Историци, жертви, кодификации
Historians, Victims, Codifications

Summary/Abstract: The text builds upon a question asked by Kristina Popova with regard to the post-1989 wave of memoirs (‘Тhis is how some people started to speak in the language of memory who used to speak in the language of power before. But is the voice not just the same?). The focus here, however, is only on the narratives of memory experts, historians and other researchers of the ‘totalitarianisms of the 20th century’. Describing several minor occurrences within the debate on the ‘70th anniversary of the salvation of Jews in Bulgaria’, the author raises the question of the causes of the rise of ‘memory’ (an amorphous, rather than analytic, category which the author strives to deconstruct, because ‘memory’ – just as ‘nostalgia’ – explains nothing, it itself must be explained). The author is interested in the problem of the autonomy of historical knowledge (incl. the expanding memory studies) and of the specifics of the historical studies in the times of ‘denationalization of history’ and ‘deinstitutionalization of history’. The analysis reveals an unexpected and completely new consensus in the official public space on the issue of the responsibility of the Bulgarian state for the deportation of Jews from Aegean Thrace and Vardar Macedonia – a nationalist and populist consensus visible not only in the mass nationalist mobilization (in response to the Macedonian interpretation of the Bulgarian occupation and to the supranational pressure to take responsibility for the deportations. This is how one can see the symptoms of a ‘new regime of writing history’, of the offer ofhistorical expert knowledge and of ‘memory politics’.

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