ENTRE LE PARADIS ET L’ENFER : L’HISTOIRE, BALTCHIK ET LA DOBROUDJA MISES AU POINT
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL: HISTORY, BALCHIK AND DOBRUJA IN FOCUS

Summary/Abstract: Why and how the seaside town Balchik (Bulgarian until 1913 and after 1940, but Romanian in-between) converts in „the little paradise of Greater Romania“, whose reminiscences today attract many tourists and create a special research interest? The responses of the famous in Romania and abroad historian Lucian Boia in his eponymous book have occasion to go back to the Dobrudja topic in the Bulgarian- Romanian relations. The focus in this article is the author‘s and national specifics in the historiographical interpretations of the history of Balchik and the land between Danube and Black sea. After reviewing the Boia’s positions as historian and the reactions they evoked, in the article are presented sequentially his version about the real and imaginary Romanian Balchik, a critical look on the deficits in Dobrudja context of the book, the different accents on the same topic in Bulgarian bibliography. Unlike the mostly onedimensional “national” representation of Dobrudja history in the period 1878 – 1940, it actually took place, metaphorically speaking, mostly in the areas between heaven and hell. A professional duty of the historians in Romania and Bulgaria today remains overcoming the unipolar interpretations of the history of disputed region and thebilateral relations.

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