Exposing Bulgarian Myths and Lies

[julie]

If the Bulgarian authorities supported freedom of association for the Macedonian minority in Pirinska Makedonia, why the hell did they turn Todor Petrov away a few months ago with priests for a sluzhba memorial for our heroes??
A load of propaganda bullshit

[Onur]

Could this be finaly forcing Bulgaria to admit that there is a Macedonian minority.

I dont think so. Bulgarians fired several Bulgarian statistical institute officials last month, just because they were going to add "Gagauz, Macedonians, Pomak" as an option for their next census. Now after this, there will only be "Bulgarian, Turkish and other" options.

[George S.]

well done tm it's great.

[Risto the Great]

If the Bulgarian authorities supported freedom of association for the Macedonian minority in Pirinska Makedonia, why the hell did they turn Todor Petrov away a few months ago with priests for a sluzhba memorial for our heroes??
A load of propaganda bullshit

Absolutely correct Julie.

[TrueMacedonian]

AMHRC Spring Review 2010 - http://macedonianhr.org.au/06AHMRCReview/

Bulgarian National Myths
By Ivan Hristovski and George Vlahov


The negative attitude the government in Sofia manifests towards its minorities, especially the Macedonians, appears to be symptomatic of a xenophobia permeating Bulgarian society in general: from the average citizen to the highest official state levels. Bulgaria has persistently refused to recognize the existence of Macedonians within its borders. This is in line with a popular view held by all segments of Bulgarian society; namely that there is no such thing as a Macedonian nation, and that those who call themselves Macedonians (in an ethnic sense, including the Macedonians in the Macedonian republic) are nothing other than ‘lost’ members of the Bulgarian nation, inhabiting a territory that was unlawfully taken from Bulgaria in 1878, via the Treaty of Berlin (Engstrom, 2009: 80). In order to begin to develop an understanding of why Bulgaria has a chauvinist policy towards Macedonians and the Macedonian state, it would be useful to examine aspects of the cultural history of what became Bulgaria in 1878, prior to its independence.

Myths, Terminologies and Interpretations

Bulgarians pride themselves on the idea that their national “revival” began not with a gun but with a book. The book that is seen in Bulgarian nationalist mythology as the fountainhead of that process, is a medieval Bulgarian history written in 1762 by Father Paisii (Slavo-Bulgarian History of the Bulgarian Peoples), a monk in the Hilendar monastery in Mount Athos, one of the centres of Eastern Orthodoxy (Dimitrov, 2001: 8). But Father Paisii’s work only began to be disseminated in the mid 19th century and it should also be noted that illiteracy, at this time, was extremely high in the regions of the Ottoman Empire that were eventually to constitute Bulgaria. Thus, to describe Father Paisii as “the father of Bulgarian nationalism” is to engage in myth-making (Karpat, 2002: 467).

It could be argued that this is hardly a malevolent myth; however there are more serious problems connected to the Father Paisii myth as presented by the modern Bulgarian nationalist interpretation of his writing. Bulgarian academics and numerous others seem to accept without question that Paisii wrote an ethno- nationalistic Bulgarian history book to counter the supposed de-nationalising of Bulgaria, via Hellenistic nationalism. But as Detrez explains, it is actually not possible to accept this claim at face value:

“According to Paissi the Greeks are ‘wise and sophisticated’ but also ‘sly and proud’, they ‘take away from the simple people and appropriate unfairly’. Moreover they treat the Bulgarians with contempt considering them ‘simple and stupid’….. Paissi characterizes the Bulgarians as ‘hospitable and charitable’; they are ‘simple diggers, ploughmen, shepherds, and simple artisans’. To substantiate this claim, he refers to God who “loves the simple and harmless ploughman and shepherds more’. The two groups Paissi opposes to each other are not necessarily ethnic communities, but seem to be social classes and even professional groups in the first place: the Greeks were merchants and city-dwellers (both categories were often called ‘Greek’ in Bulgarian popular speech), while the Bulgarians are peasants.” (Detrez, 2008: 41-42)

