Orphaned Bulgarian Nationalism: the “Attack” Party vs. Ethnic Model”
Benedict E. DeDominicis, American University in Bulgaria – 29 June 2008
(ben@aubg.bg, bendedominicis@yahoo.com)
One motivation for this paper was to gain insight into the future of Serbian nationalism following the international community’s recognition of Kosovo in February 2008. Kosovo as the medieval cradle of Serbian Orthodox identity and, concomitantly, a highly emotive symbol of contemporary Serbian nationalism are themes which both Serb and non-Serb observers repeat.1 The loss of the Serbian medieval imperial and religious center of Kosovo, together with the enforcement of separation of Republika Srpska from Serbia, raises questions about the long term role of the politically influential Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbian politics. Comparison with the Bulgarian case should provide insights as a neighboring, Balkan, predominantly Slavic Orthodox community. An extended history of conflict between Bulgaria’s Orthodox majority and its Muslim minorities is a feature of Bulgaria’s modern history since Bulgaria’s violent secession from the Ottoman Empire in 1877-78. Yet, unlike the communities of the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria since 1989 has not produced a militant ethno-sectarian nationalist social movement that has succeeded in institutionalizing itself in a major political party comparable, for example, to the Serb Radical Party of Voislav Seselj.
This ongoing process of peaceful ethnic conflict resolution in Bulgaria has given rise to the notion of the “Bulgarian ethnic model.”2 Bulgaria’s success is notable; as recently as twenty years ago, the Bulgarian Communist authorities engaged in a policy of cultural genocide against the Bulgarian Turks. According to Amnesty International, the so-called “regeneration” process which started in 1984 forced Bulgarian Turks to “Christianize” their names and the names of their ancestors on all documentation, supposedly to rectify the historical wrong of forced Turkification/Islamization. Resistance led to deaths and the flight of more than 300,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey by 1989. Approximately one-third of this number returned with the fall of the Zhivkov Communist dictatorship and the immediate reversal of this policy overcoming significant domestic political opposition.3
Bulgarian mass public discontent with the stresses of the transition from state socialism have generated ephemeral political movements which have emerged and faded quickly. Among the most recent and militantly nationalistic cases is the Attack party.4
1 See for example the Velikonja, Djordjevic, Radic and Sells contributions Religion and War in Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).
2 Polia Alexandrova, “Bulgaria: Keeping Attack at Bay,” Transitions Online, Week in Review, June 21 - June 27, 2005, at
http://www.ciaonet.org/cgi-bin/dkv/ciao/querystring.pl?rq=0&ht=0&qp=&col=ciao&qc=ciao&qt=Bulgarian+ethnic+model, 19.6.08.
3 Ömer E. Lütem, “The Past and Present State of the Turkish Bulgarian Relations,” Foreign Policy (Dış Politika), issue: 14/1999, pp. 71-74, on
www.ceeol.com, 24.6.08 and Mariana Lenkova, “Minorities in Southeast Europe: Turks of Bulgaria,” December 1999, Center for Documentation and Information on Minorities in Europe - Southeast Europe (CEDIME-SE), pp. 19-20, at
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/pdf/cedime-se-bulgaria-turks.doc, 24.6.08.
4 Volin Siderov received 24 percent to Georgi Parvanov of the Bulgarian Socialist Party receiving 76 percent in the second round national presidential election (Theodor Troev and Kerin Hope, “Parvanov win painted as pro-EU triumph,” Financial Times, 31.10.06, at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1fe168cc-6884-11db-90ac-0000779e2340.html, 21.6.08). One analyst quoted 1
Emerging in 2005, the Attack party is the latest manifestation of Bulgarian ethno-sectarian nationalism which lacks a prominent institutionalized constituency base. An observer might first expect that potential candidates for such a base would include the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The Serbian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church have both become institutionalized interest groups with great political authority in their respective societies. Observers have underlined the important role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in helping to promote and maintain the saliency of intense Serbian nationalistic values contributing to the disintegration of multinational Yugoslavia.5 Yet, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has not played even a remotely similar role, displaying comparatively little domestic political influence. The post-Communist, Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) has held the prime ministerial position for half of time period since end Communist regime in late 1989. This prominence indicates that era saw emergence substantial support constituencies today’s BSP faction political elite. Bulgaria, despite its repression, largely equated with “modernization” view modal citizen.6 Volen Siderov’s Attack party platform resonates social justice expectations which appear to derive from state socialist era. frustration these concurrently widening income disparities and widespread corruption among public office holders contributes populist appeal. Another critical component includes ethno-sectarian nationalist resentment at high profile role Turkish minority party, Movement Rights Freedoms MRF). is only significant representative approximately 9% population), been parliamentary governing coalitions nearly entire 1989.7 Aside hostility MRF, demands can be taken from the “Ataka” party program include the following:
The health, prosperity, social security and education of Bulgarians should be the first priority of the state.
