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Studies in the field of trade reveal that the main contingent of merchants came from urban communities and traded in urban and international markets. But as nine out of ten subjects of the Sultan in Bulgarian lands were peasants, it is logical to assume that some of them made their living in the field of trade. In this connection it should be noted that the issue of the involvement of peasants as professional traders in the economic life of the Ottoman Empire has not been sufficiently studied in the historiography on this topic.This study aims to outline a tentative portrait of rural pedlars, who took part in trade exchange both between the cities and the countryside and between different regions of the Empire at the end of 17th and the 18th centuries. Based on some case studies, features of their family and property status have been reconstructed. Issues, related to the legal regulation of their business activities have been analysed. The range and volumes of the goods they sold have been investigated. Problems related to the common commercial practices of partnerships between and lending to rural pedlars have been addressed. Conclusions have been drawn regarding the involvement of the institutions in regulating the trade activities and the relationship between the pedlars and their families, partners and lenders; the level of their literacy; the role their trips had on the level of awareness of the communities, in which they operated; the impact of their professional activity on the formation of modern traders in the Bulgarian society from the pre-Tanzimat era. The study draws on unpublished Ottoman Turkish documents – inheritance inventories of deceased traders, partnerships and lending litigation, sultan’s fermans, petitions and grievances, tax inventories, as well as on promulgated laws, travelogues, etc.
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The article deals with the activities of the Russian Vice-Consul in Plovdiv Nayden Gerov in 1867 in the context of the Russian Balkan politicy in the years of the Eastern Crisis of 1866–1869. By order of the Russian ambassador to Constantinople, Gen. N. P. Ignatiev, in 1867 N. Gerov wrote “A Project for Reforms”. This document, which became the basis of Ignatiev’s project, was to serve the Russian diplomatic action in a collective demarche in front of the Sublime Porte together with other European countries, notably France, for carrying out reforms in favor of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The remaining activities of Gerov during the year form several problematic circles also in connection with Russian Middle East politicy – the Russian idea of autonomy for the Bulgarians, the negotiations with Serbia for the creation of a Balkan Union for joint action against the Ottoman Empire, the Bulgarian political and revolutionary initiatives. After analyzing an array of unpublished and published documents on Gerov’s activities in 1867 in both of these aspects, the author attempts to determine the presence and opportunities of Bulgarians to influence the course of the “Great Policy”.
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The article deals with the propaganda of Bulgaria and Serbia during the dispute about the future of Macedonia during the Balkan wars of 1912–1913 and is based on the press, archival documents and memories. Used and unused Bulgarian channels of influence are demonstrated, Serbian propaganda and propagandists are shown. The arguments of the parties and the course of public discussion are given.
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Based on published documents from Russian archives as well as literature on the subject, the paper examines the underlying causes and specific details of the Soviet repressive policies in regard to Poles and ethnic Bulgarians during the 1930s and 1940s. These people became victims of ethnic cleansing, population relocation and forced resettlement in underpopulated and remote areas in Central Asia, mainly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. During the WWII period forced deportations of entire nationalities and ethnic minorities, as well as labour force transfers, were instruments of Soviet national policies. Poles were one of the first national groups inhabiting at that time the prewar territory of the Soviet Union who were deported to special settlements. They were accused of “anti-Soviet” acts and nationalistic agi¬tation and were the target of mass operations of the NKVD. There were four waves of mass deportations of Polish families to Central Asia in 1940–1941. Bessarabian, Crimean and Taurian Bulgarians were collectively punished by the So¬viet repressive apparatus for their alleged collaboration with the enemy during WWII. The political repressions against the Bulgarians, starting with deportations to special settlements in the late 1930s, and culminating in the operations of mass deportation in March-April 1944, can be perceived as a form of ethnic cleansing. After Soviet troops occupied Bulgaria on 9 September 1944, the Taurian Bulgarians who had migrated to the land of birth of their ancestors and had been granted Bulgarian citizenship by King Boris III were arrested and deported to the Kazakhstan deserts because the Soviet authorities ignored their new legal status. The author also deals with the problem of collective memory of the Communist past as it is preserved in political consciousness and presented in contemporary national his torical narratives in Poland and Bulgaria. Polish society and institutions like the Institute of National Remembrance keep the memory of the victims of the Stalinist terror alive. A number of activities for preserving the memory of the Poles sent to Central Asia have been carried out in collaboration with institutions and scholarly organizations from the Central Asian republics. Unlike the Polish example, Bulgarian society is not well enough informed about the mass Stalinist repressions against political emigrants to the Soviet Union and the Bulgarian ethnic minority there. The main reason for this is that published studies are the subject of direct politicization both among professional researchers and the broader public. Another issue concerns the lack of a Bulgarian Institute of National Remembrance whose possible establishment would encourage multidisciplinary research efforts for studying the Communist past.
