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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Dr. Miliyana Kaymakamova about Bulgarian history and role Politics played in different periods of it. There is one question to be answered and it is: How to make history "interesting" in suited in the modern society?
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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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Training and qualification of primary school teachers after the liberation is implemented on the basis of curricula and programs that are accepted by Ministry of Education and are obligatory. In them a content component in each subject, such as general professional teacher training is carried out in two directions – theoretical and practical. This is according with the European practice and especially with so called herbartianism – model. Even though applied in part, because it is consistent with conditions in Bulgaria, he played a positive role in the overall organization and systematization of pedagogical training and qualification of teachers in Bulgaria in the period after the Liberation.
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The article comments on legislative initiatives of the Cabinet of Alexander Stamboliiski, which aim to alleviate the material status of teachers and to provide more funds for the construction of new school buildings. And all this against the backdrop of economic collapse, which relegated the country after three wars, the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Neuilly and huge casualties given in hostilities.
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It is widely held view in the waqf studies that waqf institutions could not maintain their urban properties nor increase their rental income in line with price increases due to structural impairment and managerial rigidity. I argue in this paper that imperial waqfs did have ways of adapting and increasing their rent income. However, economic and commercial developments, disasters, external and coercive factors constricting the financial capacity of waqfs led to the loss of urban properties and income. Nevertheless, they devised the doublerenting method which enabled them to re-build and repair, thus maintaining the properties and creating further funds. Thus, the imperial waqfs coped with difficulties in the upkeep of properties and sustained their urban income well into to the Late Ottoman period. From the mid-19th century onwards, new institutions and regulations created impediments for waqfs; however, many imperial waqfs retained their properties into the twentieth century.
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The article analyzes the figure of Ivan Borimechkata (The Bear-Fighter) – one of the most famous heroes of April 1876 uprising – from the viewpoint of its hyposthases: as a literary character that gained popularity with Ivan Vazov’s novel “Pod Igoto“ [“Under the Yoke“]; as a historical personality with a concrete biography on whose basis Vazov created his literary character; as a mythical figure that found various representations in the national and local memory, in art, public discussions, etc.Analyzing comparatively diverse folklore and historical sources about Borimechkata, the article traces the processes of taking the concrete personality out of historical anonymity and turning it into a hero and a kind of myth. In the course of these processes, the historical indicators about the martyrdom of Ivan Borimechkata appear silenced by the voice of the heroic memories about him – ones created and affirmed through the character’s interpretation in literature, monumental representations,visual arts, and cinema. The article shows how the novel “Under the Yoke“ testifies not only of Vazov’s return to the “idealized epoch“ of the April 1876 uprising, with its ideas and heroes, but was also a powerful instrument in coining heroic characters and narratives connected with that time.
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The preservation of the memory for the past is part of the system that forms identity.“The sites of memory“ (after Pierre Nora), which surpass the frames of the physical space of the event and also include the characters-participants and the event itself as a phenomenon, are building a symbolic construct, which is often comprehended bylocal communities as heritage. The present research examines the development and transformation of places of national memory in Bulgaria. Case-study of the report is the “Monuments“ Park of the town of Svishtov in Northern Bulgaria – the original site of the landing of Russian troops in 1877, the beginning of the Liberation War. Duringits 140 years of history, the “Tekir-dere / the Monuments“ area witnesses three stages of development. In the initial years following the Liberation the area is affirmed as a site for commemoration and homage to the bravery of the Russian soldiers. OnБългарска етнология, бр. 1 (2018) / 91occasion of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the war, the narrative was expanded with the presentation of the Bulgarian volunteer troops in the process of achieving Freedom. In the beginning of the 21st c. the process of “acquiring“ the historical territory continues by introducing the revolutionary Filip Totyu and his detachment in 1867. With the expansion of the urban territory, the space also acquires the functions of a town park. Thus, despite the physical distance from the settlement,the area has turned nowadays into a place for relaxation and walk for the citizens of Svishtov, which is assisted by the activities for the socialization of the park.
