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The Nation as an Imagined State

Summary/Abstract: The paper argues that Benedict Anderson’s defi nition of the nation as an imagined community does not work for the contemporary Bulgarian society. Bulgarian citizens have a strong national identity, which is alien to the nation state. On the basis of the analysis of different research data (research on the most important topoi of memory of the Bulgarian citizens; focus group discussions with history teachers), the author defends the thesis that the national identity of the ethnic Bulgarian is based on the imagining of an abstract Bulgarian state, resembling the strongest periods of Bulgarian statehood in the Middle Ages as well as the dreamed one after Bulgarian liberation from Ottoman rule. This national identity is compensatory, it expresses longing for strong statehood with a strong leader, and imagines an abstract territoriality with no fixed boundaries. Being a “citizen” of this imagined state alienates people from civic participation here and now, and strengthens their nihilism to the present-day state institutions.

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