1962: ПАИСИЙ МЕЖДУ „ИНТЕРНАЦИОНАЛИЗМА“ И НАЦИОНАЛИЗМА
1962: PAISIUS BETWEEN ‘INTERNATIONALISM’ AND NATIONALISM

Summary/Abstract: The subject of this research is how the symbol Paisius was shaped between ‘proletarian internationalism’, ‘communist nationalism’, and a broad perception of nationalism inherited from a right-wing scholarly discourse between the two world wars. The analysis focuses on two anniversary books published within the context of the 1962 large-scale national celebration of the bicentenary of the writing of the Slav-Bulgarian History („История славянобългарска“). One book was written by the communist functionary Vladimir Topencharov, while the other was written by linguist Mikhail Arnaudov. Our attention centres on the different perceptions of the concept of ‘nationalism’ developed in the two anniversary editions. The many contexts in which Arnaudov places Paisius of Hilendar in the course of his long scholarly biography, with a view to the course of Bulgarian nationalism, against the backdrop of a lasting uncompromising attitude towards the communist imperatives for representing the ‘new Paisius’, present an interest as well.

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