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Review of the monograph created by a group of authors (Otar Chigladze, Davit Andghuladze, Nana Gelashvili, Shalva Chikhladze, Archil Kalandia, Marine Jibladze) - "History of China". Chief editor and compiler Marine Jibladze, publishing house, "Golden Fleece", Tbilisi, 2022.
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I propose here to look at the transformations of a border landscape of a small town (Jimbolia, Romania), in a context of border opening after 1989 and industrial crisis. I focus my attention on the role of the border in the social configurations of the city, both at the level of the daily practices of its inhabitants (and tourists), and at the level of the urban renewal. I also examine the extensible social spaces that are created around the use and crossing of this border and I show the time-space scales of these territories of circulation. I show that they mobilize networks of kinship, language and more broadly ethnic, as well as the memory processes. The text opens up to methodological and epistemological aspects concerning the “multi-site ethnography” of borders.
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Focusing on the Bulgarian side, the article addresses the post-socialist heritage dynamics which value the border dimension of the Strandzha area, shared between Bulgaria and Turkey since 1913. Strandzha’s location at the south-eastern edges of Bulgaria, and on the delineation of the former iron curtain, has shaped the idea of an isolate, but also a natural and cultural “conservatory”, to be protected from external harms. The image of Strandzha oscillates between the two poles of a shelter-territory and a movement place, a space of autochthony and anchorage. The border symbolizes thus a spatial and cultural rip, calling for the reassertion of the “qualities” of a marginalized space. The article scrutinizes the building of a “sense of heritage” in this border area, laying on the ambivalent feelings of the loss of its geographical and cultural unity, and of its preserved authenticity against all odds. This heritage dimension resonates with the assessment of an uninterrupted decline, delayed by the state interventionism during the socialist period, but worsened by the post-socialist upheavals and posing sharp interrogations about its future.
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The study presents Bulgaria’s business relations with the European Economic Community during the Cold War. The reasons for establishing informal contacts and negotiating more favourable commercial terms are explained. The presentation reveals that the Bulgarian foreign economic policy aimed to protect the national interests, at the same time by maintaining the image of the most loyal Soviet ally as well as by borrowing from other Eastern European countries advantageous practices in the trade with the Community. Their implementation was adjusted and altered according to the varying attitudes of the Soviet leadership – through open or confidential actions.
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The object of research presented in the article is the transition from a totalitarian to a democratic society in Bulgaria from the 1990s and the 2000s, and its subject is the contribution of the subcultural communities formed in this period, to the implementation of various social changes. The main research hypothesis is that at the end of the totalitarian regime and in the beginning of the transition in the political, economic and cultural life in Bulgaria, there were formed several main subcultures with various degrees of critical influence over the development of social processes in the country. A main mechanism of influence which transforms the subcultures in active agents of the historical change are the so-called ‘culturemes’. So far, the study identified several significant subcultures of which two political playing the leading role in the transition. They are based on ideological structures consisting of limited number of simple ideologemes (the culturemes of the political conscience). The research is based on a sociocultural analysis of documents, surveys and interviews. It combines the perspectives of social history with those of political science and social anthropology.
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Review of collective monograph "‘The World System of Socialism’ and the Global Economy in the Mid-1950s – Mid-1970s"
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Book review: Nadezhda Stoyanova. Adornments and Grimaces. Fashion and Modernity in 1920s and 1930s Bulgarian Literature. Sofia, Paradigma Press, 2022
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There is one letter in the epistolary corpus of Paulinus of Nola († 431) where the views of the Late Antique Western writer about the place and meaning of flesh and spirit in the life of Christians, and especially in ascetic life, are expressed with utmost clarity. One part of this letter is based on the 𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑠ℎ (𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑜) – 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡 (𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑠) antithesis. In this context, body/parts of a body (𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑝𝑢𝑠/𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑟𝑎) can be a synonym of flesh, and mind (𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑠) can be a synonym of spirit. This paper explores Paulinus’s concepts about the flesh and the spirit in contrast to the dualistic teachings in Antiquity and in later periods. The levels of usage of these two words and the various senses which could be instilled in them are discussed as well. Everything is examined in the context of asceticism and Christian perfection (as far as it is attainable by humans), to which Letter 24 is dedicated.