Every Bulgarian investor and businessman should have a privileged position with regard to the foreign ones operating in the country.
The different levels of state taxes should conform with the income of the citizens.
in this report, Daniel Smilov, stated that neither Ataka nor any party sought to claim itself as the home of Bulgarian euro skepticism.
5 Radmila Radic, “Serbian Orthodox Church and the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Religion War Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), pp. 168-69, in Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).
6 From extensive discussions with Bulgarians older than the generation entering adulthood now who are too young to recall the Communist period. In contrast, while Bulgarians accept that the Communist era was a modernizing stage in Bulgaria’s national development, Poles are apparently more resistant to the notion that the Communist period was a legitimate phase in their national history; the current “Third Republic” of Poland follows the first republic which existed until Poland’s division at the end of the eighteenth century and the second republic during the interwar period.
7 Siderov’s public appeals focus on the continual government coalition membership of the Bulgarian Turkish minority policy, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, since the end of communism, and especially the widespread corruption for self-enrichment popularly perceived as an unofficial prerogative of elected politicians and state administration. “Mr Siderov tried reposition himself as a watchdog, saying he represented "everyone who didn't steal or participate looting past 15 years". (Theodor Troev and Kerin Hope, “Bulgarian president faces run-off after low poll turn-out,” Financial Times, 24.10.06, at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e0ea42a2-62fb-11db-8faa-0000779e2340.html, 21.6.08).
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Privatization contracts should be a subject of re-negotiation.
Bulgarian enterprises (state-owned or private) should be supported by the state in and outside the country.
The design of the budget should be for the citizen's needs and not for the appetites of the ruling class; reduction in the state Administration Staff.
A program for fighting demographic collapse in Bulgaria (Bulgaria’s population has decreased from 8.5 to 7.3 million since the late 1980s).
Referendum on all national issues concerning more than 10% of the Bulgarian population [sic]
Start operation “Clean hands” aiming at the investigation of suspicious newly-rich people, and of all deals made by politicians related to the external national debt.
Confiscation of illegally acquired properties and funds.
Establishment of a legal minimum wage, in compliance with European standards.
No sales of Bulgarian arable land to foreigners.8
Volen Siderov, the founding leader of “Ataka,” was editor of Democratsia, the newspaper of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) in 1990. The UDF was the largest opposition political party which emerged following democratization in 1989-1990. It held power for a brief period in 1991-92 and then again in 1997-2001. It fractured after the 2001 national parliamentary elections with the rise of the “National Movement of Simeon II,” the political party created by the former king of Bulgaria literally weeks before the elections. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the de facto Turkish minority party, also emerged in 1990 and has continued to play a kingmaker role in Bulgaria through forming governing coalitions with other Bulgarian political parties. It has done so with secondary consideration of their partners’ formal ideological program or their historical connection to Turkish minority oppression, as in the case of the post-Communist BSP. Its focus has been on the pragmatic economic interests and rights of the Bulgaria Turks. Indeed, Ahmed Dogan, the founder and perennial leader of the MRF, is widely perceived to have been an informer for the secret police during the Communist era.9 Dogan’s ability, as their sole national-level representative, to deliver the political and economic goods to his Bulgarian Turkish constituency today overrides the significance of his collaboration with the Communist regime authorities responsible for the forced assimilation policies against the Bulgarian Turks in the 1980s.
