of a failed Romanian-Bulgarian Cold War project, a joint hydropower plant on the Danube's lower course. It investigates why the project failed and what this failure can reveal about the relationship between communism and environmental management.

Paper long abstract:

In April 1978, the president of the Socialist Republic of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and the General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Todor Zhivkov, symbolically laid the first stone of a new hydropower plant on the lower course of the Danube, between the cities of Turnu Măgurele (Romania), and Nikopol (Bulgaria). Ceaușescu hailed the new plant as a symbol of the unshakable friendship between the two countries. Despite the impressive premises, however, the project never saw the light of day. Bucharest and Sofia could not find common ground not only on the features of the whole infrastructure but also on the overall management of the river. Moreover, in Bulgaria, the exploitation of the Danube for energetic purposes stirred the harsh opposition of various actors, worried about the effects of the plant on the river. Amid growing skepticism, the project was progressively abandoned in the late 1980s. By tracing the troubled trajectory of the Turnu Măgurele-Nikopol hydropower plant, the proposed paper pursues two major objectives: 1. analyse how two communist states attempted to manage and transform jointly common natural resources, and why these attempts ultimately failed; 2. Highlight how competing visions of environmental management competed not only internationally but also at the national level.