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After February 25, 1921, the Soviet government tried in every possible way to win the favor of the population of Georgia, even though they managed to gain control over the country by force of arms, still, according to their outlook, they were doing a good deed, which they had to explain to the population. According to the command of the occupying forces of Soviet Russia and the Transcaucasian Bureau of the Communist Party, it was the government of the Democratic Republic that was repressive and oppressive to the population, but then again they also realized that the occupation would make a neutral person feel bad about the occupier, so in the initial period it was decided to pursue a "compromising" policy, which meant the conditional preservation of the old system, so that the population did not feel too big of a change and there were no disturbances in the country, which could result with serious consequences.The Soviet occupation authorities kept local parties around, however covert surveillance and recruitment policies were launched against its members, the purpose of these actions being to physically or politically eliminate people who had more or less influence on the population.In spite of this kind of covert actions, the Soviet occupation authorities could not avoid the demand of the population to celebrate the day of declaration of independence on May 26, which the Georgian nation considered as a national as well as a political achievement. Although the Soviet authorities did not want this day to be celebrated, they were forced to take into account the demand of the majority of the population, however, they found a solution that would be convenient for their rule, they transformed May 26, the Independence Day of the Georgian people, into an international day for the liberation of common workers, where they presented Georgia, not as An independent state, but a country of workers who were oppressed and real freedom was only brought by February 25. With such a distorted ideology, the authorities of Soviet Georgia celebrated May 26 for the first and last time during its existence without its real idea and essence.
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In the lengthy history of the Georgian people, the XV and XVIII centuries were especially hard because of the division of the country into small political units, such as the provincial kingdoms and principalities and the isolation of the patriarchates of Mtskheta and Likht-Imereti, as well as Samtskhe church from the unified Georgian Church. At that time two conquerors from the south, Iran and the Ottomans, were conquering Georgian territories and forcibly converted the Georgian population to Islam. The desperate population, hoping for help from Europeans, converted to the Catholic faith on the advice of papal missionaries, although they could still praise God in Georgian with the Georgian Typicon. The situation changed in the sixteenth century when Pope Paul III entrusted the Georgian parish to the Armenian UNITOR Catholics. Historian Zakaria Chichinadze exposed the perfidies of the Catholic Armenians, who forbade the Georgians to worship in the Georgian language and started the ‘Armenization’ of the Georgians.The Catholic Armenians almost completely Armenianized the Georgian Catholics of Artvin, Ardagan and Nigali valleys and for this purpose, used even threats, terror, bribery, slander, presented the history of the Caucasus and Georgia in a crooked mirror. This is particularly true with the members of the Congregation of the Mechitarists, who successfully convinced European scholars and Roman popes with their fabricated fantastic stories. Zakaria Chichinadze, together with Mikheil Tamarashvili, Ivane Gvaramadze and Petre Kharischirashvili, fought against this treacherous policy of Armenian Catholicism, whose goal was to denationalize the Georgian nation, and protected the identity of the Georgian nation.