The xenophobic “Attack” party attempts to portray itself as part of a broader, pan-European “far right” constellation of parties, including Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front. Unlike militant Serb nationalism, it lacks powerful institutionalized constituency allies in Bulgarian society. Yet, the current, Socialist-led government in Bulgaria does use the threat of a potential domestic nationalist backlash in support of “Attack” should the European Union impose humiliating sanctions on Bulgaria, its newest and poorest member, for lack of systematic results in fighting widespread corruption.10
A student of nationalism might expect the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to be a societal constituency for militant Bulgarian nationalism. It is an institutionalized political interest group in a region in which ethno-sectarian community membership primarily
8
www.ataka.bg/program. Retrieved on March 23,2006 [research by Magdalina Kichukova]
9 Interviews with various Bulgarian Turks.
10 Stefan Wagstyl, “Bulgaria warns sanctions could boost extremists,” Financial Times, 10 June 2008,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15e5b0fc-3688-11dd-8bb8-0000779fd2ac.html, 19.6.08.
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defines national (primary, terminal) self-identity.11 Yet, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is relatively weak as a political actor in Bulgaria in comparison with the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities in other countries. Analyzing the level of potential influence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church among the Bulgarian citizenry from a structural, historical perspective offers insights regarding the relevance of the so-called “Bulgarian ethnic model” to foresee trends in contemporary Serbia following secession of Kosovo. The downfall of Milosevic after the 1999 war with NATO and UN occupation of Kosovo highlighted the failure of secular Serb nationalism. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Communist, reinvented himself as a Serb nationalist, but the Serbian Orthodox Church always viewed Milosevic with suspicion. Instead, it tended to favor Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic as the more appropriate political leaders seeking to unify the Serb Orthodox lands and people.12
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church hierarchy has not succeeded in occupying a politically influential position in post-Communist Bulgaria, unlike its counterpart in neighboring in Serbia or in Russia. Yet, according to one recent survey, 78% of Bulgarian citizens self-identify as Orthodox. Indeed, immediately after the end of the Communist regime, the post-Communist authorities symbolically invited the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to resume the position it had during the interwar period of being in effect the state church. Peter Kanev notes that President Mladenov at the 19 February 1990 annual celebration at the Vasil Levski national hero monument had only two officials accompanying him: the Defense Minister and the Bulgarian Patriarch, Maxim. Kanev interpreted it as “promotion [of the Church] to the level of a state representative institution and also as an act of inviting the Church to take the position in Bulgarian society that it held before the Communist regime.”13
In the view of militant Serb nationalists such as Radovan Karadzic and his supporters, Yugoslav Communism permitted and equated with Islamization. In their view, Tito’s 1974 constitutional decision to recognize the Bosnian Muslims as a national constituent community was part of a strategy to weaken and destroy the Serb nation (or Croat nation, depending upon one’s nationalistic point of view).14 In multinational, authoritarian Communist Yugoslavia, Tito periodically suppressed manifestations of ethno-sectarian nationalism. Regime opposition after his death inevitably included resurgent ethno-sectarian nationalism among the different national communities. In Communist Bulgaria, the forced renaming of Bulgarian Muslim and later Bulgarian Turks with Christian names meant that the Bulgarian Communist party itself significantly represented and articulated intense Bulgarian ethno-sectarian nationalist values in the Bulgarian national community. The Bulgarian political opposition to the decaying Communist regime was therefore more strongly anti-nationalist from an ethno-sectarian perspective.15
11 Martha L. and Richard W. Cottam, Nationalism and Politics: The Political Behavior of Nation States (Lynne Reinner, 2001), pp. 230-32.
12 See for example Paul Mojzes, “The Camoflaged Role of Religion in the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” p. 74, in Religion the War in Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).
13 Petar Kanev, “Religion in Bulgaria after 1989: Historical and Sociocultural Aspects,” South-East Europe Review, 1/2002, p. 75 at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=B7ABEB3F-8650-4798-8CC2-649B6E6C24F2, 21.5.08.
