"You can buy almost anything with potatoes": An examination of barter during economic crisis in Bulgaria

This article investigates bartering practices in rural Bulgaria during 1997 , an exceptionally bad year in the nation's economy. First, it describes th e types of barter transactions observed in terms of participant identities, the goods and services exchanged, their sources, and the circumstances of the transactions. Second, it considers the extent to which these exchanges were the result of near hyperinflation and economic chaos early in 1997. Al ternative explanations view barter as part of a longer-term social and hist orical context or as a function of general postsocialist economic condition s. Thus, barter may be one solution to some of the problems of a money-base d economy under conditions of economic restructuring. The article also cons iders barter's implications for understandings of life in postsocialist Bul garia more generally.