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The fate of Poland in the twentieth century depended, above all, on its complex geopolitical position, since it is situated between two major European powers – Russia and Germany. Despite the considerable strong anti-Nazi resistance in Poland, after the end of World War II, Poland, along with most Eastern European countries, fell into the Soviet sphere of influence. The long anti-Russian historical tradition made Poland‘s stay in the pro-Soviet Eastern bloc full of many problems and acts of resistance. The Poles opposed the Communist regime on numerous occasions: in 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976, and 1980, before gaining their independence in June 1989. In the parliamentary elections, the independent Solidarity trade union won a decisive victory and started Poland’s transition to democracy, which was followed by other countries in the Eastern Bloc.
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The text treats of the decline of the previous system and the emerging of the democratic order in Bulgaria, at times at the cost of pain and socio-political turmoil. The author portrays the background of social development, its specific traits, and pays attention to national aspirations. Given the range and complexity of the problems discussed, the study fits both in the disciplines of contemporary history and political science. The starting point is the political turnaround of Sofia against the background of the movements for freedom and independence, the magical years 1989–1990 in Central and Eastern Europe, and the subsequent fundamental changes. The state of the political class with its readiness to accept the challenges, and the economic situation of the previous period marked by a structural crisis the outcome of which has not passed without turmoil, constitute an important part of the study. An important segment is dedicated to the international context which determined the place, rank and prestige of the country. The time frame was determined by the rejection of Soviet tutelage, the overcoming of limited sovereignty and subordination of national interests to the ideological values of the hegemonic power. The end of the communist dictatorship opened the prospect of building a civil society and of changes of consciousness reflected by growing opposition. The study deals with Bulgaria’s rightful aspirations to belong to the world beyond the Iron Curtain, to participate in the global economy and share responsibility for the peace order. There are references to the concurrence and similarities between the social demands and political postulates of trade unions and opposition in the “Autumn of the Nations” near Vitosha and the Vistula in their struggle for human rights and decent living conditions. The author reflects on the burden of Zhivkov’s legacy and the nature of the consequences of the past. He gives credit to environmental formations from the “time of decisions”, dwells on Bulgaria’s successful accession to the EU, and recalls acts of historical justice. In its final part, the study focuses on Bulgarian transformation efforts and economic advancement, contribution to defense, and growing role in regional and global politics.
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The purpose of this contribution is to show how deep and valuable is the cultural heritage of a people and how dynamic, especially in difficult times. One basic concept used is the cultural style, which differs from the individual style in art. We shall mention the philosophical contribution of a Romanian philosopher of culture, Lucian Blaga, who, under the influence of Jung’s “collective unconsciousness” wrote about the cultural heritage and how it is transmitted from generation to generation through an unconscious structure called by Lucian Blaga “the stylistic matrix”. We shall apply this philosophical theory to some artistic productions of the Romanian art of the period 1960–1980. We will also use some specific mythological and ritual meanings connected to the vegetal world, especially to wheat, flour, paste, bread.