14 Mojzes, “The Camoflaged Role of Religion in the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” p. 87.
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The Bulgarian ethnic model has the roots of its success partly in response to the policies of the Communist authorities, and partly in the socio-political conditions within the country. The Communist authorities never created a political unit for the Muslim areas of Bulgaria as they did in the former Yugoslavia.16 Bulgarian Communism expropriated ethno-sectarian nationalism. These state level factors help account for the comparative weakness of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church both in its pronouncements as well as in the form of its representatives not being a prominent authority source of “political knowledge” today in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian anti-Communist political opposition was therefore anti-ethno-sectarian in its formal ideology, so the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had less symbolic authority potential to exploit in the transition.
Other Communist authorities in multinational states were comparatively less effective in co-opting ethno-sectarian nationalism in comparison to the Bulgarian Communist authorities. Only 50% of the population of the USSR was Russian, so for the Soviet authorities to exploit Russian nationalism was fatal. As with the Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Russian Church emerged in the post Communist era as a critical successor institution for defining Russian identity. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church did not have a national political identity vacuum into which to step as did the Russian Orthodox Church. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has not been prominent as an actor in Bulgarian civic society, nor has it been active in mobilizing the diaspora community, despite the fact that a significant percentage of the Bulgarian population now lives and works abroad. In contrast, the Serb Orthodox Church today has engaged in struggles with its pre-Communist antecedent organization and also with the Oecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople in appealing intensively to their respective constituencies.17 The Russian Orthodox Church has also been asserting its influence among the Russian diaspora in the territories of the former USSR.18
In Serbia, the Church has been political preserver of national identity in a fragmented national environment. Serbian identity through the Serbian Orthodox Church had been a facet of Serbian national identity while divided by three states (Habsburg, Ottoman, Montenegran/Serbian) until 1918. The Bulgarian Church did not play a similar role partly because only the Ottoman empire controlled the Bulgarians within its religious community millet system. The Greek patriarch in Istanbul had ecclesiastical administrative authority from the Porte on behalf of all the Orthodox subjects in the empire. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church did not have autonomy in the modern era until
15 Alexander Kolev, “Why Bulgaria Remained Peaceful and How This Helps Us Understand Nationalist Conflict in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” at
http://socsci2.ucsd.edu/~aronatas/scrretreat/Kolev.Alex.doc, 23.05.06.
16 The Bulgarian Communists did at one point follow Stalin’s lead in agreeing to the existence of a Macedonian minority in the Pirin region of southwest Bulgaria (the home of the American University in Bulgaria) but they jettisoned this policy with the cominform break with Tito in 1948.
17 Lenard Cohen, “Bosnia’s ‘Tribal Gods’: The Role of Religion in Nationalist Politics,” pp. 62, 71 and Radmila Radic, “Serbian Orthodox Church and the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Religion and the War in Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), p. 162, in Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).
18 Sergiu Panainte, “Secularism in Republic of Moldova – Politics of Religion or Religious Politics: Where Do We Draw the Boundaries?” Romanian Journal of Political Science, Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2006: Religion as Political Identity: Understanding the Global Rise of Religion as a Political Issue: Religion and Politics, p. 95, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=AB631E66-64CE-49F0-922A-1C398967C473, 9.6.08.
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the Ottoman authorities granted it in 1870. It did so over the objections of the Oecumencial Greek Patriarch in Constantinople in response to demands from Bulgarian ethnic Orthodox self-identifiers. The Porte granted an exarchate, giving the Bulgarian church authorities administrative control over their own ecclesiastical affairs, but the Bulgarian church still nominally recognized the supremacy of the Oecumenical patriarch.19 This social movement evolved into Bulgarian nationalism which quickly succeeded in the midst of violent uprisings and international intervention in creating an independent Bulgarian state in 1878.20 In one sense, modern Bulgarian nationalism created the modern Bulgarian Orthodox Church as an institution. The relative lack of coherence today between Bulgarian nationalism and the Bulgarian church hierarchy as an institutional symbol has historical structural antecedents. The Bulgarian exarchate which the Porte established in 1870 had boundaries which served as the basis for the independence of Bulgaria according to the San Stefano peace treaty ending the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War.21 This territory included much of present day Macedonia, Greek Thrace and Romanian Dodrudja. Under pressure from other imperial powers which saw Bulgaria as a satellite of their Russian imperial competitor, the subsequent Congress of Berlin rejected this arrangement and reduced Bulgaria to half this territory and still technically subject to the Porte.
