1914 И КРАЯТ НА БЪЛГАРСКОТО ВЪЗРАЖДАНЕ:

Author(s): Plamen Antov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

This article, which may conventionally be classified under the genre philosophy of history, develops two metaphors of high symbolic value. The first is the year 1914, as the start of World War I, the third and last in a se-ries of wars at the start of the 20th century in which Bulgaria was involved. It led teleologically to the year 1919 (Neuilly) which marked the symbolic – therefore absolute – end of the Bulgarian National Revival. The second metaphor is the figure of Yavorov in its his mytho-biographical projection – the poet’s suicide in October 1914 can be seen as a collective metaphor, as a metaphor of a collective ontological loss; but also as an attainment of a qualitatively new state; as the loss of the Revival’s monolithic national aspect and the acquiring of the tragic experience of Modernity and its social fragmentariness.

Действителната свобода като възможна чрез Другия

Author(s): Iliya Todorov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 5/2016

The article aims to reveal the crucial relationship between the concept of freedom and the figure of the Other (another conscious being) as enshrined in the philosophical reflections of Friedrich Schelling and Jean-Paul Sartre. In studies on the two philosophers conducted in the tradition of conceptual clarification of the subject–object relationship, in the light of transcendental idealism philosophy, we find symptomatic similarities used as keys to understanding the problem of freedom defined in the phenomenological perspective.

Васил Хаджистоянов-Берон и българският образователен идеал

Author(s): Nina Ivanova Dimitrova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 3/2018

This essay attempts to present Vasil Hadjistoyanov-Beron’s views on education in the context of the Bulgarian national revival. Vasil Beron (1804–1909) was a nephew of Petar Beron, the greatest Bulgarian scientist of his time; unlike his uncle, he was closely associated with the Bulgarian enlightenment. Vasil Beron was very much concerned with the balance between natural sciences and the humanities as components of the education of Bulgarians in the second half of the 19th century. As a doctor of medicine and author of works in the field of history of sciences, he insisted that philology, logic, psychology, theology, history, etc., should be taught in Bulgarian schools. The article draws a parallel between his views on the educational system in Bulgaria and public debates on the same topic that went on in the interwar period.

Мишел Фуко и западната медицина

Author(s): Dmitry Mikhel / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The article analyzes Michel Foucault’s philosophical ideas on Western medicine and delves into three main insights that the French philosopher developed to expose the presence of power behind the veil of the conventional experience of medicine. These insights probe the power-disciplining function of psychiatry, the administra¬tive function of medical institutions, and the role of social medicine in the adminis¬trative and political system of Western society. Foucault arrived at these views by way of his intense interest in three elements of the medical system that arose almost simultaneously at the end of the 18th century: psychiatry as “medicine for mental illness”, the hospital as the first and most well-known type of medical institution, and social medicine as a type of medical knowledge focused more on the protection of society and far less on caring for the individual. All the issues Foucault wrote about stemmed from his personal and professional sensitivity to the problems of power and were a part of the “medical turn” in the social and human sciences that occurred in the West in the 1960s and 1970s and led to the emergence of medical humanities. The article argues that Foucault’s histories of the power of medical knowledge were philosophical histories of Western medicine. Foucault always used facts, dates, and names in an attempt to identify some of the general tendencies and patterns in the development of Western medicine and to reveal usually undisclosed mechanisms for managing individuals and populations. Those mechanisms underlie the practice of providing assistance, be it the “moral treatment” practiced by psychiatrists before the advent of effective medication, or treating patients as “clinical cases” in hospitals, or hospitalization campaigns that were considered an effective “technological safe-guard ” in the 18th and most of the 19th century.

