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TOL’s regional news roundup: effective protests in Kyrgyzstan; intolerance in Poland; innovation in Estonia; WWII ceremonies pose RSVP conundrum; and Borissov’s castle in Spain.
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The text represents the first period (late 1960s to late 1980s) of the professional development of the historian Vladimir Migev, time when he specialized as a researcher of authoritarianism and authoritarian regime in Bulgaria. The article focuses on the conditions of scholarly work specific to those years (compulsory explanatory models and strict ideological control over interpretations) which left their mark on the concepts used by the historian and on his basic evaluations. At the same time, his contributions to the development of a number of major aspects of Bulgarian authoritarianism are shown.
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The article presents the views of Bulgarian economists about Bulgariaʼs place in the imagined world order and the international market after the Great War, formed before the national collapse. In parti-cular, it examines the opinions of the employees of a very specific structure at the Headquarters of the Acting Army – the Economic Research Section. They presented geo-economic reasons for establishing Bulgaria as a regional factor in Southeastern Europe, which they thought would save the country. The leading idea was that if this goal was not achieved, the Bulgarian national economy would simply not be “large enough, and therefore sustainable, to overcome the storms that the economic war of the future peace bears”. The Neuilly treaty, “legalizing” the Bulgarian national catastrophe with the “right” of power, proved in the long run the validity of this judgment.
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The article highlights issues related to the problems of studying the history of Eastern Europe, the definition of Slavic identity and the construction of national Slavic historical memory, which were discussed by domestic and foreign researchers in the framework of the First international St. Petersburg historical forum (October 29–November 3, 2019).
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The articles gathered in this issue of MemoScapes, titled Frames of Reference in Central Europe, and the Black Sea Region, in the Last Two Centuries, assess the importance of nationhood in constructing the social imaginary in the above mentioned regions. Furthermore, they emphasize the national myths, the building processes of national, local, and regional identities in the post-communist/post-soviet world as well as the role played by scholars and politicians, by mass-media and social media in forging new narratives on the past, present, and future. The role of minorities and diasporic communities in the national building processes in the region are also highlighted by a number of papers.
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Under the premise that language and script may constitute central elements in today’s nation building processes, this article argues that the Georgian alphabet holds a particularly important role in the articulation of a post-socialist identity for society as also for government foreign policy objectives in Georgia. By examining Batumi’s “Alphabetic Tower”, a 135m tall iron construction with the letters of the Georgian alphabet represented along a twisting double helix pattern, as well as the brand “Georgia. Made by Characters”, developed for Georgia’s status as guest of honour at the 2018 Frankfurt Book Fair, the paper demonstrates how internal nation building and external nation branding are intrinsically interlinked. Drawing on studies examining a linguistic turn in Georgian nationalism, I suggest that the script’s visual-iconographic rather than its phonographic dimension is used for intertwined identity politics and nation branding. The envisaged definition of Georgia as a nation of high and unique culture transcends the need for stabilizing new post-socialist national narratives from within. By defining itself as a nation based on cultural values, Georgia additionally attempts to position itself as culturally associated to Europe, thereby seeking to underscore the ambition of Euro-Atlantic integration.
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The article discusses a few controversial ideas about the ‘essence’ of the Bulgarian nation. The foundation of the autonomous Bulgarian principality (1878) arouse the controversy between the ‘ethnic’ and the ‘civic’ perspective on the Bulgarian nation. This controversy is still actual in the Bulgarian public debates and influences the Bulgarian policy toward ethnic minorities and specific groups, such as Pomaks (Bulgarian-speaking Muslims) and Gagauz (Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians) who did not ‘meet the standard’ for the ‘real’ Bulgarians.