For the next several decades until the coming to power of the Communists in 1944, Bulgaria expended large sums of blood and treasure in an incomplete effort to regain its territorial “national ideals” in the Serbo-Bulgarian 1885 war, the 1912-13 Balkan Wars and in the two world wars. Bulgaria expanded and achieved full sovereignty, but regional as well as Great Power military and political obstacles produced costly, disappointing defeats after temporary successes to reconstitute the nation on the basis of the San Stefano treaty boundaries and the borders of the exarchate. During the interwar period, the Bulgarian government maintained an intense concern for the education and worship rights of Bulgarian irredenta in Thrace, Macedonia and Moesia.22 The Bulgarian Orthodox Church had institutionally personified the “national ideals” in pre-Communist Bulgaria. For the last time during World War II, Bulgaria occupied much of these territories as a nominal ally of Germany. The rise of the Communist regime was the denouement to this long term, costly and unsuccessful strategy while also suppressing and marginalizing the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. While highlighting the Romanian case, Cristian Vasile cites Pedro Ramet in noting that for Marxists in the Balkans, “religious policy and nationalities policy were parts of an organic whole.”23 In
19 An “exarch” is between a metropolitan and patriarch in status.
20 R.J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 66-76.
21 Maria Todorova, “Language in the Construction of Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Bulgarian Case: Language, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Some Theoretical Observations,” in Nacjonalizmy w Swiecie: Specific Nationalisms, 2006, p. 12, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=b8d7b646-0695-11db-9828-0080ad781d9c, 28.5.08.
22 See for example, “History of Bulgaria,” at
http://www.bulgaria-embassy.org/History_of_Bulgaria.htm, 21.6.08.
23 Cristian Vasile (Institute of History “Nicolae Iorga”), “Church and State in Romania after the Communist Takeover (1945-1948),” Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Balkan Studies, Balkan Studies, 2002, No 2, p. 105, citing Pedro Ramt, Cross and Commissar. The Politics of Religion in Eastern Europe and USSR. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 38.
at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=1542FB48-CEFC-11D6-90B0-0002446345DA, 27.5.08.
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sum, post-Communist Bulgaria inherited the Communist legacy of ending the dream of “the national ideals.”
The Bulgarian Church has not had the political opportunities available to it today for political ascendancy which have become available to the Serb and Russian Orthodox churches. As a critical feature of the so-called Bulgarian “ethnic model,” the Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s closer, historical association with the people through the petty clergy leaves the political requirements and parameters and boundaries of Bulgarian nationalism to be defined more strongly by the secular state leaders, and not the Church ecclesiastical authorities. Religious symbols in Bulgarian national identity are critical. Yet, the resonance of nationally defining, emotive symbols of Orthodoxy did not translate into a comparable level of institutional hierarchical political authority for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
Some argue that in regard to the defining criteria of the Bulgarian nation, language trumps religion. Maria Todorova claims that the politically prevailing conceptualization of Bulgarian identity among the state authorities had in pre-Communist Bulgaria come to focus on linguistic criteria as the critical defining community marker, not religion. It was partly a self-serving means to overcome the religious community divisions in the country between Christians and Muslims by integrating and assimilating the latter.24 The disjuncture between Bulgarian ethnic community identity with Bulgarian nationalist aspirations on a medieval historical territorial basis would not become so intense as it was in the cases, for example, of Serb, Hungarian and Polish nationalism. In Bulgaria, this nationalism-based stereotype of self has its manifestation in the emergence and persistence of the mistaken cultural stereotype among the Bulgarian mass public that Slav Bulgarian Muslims, the “Pomaks,” speak the “purest” Bulgarian.25 This small community of 250,000 are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, many of whom prefer the name “Bulgaromohammedani,” i.e. Bulgarian Muslims.26
Territorial versus linguistic-ethnic versus ethno-sectarian community bases for nationalist claims conflict and complement each other over time. In the Serbian, Polish and Hungarian pre World War II cases, nationalists sought to annex lands “lost” that were ‘historically’ theirs, with the ethnic constitution of the populations living there at the time a secondary consideration. Clearly the “Bulgarian lands” of the exarchate were also not anywhere near ethnically homogenous, but they were predominantly Bulgarian-speaking. Consequently, the BOC lent its symbolic nationalist authority to a project which appeared to correspond with ethnic Bulgarian irredentism. The failure to achieve these Bulgarian territorial “national ideals” was consequently an additional critical blow to the symbolic representational authority of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as well as to Bulgarian ethnic irredentism. Orthodoxy would remain much more of a symbol than as an institutionalized social interest group actor in providing an institutional base for political activism. The Communist authorities themselves later sought to reinvigorate
24 Maria Todorova, “Identity (Trans)formation Among Bulgarian Muslims,” p. 477, in The Myth of “Ethnic Conflict,” Beverly Crawford and Ronnie D. Lipschutz, (editors), International and Area Studies Research Series/Number 98, (University of California, Berkeley, 1998).
