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The church-national struggle continued almost four decades and ended on February 27, 1870, with the foundation of an independent Bulgarian church hierarchy in the form of a Bulgarian hexarchy by virtue of a decree of the sultan.
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Based on published and newly discovered unpublished sources, as well as the existing historical research on the topic, the author reconstructs the church-national struggle in Sofia in the years after the end of the Crimean War (1856). The events in Sofia are discussed in the context of the national struggle for an independent Bulgarian church and in comparison with the similar activities in Plovdiv at the same time. Two main moments in the church movement in Sofia attract the attention and form the cores around which the source material is focused: the reaction in the city after the secession from the Patriarchate of Constantinople on 3 April 1860 in the Bulgarian church „St. Stefan“ in Constantinople – two months later Sofia’s Bulgarians also renounced the Patriarchate and reinforced this with relevant changes in the municipal self-government; the dramatic events in Sofia in 1861 when the citizens of Sofia defended their previously stated position on the church issue by refusing to accept the patriarchal bishop – Bulgarian Dorotheos.
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One of the greatest idols of the twentieth century, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, was visiting Yugoslavia in Avgust 1959. It was a significant visit which wasn’t characterised as important in public and in media. On the one hand, it is understandable, because Che Guevara first stepped on the historical stage just a few years before he came to Yugoslavia and he wasn’t as planetary popular as he is nowdays. In those days, he was young and rebellious revolutionary who has just found himself in politics and his time was yet to come. Che Guevara – the right hand of Fidel Castro, a minister, a commandant, a physician, the icon of the 20th, but also of the 21th century. This encounter was important for Yugoslav – Cuban relations, as well as for two historical figures, Tito and Che Guevara, who possessed revolutionary spirit, although originated from different continents and with different ambitions. His visit was important for Guevara, because he wanted to learn everything about revolution and guerrilla warfare. Guevara learned techniques of warfare and hiding in the woods from Yugoslav soldiers, which he applied in Bolivia 1967. This visit was also significant for the better development of Yugoslav Cuban relations.
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The essential problem of Germany’s international position after unification was its disproportionately great strength in comparison with other powers and the fact that this disproportion was constantly increasing. That trend was to continue right up to 1914. Germany was not only stronger than any other European power individually, but it was also capable to single-handedly take on even a coalition of several other powers, as it was to be amply demonstrated in World War I. Immediately after the unification, Bismarck realized the fear that Germany instilled in its neighbours and the potential negative consequences this fear could have for Germany itself. Consequently, he attempted to adapt his foreign policy to these circumstances, making it moderate and cautious, with the goal of preserving the situation created after 1871. However, soon after Bismarck left, the Kaiser’s diplomacy tore down the basic postulates of his foreign policy. As if that was not enough, a policy was launched, designated as Weltpolitik, although no one defined that concept, or connection of that policy with German national interest. Bismarck’s successors did not have clearly defined national interests for Germany to pursue. They thoughtlessly and irrationally reduced the entire foreign policy to a simple an illogical choice between two alternatives. So as not to be an “anvil” in European politics, Germany had to be a “hammer”. An unavoidable consequence of such a policy was the rapid deterioration of relations with other Great Powers. The great speed with which the process of degradation of the international position of Germany was progressing at the beginning of the 20th century was equal to the speed of its military and economic growth. In 1890, just about every experienced European diplomat would have jeered and shaken his head at the thought of an alliance between Britain, France and Russia. In 1906 at Algeciras it could be seen that such an alliance was definitely going to become a reality. It is an irony of history that for the greater part this alliance was not the work of some diplomat from one of the member states, but of the very nation against which it was directed. In his time, Bismarck had been faced with the possibility of an alliance of that kind and he made every attempt to avoid its consequences – the surrounding and isolation of Germany. Now the German politicians were faced with the reality of that alliance, and in 1905, they made the first in a series of attempts to break that encirclement and thus eliminate negative consequence of their restless, erratic, inconsistent and incalculable foreign policy. But to no avail. The last such attempt would lead into World War I.