In the light of Detrez’s observations, one must acknowledge that the social phenomena in question had more to do with socio-economic status, rather than the modern ethnic/national realm.
Another aspect of the national mythology propagated in Bulgaria today is the belief that throughout the Ottoman era there was a systematic process of “ethnic Greek” clerics converting “ethnic Bulgarians” into “ethnic Greeks”. However, these attempts made by the Orthodox Greek speaking Patriarchate church to spread Greek literacy to the illiterate masses, were not generally about creating ethnic Greeks – rather, they were about attempting to advance Orthodoxy via a semi-Westernised education (Detrez, 2008: 42).
Moreover, many people make the assumption that the terms “Bulgarian”, “Greek”, “Turk”, “Vlach” etc. possessed the same meaning during the time of the Ottoman Empire as they do today. However, at the time in question, these present day ethno-national labels were socio-economic/cultural categories, that numerous anthropologists and sociologists like Loring Danforth have described as a “cultural division of labour” (Danforth, 1995: 59). Many scholars agree that during much of the Ottoman Era a “Greek” was a merchant, a city-dweller, or someone well to do (Roudometof, 2001: 48). A “Turk” was someone who may have been a government official (Brown, 2003: 59). A “Vlach” might denote someone who is a shepherd (Detrez, 2003: 43) and a “Bulgarian” might be someone who is a peasant or labourer (Mackridge, 2009: 56), or a villager (Detrez, 2003: 43). This is how Paisii perceived people in his time.
Even more revealing is the substantial incidence of “Bulgarian” peasants actually pursuing “Greekness”, because this would signify an advance in their class status and wealth. If a “Bulgarian” managed to rise above his occupational peasant-farmer class status and become a wealthy city dweller, it was not unusual for him to then begin referring to himself as a “Greek” and to send his children to a Greek speaking school for the purpose of giving them the literacy/education he never possessed. What took place was not a change of ethno-national status, but of class (see for example, Amfiteatrov, 1990: 51-52).
Sociologically grounded etymological investigations like these outline a picture of life in the Balkans, very different to the one presented by ultra-nationalistic Balkan historians. For our present purposes, it is worth singling out Bulgarian historians for utilising centuries old traveller’s chronicles with references to inhabitants of various parts of the Balkans, including Macedonia, as “Bulgarians”; in a manner that deliberately ignores the socio-economic contextual meaning of the usage of the term “Bulgarian” and instead, reprehensibly ascribes to it, modern ethno-national connotations. Such misinterpretations serve to provide support in Bulgaria, for the fictional notion that Bulgarians possess an unbroken ethno-national identity continuity, extending back from the present to early Medieval times. Moreover, these distortions are also enlisted in aid of the myth that Macedonians have consistently been an integral part of the Bulgarian ethnos (Balikci, 2008: 178). This helps to illustrate that “historiography in Bulgaria is constituted within the context of a broad national agenda.” (Elenkov & Koleva, 2003-4: 183) Or in our words, Bulgarian historiography has been imbued with a serious dose of fiction in the service of sinister political ambitions and at the expense of genuine scholarship.

