Отхвърлени знания. Представяне на мюсюлманските малцинства в българските учебници
Rejected Knowledge. Presentation of Muslim Minorities in the Bulgarian Textbooks

Summary/Abstract: The paper is focused on the representation – and the lack of representation – of the assimilation politics towards Muslim minorities in Communist Bulgaria. The major sources are threefold:1. Contemporary textbooks. 2. Additional educational materials. 3. Personal accounts (oral history interviews). The analysis of several textbooks, published in 2019 shows that the sequence of totalitarian politics aiming at the gradual assimilation of Muslim minorities in Bulgaria are lacking. There is no mentioning of the forceful renaming of Pomaks, Roma and Tatars that took place between 1960s and 1970s. The only assimilation process that is mentioned – in quite different ways – in the textbooks, is the cynically called “Regenerative Process” that was initiated in 1984 and had its culmination with the forceful exodus of 350000 Turks in 1989. It is inexplicable why the authors totally dismissed the long history of the process of assimilation of the diverse Muslim minorities, especially after the appearance of a number of very influential historiographical researches on the topic. In addition, there are unique memoirs and oral history interviews, published by historians and anthropologists working on the field for decades, that have been offered to the Ministry of Education to be accepted and recommended as additional teaching materials on this unknown and marginalized topic.Still today the way the historical knowledge about the mentioned long and convulcated process of assimilation of the Muslims in Bulgaria is far away of real adequate public presentation, not to mention the judicial condemnation of it.

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