25 Maria Todorova, “Language,” p. 15.
26 Ulf Brunnbauer, “Diverging (Hi-)Stories: The Contested Identity of the Bulgarian Pomaks,” Ethnologia Balkanica, vol. 3, 1999, p. 36, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=1E111474-2944-4266-879B-CE508B577386, 8.6.08.
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Bulgarian ethno-sectarian nationalism as part of their control strategy while suppressing the Church as a political actor.
Paul Werth notes the historical equation of Bulgarian Orthodox ecclesiastical authority with ethnicity contrasts with other Orthodox community self-expression movements which continued to focus on “historical” territorial definitions of the community. The Russian autocracy abolished Georgian Orthodox autocephaly with the incorporation of the eastern Georgian catholicosate into the empire in 1811. Early twentieth century Georgian “autocephalists” lead the social movement to constitute Georgian Orthodox autocephaly over what they considered to be all Georgian territories within the framework of the Russian imperial system. They “…remained committed to the proposition that the jurisdiction of any future autocephalous Georgian church be strictly territorial and not be confined only to certain parishes based on the ethnicity of the parishioners. In this regard, in fact, they were quite critical of Bulgarians, who in their view had advocated precisely such an arrangement.”27 The Bulgarians had been condemned for “philetism,” i.e. demanding ecclesiastical organizational differentiation on the basis of ethnic criteria. The Georgian autocephalists did not want a similar arrangement in the multiethnic, but allegedly historically “Georgian” territories over which they sought Georgian autocephaly in relation to the Russian Holy Synod. Contemporary Russian oppositionists pointed out that the old catholicosate did not have canonical jurisdiction over the other Georgian territories which the Georgian autocephalists claimed, nor where the Georgians a majority in all of their claimed areas.28
Comparisons are made between Slav but Roman Catholic Poland and Orthodox Slavic communities such as Bulgaria in highlighting the impact of Orthodox, caeseropapist political culture.29 Felicia Alexandru writes that Max Weber identified three different models of relations between secular and ecclesiastical power. The subordination of the religion to the state characterizes the caesaropapist model.30 Caesaropapism is frequently portrayed as a feature of Orthodox culture.31 It supposedly manifests itself in a political attitude of passivity and obeisance towards state authority. Some Bulgarian authors themselves accept this claim.32 Weber’s other two models include the hierocratic model, in which a secular power is dominant but depends on religious legitimacy. Finally, the theocratic model manifests ecclesiastical power as preeminent.33 According to Alexandru’s analysis, the hierocratic model from among the
27 Paul Werth, “ Georgian Autocephaly and the Ethnic Fragmentation of Orthodoxy,” Acta Slavica Iaponica, 2006, Tomus 23, p. 92, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=2E8627C4-A833-45D0-9BA9-E8E7E1B46474, 27.5.08.
28 Werth, p. 99.
29 Svetlozar Kirilov, “Does Civilization Matter for Transformation of East European Societies?” Sociological Problems, Special Issue, 2006, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=D697CE9D-EB92-4B00-99BF-17E0B97A46F1, 20.5.08. Kirilov’s article has this claim as its thesis, placing Poland in the category of western civiliational political culture, using the terminology of Samuel Huntington.
