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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Dr. Miliyana Kaymakamova about Bulgarian history and role Politics played in different periods of it. There is one question to be answered and it is: How to make history "interesting" in suited in the modern society?
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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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Training and qualification of primary school teachers after the liberation is implemented on the basis of curricula and programs that are accepted by Ministry of Education and are obligatory. In them a content component in each subject, such as general professional teacher training is carried out in two directions – theoretical and practical. This is according with the European practice and especially with so called herbartianism – model. Even though applied in part, because it is consistent with conditions in Bulgaria, he played a positive role in the overall organization and systematization of pedagogical training and qualification of teachers in Bulgaria in the period after the Liberation.
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The interdisciplinary field of memory studies and literary science is a relatively new research subject that immediately attracted the attention of scholars from across various areas. In the case of Bulgarian literature, however, no comprehensive study has yet been attempted. This article strives to make a first, tentative contribution in this direction. By analysing three Bulgarian literary works – Čavdar Mutafov’s Smărten săn, Dimităr Korudžiev’s Predi da se umre and Vladislav Todorov’s Dzift – with regard to their interrelationship between city, memory and individual, this paper offers a thematically limited, but concise glimpse into some of the manifestations of a memoryscape in modernist and contemporary Bulgarian literature.
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The article presents and analyzes the Italian old printed books as a main element in the development of the collection of Italian rarites in the University Library “St. Kliment Ohridski”. The Italian printed books (1501 – 1830) are the fundamental and the most valuable part of the Italian literary monuments in the library. The books are acquired by the University Library in the period of the fundamental development of library collections 1888 – 1903. The Italian old printed books are acquired in the library not as rarites, but as main editions necessary both for research and education. The University Library owns 81 Italian old printed books in 189 volumes. Subjects of the old printed editions are varied. Mainly historical works; literary works; theological and philosophical-political treatises, as well as a limited range of titles in the fields of law, art and architecture, linguistics and pedagogy. It must be especially mentioned the presence of the Italian classical authors – Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Panfilo di Renaldini, Ludovico Ariosto et al. Special attention must be paid to the old printed books, which contain information for Bulgaria and Bulgarians.
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The article analyzes the figure of Ivan Borimechkata (The Bear-Fighter) – one of the most famous heroes of April 1876 uprising – from the viewpoint of its hyposthases: as a literary character that gained popularity with Ivan Vazov’s novel “Pod Igoto“ [“Under the Yoke“]; as a historical personality with a concrete biography on whose basis Vazov created his literary character; as a mythical figure that found various representations in the national and local memory, in art, public discussions, etc.Analyzing comparatively diverse folklore and historical sources about Borimechkata, the article traces the processes of taking the concrete personality out of historical anonymity and turning it into a hero and a kind of myth. In the course of these processes, the historical indicators about the martyrdom of Ivan Borimechkata appear silenced by the voice of the heroic memories about him – ones created and affirmed through the character’s interpretation in literature, monumental representations,visual arts, and cinema. The article shows how the novel “Under the Yoke“ testifies not only of Vazov’s return to the “idealized epoch“ of the April 1876 uprising, with its ideas and heroes, but was also a powerful instrument in coining heroic characters and narratives connected with that time.
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The paper analyzes the symbolic layers in the major commemorative ceremony in Bulgaria – the roll-call. It is divided in two parts. The first one (Bulgarian Ethnology,2018, № 1) interprets the symbolic actions comprising the basic tools for producing ceremonial meaning: saluting and rendering military honors, ritual silence and lack of action, battle cry, ceremonial mise-en-scène (monument, guards of honor, etc.)– these are recognized as specific devices for removing symbolically the border between the living and the dead, between heroes and descendants. The second part(Bulgarian Ethnology, 2018, № 2) examines the ceremonial scenario as a prospectivelyun folding narrative – each symbolic action is interpreted as a successive move in the overall plot. This approach acknowledges that the ceremony is made up of three parts: preparatory, commemorative, and triumphal, whereas the scenario as a whole embraces the following logic: listing and honoring the heroes in the commemorative part is succeeded by their posthumous enwreathing and symbolic immortalization as stars in the night sky through the use of fireworks.
