Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-13 May
Highlights from our coverage region: asylum seeker abuse in Croatia; opening up in Uzbekistan; Telegram abandons blockchain; stunning fossils in Bulgaria; and a friendly reminder for Georgia.
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Highlights from our coverage region: asylum seeker abuse in Croatia; opening up in Uzbekistan; Telegram abandons blockchain; stunning fossils in Bulgaria; and a friendly reminder for Georgia.
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The article analyses the educational, cultural, national and political challenges in front of the Bulgarian diaspora in the Romanian town Alexandria from the second half of the 19th century to the Liberation of Bulgaria – keeping the native language, upbringing the young generation in patriotic spirit, relations with the countrymen who remained on the other side of the Danube, inclusion in the national liberation movement. The names of teachers, doctors and other representatives of the Bulgarian emigrant intellectuals who combined their professional activities with intense socially useful activity are mentioned. Part of them turned into notable names in Principality of Bulgaria after the Liberation.
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This article aims to provide unknown information about the traditional culture of the Tatars from Northeastern Bulgaria. This ethnic community today is experiencing a process of active linguistic and cultural assimilation. The text analyses the two main cases. The first illustrates the role of the science and the work of researchers as an important tool against forgetting. The second provides the so-called аutosanction. In this example it means suppression and destruction of relics, which are valuable ethno-cultural characteristics of the community. The observations are the result of the analysis of publications in Hungarian ethnographic editions, of fieldwork in the region of Dobrich (Dobrich, Onogur, Yovkovo) and of archival work.
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The present article follows the relations of the Gypsy activists from Shumen with the International Roma Union, the attempts to send representatives to three of its congresses, as well as the control exercised by the authorities on these activities in the period 1966–1981. Archival documents and narratives of the witnesses of the events or of their relatives have been used. First of all, the analysis of the documents and narratives shows that the so called Gypsy nationalism (that lead to putting under observation of the Gypsy activists and to the restriction of their attempts to maintain contacts with the International Roma Union) was groundless. The article will also show that the self-study attempt of the Gypsies in Bulgaria were actually the efforts of a small group of representatives of the Roma intelligentsia, but not an all-Roma movement.
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The article analyzes the illustrated postcards of the early twentieth century as a source of the iconography of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 – 1878 and the objectives of the worldview of Bulgarian and Russian societies in the early 20th century. It is emphasized that during 1902 – 1912 the postal cards, dedicated to the events and participants of this military conflict, were repeatedly published in Russia and Bulgaria. It was found that the most popular were postcards with views of battle paintings by V. Vereshchagin, M. Dmitriev-Orenburg, O. Popov and others. It is determined that the theme of this war was relevant until 1912.
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The article presents an analysis of honesty as an important aspect of the Bulgarian economic culture. The focus is on the transition from the Bulgarian Revival to the nation state and the subsequent period 1879 – 1944. The main conclusions are synthesized in two hypotheses. The first is that the transition from Ottoman rule to an independent nation-state is associated with a decline of honesty and integrity in economic life. The second hypothesis points to the low level of honesty and mutual trust in relations between economic agents on the one hand and between economic agents and the state on the other as one of the important reasons for the lack of visible and long-lasting economic success in Bulgaria during the period 1879 – 1944.
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This article focuses on the daily experience of tolerance between different ethnic and religious communities in Bulgaria. The modern political uses of ethno-religious differences, in our opinion, do not lead to the need to discover new mechanisms of coexistence, but require the study of already acquired historical experience and the interweaving of these methods in new realities.
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At the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918, the process of the nationalization of army units took place on the Romanian Front of the Russian army. In conditions of army disintegration, in order to keep the front fighting against the Central Powers, the Russian Command planned to create two Ukrainian, two Polish, one Muslim corps, as well as Belarusian, Lithuanian, Moldovan, and Siberian military units. During the nationalization of troops on the Romanian Front, the entire corps and divisions, as well as smaller military units were given over to Ukrainization, Polonization, Muslimization, etc. Based on archival documents, the article identifies the numbers of major military units, smaller units and subdivisions intended for nationalization, and traces the course of nationalization. The causes of failures of the nationalization process were determined, and the fates of the nationalized formations of the Romanian Front were traced.
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The text aims to present a translation of a document from September 1451, defining the boundaries of the land of Krichim as mulk of the Grand Vizier Chanderli Khalil Pasha, contextualizing the information in it with the published and commented so far about the region as the economic base of the mulk. Waqf, as well as a horizontal structure in which interactions between the settlement and the network of religious infrastructure are visible.
