The main task of the study is to reconstruct the evolution of the agrarian cooperative sector in Bulgaria in the years of communism (1944-1989) from the standpoint of a long-term historical perspective and as a result of the accumulation of two leading institutional transmission mechanisms. The first institutional mechanism is associated with the available institutional inertia being the result of Bulgaria’s capitalist past (kind of path dependence), where the cooperative sector and social forms, deeply embedded and rooted among Bulgarians, were put under the government control. The second institutional factor, which determined the image of the cooperative model in Bulgaria under communism, was an external one and was associated with the transfer of the Soviet cooperative agrarian model. Under the communist ideology, the cooperatives were devoid of their original character and were subordinated to the state planned economy.