Чудният свят на древните българи

Author(s): Rumen Daskalov / Language(s): Bulgarian

This is a book about the history and the origin of the Proto-Bulgarians and their way to the Balkans and it follows the concept for modern Proto-Bulgarian history. What can be called "modern" is the fact, that the sources on which this book is based are rather different from the well known and traditionally used Latin and Byzantine authors, but among the reviewed sources are Chinese, Indian, Arab, Armenian and other texts of different types ans genres. The author Rumen Daskalov is giving his own interpretations and the purpose of his analysis is to emphasize, summarize and promote the best accomplishments of the Bulgarian school of Proto-Bulgarian history.

Istorii venețiene

Author(s): Giovanni Giacomo Caroldo / Language(s): Romanian,Italian

Zid je mrtav, živeli zidovi

Author(s): / Language(s): Serbian

Collected papers by seventeen authors on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition to a foreword by the editor and the prologue (Vladimir Arsenijević, The Walls), thus volune contains the following texts: ”It All Began in Serbia”, ”Nenad Stefanov, ”Fobia of a German Europe – The Serbian Intellectuals and The Year 1989”, Katarina Luketić, ”The Past is our Future”, Vojin Dimitrijević, ”From a Drunkard and the Fence He is Clinging Unto to the last Valve on a Flute . The Human Rights in Serbia before and after 1989, Sabrina P. Ramet, ”The Yugoslav Crisis and the West. Avoiding Vietnam, They Stumbled into Abyssinia”, Ugo Vlaisavljević, ”From Berlin to Srajevo. Inner Borders and Outer Walla”, Jean -Arnault Derans ”From Gayimestan to Mirovac Wall. Kosovo 1989 – 2009Ć. Xavier Bougarel ” ‘The Revenge of the Village’, Between Sociological Reality and a Nationalist Myth” Žarko Paić, Melancholy and Revolution . Culture in the Post-Communist State of Siege”, Indiko Erdei, ” ‘It Takes Two to Tango’, Economy and the Idetity of the Serbs and the Slovenes in Post-Socialism”, Mikloš Biro, ”Communism has Fallen – Capitalism and Democracy are still on their Way. Svetlana Slapšak ”The Post’ War War of the Sexes. Misogyny, Feminist Gettoization and Responsibility Discourse in Post-Yugoslav Societies”, Vjekoslav Perica, ”The Twighlight of Panslavic Myths”, Miroslava Malešević, ” ‘Serbia is Stronger than Nokia’. Identity Politics in Post-Communist Serbia”, Eric Gordy, ”A Totally Personal Remembrance of Cold War, Yugoslavia, and Inexpensive (but good) Wine”, Mitja Velikonja, ”The Return of the Written Off. The Emancipatory Potential Of Yugonostalgia”.

La Serbie et le Mouvement National Bulgare

Author(s): Iv. Mich. Minčev / Language(s): French

published by: Librarie centrale des Nationalités, Lausanne

La Macédoine et la Renaissance Bulgare au XIXe Siècle

Author(s): Simeon Traychev Radev / Language(s): French

published by the Bulgarian Association of Researchers, Literates and Artists printed by the Press of the Royal Court, Sofia 1918 author's name in the French edition is written: "Radeff"

Карађорђе и Милош

Author(s): Dragana Antonijević / Language(s): Serbian

Tsarigrad/Istanbul and the Spatial Construction of Bulgarian National Identity in the Nineteenth Century

Author(s): Boyko Penchev / Language(s): English

The point of departure of the following paper is the question how and why Istanbul, or Tsarigrad, as Bulgarians used to call the capital of Ottoman Turkey in 19th century and later, has been inscribed in different spatial frameworks during the second half of 19th century. My interest is how representations of big cities, i.e. Tsarigrad/Istanbul, participate in the construction of a unifi ed national identity or, to put it another way, how the multiethnic city of convergent cultures has been appropriated in the imaginary geography of the diverging culture of nationalism.