Фигурата на гения: варианти на граничност

Author(s): Sylvia Borissova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2020

The word ‘genius’ has a particularly strong aura in the so-called ‘star age of geniuses’ (I. Passy) – during those memorable for modern Western aesthetics three decades from the late eighteenth – early nineteenth century, when in the face of Kant and the early Romanticists both an unprecedented flowering of the creative individuality with its endless labyrinth of inner worlds and attention to it were observed. Over time, the word ‘genius’ enters everyday language, which enriches the layers of its meaning. The pledge of this article is to typologize the basic nuances of the philosophical-aesthetic concept of genius, which means: to outline the main types of borderness of genius as an aesthetic figure.

“Capital of Despair”. Holodomor Memory and Political Conflicts in Kharkiv after the Orange Revolution

Author(s): Tatiana Zhurzhenko / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2011

The Great Famine of 1932–33, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor and silenced for decades by the Soviet regime, holds a special place in national memory. It was after the Orange Revolution that the Holodomor became the core of a new identity politics, which conceptualized the Ukrainian nation as a “postgenocide” community, a collective victim of the Communist regime. But the official interpretation of the Famine as a genocide met ambivalent responses in the regions. While formally complying with the official political line, the regional political elites in Eastern and Southern Ukraine often refused to accept the official interpretation of history and sabotaged orders coming from Kyiv. The present article focuses on the official commemoration of the seventyfifth anniversary of the Holodomor in Kharkiv, the former capital of Soviet Ukraine and epicenter of the famine. The “memory wars” in Kharkiv during 2006 to 2009 have revealed more than just tensions between the center promoting a new national identity and a reluctant “Sovietized” region adhering to its political mentality and commemorative culture. In fact, the official narrative of the Holodomor as a genocide and the corresponding memory regime have been contested, renegotiated, and modified on the regional level, through the conflicts and the bargaining of the local political actors. The borderland identity of Kharkiv, its geographic proximity to Russia, added an international dimension to the local memory wars as the Holodomor issue became a stumbling block in Ukrainian-Russian relations.

OPERA AND MODERNIZATION: THE CASE OF BULGARIA

Author(s): Alexandra Milanova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Opera music may be much more central to our understanding of urban modernity than is habitually thought. Since its beginnings in Bulgaria around 1890, opera has had a strong relationship with urban space and the public sphere. Most opera houses were built in urban centers and came to be seen both as secular temples and sites of entertainment, in which the appreciation of high art coexisted with conviviality. This paper aims at demonstrating that development of opera art is inextricably linked to the process of modernization of Bulgarian cities. By addressing the impact of this classical art on urbanity, the paper will also attempt to show how opera houses have been among important in towns‘ transformations and alteration from the late 19th to the second half of the 20th c. By studying the inception and development of opera theaters in particular Bulgarian cities and through its focus on the liaison between music and localities, this paper should add to the vast body of scholarship in social and cultural history to do with the city, and the meaning of urbanity in Bulgaria.

Fascism under Pressure. Influence of Marxist Discourse on the Ideological Redefinition of the Croatian Fascist Movement 1941–1944

Author(s): Ana Antić / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2010

This article analyzes how the ideological discourse of the Croatian fascist movement (the Ustaša) evolved in the course of World War II under pressures of the increasingly popular and powerful communist armed resistance. It explores and interprets the way the regime formulated its ideological responses to the political/ideological challenge of the leftist guerrilla and its propaganda in the period after the proclamation of the Ustaša Independent State of Croatia in 1941 until the end of the war. The author demonstrates that the regime, faced with its own political weakness and inability to maintain authority, shaped its rhetoric and ideological self-definition in a direct dialogue with the Marxist discourse of the communist propaganda, incorporating important Marxist concepts in its theory of state and society and redefining its concepts of national boundaries and racial identity to match the communists’ propaganda of inclusive, civic national Yugoslavism. This massive ideological renegotiation of the movement’s basic tenets and its consequent leftward shift reflected a change in an opposite direction from the one commonly encountered in narratives of other fascisms’ ideological evolution paths (most notably in Italy and Germany): as the movement became a regime, the Ustaša transformed from its initial conservatism, traditionalism (in both sociopolitical and cultural matters), pseudofeudal worldview of peasant worship and antiurbanism, anti-Semitism, and rigid racialism in relation to nation and state into an ideology of increasingly inclusive, culture-based, and nonethnic nationalism and with an exceptionally strong leftist rhetoric of social welfare, class struggle, and the rights of the working class.