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The study presents three Greek itineraries, produced for the needs of itinerant traders: a MS written in the period 1769–1773 and two printed publications of 1824 and 1829. The texts testify to the increased possibilities of communication and show growing interest in the outside world, widening the horizon of people – linked to the needs of a society entering the modern age. They mirror the formation of national identities and national programs in the Balkans at the time.
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The subject of the article is to show and analyze inscriptions in Hiberno-Latin language in Marian Scotus’ World Chronicle (11th century). Marian Scotus was an Irish monk who led the life of an ascetic in Mainz, where he wrote a great Latin universal chronicle in which he applied his own count of years from the birth of Christ, shifting the date of birth 22 years back. The notes in the native language contained in the manuscript are evidence of a bond with the Irish chaplet that has not been broken despite many years spent in Germany. They show an interesting part of intellectual conditioning in the Middle Ages.
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The present study offers a historiographic and ideological interpretation of the first four volumes of the History of Romania treatise published under the rule of the late Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, between 1960-1964. I argue that historians involved in this project, far from succeeding to accomplish a full-scale marxist revolutionary breakthrough in Romanian postwar historiography, have mannaged in the end to offer an original hybrid narrative of the Nation`s past, packed not only with marxist and leninist formulas, but also with ideas and themes specific to the traditional prewar Romanian historical writing. In the second section of my contribution, by exploring a wealth of archival sources and a number of four oral history interviews which I have conducted between 2009-2011, I present the fate of the following volumes of this work which, although having been completed by the end of the 1960s, have never been published under communism.
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The present study aims to analyze the relations between the political decisional factors and press in Timișoara, in the 1970s. There were the following papers in Timișoara between 1970 and 1977: Drapelul roșu, Neue Banater Zeitung (German language), Szabad Szo (Magyar language), Banatske Novine (magazine, Serbian language), and the literary revue Orizont, all of them with an important circulation. The local Radio studio was also running then.Even if the years of 1965–1971 are better known as providing a relative political freedom, press in Romania went away with the RCP control; relations between the party and media deeply changed in the summer and fall of 1971, after the decisions taken by the leaders of the R. C. P. So, media was obliged both to put in light the socialist reality in Romania and to combat with the ideological bourgeois influences and retrograde mentality. The cultural revues had to promote the “involved” militant socialist arts and literature, and criticize the tendencies to separate the artistic creation from the socialist realities; it was the way the Romanian press became an instrument of the RCP. The journalist’ rules were changed too, so that one became a Party activist in that occupational field. Following the above decisions media in Timișoara was controlled by the Section of Propaganda, the Secretariate, and the County Chancery of the RCP; all those organisms periodically analyzed the activity of journals, revues and the territorial Radio Studio.1974 was also an important but baleful year for Romanian media due to the central decisions to reduce copies, formats, numbers of pages, and periodicity of journals; all those measures touched the press in Timișoara too (Banatske Novine – for instance)Media in Timișoara had mainly to emphasize at that time the activity of the county Party organization, and the political, economical, social and cultural-scientific life in the county. The county authorities attracted the journalists’ attention on the necessity to strengthen the Party militant spirit of all the articles and broadcastings as they considered that trite expressions still were published in articles with a strong formalist shape. The analyses also underlined that there was no clear position both against reactionary philosophic or aesthetic schools and political Occidental doctrines, the capitalist “drawbacks” being so not sufficiently presented. Such critical observations make us believe that the journalists in Timișoara didn’t comply integrally with the “ideological orders” of the Party.But we have also to note that besides those “political commands”, there were some positive measures taken by the RCP County Committee: a more extensive mirroring of the culture in the Banat, or of important moments of the history of the Banat and Romania. The communist authorities were also concerned with the future journalists’ professional training, as long as there were still unschooled journalists at the beginning of the 1970s. I have to observe that the professional vocation of the ones who applied for was taken into consideration besides the negative aspects – need of a “healthy” political origin, the candidates’ deeds severe political examination or recruiting the candidates from the workers’ class especially.