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The article presents arguments in support of the claim that there was a process of integration on the Bulgarian national market even before the Liberation of1878 and that this process was more and more noticeable in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. The research methodology is based on data from the business history of the Bulgarian Revival, including my own explorations on the emergence of commercial companies as a manifestation of commercial modernity in the Bulgarian economic area during the era as well as on the trade networks established by them. The two largest companies, “Evlogiy and Hristo Georgievi” and “Hristo P. Tapchileshtov”, stand out as de facto legitimizers of the Bulgarian national market in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. They represent two important Bulgarian national economic institutions, a state before the state in the economic sphere. Other larger or not so large commercial companies and the trade networks established by them also contributed to the process of integration of the Bulgarian national market: “ Robevi Brothers”, “Geshovi Brothers”, “Komsievi Brothers”, “Karaminkovi Brothers”, “Papazoglu Brothers”, “N. Minchoolu & E. Selveli and friends ”,“Stancho Arnaudov and son”,“Georgi Hadjidraganov”, “The Commercial Company in Kotel” and others. The article provides summary information about these companies, about their trade networks in the Bulgarian lands and abroad, about the movements of their capital, etc. The article compares the similar national processes in the economic and political development of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. According to a study published in 2012 (Schulze & Wolf, 2012), in late nineteenth-century Austria-Hungary there was an asymmetric intra-imperial integration, which led to the emergence of national markets within the various ethnolinguistic communities of the country. The same process took place in the Ottoman Empire earlier, already in the first half and the middle of the same century, under specific conditions facilitating the integration of separate national markets, including the formation of the Bulgarian market. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the Bulgarian Revival elite – economic, cultural, and political – gradually developed the idea of a Bulgarian national market and initiated some original projects with in this market. Another approach in studying the topic is also possible – tracking and comparing the movement of prices of major types of goods in smaller or larger areas of the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, including the Bulgarian ethnic territory during this period. There is no doubt that serious future efforts on the part of a wider circle of researchers are needed, but this cannot happen if the discussion is not opened, if the topic of the emergence of the Bulgarian national market has not been drawn to attention. This article aims to provoke the interest of researchers on the topic.
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The article results from fieldwork research and presents three forms of charitable activity in the town of Smolyan, which take place in three institutions: 1. A secondary school in Smolyan, 2. An emblematic Christian temple in the city, and 3. An organization with a non-governmental profile – all three with the involvement and participation of children/ pupils/ youth. The choice to study these charitable activities within the Cultural Heritage, National Memory and Social Development National Research Programme was inspired by the need to document these events. They have already existed for several years and deserve promotion and validation because of their high educational and civic purpose. Additionally, valuable messages could be found in these activities from the period of the Bulgarian Renaissance – a complicated transitional time similar to the present, when young people became citizens through the suggestions of public charitable and donor formats.
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Known to man since time immemorial, nacre is one of the most popular and most highly valued material that are still in use nowadays in the creating of different pieces of jewelry and decorations. Subject of the study are some of the most attractive and beautiful belt buckles (pafti) which are property of the Regional Museum of History in the town of Kardzhali. Additionally, nacre is described as a raw material in regards with its composition and structure, its natural sources and the ways in which it is used. The article is an attempt to view the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective and give a complex picture, using the resources of different disciplines. Its goal is to interpret the messages encrypted in the images on the belt buckles, and also to answer a series of questions about the type, nature, biogeographic origins and the way of processing the raw nacre.
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The study in Oryahovo is a contribution to the modern anthropological study of local cultures, communities and heritage along the Danube River. It aims to describe the cultural geography of the place, as well as the specifics of local fishing, the names of species of nets and gear, the names of boats, species of fish, the daily life of fishermen and the forms of celebration. The methodology of the historical-anthropological approach and the biographical approach is used. The authentic texts that are published are grouped in four parts – Everyday life, Environment, Fishing, Holidays. They create a collective biography, represented by the many voices of ordinary local fishermen. Fishermen's knowledge of the world around them is complex – their stories include swamps in Romania, the numerous islands on the Danube and the nuclear power plant, as well as specific places where the riverbed is clear and the nets do not get caught to rupture. Turning an individual into a fisherman is a way of life. And it is precisely the differences in this living – with devotion to the river and the local ecosystem, that make the fishermen of Oryahovo different from everyone else. We have registered many of their worldview, acquired habits, traditional practices and skills, oral knowledge – the amalgam which we define as cultural heritage. But for local fishermen, this knowledge has not yet been valorized.
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Bulgarian historiography did not find to date a documentary source based evidence that firmly establishes 6 July 1837 as the birth date of Vasil Levski. Therefore, other hypotheses placing the birth of Levski in 1846 or 1843 have lately been put forward. The present article examines data from the population registers of Karlovo, kept in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, and argues that 1840 is Vasil Levski’s most probable birth date.
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The aim of the text is to create a prosopographical portrait of the merchant-entrepreneurs from the Danubian town of Svishtov during the Bulgarian National Revival period. I will shed light on merchants’ family background, education, individual qualities, etc. Most of the merchants were born in Svishtov. On the other hand, there are persons who fled from their native places and settled down in Svishtov. Some of them chose to settle in Svishtov in order to find better prospects for professional realization and peaceful life. Often these people are not highly educated, although there are some exceptions. Despite the lack of high and/or specialized education, they compensate with their individual qualities such as natural intelligence, resourcefulness, diligence, perseverance and honesty. They used “strategic marriages” to preserve, and to extend their wealth. They created entrepreneurial networks through which exchanged information with their relatives, acquaintances and friends. They used commercial and personal letters. Some of them were fluent in foreign languages. They used different kinds of commercial ledgers. They managed to benefit from the advantages brought to them by the economic situation in the 18th and 19th centuries. All of them participate, according to their abilities, in the public life of their native Svishtov.
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This essay is dedicated to a book written by Tomasz Rawski titled "Boszniacki nacjonalizm. Strategie budowania narodu po 1995 roku" (Eng.: "Bosniac nationalism. Nation-building strategies after the year 1995") which was published by Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar in the year 2019. Basing on an analysis of contemporary politics of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina relating to the 1992–1995 war, the author presents two antagonistic nation-building strategies.
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