The complexity of the terminological issues we have been discussing is increased when we note that the terms under investigation were also to become entangled with rival religious denominations later in the 19th century, with the formation in 1870 of the Bulgarian speaking/literate Orthodox Exarchate church as an opponent within the Ottoman empire, to the long standing Greek speaking/literate Orthodox Patriarchate church. Furthermore religion was often used to identify people in a manner differently from and in some contradiction to the socio-economic/cultural categories we have been outlining. Throughout the Ottoman period a “Turk”, in the context of a discussion with someone possessing a religious outlook on life (and such were very numerous within the Ottoman Empire, for reasons soon to be given), referred to anyone who was a Muslim (Detrez, 2003: 43) and a “Greek” or “Rum” could mean someone who was an Orthodox Christian regardless of their language or class (Danforth, 1995: 59). The historian R.W. Seton-Watson wrote of “the ignorant Bulgar peasant, when questioned as to his nationality, would answer with the misleading confession that he was a "Greek." (Seton-Watson, 1918: 78) Again, the deceptive nature of the “confession” is understood only when it is pointed out that the ethno-national meaning that is today associated with the label “Greek”, did not generally apply for much of the duration of the Ottoman Empire. As we have been arguing, generalised primary identity markers appear to have been mostly underpinned by class and religion. It is not surprising that the “Bulgarian” peasant (Bulgarian in a socio-economic occupational/class sense or perhaps one could describe him as a Bulgarian speaking peasant, but not as an ethnic Bulgarian in the modern sense – it seems clear enough that such a notion was not present in his mind and that is what matters) replied that he was “Greek” - for, by this he meant that he was an Orthodox Christian and it is a perfectly understandable attitude for a resident of an empire that placed Muslims above Christians in numerous practical ways. In addition, the Ottoman authorities usually officially referred to all Christians as “Rum” or “Greeks”. Moreover, it is this attitude which explains the failure of some uninformed 19th century travel writers to detect the presence of “Bulgarians” in regions that later became an integral part of the Bulgarian state. Thus the writings of western tourist authors need to be used with a considerable amount of care – something that Bulgarian and Balkan historians in general, appear to consistently lack (Seton-Watson, 1918: 78). Notably, Seton-Watson also condemns the fact that “In the West there grew up the highly inaccurate habit of referring to all branches of the Orthodox or Eastern Church as "the Greek Church," and more than one distinguished historian and traveller was guilty of the most ludicrous errors.” (Seton-Watson, 1918: 22)

We are now in a position to better understand that it is not really possible to speak of the Hellenization of Bulgarians in an ethnic/national sense. During much of the Ottoman period, the labels in question were mostly underpinned by class and religion. The modern ethno-national project, among other things, has in the Balkans, generally been about taking some of these pre-Modern identity markers and converting them into ethno-national markers – which entails the creation of a state inhabited by an entire population that is unified in a manner that more or less transcends the limits of class and religion; a mass social grouping which feels it possesses a very strong identity, in spite of its very high division of labour. These are disturbing revelations for ultra-nationalistic Bulgarian (see Pilbrow, 2005: 129) and other proponents of myths asserting an ancient to modern essentialised ethno-cultural identity continuity.

Conclusion

At this point, some would no doubt like to assert that all social groups possess, need and maintain foundation myths. There appears to be some truth to this claim and be that as it may, it is not acceptable to maintain narratives with aspects which breed arrogance, hatred and the negation of others – especially minorities. Of the themes specifically mentioned in Bulgarian history textbooks today, the “national unification of the Bulgarian areas” (meaning Macedonia and adjacent land) remains a dominant theme. For example, in the 1992 textbooks it was mentioned seventy times versus only thirty for the 1991 textbooks. Other themes include “Greece's denationalization policy,” mentioned twenty-four times in 1991 and twenty times in 1992 etc. (Roudometof, 2002: 14). All of this is directly linked to the often intentional misinterpretation of the pre-Modern identity marker, “Bulgarian”.
The result is a perpetuation of Bulgarian chauvinism towards Macedonians which manifests itself by constant declarations asserting the Macedonian language to be a “Bulgarian dialect”; by consistent references to Macedonian history as “Bulgarian history” and to Macedonia as chiefly a “Bulgarian land”. Moreover, Bulgaria, an EU member country (and this tells us much about the EU!), does not recognize the existence of its Macedonian minority and inflicts upon it, a variety of other human rights abuses. Members and supporters of OMO "Ilinden" - PIRIN (a Macedonian political party and human rights organization operating in Bulgaria – which the Bulgarian state unlawfully refuses to register) have been harassed, beaten, fined and even imprisoned simply for asserting their Macedonian identity. This has to stop and ultimately, only an educational/cultural ‘sea-change’, facilitated by the Bulgarian state and academics, is going to ensure a relatively prompt end to the ethnic chauvinism and the development of a lasting reconciliation.

