The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has a long, rich and difficult history. During the Soviet-style socialism, the BAS grew as a leading scientific center for fundamental and applied knowledge, which since the 1970s has also been preparing highly qualified specialists in integration with Sofia University. The price of the privileged position is the political and ideological dictate. But despite it, the Academy participated in the accelerated industrial and modernization development of the country in the second half of the 20th century and made significant contributions to a number of branches of scientific, technical and technological progress. After the end of the communist regime, the BAS experienced a difficult adaptation to the new conditions of globalization and commercialization of the scientific sphere, reformed and democratized. It lost its privileged position, but retained leading positions in doing science in Bulgaria. Renewed and stabilized as a combination of a national scientific center and a club of elite scientists, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is an active participant in the European Scientific Area, which contributes to the transformation of Bulgarian society into a knowledge society, and the Bulgarian people into a spiritualized member of the European family.