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The Russo-Turkish War of Liberation of 1877-1878 was the last large-scale military campaign led by Russia in the Balkans, culminating in the most decisive victory ever achieved by St. Petersburg over the Supreme Porte, whose political consequences largely predetermined the further history of Balkan Peninsula. Today, the history of this armed conflict continues to give rise to discussions both among historians and in the general public. Estimates of both St. Petersburg’s political motivation and the purely military aspects of the conflict are various. Although of all the Russo-Ottoman wars, this was the shortest and most victorious for Russia, gaps in the intelligence and underestimation of the enemy are often cited as some of the weaknesses of the Russian army, leading to prolonged hostilities and additional casualties. The article examines the intelligence activities carried out by the headquarters of the Russian Danube Army during the period from its formation in November 1876 to the beginning of the hostilities in April of the following year. The focus is on the secret intelligence in the Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule, which were to become the main battle theatre in the looming conflict. Some documents may give the impression that on the eve of the war there was a large clandestine Russian intelligence network in the rear of the enemy. In practice, with the hesitant policy of St. Petersburg and the uncertainty at the headquarters of the Danube Army about whether the war would take place at all, the organization and scope of intelligence even then included those shortcomings that would have to be overcome later in the context of ongoing hostilities and failed plans for a lightning victory.
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The Young Turk Coup of July 1908 unleashed an unsuspected social energy and a previously unseen livening of urban social and political life in European Turkey. The negative trends in relations between the Bulgarian Revolutionary Organisation and the Young Turk Committees mobilised wider public circles and new political figures to seek adequate forms of political expression. The Union of Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs developed as the most popular national party, formed in accordance with the European model in the spirit of modern political liberalism. Leftist international ideas of consolidating all democratic forces in the Empire based on a unified radical platform made a second line, albeit fainter, in Bulgarian political activity. With their numerous programme documents and journalistic materials in a colorful ideological and political palette, Bulgarians left a specific trace in the new political life, which despite the efforts of the Young Turks to channel and unify it, in reality replicated the national fragmentation of the urban public space existing up to 1908.
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The article examines an insufficiently studied problem in Bulgarian historiography - the cholera epidemics in the Bulgarian-populated provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s and 1870s. The information available in the sources about the two major cholera epidemics in the Bulgarian lands from 1865–1867 and 1871–1873 is traced, locating the main epidemic outbreaks and analyzing the data on the damage caused by cholera to the health of the local population. Central to the article is the study of the problem of the nature, specifics and effectiveness of the measures taken by the Ottoman authority to limit the spread of cholera epidemics in the Bulgarian lands.
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The political life of the Albanian minority in Serbia in the period 2010-2014 abounded in local level micro-conflicts motivated by numerous family, interpersonal and career confrontations. They reflected the differences existing among the three municipalities with considerable numbers of Albanian population usually referred to collectively as the “Preševo Valley”. The influence of the historical leader Riza Halimi was challenged by various powerful figures on a local scale and particularly by the faction of the former fighters from the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac. “Preševo” Albanians have alternated moments of cooperation with the Serbian government with moments of boycott, without ever discontinuing informal and behind-the-scene contacts. In 2012 the Albanian minority parties participated in the local, parliamentary and presidential elections, thereby ultimately fitting into the Serbian political system.
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What marked the Croatia’s history from the 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century was its accession to the EU after long and difficult six-year membership negotiations (2005-2011). It was the only state from the Western Balkans region that so far had succeeded alone and not in a group in joining the Union as its 28th member on July 1, 2013. Unlike Slovenia, Croatia lagged dramatically in the 1990s, possessed by a strong nationalism, hostile to the very idea of a united Europe. Only when the nationalistic Croatian Democratic Union lost power in 2000, the foreign policy of the country became pro-European and pro-NATO. But Croatia faced many difficulties on its road to EU. It had to solve its border issues with Slovenia. The cooperation with the Hague tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia was also very painful for the Croats. The country officially entered the Union in 2013 but that happened in a moment when Europe was in a deep economic crisis and it had no chance to gain sizeable economic benefits from its membership. So, the Euroscepticism became quite popular among Croats soon after their country became part of the huge European community.