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The preservation of the memory for the past is part of the system that forms identity.“The sites of memory“ (after Pierre Nora), which surpass the frames of the physical space of the event and also include the characters-participants and the event itself as a phenomenon, are building a symbolic construct, which is often comprehended bylocal communities as heritage. The present research examines the development and transformation of places of national memory in Bulgaria. Case-study of the report is the “Monuments“ Park of the town of Svishtov in Northern Bulgaria – the original site of the landing of Russian troops in 1877, the beginning of the Liberation War. Duringits 140 years of history, the “Tekir-dere / the Monuments“ area witnesses three stages of development. In the initial years following the Liberation the area is affirmed as a site for commemoration and homage to the bravery of the Russian soldiers. OnБългарска етнология, бр. 1 (2018) / 91occasion of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the war, the narrative was expanded with the presentation of the Bulgarian volunteer troops in the process of achieving Freedom. In the beginning of the 21st c. the process of “acquiring“ the historical territory continues by introducing the revolutionary Filip Totyu and his detachment in 1867. With the expansion of the urban territory, the space also acquires the functions of a town park. Thus, despite the physical distance from the settlement,the area has turned nowadays into a place for relaxation and walk for the citizens of Svishtov, which is assisted by the activities for the socialization of the park.
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The article discusses the main indicators for perceiving Hristo Botev in the public space, by eliciting some of the debates and the attempts for appropriation of his figure. The ideas about the personality, which has in different periods been an occasion for diverse opinions and interpretations, are presented from the perspective of their significance in the culture of memory and of their role in explicating time and identity (Assmann 2001: 20). These notions diverge the figures of correlation to national parameters, but also to unrelated to the initial ideas trends, which is presented in the text with the theme about the appropriations and the popular uses of this character. Separate attention in the article is paid to the monuments dedicated to Hristo Botev in different periods and parts of the country and to the changing emphases in the commemorations to the national hero. The discussed examples outline a comprehensive presentation of different studies on the topic and raise new questions, which are important in view of future research.
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This article presents the points of view from which interreligious relations in the Ottoman world have been approached in academic historiography, the frames of interpretation and concepts that have been used, and the critical reassessments and revisions that are currently underway. Conceptions about the position of the non-Muslims and the nature and forms of interreligious relations in the Ottoman Empire have changed perceptively over the last half century. The mosaic world of subjugated nations and self-governed religious communities (millets) that lived parallel and distinct lives gave its place, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, to the plural society of extensive interreligious interaction at individual or communal level. In tandem came the shift from an emphasis on the oppression of the non-Muslims to that on toleration. We are now in a new phase of revision which focuses on the forms, extent and limits of toleration and intercommunal interaction, and pays close attention to change over time.
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The subject of the article concerns the reconstruction of the Midsum¬mer Night’s ritual. The author gives answers to the questions: What is a ritual? How should it be studied? What should be the methodology of description and interpretation of its complicated morphology? Regional variants of the rite are analysed and on the basis of them a model ritual (its invariant) is reconstructed. The article is based on archive materials and accounts collected personally by the author, mostly in Poland, in the years 2009–2014. The period of the most intense activity of the sun, falling on the second half of June, was generally regarded as extraordinary time in the folk tradition. The culmination of ritual activities took place on the night preceding the holiday of the nativity of St John the Baptist, usually celebrated on the 24th of June (also on the 7th of July in the Orthodox tradi¬tion). This time was marked by many ritual practices resulting from the system of traditional beliefs and views on the world. The article discusses the relics of beliefs and ritual behaviour connected with the summer solstice and their most important functions (magical, protective, purificatory, courtship and matrimonial, conveying beliefs, in¬tegrative and ludic). Furthermore, the article presents the main causes of disappearance, degradation and simultaneous modernization of the sum¬mer solstice rites.
