Das Projekt und der Skandal „Batak“
The “Batak” Project and Scandal

Summary/Abstract: “Batak as a Bulgarian lieu de mémoire” was a relatively modest research project aimed at explaining how and why the village of Batak became the most important symbol for the massacres committed by “the Turks” in 1876. In late April 2007, the project suddenly became extremely infamous because it was presented as a denial of the Batak massacre as such. The present article is a critical overview of the debates among Bulgarian historians at that time, which supported these accusations that in fact were tangential to the project itself. Furthermore, the article examines the main hypotheses of the original project, taking into account all relevant objections against it. The author claims that, although several of the project’s initial hypotheses did not hold, it did contribute to a better understanding of the Bulgarian national memory of the Batak massacre.

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