Review of Bucur’s Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania

Author(s): Dan Stone / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2003

The review of: Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania by Maria Bucur. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002 (Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies). pp. 298 + vi, notes, bibliography, index.

Prague Spring and the Impulses of National Identity

Author(s): Lee Congdon / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2000

The review of: 1) Jaromír Navrátil et al. eds. The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. Translated by Mark Kramer, Joy Moss, and Ruth Tosek. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998. xxxix, 596 pp. 2) Miklós Kun. Prague Spring-Prague Fall: Blank Spots of 1968. Translated by Hajnal Csatorday. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1999. xiii, 252 pp.

‘EUROPE’ AND THE ‘BALKANS’ IMAGES AND NARRATIVES IN THE CULTURAL STRATEGY OF “PLOVDIV – EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019”

Author(s): Zlatina Bogdanova / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

The paper reviews leading narratives and practices that construct specific images of the ‘European’ and the ‘Balkan’ in the intercultural program of ‘Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019’. The argument is based on studied models in intercultural communication: building images of ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ in narrative strategies. The campaign “Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019” was conceived and implemented as an intercultural interaction between Europe and Plovdiv (Bulgaria). Therefore, at a collective level, narratives can stabilize the identity as well as emphasize belonging to a particular cultural and social space (but they can also mark boundaries – ethnic and cultural). The paper draws particular attention to the role of the cultural industries in representing the city as the European Capital of Culture. The research methodology includes observation and participation in specific trainings, projects and events related to the campaign.

Бежанци в Хасковски окръг след Ньойския договор 1919 г.

Author(s): Violeta Kostova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2020

The refugee issue was one of the most important after the end of the First World War. For Bulgaria, after the signing of the Neuilly Peace Treaty, this problem marked the entire post-war decade. Thiscontribution traces the specifics of the refugee and migration flow inthe Haskovo region in the 1920s on the basis of a number of studies on the subject, archival documents, materials from the local press and official statistics.

From What Is a Jew to Who Is a Jew for the Romanian State?

Author(s): Nicolae Drăguşin / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2020

The present study aims at exploring how the question of Jewish emancipation was managed by the Romanian State. Our analytical quest aims at unveiling the double approach of the Romanian authorities. While the first phase revolved around the question: “What is a Jew for the Romanian State?”, the second phase revolved around a different question: “Who is a Jew for the Romanian State?” Consequently, the paper consists of two parts. First, we are interested to investigate the quest for citizenship up to 1919/1923; second, we are interested to see how the Romanian authorities approached the Jewish minority after naturalization was granted. This second part, corresponding to the years 1923 to 1938, has two complementary facets: revising the citizenship (1924-1938) and legally defining the Jew (1940-1942), in order to introduce a whole range of discriminations. These complementary facets are interlinked, since the legal identification of the Jews was meant, in certain situations, to deprive them of the rights associated with citizenship and, in other situations, to exclude them from society and nationalize their properties. The paper focuses on the legal documents (treaties, constitutional laws, organic laws, and decree-laws) to explore the status ascribed to Jews by the Romanian State and the dynamics of the legal definitions associated to them in the early nineteen-forties.

Nicolae Iorga and the Jews

Author(s): Ana Bărbulescu / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2020

This paper turns toward the image ascribed to the Jewish minority by one of the most prolific representatives of Romanian culture, Nicolae Iorga. The analysis starts with the identity pattern proposed by Iorga and moves to the cluster of attributes that he ascribed to the Jewish minority, as well as the social roles associated to the latter. On a final approach, our interest moves towards the political solutions envisaged by Iorga to solve the “Jewish problem”.