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The existence of a residence of the metropolitans of Gniezno in Cracow had been confirmed from the fourteenth till the end of the eighteenth century. Its beginnings, attested by documentary evidence, reach back to the foundation of Archbishop Jarosław Bogoria Skotnicki (1342-1374) who erected a stonework mansion located extrawaros, probably to the south of Wawel Hill. The building, neglected in the following century, was eventually pulled down in 1498. In the fifteenth century, a new residence was constructed. It was located immediately outside the city walls, in front of Brama Poboczna [Lateral Gate], next to Wawels north slope, on the grounds acquired by Archbishop Mikołaj Kurowski (1402-1411) that had been in the possession of the Gniezno archbishops until 1523. According to a description from the beginning of the sixteenth century, there existed an extensive residential complex made up of episcopal offices, a few buildings which housed the living quarters and some utility buildings in a garden.Since the late Middle Ages until 1621, the archbishops of Gniezno had also owned a plot of land located intra warns, i.e. within the city walls, in Grodzka Street, to the south ofSt Martins church. There stood a stonework mansion, mentioned in documentary sources as curia arcfiicpiscopaiis, whose appearance, however, is unknown. In the sixteenth century the buildings that stood there were used by the canons of Gniezno during their stay inCracow. Archbishop fan Łaski (1510-1531), who in 1529 acquired a conveniently located plot of land on the corner of Grodzka Street in the neighbourhood of St Giles church, moved the residence to a different location. The new grounds were situated opposite the former plot owned by the archbishops, at the foot of Wawel Hill and the royal castle (adradices arczs), close to its north-east corner which housed the kings apartments. It was there that - apart from a brief interlude when the archbishops lodged in Kanonicza Street - since the mid-sixteenth century for the following 250 years the last residence of the Primates of Poland in Cracows history had been located.The architectural forms of the building were irretrievably lost in the course of radical transformations the residence underwent at the beginning of the nineteenth century(it was dismantled down to the foundations, and replaced with a new construction that has survived to this day). Therefore it has remained virtually unknown because of the scarcity of iconographic evidence and insufficiently researched documentary sources from the period before the end of the eighteenth century. An interpretation of the newly discovered inventories from the years 1673,1767 and 1777, which contain the only known descriptions of the residence from the times when the Primates stayed in it, combined with an analysis of earlier source materials, has helped to recreate the architectural transformations of the building and precisely reconstruct its spatial and functional disposition, as well as to establish the dating and attribute its construction to particular founders.A particularly valuable source, which complements the inventories, is a survey of 1798, used as a basis for the reconstruction of the plan of the residence in the last phase before it was dismantled.The early modern forms of the residence (which since the second half of the seventeenth century had been known as a 'mansion) were shaped as a result of adaptation and extension of a house, formerly owned by a knightly family and later by the CracowChapter, which occupied the southern part of the plot acquired by the archbishops in 1529, facing the castle. The forms of the residence that had survived until 1670 arose mainly in the course of construction works undertaken by the Primates: Piotr Gamrat (1541-1545)and Wawrzyniec Gembicki (1615-1624). According to an inventory of 1673, the residence consisted of three one-storey buildings surrounding an internal courtyard: two stone workhouses (of medieval and sixteenth-century origins) joined on the corner, forming the south and west wings, and a wooden building on the east (erected in the mid-seventeenth century) which housed the main gateway opening to Grodzka Street. Between 1672 and1676 the complex was substantially remodelled in the course of a building campaign initiated by Primate Mikołaj Prażmowski (1666-1673) and completed by Andrzej Olszowski(1674-1677). The construction works, which cost 24 thousand zloty, were overseen by the Cracow city councillor Jan Pernus. The resulting complex consisted of a two-storey palace building made up of two wings meeting at the right angle with matching external elevations, but differing in plan and the spatial disposal of interiors. The third part of the complex - a one-storey wing facing Grodzka Street - was erected in 1765 by Archbishop Władysław Łubieński (1759-1767) and was the last element in this additive construction process. In the functional hierarchy of the residence it held the lowest rank, being merely a kind of outbuilding that housed the main gateway. The longest, one-aisle south wing played an important part in the communication system of the palace: it housed another gate and the stately main staircase leading from the courtyard up to the rooms on pńmonoMc. The largest, two-aisle west wing had the function of an actual corps de fog is -the main part of the palace - being at the same time its predominant element as far as its architecture and functions were concerned. It was on its upper storey that the apartment of the Primate (consisting of antechamber, bedroom and wardrobe) was located, together with a large reception hall (measuring 12 by 15 m) overlooking Wawel where Primate Olszowski hung a portrait gallery of his antecedent archbishops, including his own likeness provided with a following inscription: Andreas Olszowski, Sfernmate Prnsszns cam ^ascdn'sioannis iff. Coronator. Both the location and decoration of the stately hall in the residence of Polish Primates in the capital city of Cracow should be understood as the key elements of the iconographic programme of the palace: a seat of the interrex and at the same time primate-archbishop who crowned.
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The author examines the South Slavic Boarding School in the town of Nikolaev under the direction of the Bulgarian Todor Minkov and reveals its contribution for the education and shaping of the Bulgarian national elite in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. From a statistical and historical perspective, he has collected and summarized valuable data on the biography, study and future professional realization of dozens of Bulgarians, many of which joint the intellectual and political elite of free Bulgaria.