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The article is dedicated to some issues related to the memory of one of the most important events of the 20th century – World War II. The author traces the debate on the role of the Red Army in the war as part of the total revision of its history picking up momentum after the collapse of the communist system and the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The analysis of the changes over the past three decades in the views of this greatest clash in the history of mankind, respectively, the role of the Soviet army in it, rests on several basic postulates. The first of them is the view that history is an endless process of self-knowledge and is related to the need of each generation to make sense of the past in terms of the issues and problems of its present, i.e. the rethinking of what happened during the Second World War is not an exclusive priority of the post-communist era. Secondly, this is a process that affects, at one time or another, each of the states participating in the war, not just the countries of Eastern Europe, from the so-called “socialist camp”, which for many years were forced to adhere to the Soviet version about the war. Thirdly, the history of World War II, taken as a collective historical memory, demonstrates clearly the “multivoicedness” of the historical narrative, the principle inability to build an adequate account of the past from a single point of view within an unmistakable history. On the contrary, we are witnessing a kind of “war of memories”, not only between national discourses but also between the “memories” of different groups of society within one country. It is undisputed, however, that the great rewriting of the history of World War II is in the post-communist era and is mainly related to the participation of the USSR in the war. And the great “battle” of the memories here is led between today’s Russia on the one hand and the former members of the “socialist camp” and of the Soviet Union itself, on the other. That is why the debate about World War II and the role of the Red Army is traced in the article through the prism of the development of the historical policy of the participants in the war. The zigzags in the Russian interpretation of the historical events are compared to the new narratives of Poland, Ukraine and the three Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, the countries located in a special region of Eastern Europe, designated by the Yale University Professor Timothy Snider as the geographical, moral and political centre of the mass murders in the old continent.
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In the article, the author seeks the interrelation between two historic processes that seem to be independent of each other – the final conquest of the North Caucasus by the Russian army in the years after the Crimean War and the events that led to the Bulgarian liberation in 1878. The “linking point” between these two processes is the massive resettlement of the Circassian tribes from the Northwest Caucasus within the Ottoman Empire, including the Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule – a resettlement that occupies an important place in the policy of the Russian rulers not only with regard to the Caucasus region but also against the Ottoman Empire and its possessions in the Balkans.
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Каждый польский ребёнок слышал о «чёрной “Волге”». Якобы именно на этом автомобиле, ездили то ли ксёндзы, то ли монашки, то ли сотрудники госбезопасности, или даже высокопоставленные советские чиновники, которые, соблазнив детей конфетами, похищали их и убивали [21, с. 312-313]. Возможно, здесь проявляется отголосок «легенд о крови» — рассказов о хищениях и убийствах христианских детей, якобы совершаемых евреями, которые затем использовали кровь для приготовления мацы [24]. Байки о «чёрной “Волге”» — один из самых популярных современных нарративов, называемых городскими легендами. Впрочем, в области терминологии современного фольклора царит хаос, отражающий, на мой взгляд, существующие дефиниционные проблемы. Дионизиуш Чубала, главный польский исследователь этого явления, пишет: «В своей работе я употребляю множество терминов. Я говорю: “сплетня”, “слух”, “сенсация”, “новость”, “городская легенда”, “современный миф”. Ранее Дорота Симонидес пользовалась терминами: “рассказ из жизни”, “невероятная история”, “ужасная история”, “вампирическая”, а Чеслав Хернас употреблял словосочетание “легенда факта”. Этот номенклатурный плюрализм указывает на некоторую нашу терминологическую беспомощность, одновременно доказывая необ- ходимость срочного уточнения отдельных понятий» [6, 32]. Также и в английском языке нет в этом плане терминологического единогласия: самые часто употребляемые определения — это «urban legend», «modern legend», «contemporary legend», «rumor legend», «modern myth», «rumor», «gossip». По моему мнению, самая важная опознавательная черта рассказов данного типа — это способ отсылки к их подлинности.
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The aim of the study is to present the Czech intellectuals’ vision of the life in Plovdiv during the existence of Eastern Rumelia. Then, in the capital of Eastern Rumelia, a considerable number of Czechs lived, it can be said that there was a Czech colony. K. Jirechek, H. Skorpil, A. Sourek, R. Turn-Taksis, J. Voracek, Y. Vagner, drew attention to the Bulgarian society and described the differences in the lifestyle of the two nationalities. The citations quoted in the article are selected from a preserved correspondence and the printed memoirs of Czech activists.
