The book explores the intellectual history of Bulgaria between the 1960s and the 1980s at the intersections of the country's social and political history. Based on case studies, the research delves into three areas: the control and pressure mechanisms used on science and the university; the clash of ideas while performing the formal and hidden functions of academia in a communist regime setting; the processes whereby research and academia acquire a relative autonomy and alternative academic communities are being formed amidst the eroding ideological legitimacy of the regime.

Centred on the concept of the "incident", this setup allowed us to eschew the narratives around the role of the dissidents or "freedom as a gift" and interpret society's transformation as the outcome of intersecting and overlaying sectoral events, which gathered strength down the years and lay the ground for the eruption labelled here as the "Big Event of 1989".