The Close and the Distant Balkans. Building up Identities in the Context of Economic Development 1878-1912

Author(s): Roumiana Preshlenova / Language(s): English

Admittedly, collective identities are specific and complicated intellectual constructions. Apart from the obvious contemporary scientific controversies between the concepts of “the leading constructionist” Benedict Anderson and the critics of provable collective identities, an attempt will be made at retracing some aspects of collective identities in the Balkans associated with or expressed in relevant economic terms. Pride of place is accorded to the feelings of belonging both as a self-consciousness, self-determination, self-recognition and as mutual/reciprocal perception. The necessary admission of their multiple layers predetermines the acceptance of fl uctuating imaginary maps where frontiers could be optional. Identity as a specifi c sociological term will be used as a determinant toward neighbours, Europe as a whole, the Great Powers and other historical and political constituents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - a period of significant political and economic changes in the region’s life. Admittedly, all this relates more or less to the process of nation building. The study is focusing on contemporary uses of the Balkans before the Balkan wars, rather than on later political discourses and present-day scientifi c discussions on sense, essence and non-sense of the Balkan(s) as a construct .[...]

Tracing Back the Bulgarian Clerk: Public Images of the Profession (Late 19th – early 20th centuries)

Author(s): Galina Goncharova / Language(s): English

The traditional sociological notion of the role combines the presumption of rationality with the metaphor of theatrical performance. On the one hand, the role notion presupposes typization and instrumentality, or setting up and upholding certain normative prescriptions. On the other hand, it refers to a situation of communication and representation – assessment and orientation of your own acts in accordance with the “presence” of the others’ roles – that comes to the fore. As two ultimate explications of these two characteristics we can treat the ideal model of Webber of bureaucracy and the interactive symbolism of Goffman; and as an attempt to bridge them together we can view the definition of Berger and Luckmann.

Who Are The Bulgarians? „Race,“ science and politics in fin-de-siècle Bulgaria

Author(s): Stefan Detchev / Language(s): English

In national ideologies and definition of the nations, the issues of „race“ and ethnicity were in many cases central ones. In the 19th century the emerging national consciousness in many cases received rational shape through a scientific revolution. At that time nationalism was, in fact, the driving force behind „racial“ differentiation. In the scientific investigations one obvious area was that of „race,“ which often had political objectives as an attempt to assert the existence of a national identity based on innate „racial“ characteristics. As Barkan emphasizes, the intensification of national rivalry in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century stimulated pursuit of still greater „racial“ differentiation as a mode of justifying nationalism that was sanctioned by the growing repute of biology and evolutionary theory. Part of this process of constructing national ideologies in the 19th century was the search for racial antiquity, „ancestors“ and common descent. Special importance had been assigned to different branches of modern science where the idea of inherent difference found legitimacy, and „race“ was perceived primarily as a scientific concept.2 Inasmuch as national ideologies played a crucial role in the public political domain, the intersection between „race,“ „ancestors,“ ethnogenesis, science and politics was quite obvious.

BARBARIANS, CIVILIZED PEOPLE AND BULGARIANS. Definition of Identity in Textbooks and the Press (1830–1878)

Author(s): Dessislava Lilova / Language(s): English

Are Bulgarians barbarians or civilized? Answering this question consumed a considerable part of the intellectual energy of the Bulgarian elite in the 19th century. The dilemma was first put up for discussion at the beginning of the century and ever since then, each new generation has been joining a fresh round of the debate. Interest in the topic has been sufficiently lively to lend legitimacy to the "barbarism-civilization" taxonomy as the main framework within which the nation builds its identity. This research aims to explore the origins of this process. The analysis covers the period from the 1830s to the rise of the independent Bulgarian state in 1878. This is the chronological framework in which the intellectual elite imported and promoted the ideological grammar of modernity and the taxonomies of progress. The objective is to shed light on the history, mechanisms and results of their transfer.