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В условиях перманентного внутриполитического кризиса в последние два десятилетия XIX в., вызванного ростом национальных противоречий в монархии Габсбургов, российские дипломатические службы, общественные организации, публицистика, пресса, то есть все структуры, формирующие общественное мнение, следили за развитием ситуации в этом государстве. Однако отношение каждой из них к происходившим событиям, их трактовке было различным.
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The war of the Ottomans with the Holy League (1683-1699) causes significant changes in the lives of the Balkan provinces within the Ottoman Empire. An interesting moment in the history of the Empire is the participation of civilians in the armed conflicts between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman armies. The population is drawn into the conflict in various ways both by the Ottoman authorities and by the Habsburg propaganda in the Balkans, and assists both parties. One such moment is the Chiprovtsi uprising, as it is called in the Bulgarian historiography, from 1688. The story about the uprising and, in general, about the fate of the Bulgarian Catholics, had been constructed on the basis of the documentation of the Catholic communities, Christian chronicles from ХVІІІ c, relations of Dubrovnik agents, information by the Habsburg generals and correspondents for the military actions in the Balkans, as well as additions by orthodox priests. Up to that moment, however, the Ottoman sources that represent the point of view of the ruling party regarding the Chiprovtsi events remain almost unknown. The goal of this article is to reveal so far unknown information regarding the crushing of the Chiprovtsi uprising through the point of view of an Ottoman historiography monument from the late 17th – early 18th century. The main story was described by Bakkaloğlu Sarı Hadji Mehmed pasha Defterdar (?–1717) in his story Zubde-i Vekayiat (Important events). The author was for a long time a servant at the financial department in Istanbul in the 1680s and 1690s. In the early18th century he was appointed for the first time as a chief defterdar and he occupied that position several times in his lifetime, and that is why he was popular with his nickname – Defterdar. Some comparisons are also made with other sources from that period and some suggestions are presented regarding the chronological frames of the follow up events in Chiprovtsi region.
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This article deals with the diplomatic efforts that marked the period after the introduction of the Helsinki Final Act, observed not only from the viewpoint of socialist Yugoslavia as the host of the future CSCE Belgrade Follow-up Meeting, but also from the standpoint of the complex relationships existing in Europe between the two blocs during the years in question. Particular attention is devoted to the ties between Yugoslavia and the group of neutral and non-aligned countries, which jointly gave a considerable contribution to the concept of CSCE continuity. This article is primarily based on documents from Serbian and U.S. archives.
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Magazine "Macedonian Review" began to print in 1991 as a continuation of the old magazine, printed from 1924 to 1943 and after restoration of the Sofia Macedonian Scientific Institute work in 1990.
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The new powers that be in Yugoslavia after WWII faced lack of expert and well educated, but also pro-Marxist diplomatic cadres that would also be loyal to the Communist Party. In the beginning, the problem was solved by cautious taking over of the diplomatic officials of the Kingdom of J ugoslavia, by employing the cadres who graduated from humanities faculties and by using the existing Party cadres, regardless of their expertise. Very soon higher schools were set up to broadly educate and improve Marxistically the chosen Party cadres and to enable them to work in the diplomatic service. Firstly, the one-year Diplomatic School at the Foreign Ministry was founded in 1946, and in 1948 the Journalist and Diplomatic High School in Belgrade, that had the rank of a faculty and two departments educating the cadres for diplomacy and journalism. Despite public competitions, only communists and youth activists proposed by Party committees in federal republics were accepted. The teaching staff consisted mainly of university professors, officials of the Foreign Ministry and of other institutions. Due to political problems with the Infonnbureau, the school was abolished in 1952, but it was possible for 200 students to end their studies and graduate. Only in the late 1950s the opinion within the Party leadership prevailed that a higher school for education of the Parly cadres for diplomacy and other political posts should be founded, so that within the framework of the Party school system the High School of Political Sciences started operating in 1960. In 1968 the School was turned into the Faculty of Political Sciences within the framework of the Belgrade University, that, among other things, educated diplomatic experts.
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The article considers the problem of Agatha’s, the wife of Edward the Exile, ancestry. The author analyzes a different version of the Agatha’s ancestry in a context of internal policy of Yaroslav the Wise, who was the guardian of her husband. The debate about Agatha’s origin continues, but the author concludes that the German theory of descent for Agatha has better evidence base in the context of Yaroslav the Wises foreign policy.
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