Религиозно-митологичната матрица на балканския национализъм: политическа употреба
Religious-Mythological Matrix of the Balkan Nationalism: the Political Use

Summary/Abstract: The force, energy, and scale of the mythological idea of God’s elect people and its unique mission depend on the environment, on the “enemy” that the idea confronts. In the history of the independent national Balkan states (in the 19th and 20th centuries), the periods of good neighbour relations often changed with rivalry - the mega-myth of God’s elect people was broken up into parts to the myths of the “bad other” in the Balkans as opposed to “us, the good ones”; the myth of Macedonia, which has different meanings for Bulgarians and Serbs; the myth of the true faith, of “authentic” Orthodoxy; the myth of the nation that created the Slavonic language, etc. In the present time the myths are entirely under the control and responsibility of the political elite and media. Proof of this is the variety of approaches and usage of each of the above-mentioned myths under the various political regimes in the different Balkan countries. During the totalitarian period most of these myths lost the official support, but survived. They have obviously not lost their vitality and unifying potential, unfortunately used in the recent years at the service of mutual hate.

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