Ethnographie et folklore du religieux en Bulgarie: «un tango de Lénine»?
Religious Themes in Bulgarian Ethnography and Folkloristics: a “tango of Lenin”?

Summary/Abstract: The recent boom of studies on religious themes in Bulgaria raises the question whether such studies were prohibited under the communist regime, as is usually assumed. The author’s answer is a quote from Lenin’s famous article “One step forwards, two backwards”. Two parallel fields of ethnological research developed in Bulgaria: ethnography and folkloristics. Both of them, however, have studied religious facts only among the Christian orthodox peasant population, and mainly in the context of festivals. The superstitious aspects of folk religion were always stressed and the role of the Orthodox Church was regularly downplayed. The predominant trend was historical: the search for deep pagan roots which, depending on political conjuncture, could be ascribed to Thracian, Proto-Bulgarian or Slavic paganism. The focus of ethnographic and folkloristic research was on the cult of saints as an important expression of “popular mythology”. A lot of data from the 19th century was used, supplemented with superficial field observations; the performers’ explanations were accepted without question and interpretation. The old theory of saints as the successors of former pagan gods was never put in question. This allowed subtle accomodations to the dominant ideology of the communist state which was, in fact, nationalism much more than Marxism-Leninism.

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