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Romania entered in the war after the bombardments executed by the artillery from Vidin against Calafat. The same fortress was the target of the last part of the campaign of the Romanian army in Bulgaria. Vidin had a great importance in the history of the Bulgarian people during the Middle Ages, and later for the Ottoman Empire, who occupied it in 1396. Later on, the region of Vidin was involved in attempts of liberation of the country (the uprisings of 1841 and 1850). The massacres which followed in the Vidin region as well as in other part of Bulgaria after the rebellion of June 1876 were the pretext taken by Russia to start the war, in which Romania took part effectively from 16/28 July 1877. After the valuable participation at the siege of Plevna, the Romanian army received the mission to operate in the north-western Bulgaria. A Western Corps commanded by general Nicolae Haralambie was constituted for this purpose (Divisions 1, 4 and Reserve, and the 1st Brigade from 2nd Division). These forces arrived on 25 December 1877/January 1878 on the line Arcear – Belogradcik. Meanwhile, the Serbian army was too marching toward Vidin, but Prince Carol I rejected the proposed cooperation. A secondary action of the offensive against Vidin was the blockade of Belogradcik. The Romanian forces arrived near Vidin began the attacks against the redoubts on 29 December 1877/10 January 1878. The encirclement was completed on 11/23 January 1878, but the commander of the city Mehmet Izzet Pasha continued the resistance. In the second part of the operation, between 12/24 and 14/26 January 1878, the Romanian positions moved to a smaller distance toward the defences of the city. In the third part of the operation which began on 15/27 January 1878 The fortress was continuously bombarded by the batteries settled around it, and by those from Calafat, until the capitulation of 11/23 February, when a convention was signed with general Gheorghe Manu. Vidin entered under Romanian administration. The retreat of the Romanian troops from Vidin and Belogradcik was made in several stages until the first days of April 1878, they being replaced by the Russians. The liberation of Vidin was executed only by the Romanian forces. Romania had no intention to annex Vidin or the entire region of Timok, as some rumours pretended.
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Time of the national renaissance of the Balkan peoples, the 19th century represents also an important chapter in the history of Romanian-Bulgarian relations. The Bulgarian renaissance and the struggle for emancipation from Ottoman rule would not have been possible, beyond the involvement and help of great powers such as Russia, without the safe Heaven that Bulgarian revolutionaries and common people, cultural and political elites have found north of Danube. Cultural, military and political structures, schools, press and printing in Bulgarian appeared and flourished north of the Danube under the protection of the Romanian authorities. The present approach proposes an analysis of these developments and the impact they had on the Bulgarian national renaissance and the relations between the two states.
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Romanian participation in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 – 1878 was manifested to the greatest extent in the high number of casualties near the town of Pleven in 1877. The Romanian attacks during the third assault on the city and the subsequent actions for its liberation remain memorable. With memorial signs and museums Bulgaria and Romania honor and preserve the memory of the heroes who, with their blood, won the victory of Pleven and contributed to Romanian independence and Bulgarian freedom.
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The report examines aspects of Bulgarian-Romanian relations during the Bulgarian Renaissance and the use of the territory of Romania as a base for Bulgarian revolutionary movements against Ottoman slavery.
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The following article highlights the most important endogenous aspects of population reproduction in crisis circumstances, based on demographic data on the Bessarabian Bulgarians in the 1940s. During this decade, the territory of Bessarabia sporadically fell within the borders of both Romania and the USSR, which led to the collapse of the traditional social institutions and practices among the Bulgarians living there. Led by the numerous political changes, demographic birth and death rates within a group are affected by these exogenous factors, while reflecting actual societal alterations. As a basis for the study, information extracted from the current reports of the village councils was used, or in other words – the so-called population registers. The results of the data processing are presented in a diachronic comparative perspective regarding the history of the Bulgarian communities in Bessarabia. This approach allows for analytic clarifications of the scale and nature of the famine in 1946-1947. The average daily mortality rate was found to be 18.3. In general, the specificity of the demographic transition of the Bulgarian group from a traditional to a modern model of reproduction stands out. The role of exogenous causes in the final phase of this transition has been also revealed. Birth rates were reported to be gradually decreasing while mortality rates were increasing. The consequences of this transformation were visible in the next generation in the 1960s.