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The Greeks of Tsalka is a sub-ethnic group, whose ancestors originated from the Pontus and Erzurum regions and lived for several centuries under the rule of the Ottomans. Therefore they absorbed cultural elements of many peoples of Asia Minor – Turks, Armenians, Persians, Assyrians, etc. That can be traced in their language, folklore, and rites. As a result of the Russian-Turkish wars, they were resettled to the territory of Georgia – to the Tsalka region. The migration to the territory of the Russian Empire was accomplished in several waves – after the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 until the end of the 19th century. At the time of the resettlement, most of them forget their native language and switched to Turkish.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in Georgia, the inter-ethnic issue became very acute. In conjunction with the economic crisis, the situation forced many Greeks to leave Tsalka. Currently, the Greeks of Tsalka have a little more than 50 thousand representatives, living mainly in Greece and in southern Russia. Those who moved to Greece almost immediately faced an identity crisis, as the Greek society did not welcome them well. As a result, many Greeks of Tsalka ceased to identify themselves as Greek and tried to forge new hypotheses about their origin.
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The influence of Polonization, Rusification and sovietization on the Belarusian people made Belarusians one of the least historical-conscious nations in Europe. However, an important reference frame could play a role in shaping a future Belarusian national identity: the Belarusian People's Republic, a political entity that existed for several months in 1918. In the recent years, a certain trend of "returning to the roots" can be observed, in which the symbolism related to the Belarusian People's Republic seems to enjoy a special place.
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Bogdan Filov (1883–1945) was a Bulgarian archeologist and politician, who studied in Freiburg, Germany. In 1914 he became professor in Sofia, in 1929 – member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In the years 1938–1940 he was Minister of Education, from 1940 till 1943 he was Prime Minister of Bulgaria. After the unexpected death of king Boris III Filov became one of the three members of the Bulgarian regency instead of Boris´ minor son Simeon. Because of the coalition with Germany during World War II Filov was overthrown in September 1944 after the invasion of Soviet troops and executed by a Popular Court of justice. The scientific researches of Bogdan Filiov in the fields of Bulgarian archeology and history of art were acknowledged not only in Bulgaria, but also in Germany by his election as a foreign member of the academies in Berlin, Göttingen and Munich.
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In this article I undertake a close reading of Ernst Jünger’s War Diary (1914-1918) as a founding text both of his following literary work and his rightwing political radicalization during the Weimar Republic. The representation of the war experience in the War Diary follows a pattern of detachment which relies on an implicit aesthetical perception. This pattern evolves to a literary form in Jünger’s Strom of Steel (1920) and his war books. The war experience of the young apolitical volunteer is subjected latter on to an ideological reshaping and rewriting in Jünger’s evolution to an emblematic figure of the so-called “conservative revolution”. This ideological reshaping configures an (rightwing) political subject who leans on the shining and blindness of the aesthetical perception. The article is a part of a larger comparative study confronting the key role played by the experience of World War I in the work of Ernst Jünger and the leftwing Bulgarian literary critic Ivan Meshekov.
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The current text examines the museum representations of Hadzhi Dimitar, Stefan Karadzha, Zahari Stoyanov and Panayot Hitov, whose life connects the areas of Ruse and Sliven. The research is based on observations over four house museums – “Hadzhi Dimitar” in Sliven, “Zahari Stoyanov” in Medven and in Ruse, and “Baba Tonka” in Ruse. These examples display ambiguous presentations of the heroes’ biographies, based on the availability or the absence of a memorial house to the character. The type of presentation is contextualized with the settlement’s history, which in this case appears as an environment for the “spiritual growth” of the hero. The absence of a memorial house leads to a fragmented presentation of the image, turning it into an addition to the main topic.
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Sharing heritage is an important process in society, where a narrative makes transmission and turns in a vehicle for the understanding of both past and present. The text presents the contemporary practices of object oriented museology. Using the exhibits with history in Russe Museum, an exposition and museum educational module are produced. On the basis of the principles of the co-participatory museum, a dialogical environment is built in which the artefacts are not only witnesses of time, but also an inspiration for creativity. Russe Museum explores the relationship between cultural heritage and local development with the participation of the Museum as an environment for communication between different social actors, local communities and shared knowledge. In this process object oriented museology gives the possibility to re-conceptualize the ways of change of the approaches connected to communication through heritage. In its core stays the active public, which is part of the local community.