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Textbook literature is not only an interesting object of research, but also a kind of mirror of the society that produces them. In a way, they represent the basic source of knowledge for students, and their content represents a certain type of absolute truth or canonized knowledge. This is especially true for history textbooks, which show students what memory state systems not only recommend but also determine. This means that such textbooks are a reflection of the official attitude towards the past, so they are one of the most powerful instruments of action on the collective consciousness of young people, but also society as a whole. Namely, the "truth" that is built into school textbooks inevitably becomes a "living truth", having in mind the age and quantity of the reader's body. It does not take much intellectual effort to properly understand, then, the potential energy that ethnic prejudices loaded in this way, based on historical myths, half-truths and untruths, carry with them.Textbooks from Serbia and Croatia were imported and used in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a while, and in recent years the contents of textbooks from the mentioned countries have served as a template for the production of textbooks that are printed and published in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In all such textbooks, examples have been identified in which entire teaching units are dedicated to events, personalities and locations that are not from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thus, for example, in terms of belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina, negative examples dominate and the analyzed textbooks do not encourage the creation of a sense of a common heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, students do not develop critical thinking, and explanations of historical-political processes are burdened with political interpretations that largely support valid auto and hetero-stereotypes. Policy options and processes are presented in a way that continues to support established attitudes about what has happened in the past, and current stereotypes about one's own and other peoples and their role in those processes.Having in mind, therefore, that the textbook content necessarily reflects the dominant ideology and current government policy, we tried to use the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to question the political function of the textbook, more precisely to show indicators of paternalistic attitude towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are generated through Serbian and Croatian education system both in the home countries and in Bosnia and Herzegovina itself.The question that is specifically posed here is twofold: To what extent are conflicts and ethnic tensions, which have been present in all societies throughout history, reflected in school textbooks, and to what extent do school textbooks themselves convey these conflicts. The latter entails further sub-questions, such as the extent to which the textbook medium intensifies conflicts and the extent to which it calms and breaks them down. The topic itself is very broad and almost forces it to be sketched in such a small space only theoretically, which is less useful. Therefore, attention will be focused here on selected specific examples that deal with individual historical events, which are the subject of public debate, or conflict between Serbian and Croatian historiography when it comes to the origin and affiliation of the population and state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.In this regard, this paper presents an "interpretation of the interpreted", with the prevalent use of secondary literature, given through a review of the opinions of selected authors. In doing so, an effort was made to consistently apply comparative analysis, to show and expose all the diversity of approaches of individual national and nationalist discourses.
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The article presents the political activities and views of Michał Czajkowski at the end of the1840s and the beginning of 1850s as a top agent and head of the so-called Eastern Agency in Istanbul. The Eastern Agency, supported by France, is a permanent residence in the East of Adam Czartoryski’s Polish political émigré camp Hôtel Lambert. The change of the geopolitical tides in the East in the 1840s forced Czajkowski’s pragmatical Slavophilism towards a pragmatical Turkophilism. When the top agent of Hôtel Lambert found himself without French protection after exerted influence by Petersburg, he found shelter as a subject to the Sultan in 1850, converted to Islam, and accepted the name Mehmed Sadyk. That decision opened a completely new chapter and prospective career options in the Ottoman state for the Polish renegade.
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In the time of its short existence during the Second World War, the Independent State of Croatia maintains close relations with Bulgaria in almost all spheres of public and political life. Sports are no exception. The article aims to show contacts in this area from a political point of view. Despite the lack of international sports tournaments, Bulgarian and Croatian sportsmen met in a number of competitions, seen as an important element of the relations between the two countries.
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