　
Bibliography

Amfiteatrov, A. Land of Discord, Makedonska Kniga, Skopje, 1990 (Macedonian translation of the Russian original published in 1903).

Balikci, Asen. The ‘Bulgarian Ethnography’ of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: Some Critical Comments, in Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ilia Iliev, Slobodan Naumović(eds.) Studying Peoples in the People’s Democracies II, Lit Verlag, 2008.

Brown, Keith. The Past in Question, Princeton University Press, 2003.

Danforth, Loring. The Macedonian Conflict, Princeton University Press, 1995.


Detrez, Raymond. Relations between Greeks and Bulgarians in the Pre-Nationalist Era: The Gudilas in Plovdiv, in Dimitris Tziovas (ed.) Greece and the Balkans, Ashgate, 2003.

- Between the Ottoman Legacy and the Temptation of the West: Bulgarians coming to terms with the Greeks. In Raymond Detrez, Barbara Segaert (eds.)
Europe and the historical legacies in the Balkans, P.I.E. Peter Lang, Brussels, 2008.

Dimitrov, Vesselin. Bulgaria: the uneven transition, Routledge, 2001.

Elenkov, Ivan & Koleva, Daniela. Historiography in Bulgaria After the Fall of Communism: Did “The Change” Happen?, Historein Volume 4, 2003-4.
http://www.nnet.gr/historein/histore...n4-elenkov.pdf,

Engstrom, Jenny. Democratisation and the Prevention of Violent Conflict, Ashgate, 2009.

Karpat, Kemal. Studies on Ottoman social and political history: selected articles and essays, Brill, Netherlands, 2002.

Livanios, Dimitris. The Quest For Hellenism, The Historical Review, Vol.3, 2006.

Mackridge, Peter. Language and national identity in Greece, 1766-1976, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Pilbrow, Tim. “Europe” in Bulgarian Conceptions of Nationhood, in Hanna Schissler, Yasemin Nuhoğlu Soysal (eds.) The Nation, Europe, and the World: textbooks and curricula in transition, Berghahn Books, 2005.

Roudometof, Victor. Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy, Greenwood press, 2001.


- Collective memory, national identity, and ethnic conflict, Praeger Publishing, 2002.

Seton-Watson, R.W. The rise of nationality in the Balkans, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1918.
　
　

[Bill77]

This is a mighty fine piece of work By Ivan Hristovski and George Vlahov.
Definitely a keeper in my Favorites section.

Thanks for posting it TM.

Notably, Seton-Watson also condemns the fact that “In the West there grew up the highly inaccurate habit of referring to all branches of the Orthodox or Eastern Church as "the Greek Church," and more than one distinguished historian and traveller was guilty of the most ludicrous errors.” (Seton-Watson, 1918: 22)

Wow things have not changed much regarding highly inaccurate habits. Such as, today, the west still calls Eastern Orthodox Church's Easter as "Greek Easter"

Even more revealing is the substantial incidence of “Bulgarian” peasants actually pursuing “Greekness”, because this would signify an advance in their class status and wealth. If a “Bulgarian” managed to rise above his occupational peasant-farmer class status and become a wealthy city dweller, it was not unusual for him to then begin referring to himself as a “Greek” and to send his children to a Greek speaking school for the purpose of giving them the literacy/education he never possessed. What took place was not a change of ethno-national status, but of class (see for example, Amfiteatrov, 1990: 51-52).

Well i take back what i previously said. Things have changed.
I mean, with the current financial situation in Greece, how acurate would it be, today, to asociate the word "Greeks" with "Class status and wealth"

What Irony hey.