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During the twentieth century, the male dance verbunk in the village of Kóny, initially performed in traditional lad societies as part of the local heritage, became a staged attraction. Between the two world wars, the Kóny verbunk was performed in the village as a representation practice of the lad societies and, as such, besides maintaining the group identity, served to indicate the spatial segregation and social differences within the local community. The decade after the Second World War brought the socio-economic transformation of local society in line with national processes. The relational network on which lad societies had been based was suppressed. In the first half of the 1950s, along with the persisting practice of the lad guilds, the verbunk became increasingly a staged spectacle for the community. At the same time, it should not be ignored that, under the supervision of the local authorities, the phenomenon shifted from the framework of church holidays to the field of political celebrations.
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In the focus of the present study is that part of the so-called Edirnes’s or ThracianGagauzes who in the period after the Balkan wars settled in the town of Yambol and whose new location fully corresponds to one of the characteristic features of these people (especially of the groups in the Balkans) – urban manners, clothing, way of life. Thus, it is particularly important to study, this time in the context of the national state, the place and role of the town with its specific environment as a factor in the formation and restructuring of the collective memory of the Gagauzes; in the development of their communal strategies for survival and adaptation; as well as in their relations with other ethnocultural groups in Yambol, the public and cultural institutions, etc. All this will be studied through several emblematic life stories. However, their representative character and, to some extent, their exclusiveness is not only due to their instructive and factological value. The process of search, registration and study of each case, as well as their interrelations, are also of significance.
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The article presents a case study of a particular part of the Bulgarian-North Macedonian border – the border regions of Petrich, Republic of Bulgaria, and Strumica, Republic of North Macedonia. The study is focused on the level of everyday experience. Its aim is to study how in their everyday life and transborder experience the people from the border regions adapt to the changing border regime and do this alter their“traditional” forms of contact. After the setting of a state/political border between the regions of Petrich and Strumica, the people adopt a pragmatic approach to this border and the life in the context of borderness. The pragmatism in the transborder contacts is not a particular form of relations rather one of their features which expends its range and significance in the course of time. The various layers of relations transform into tools for solving pragmatic issues in everyday life in the border regions, i.e. the pragmatisation turns into a peculiar form of adaptation to the border. At the same time, the pragmatic attitude towards the border rearranges to a certain extent the different layers of the traditional relations putting the family, kin, friend and cultural ties aside. Nevertheless, as long as they function as tools for solving pragmatic issues, they remain and revitalize.
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Celem artykułu jest wyjaśnienie przyczyn konfliktu jaki trwa w Burkina Fasood 2014 roku. Po wybuchu konfliktu zbrojnego w Mali w 2012 r., który był konsekwencją upadku reżimu Kadafiego i pomimo zaangażowania środowiska międzynarodowego w jego zakończenie, rozlewa się on na nowe tereny w Mali i poza jej granice. Od 2015 r. w Burkina Faso dramatycznie pogorszyła się sytuacja bezpieczeństwa, która w chwili obecnej wymyka się spod kontroli. Konflikt w Mali jest tylko jednym z powodów takiej sytuacji. Innymi elementami kształtującymi sytuację wewnętrzną są: odejście ze stanowiska byłego prezydenta Blaise Compaoré, działania lokalnej grupy zbrojnej Ansar ul Islam, tarcia pomiędzy różnymi grupami religijnymi i narodowościowymi oraz od lat nierozwiązane problemy ekonomiczne. Analizy zawarte w artykule wsparte są danymi dostępnymi w bieżących publikacjach wyspecjalizowanych portali internetowych, takich jak The African Center for Strategic Studies, International Crisis Group, Terrorism Monitor, Long War Journal i West African Papers.
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The article is dedicated to an episode of the cultural relations between Bulgaria and Poland immediately after the First World War. This was the time when their political and ruling elites realized that the two Slavic states would not receive the diplomatic support of the great powers and their neighbors to realize their national ideals. That was why they united around the concept of informal - scientific, personal and collective – contacts as a way to get to know each other and draw closer. This idea was carried out through the exchange of two delegations. On September 5, 1923, a Bulgarian cultural and educational group left Sofia for Poland. Among its members was Dr. Boris Vazov – chairman of „Slavyanska Beseda“, a prestigious journalist and public figure who was committed to sending daily articles covering the trip. In them he dwells on important events in Polish history, life, culture, economy and psychology of the Polish people, shares impressions of the patriotic feelings of Poles and their respect for the heroes who played an important role in national preservation.
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