THE PEOPLE INCORPORATED Constructions of the Nation in Transylvanian Romanian Liberalism, 1838–1848

Author(s): Kinga-Koretta Sata / Language(s): English

The existence of a specific Transylvanian Romanian liberalism, either in the sense of being a fully-fledged movement, or only a more or less clear-cut affective community of individual theorists and politicians, is not taken for granted by the national historiographies of 19th-century Transylvania, either Hungarian or Romanian. The theorists and activists that this paper groups under the heading of Transylvanian Romanian national liberals are most commonly described as members of the national movement in Transylvania, that is, the movement that fought for the emancipation of the Romanian people in Transylvania. It is the argument of this paper, however, that the identity politics devised by the theorists discussed cannot be understood without taking seriously their allegiance to the liberal project of modernity (and modernization) besides their commitment to the national cause. They themselves thought that the two projects, liberal modernization (and its economic corollary, capitalism) and national emancipation were not only reinforcing each other, but could not be conceived of separately. It is this apparently paradoxical concatenation of a progressive and a conservative idiom of political thought, liberalism and nationalism, that the present paper intends to describe through a reconstruction of the Transylvanian Romanian version of liberal identity-building, both political-institutional and cultural.

HISTORY AND CHARACTER Visions of National Peculiarity in the Romanian Political Discourse of the 19th century

Author(s): Balázs Trencsényi / Language(s): English

As in most European cases, some aspects of the Romanian discourse of national peculiarity can be traced back to the humanist genre of "Descripţia" of the land, narrating the origins and political history of the respective people, a genre which in the Danubian Principalities reached its climax in the works of the erudite Moldavian prince-scholar Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723).1 The works rooted in the humanist chorographical paradigm of course had a very different discursive function and referential basis than the characterological constructions underpinning the projects of modern nationhood and statebuilding, emerging from the late 18th century onwards, making "national individuality" a key argument of political self-legitimization. Some references to this national individuality can be identified in the political and cultural works of the Transylvanian Greek Catholic elite, which sought to anchor the historical-institutional identity of Transylvanian Romanians in a genealogical construction. They were stressing customs and behavior as the proof of continuity with the Roman colonists of Dacia and accidentally, even the concept of "character" surfaced in some of their writings. Simultaneously, the culturalgeographical literature stemming from the Danubian Principalities (often by travelers or cosmopolitan intellectuals, whose work can be related to more than one national tradition, such as the Greek Daniil Philippide or Dionisie Fotino, both of whom authored geographical descriptions of these lands, or the French Encyclopédiste, J. L. Carra) sought to put these polities on the map of Europe, making references to the customs of the inhabitants. Significantly, the concept of character was already able to become politicized in the late 18th century, as was the case with the reformist discourse of the Moldavian boyar Ionică Tăutul, who deplored the loss of patriotic identification and the growth of egoism on the part of the ruling elite.

Das Nationalitätenproblem. Eine politische Studie über die Polenfrage und die Zukunft Österreich-Ungarns

Author(s): Walther Schücking / Language(s): German

TEXT IS PRINTED IN GERMAN FRAKTURA, TO BE READ ONLY BY READERS BEING FAMILIAR WITH THIS FONT!! // Since 1931 until his death (1935) the author has been the first and only German judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague. // From his introduction: „The following study aims to put one of the most important questions of day-to-day politics in the light of science in a generally understandable form for a larger audience. The glaring light that falls on the aberrations of our reactionary nationalists will at first startle some patriotic readers. However, this reader should have long since become puzzled when he sees the French nationalists rightly portrayed in his "national” daily newspaper as a backward group and when he reads about the atrocities of the Union of Genuine Russian People. Isn't it just a gradual difference in injustice, based on the diversity of culture, between killing or expropriating political opponents? The following pages try to explain the effects of the nationalistic disease on us. May then the wonderful word from the Bible come true: "The truth will make you free".” // Booklet published in 1908 in Dresden by v. Zahn & Jaensch Publisher.