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The article discusses the weapons that are preserved until today in Bulgarian museums of the revolutionaries who participated in the struggles for political independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1867–1878. On the basis of observations made within the project “Traces of the Heroic Time,“ as well as of the experience with exhibitions dedicated to this topic, the article makes an overview of the weapons in Bulgarian museums that had belonged to participants in the national liberation struggles – of Georgi Rakovski, Vassil Levski, of the voevods Hadzhi Dimitar Assenov and Stefan Karadza, of Panayot Volov, of Petrana Obretenova, Rayna Popgeorguieva, etc.Raising the issues about the identification of the revolutionaries’ weapons and the interpretation of the facts around them, the author points out that these important artifacts for the construction of historical memory are insufficiently studied in Bulgaria. The article argues that – as materialized history, these weapons facilitate the heroization of the nationally important personalities. Regardless if being truly authentic or not, weapons – similarly to myths, are an important resource for construing the heroism of the national consolidation processes and for the creation and maintenance of the “big historical narratives.“
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This article presents the points of view from which interreligious relations in the Ottoman world have been approached in academic historiography, the frames of interpretation and concepts that have been used, and the critical reassessments and revisions that are currently underway. Conceptions about the position of the non-Muslims and the nature and forms of interreligious relations in the Ottoman Empire have changed perceptively over the last half century. The mosaic world of subjugated nations and self-governed religious communities (millets) that lived parallel and distinct lives gave its place, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, to the plural society of extensive interreligious interaction at individual or communal level. In tandem came the shift from an emphasis on the oppression of the non-Muslims to that on toleration. We are now in a new phase of revision which focuses on the forms, extent and limits of toleration and intercommunal interaction, and pays close attention to change over time.
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The present work is an attempt to broaden the biography of the autonomous individual. Contrary to the conception of the inborn sociality of a person that deprives him of his uniqueness and refuted by various manifestations of mental disorders, the idea of an individual way of life could explain some contradictions and paradoxes in his behavior. Being alone in nature and without physical contact with similar individuals, he had not only to develop and improve his sensitivity and the way of perceiving reality, but also to change the metabolism of his own organism. Losing instincts by changing connections with reality, he manages to turn objects into a source of information, providing him certain and safe means of survival. That information will became his personal environment unattainable for animals. An environment, which purpose is to function as an untouchable, invisible „territory“, i.e. as a consciousness.
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Under direct German influence, anti-Semitism and racism were imposed as a state ideology and policy in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War, and thousands of Jews became victims of that. The lack of political opposition in the country turns the Catholic Church in the only opponent and corrective of the Holocaust. Since it could not protect all Jews whose destiny was decided in Berlin, not in Zagreb, the only realistic program of action of the Catholic Church was to at least champion for the Jews of mixed marriages, those who had adopted Catholicism, the children, the elderly people and others. As a result, many were taken to Dalmatia (in the Italian occupation zone) or outside the country.
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The article summarizes the factors that influence the emergence and development of American Studies in the United States and Western Europe. The author identifies key trends and themes that shape the character of the scientific discipline on both sides of the Atlantic in the second half of the 20th century, and outlines current trends and directions of its development at the beginning of the 21st century.
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There is one group of findings, discovered at the shrine of St. Atanas in village Spanchevo that includes anthropomorphic and zoomorphic repre¬sents made of mix of dirt (soil) and stones, known under the general term “figurines“.Such represents are characteristic of the Eneolithic period in Macedo¬nia and in the wider Balkan area. Alongside their aesthetic role, they also had a more practical and protective one; they protected the area, people, crops, fertility and good hunt, or to be more precise, they protected the core values from any kind of “evil“.Their undisputed cult affiliation is already accepted in science. How¬ever, we use basic comparative examples in the interpretation of their in¬sufficiently defined role, and we add the observations made on the choice of material and embossed decoration as an addition while trying to recon¬struct their ritual and magical meaning and the definition of the role they had in the community.In this presentation we will focus on the material, iconography and symbolism that is transferred by the figurines, using more sophisticated comparative examples preserved up till nowadays in the cultural group of the Shopi and the region they inhabit. We provide religious and ritual manifestations characteristic of the Shopluk region, in addition to previously confirmed magical-religious function of the figurines, despite the obvious temporal and cultural diversity. These similarities enable com¬parison of beliefs, symbols and images in cultures, which although differ in time, have geographical overlap.
