What were the Origins of the Bulgarian Alphabet? Cultural Patterns and the Question of the Socialist Heritage
What were the Origins of the Bulgarian Alphabet? Cultural Patterns and the Question of the Socialist Heritage

Summary/Abstract: The paper addresses the question of the socialist heritage in scholarship with re-gard to the issue of the origins of the Old Bulgarian alphabet. The point of refer-ence is the process of generating memory about the event(s) and the discussion that took place in the Bulgarian academic community on the occasion of the anniver-sary of 1100 years of the Moravian Mission (1963). The aim of the analysis is not to re-evaluate the view that is well-established in Slavic studies, but to problematize the conditions of possibility for the alternative thesis, i.e. St. Cyril and Methodius invented it long before they went to Moravia and it was intended specifically for Bulgarians, which functions in Bulgarian cultural memory and textbooks up to present day. The research focus is on the scientific discourse on the subject and the role of both intellectuals and the long-lasting cultural patterns in the process of (re)creating notions that have been crucial for the national identity before and after the fall of the communist political regime.

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