Срвија и Арванија. Један прилог критици завојевачке Политике Српске Буржоазије

Author(s): Dimitrije Tucović / Language(s): Serbian

La Question des Comitadjis en Serbie du Sud.

Author(s): Rudolphe Archibald Reiss / Language(s): French

Les Rapports Bulgaro-Serbes et la Question Macédonienne

Author(s): Nikola S. Deržavin / Language(s): French

The Macedonian question arose on the day when European diplomacy at the Congress of Berlin (1878) replaced Macedonia under the authority of the Sultan, which, by the Treaty of San Stefano, was included in the Bulgarian state. Since then much has been written on this question and on the dispute between Bulgarians and Serbs, the former wanting to maintain their national unity in the cultural field and pursuing the achievement of political unity and the Serbs seeking to expand at the expense of their neighbors from the east. (introduction by the translator)

La Macédoine et les réformes

Author(s): Petr D. Draganov / Language(s): French

Published in 1906 by Librairie Plon in Paris. // Authors preface: "This is the full story of Macedonia and the reforms over the past ten years: on the one hand, the suffering and heroic struggles of the Macedonian people; on the other hand, the desperate efforts of the Sultan to keep under the knife this people which his brothers of Bulgaria, Serbia, Rumania and Greece civilized by the schools, but which they are unable to deliver by arms, less for lack of a military power, which would induce the end of the Ottoman rule, than for lack of a diplomatic agreement, which would combine all the interests and all the efforts in the service of civilization and liberty."

Le Régime Serbe et la Lutte Révolutionnaire en Macédoine

Author(s): Kiril G. Părličev / Language(s): French

Published in 1917 by Pascalew Publisher in Sofia in the series „Bibliothèque des "Questions balkaniques", printed by the Royal Printing Press. // The author: A large number of scholars, travelers, geographers, ethnographers, historians and European publicists from both opposing camps have spoken out, during the last century and before the Balkan wars, on the ethnographic character of Macedonia. Almost all come to the conclusion that Macedonia is a country inhabited mainly by Bulgarians (in addition to Turks and Jews). The Ottoman Imperial Firman which sanctioned the restoration of the Bulgarian National Church, as well as international solemn acts, such as the Conference of Ambassadors in Constantinople, the Treaty of San Stefano and that of Berlin - confirmed this great truth. // Without dwelling on this question, we had to note this fact incidentally by exposing the factual situation, as it was under the Serbian regime and during the revolutionary struggle of the population in Macedonia during the period which embraces the end of the year 1912, when the Serbs had occupied the country, until the end of 1915, when the latter, having lost their former territory, had even had to abandon Macedonia. // Indeed, what did Macedonia represent when the Serbs, albeit for a period of three years, were the masters in this country?

Roumains et Hongrois. Prémisses Historiques

Author(s): C. Sassu / Language(s): French

The economic crises, political tensions and troubled situations which have afflicted humanity during these last two decades since 1918, would be due, to a large extent, to the layout of these borders considered as artificial, because of them, we would have abolished consolidated units. And the course of these borders would have been made by force and by surprise i by force, because we would have imposed by violence conditions impossible on an adversary without the right of reply or of explanation, and, by surprise, by deceiving good faith of certain statesmen completely ignorant of the real situation in these regions. // As the current border between Hungary and Romania is also disputed with a great deal of passion by this development, which seems to assume that continually repeated assertions end up being accepted as true, by the mere fact of their being uttered, this work is confined to the subject proposed and aims to explain, as far as possible, the real value of these statements. We hope that minds not blinded by passion and disinterested, will find it useful and opportune to know the real elements of a controversy so ostentatiously stirred, and presented as one of the great unresolved political problems of the present time. // Published in 1940 by Editions „Cugetarea—P. Georgescu-Delafras, Bucharest