Dr. Vladimir Kalaydzhiev or the Embodiment of Modernity

The text attempts an experimental “double reading” of a significant figure in the history of Bulgarian health care – Dr. Vladimir Kalaydzhiev, initiator and organiser of a large-scale public health care reform in Bulgaria in the 1960s. The authors' different approaches make it possible, on the one hand, to interpret the specifics of the health reform and the reasons for its (partial) repeal in the context of synchronous developments in Europe and controversial, on the other hand, to controversially offer a diachronic analysis with basic characteristics of the "Catholic West" and the "Orthodox socialist East".