[TrueMacedonian]

No problem Bill. And thanks for the compliment. George really made this article come together the way it did

[George S.]

well done TM & George.

[Onur]

Who is Bulgarian? The Changing Definitions of Nationhood

The changes in the definitions of the Bulgarian nation generally corresponded and justified the strategies adopted by the Bulgarian state to deal with its Turkish minority, although on a number of occasions they acquired a force of their own. As was the case with most Eastern European nations, Bulgarian nationhood was constructed through conscious elite action in the 19th century.

The construction was based, however, on a number of primordial elements. In 1878-1944, the Bulgarian nation was generally identified in terms of language and religion, as encompassing the Orthodox Christian Slavic speaking inhabitants of Bulgaria.

The Turkish-speaking inhabitants were excluded, as were the Pomaks, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. At least on two occasions, in 1912-13, and again in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Pomaks were re-defined as ancestral Bulgarians who had been converted forcibly to Islam under the Ottoman empire and who therefore needed to be reclaimed back by the Bulgarian nation. State-sponsored efforts were made to change the Pomaks' Turkish-Arabic names to ethnic Bulgarian ones, using both coercion and inducements.The first, but not the second assimilation campaign also involved the conversion of the Pomaks to Eastern Orthodoxy.

The campaigns proved largely successful in the short term, at least in achieving their nominal objectives. Bulgaria's unstable domestic politics, however, made it difficult for the state to pursue a consistent policy, and both campaigns were reversed within a few years by governments seeking to gain the Muslims' votes. The Turkish-speaking population was regarded as descendants of colonists from Asia Minor, and was therefore seen as alien element which was not liable to assimilation. Whilst tolerated, the Turkish speakers were not seen as having a future in Bulgaria, and were expected sooner or later to emigrate to Turkey. (Stoianov, 1993: 204).

In their first decades in power, the communists denigrated the importance of ethnic differences, both on the Bulgarian and the Turkish side, and expected ethnicity to be submerged with the development of a socialist and then communist society. This made the issue of the origins of the Pomaks and the Turks almost irrelevant. The growing awareness of the importance of ethnic characteristics which emerged with the partial relaxation of the Stalinist system after 1956 and the increasing efforts of the communist leadership to legitimise its power at least partly in nationalistic terms, focused attention once again on the status of the Pomaks. They were redefined as ancestral Bulgarians and pressurised into adopting ethnic Bulgarian names.

The initial surge of party pressure was met with stiff resistance by the Pomaks. In 1964, for example, attempts to rename the Pomaks in the south-western region of Blagoevgrad bordering on Greece and Yugoslavia resulted in a virtual revolt in a number of villages. The Pomaks responded to the incursions of police and armed Bulgarian 'volunteers' into their villages by staging mass protests and in some cases, throwing the intruders out. The party leadership in Sofia responded to the protests with a mixture of threats and concessions. On one hand, the Pomaks were threatened that the army would be sent out against them and they would be crushed with tanks. On the other hand, the party leaders in Sofia claimed that their 'true' policy of voluntary renaming had been distorted by local officials in Blagoevgrad, and that the Pomaks could keep their names if they wished to do so (Trifonov, 1993: p. 219). However, this claim did not prove to hold true for future policy. In 1970, the 'renaming' was resumed, using more gradual means, and by 1980 the names of most Pomaks (some 200,000) had been changed. Encouraged by the success, in the beginning of the 1980s local party leaders began to trace the descendants of mixed marriages between the Pomaks and the Turkish-speaking Muslims. Since the two populations were highly intermingled, the scope of this operation grew steadily wider and it was expected to affect some 50,000 people by the end of December 1984 and twice that number by the following year. The elusive search for 'Bulgarian roots' was thus leading the party leaders deeper and deeper into the Turkish-speaking population (Asenov, 1996: 30-31; 70).