Agency and the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Debórah Dwork

Author(s): Loredana-Andrada Iordache / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2020

TATTOOS AND TABOOS IN INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Author(s): Raluca Ghenţulescu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

When communicating with people from other cultures, one has to pay attention to their verbal and non-verbal messages. Besides what they actually say, it is equally important to notice what they do not say, what gestures they make – or avoid making – and what other ways of expressing themselves they resort to. Tattoos and taboos are two of the key factors that are worth taking into consideration when dealing with people from other countries, as they may reveal interesting aspects of their personality and culture. Both tattoos and taboos have ancient origins and reach the deepest levels of humanity. They can explain how we have evolved as acultural species endowed with the power of communicating both through language and through images or gestures. This article aims at presenting the importance of tattoos and taboos for understanding the core features of a culture, with a view to improving intercultural communication.

Георги Младенов (1931 – 2020): жизнен път и обществена дейност

Author(s): Stoyan Germanov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2020

Biographical notes on Georgi Mladenov (1931 – 2020), honorary member of the Macedonian Scientific Institute. He lived in Canada for the last years of his life. He is a generous donor and supporter of the Bulgarian cause in the historical-geographical region of Macedonia.

Диалози за руската литература на XX век (III. Столица / Провинция)

Author(s): Galina Petkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 02/2020

Поглед към ранната история на българското морско образование посредством нейното документално наследство

Author(s): Ivan Roussev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

Мухйиддин Абдал – един духовен проповедник от алевийско-бекташийската общност в Източните Балкани под османска власт

Author(s): Nevena Gramatikova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1-2/2019

There are key names among the representatives of the Alevi-Bektashi poetic tradition, whose life and work have been closely related to the Balkan Ottoman provinces, and more specifically, today’s northeast and northwest Bulgarian territories. In this sense, these are poets who originated from the community itself here, or settled here and became an integral part of the emerging Balkan Alevi-Bektashi community. Among them are key names of people who are related to this religious-mystical poetic tradition, for whom we can find nothing in the Ottoman biographical collections, but who are important for the functioning of this tradition here. Muhyiddin Abdal belongs exactly to this group. In this article, for the first time in the Bulgarian scientific literature, an attempt is made to present the information about the personality of Muhyiddin Abdal. His religious-mystical affiliation is commented on and attention is paid to the research interest in him in the Turkish scientific literature. Information is given about the cult center associated with his name and located in Eastern Thrace near the village of Hacı danişmend (region of Lâlâ Paşa, Edirne vilayet, Turkey). The most widely considered are the religious-mystical and ethical views, represented in his verses, some of which are given for the first time in Bulgarian translation. The thesis is argued that Muhyiddin Abdal belongs to an Islamic mystical tradition, intertwined with Alevism, Bektashism, Calendarism and Hurufism. The study emphasizes on the two key motives in his verses – the cult of Ali ibn Abu Talib and the cult of Man as a higher creation of God and the Universe. The verses presented in the article are extracted from two notebooks with nefesi (religious-ritual songs), written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet, found by us in the village of Sevar (Ceferler), region of Razgrad, and from a dozen notebooks with nefesi written in Turkish Latin belonging to representatives of the Alevi-Bektashi community in the villages of Sevar, Mıdrevo, (Mesimahlesi), Bisertsi (Kasçılar), Ostrovo (Ada köy), Razgrad area. In conclusion, the verses of Muhyiddin Abdal play a key role in affirming the Alevi beliefs and the Hurufi and mystical views that are adapted to them in a specific interpretation in the Eastern Balkans and in particular the northeastern Bulgarian territories in the Ottoman period. The ideas presented in them about Man quite deservedly raise him to the level of his predecessor Yunus Emre – a standard of humanism in Türk (respectively Turkish) religious-mystical poetry.