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A major objective of this article is to reveal the essence of the concept of Bulgaria’s healthcare policy in the period from 1879 to 1912. It is based on a detailed study of the debates accompanying the preparation, discussion and adoption of all laws related to healthcare in post-liberation Bulgaria. Their analysis makes it possible to conclude that the formation of the basic concept of this kind of policy began already with the establishment of the first governing structures in the territories liberated by the Russian troops. At its core were the aspirations of the authorities to regulate all the necessary care that the state had to take to improve the health and to reduce the mortality among the population. It was of decisive importance for the realization of this process and for the gradual increase of the life expectancy of the population inhabiting the country.
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Book Review: "Naimushin, I. N. Naval Engineering School of Emperor Nicholas I, 1898-1919."
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The paper presents the main commercial law institutes and their manifestation on the Bulgarian market in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century – commercial companies, commercial courts, bankruptcy. They are regulated by the trade legislation and, in this sense, modernity is enshrined in them. Insofar as the modernity is difficult to break through and difficult to place in the oriental conditions of the region, these institutes acquire a specific local appearance that is subject of the analysis in the article. In these structures the modernity is combined with traditional stereotypes. In addition, there are phenomena that are contrary to the law and public morality: corrupt practices, the use of friendly and ties to provide a favorable outcome of a case, seeking legal information and specialized advice through informal contacts, pressure on the members of the trade court. Several key case studies have been considered in the paper and an attempt has been made to formulate hypotheses on the subject, both on the basis of own studies – already published and current, as well as on the basis of recently published contributions, mainly PhD theses. The present study revises the statement in the historiography that laws are adopted in the Ottoman Empire, but they remain “just on a book”, while reforms are formal and imposed “from above”. This statement is not true about the Commercial Law and the commercial law institutes.
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The article describes the establishing of the first circle of Kabbalists in Salonica by two scholars who later laid the foundations of The Golden Age of Safed: R. Joseph Karo, whose Shulchan Aruch became the authoritative codification of Jewish law; and his companion, kabbalist and poet R. Solomon Halevi Elkabetz. While performing a mystical ceremony on the nights of Shevuot (Pentecost) of 1533, a prophetic voice was heard through R. J. Karo’s throat and mouth. The voice urged the companions to ascend immediately to the Land of Israel in order to redeem the Assembly of Israel and be redeemed from exile.Special weight is given to the messianic enthusiasm of the circle, and to their interpretation of the triumphs of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent over the Christian coalition led by Emperor Charles V as an omen to the fall of the satanic realm of “Edom” and as an encouraging step towards redemption.
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As a cosmopolitan port city imbued with various cultures in the Levant, Salonica took its share from the modernization efforts triggered with Tanzimat Period. By mid-nineteenth century, Salonica’s embankment and customs facilities were limited and the transport of goods was problematic due to limited access. Meanwhile, burgeoning trade activities as a result of Ottoman treaties granting special privileges to foreign tradesmen necessitated a comprehensive reorganization of the harbour area.This paper aims to study the urban and architectural transformation of the commercial centre of the city, with a special focus on the re-organization of the sea shore supported with new findings from the Ottoman archives. After its completion in 1882, Salonica Quay became the most prestigious area of the city, lined with buildings which represented the transforming socio-economic life. The urban transformation emerging from the quay area also reflected on the traditional commercial centre concentrating around Frank Street, where new types of commercial buildings started to appear.
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This article portrays modern masculinity at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth cen¬turies, when modern technologies, especially the railway and the steam engine, forged new images of masculinity. By revealing human passions, the railway modernized not only social and economic life but also the life of the psyche. Thereby it influenced the for¬mation of psychoanalytical discourses. In tune with Freud’s concept of the sex drive, the railway was inscribed into the economy of male desire, thus forming the framework to ex¬press literary characters’ identity. The transformative effect that modern mechanization had on models of masculinity is visible in the male characters in works of fiction where the railway features prominently, such as the works of Stefan Grabiński, but it also marks the character Stanisław Wokulski in Bolesław Prus’s novel The Doll. Modernization is as¬sociated with concepts such as “railway neurosis” or “dissociative fugue” (ambulatory automatism), which Kaliściak discusses as prototypes of male hysteria.
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