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The text attempts to analyze the Bulgarian cross-border labor mobility in Komi ASSR. In the period 1968 – 1993, dozens of Bulgarian citizens worked in the Bulgarian-Soviet logging enterprises in Komi. Men, women, and families with children became part of the largest project of the Bulgarian Communist Party for work in the Soviet Union, in the taiga of the Komi people. How are the main moments of this contract policy of the USSR and the NRB unfolding, what benefits is Bulgaria accumulating and what problems are faced by the loggers who formed a memory of the work in Komi – all questions to which this article seeks answers and points of view.
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The first part of this research, published in the previous issue 3/2022 of the journal “BulgarianEthnology”, touched on the historiographical, theoretical-methodological and terminological aspects of the present study, dedicated to an increasingly discussed and developed topic in the post-Soviet space. This is the subject of the collective memory which covers the turbulent decades of the 1940s and 1950s., as well as the ongoing processes of collectivization of the property, the inherent repressions, the so-called dispossessing (dekulakization) and the deportation of whole families within the USSR, tearing them away from their places of birth,forcing them to settle down for a long time in the remote and vaguely known northern parts ofthe vast country. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly removed and coerced to live inisolation, to work and carry out the orders of the Stalinist regime until the very death of JosephStalin in 1953, in the extremely harsh climatically and poorly developed territories such asCentral Asia, Kazakhstan, the Urals, Altai and Siberia. Rehabilitated after that year, they wereallowed to return to their native lands, but a large number did not manage to restore their homesand property, while some could not settle closer than 40 km to the settlements they lived in priorto the deportation. Similar cases are not a rarity for the region of Bessarabia, which was brieflyunder Soviet rule in 1941 and from 1944 until 1991. As it is known, one of the largest and oldestBulgarian historical communities is located in this area, which after the collapse of the SovietUnion fell within the borders of the modern states of Ukraine and Moldova.The subject of the present study is precisely such a “small” case of dispossessed anddeported as a result of the so-called operation South Bulgarian families from the villageof Korten (or Kiryutnya) in the then Moldavian SSR, who for nearly a decade (from 1949roughly to 1959) resided in several settlements of the Bistroistotsky and Biysky districts ofthe Altai Krai, Russia. Since some of these 80 families were not allowed to return to theirnative Korten, they chose to settle in the town of Tarutino and in some of the surrounding settlements such as Podgornoe, Berezino, etc., located nowadays on Ukrainian territory, in the region of Odesa.
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The present text offers reading of an album that contains the visual history of a group of Bulgarian builders, working in the USSR on a contract. Their activity is to assure access to natural gas for Bulgaria. The album is printed as a special edition for only 130 workers. It contains their names and personal photos, images from the working process, as well as from the cultural events of the workers – folklore dances, choir formations, which are subdued to a general ideological discourse. The political manifestations are not forgotten, too – celebrating anniversaries from revolutions, March 8th (International Women’s Day), as an element of the festivity calendar of the communist societies. The album is a product of ideological propaganda, which displays the achieved communist dream by presenting the desired as real. Within this topic construction is a key element, because it refers not only to the actual building of facilities and structures but also to the social engineering – the creating of the“Socialist Man“.A second plan in the album is a large number of photos from Bulgaria, which have no actual relation to the topic of the gas pipeline and the building works. They are displaying emblematic places of heritage – monasteries, old houses and tourism – new resort and vacation storylines. These are part of the official images of the country in front of the world, displayed as achievements of the communist authority. The images, controversial at first sight, are combined within the general propaganda narrative of the album, which affirms memory within the community of the workers and creates a positive relationship. The participation in construction works outside the country is not only a manifestation of the policy of “internationalism“, but also a form of personal benefit, because the payment is different and assures access to various deficit goods, like an automobile for instance. All of this imposes the necessity for the evidence from the period of communism to be positioned within the context that caused them. They are to be examined critically since the photos in the album do not only display reality – they are not a moment shot in time but are mainly a constructed positive world of a society, which does not offer alternatives in thinking.
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