At the same time, in the late 1970s research in the Ottoman archives was persuading a significant number of Bulgarian historians that not only the Pomaks but also the majority of Turkish-speaking Muslims had descended from indigenous Bulgarian population converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule. The difference which could be observed between the two groups was explained by insisting that in the case of the Pomaks the assimilation into the ruling group had taken place only on the religious level, whilst the Turkish-speakers had gone further and adopted the language of their occupiers. (Petrov, 1987; Hristov, 1989; Dimitrov, 1992). These findings, which have been vigorously contested by other Bulgarian historians and by most of their Turkish colleagues (Eminov, 1997: 36-37), might have remained of purely academic interest, had not the communist party given its support to a policy of cultural revival in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.

The new policy was spearheaded by the daughter of the party leader, Liudmila Zhivkova, who became a member of the Politburo (the highest decision making organ of the communist party) in 1977 and was possibly groomed for succession. Zhivkova surrounded herself with intellectuals and began emphasizing the value and potential of Bulgarian culture. Zhivkova herself was remarkably open-minded, and saw Bulgaria's cultural revival in terms of the country restoring its broken links with world culture. The fact that she was interested in oriental religions would have made her especially reluctant to suppress what she would have perceived as a valuable aspect of Bulgaria's cultural diversity. Some of her associates, however, saw the revival as an opportunity to restore Bulgaria's cultural purity, or rather to create it because Bulgaria had never been culturally homogeneous. Zhivkova's early death in 1981 resulted in the submergence of the inclusive aspect of the cultural revival, and the ascendance of the narrow-minded nationalists. This made it possible for the theory of the Bulgarian origins of the Turkish minority to become accepted as official party policy. The theory was to provide some of the motivation and the bulk of the official justification for returning the 'prodigal' Turkish 'sons' to the Bulgarian fold (Dimitrov, 1992: 158).

03 March 2011

VESSELIN DIMITROV

http://www.balkanchronicle.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=890:who-is-bulgarian-the-changing-definitions-of-nationhood&catid=83:balkans&Itemid=460

[Risto the Great]

Nothing more than 19th century nationalism 100 years late.

[George S.]

Onur given that scenario what is going to happen to the notion of bulgaria when they reach 2050 when the gypsies will be a majority & they'll simply take over.

[TrueMacedonian]

Ever wondered when the term "Old Church Bulgarian" was invented? Ever wondered who invented such a term? Here's the German inventors of "Old Church Bulgarian";







I guess the Bulgarians have to thank the Russians for a country and the Germans for erroneous terminologies.

[Risto the Great]

Thanks TM.



I think it would have been worth pulling out the BRT (BIG RED TEXTA) to highlight the last note (note 5). So many name choices (Old Slavonic, Old Bulgarian, Old Serbian etc) .... when it is painfully obvious .... OLD MACEDONIAN.

[George S.]

Pretty good find on the slav history.

[Onur]

Refering old church slavonic as "old Bulgarian" is so absurd but ironically, this term is used by many. If OCS is "old Bulgarian" then how we should refer to the language of Asparuh, Kubrat and others, "older Bulgarian than the old Bulgarian"???!!! cuz it`s a fact that the Bulgarian elite and considerable part of their people wasnt speaking a slavic language b4 early 10th century.

So, if we consider that fact, OCS can only be their "new" language not the "old" one. But the ones who prefered to call OCS as old Bulgarian totally ignores their pre-christianity era, most likely they do that purposely.

Bulgarians didn't born with slavonic language but they have been assimilated with it and Bulgars had history b4 they migrated to the Balkans and adopted the slavonic tongue. The proof for this is the Volga Bulgars who still speaks their original Turkic language today, attested for more than millenia. There is a travelogue of an Arab embassador named Ibn Fadlan in Khazar empire, dated as early 10th century and he clearly states that people around Volga calling themselves as Bulgars and they are speaking Turkic just as the Khazar rulers. This Arab embassador is the one who converted volga Bulgar Khan and his family to islam.