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If examined in detail – by means of archaeological excavations plus objective dating techniques – аt least 20 Islamic burials (direct task of ethnology and archeology) they will create a database. A database can serve as an additional heuristic tool in the field studies (reverse task of ethnology and archeology) that aim to clarify the various ethno-confes¬sional processes occurred during the last seven centuries when the Islam attended the Balkans.
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If we observe classical art of Ancient Greece, we should know surely that for their creator is not art, including for those who contemplate it. For them all it is cosmogonic expression of ideas. The proposed text presents the opportunity to recover cosmogonic notions of traditional, non-literary communities through the plastic expression. In this sense, for traditional culture from antiquity to today’s it is better not to talk about art, but for the visual expression. By means of the plastic language may be bound the cosmogonic thinking with living antiquity and/or with the relict reality, and even with all substantial sources. The plastic expression gives opportunity for the expression of the cosmological structure stored in ethnical culture. Cosmological structure does not allow fully understand while attempting to do so. This kind of expression announce possible cosmogonic model, which also directly formed social interactions. In any sense, the Cosmogonic model is also mythological but the mythology is ideological system, and even we can feel some synonymity between mythology and ideology. Therefore, in principle it is necessary to have two main object for the study of the non-literally reality – the songs and customary-ritual com¬plexes, but only in their unity. This unity is embodied in ritual perfor-mances, whose elements are liable to analyzed. Through that rather analyze we can observe and the social interac¬tions.
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The paper analyzes the symbolic layers in the major commemorative ceremony in Bulgaria – the roll-call. It is divided in two parts. The first one (Bulgarian Ethnology,2018, no. 1) interprets the symbolic actions comprising the basic tools for producing ceremonial meaning: saluting and rendering military honors, ritual silence and lack of action, battle cry, ceremonial mise-en-scène (monument, guards of honor, etc.) – these are recognized as specific devices for removing symbolically the border between the living and the dead, between heroes and descendants. The second part examines the ceremonial scenario as a prospectively unfolding narrative – each symbolic action is interpreted as a successive move in the overall plot. This approach acknowledges that the ceremony is made up of three parts: preparatory, commemorative, and triumphal,whereas the scenario as a whole embraces the following logic: listing and honoring the heroes in the commemorative part is succeeded by their posthumous enwreathing and symbolic immortalization as stars in the night sky through the use of fireworks.
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Integration process in the region of East Asia is a relatively new phenomenon in comparison with Europe or America. The idea for deepening East-Asian regional cooperation emerged during 50s and 60s of XX century. Nevertheless, East Asian countries were not ready to take steps in that direction yet. Although a few South East Asian countries managed to establish in 1967 first successfully operating regional organization – ASEAN, real attempts for deepening regionalism and integration, including East Asian countries, appeared after the end of the Cold War. This study aims to outline Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul’s basic views on development of East Asian integration and to analyze similarities and differences between them. The study also attempts to explain what really prevents East Asian countries to achieve comprehensive and effective integration of the region.
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The author examines the South Slavic Boarding School in the town of Nikolaev under the direction of the Bulgarian Todor Minkov and reveals its contribution for the education and shaping of the Bulgarian national elite in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. From a statistical and historical perspective, he has collected and summarized valuable data on the biography, study and future professional realization of dozens of Bulgarians, many of which joint the intellectual and political elite of free Bulgaria.
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A major objective of this article is to reveal the essence of the concept of Bulgaria’s healthcare policy in the period from 1879 to 1912. It is based on a detailed study of the debates accompanying the preparation, discussion and adoption of all laws related to healthcare in post-liberation Bulgaria. Their analysis makes it possible to conclude that the formation of the basic concept of this kind of policy began already with the establishment of the first governing structures in the territories liberated by the Russian troops. At its core were the aspirations of the authorities to regulate all the necessary care that the state had to take to improve the health and to reduce the mortality among the population. It was of decisive importance for the realization of this process and for the gradual increase of the life expectancy of the population inhabiting the country.
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