Článek 12: tisk je svobodný v mezích zákona.“ Podoby cenzury v knižní kultuře vrcholných fází bulharského obrození
“Article 12: The Press is Free within the Limits of the Law.” The Shapes of Censorship in Book Culture during the Peak Phases of the Bulgarian National Revival

Summary/Abstract: The formation of modern ethnic and cultural identities in non-state communities is a process that, in addition to general assumptions, also required increased cultivation of the institutional backdrop of the given national movement. In the case of the Bulgarian national revival, one of the characteristic features is the systematic and long-term absence of domestic printing presses, which during almost the entire 19th century limited the development of book culture. A key factor in this cultural situation is not only the weak representation of cultural elites, but also the systematically enforced legislative measures by the Ottoman state, which prevented the establishment of a polygraphic center on Bulgarian territory. For this reason, the printing of nearly all production of Bulgarian books and periodicals was realized outside the Bulgarian lands until the late 1870s. The Tanzimat reforms also had a paradoxical effect, in the context of which the Turkish Press Act came into force. Based on it, the initial prerequisites were created for the gradually introduced censorship, which concerned the entire Ottoman Empire. As part of it, applications for the establishment of printing presses, which were systematically rejected for the Bulgarian lands, were also under thorough control. This paper therefore tries to present a basic typology of censorship measures, which it follows on two basic levels – in the aspects of the external and internal effects of the Ottoman power, at the same time pointing out the fact that the traditions of freedom of speech were not established either during the so-called national revival or after the introduction of the Ottoman constitution from 1876, or even after the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878.

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