30 Felicia Alexandru, “Church-State Relations in Postcommunist Romania: Real Deprivatization or the Way Back to Byzantine Symphonia,” in Romanian Journal of Political Science, Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2006: Religion as Identity: Understanding the Global Rise a Issue: and Politics, p. 63, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=AB631E66-64CE-49F0-922A-1C398967C473, 9.6.08.
31 Kirilov, p. 129.
32 Kirilov, pp. 89-99.
33 Alexandru, “Church-State Relations,” p. 63.
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three appears to be the most typical present in Central and Eastern Europe, rather than the caesaropapist model. Rising consumerism, Western-led globalism and materialism have lead to a nationalist political reaction involving the automatic inclusion of the Orthodox Church. The Church, in turn generally has sought policy privileges as the guardians of morality and identity. In reality, great diversity characterizes the role that religion played in the resistance to Communist oppression, in each country’s democratic revolutions, and in the status of religion today.34 Consequently, the caesaropapist model appears not really appropriate: the ecclesiastical authorities exercise political influence through influencing the state authorities, including favoring some elite factions and political parties over others. The Church authorities in post-Communist Orthodox Europe are not subservient tools of the authorities. Nor are they ultimately the supreme authorities in the theocratic model as in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The “Western” conceptualization of separation of church and state supposedly lends itself to the development of civic society activity as an antidote to statism.35 The historical institutional autonomy and strength of the Polish Roman Catholic church supposedly created the foundation for an alternative social movement which re-energized liberal political and Polish national identity values. This institution linked with the emerging trade union movement and its intelligentsia partners to complete the coalitional alliance which challenged the Polish communist party in the context of slowly dying Soviet imperialism in the Cold War international context. The Polish Church, standing in opposition to the Communist state, became the repository both of liberal and nationalist values. Despite Communist efforts, Polish official ceremonies did not supplant the private religious ones because of the strength of the Church in Poland, unlike in the Soviet Union.36 In Russia people were more likely to suffuse the public rituals with emotional meaning significantly because they were the only ceremonial routes available to them, unlike in Poland.37 Russia allowed increased ceremonial functioning in the 1950s and 60s which the public exploited.38
The same appears to have been true in Bulgaria as the closest ally to the USSR and the most likely to copy and apply Soviet public policy models. Desacralization in Bulgaria appeared to be more successful and more in accordance with the Russian experience.39 Reflecting its reputation as the staunchest ally of the Soviet Union, the Bulgarian Communist authorities under Todor Zhivkov reportedly explored the prospect of joining the USSR as its 16th republic member. Nevertheless, despite the more successful atomization of Russian and Bulgarian society under the totalitarian Communist regime, the Russian Church has (re)asserted a very strong role as an institutional political interest group in the Russian political system.40 The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has played a comparatively much weaker political role in Bulgaria.
34 Alexandru, “Church-State Relations,” p. 63.
35 Kirilov, pp. 90-91.
36 Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols Against the Power: Rise Solidarity and Fall State Socialism in Poland (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994) pp. 41-42.
37 Kubik, p. 42.
38 Kubik, p. 41.
39 Personal observations of the author witnessing wedding ceremonies; the Bulgarian wedding ceremony remains today in 2008 an official secular matter with a secular official presiding in a municipal hall with secular mimicry of the elements of the religious ceremony, e.g. a small choir. Today, the unofficial Church service then comes later and is undertaken as an event to add a solemn but festive ethnic coloring to the sequence of wedding day events which then conclude with a party/reception.
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The Bulgarian communist authorities expropriated the Christianization of ancient Bulgaria as a critical episode in the historical development of the Bulgarian state.41 However, this equation of Orthodoxy with the founding of the Bulgarian state 1,300 years ago did not translate into institutionalized political authority of the ecclesiastical officials in public policy making during the Communist period.
The re-establishment of the Bulgarian patriarchate after its extermination by the Ottoman overlords and Greek masters was itself a product of Communist power. In 1767, under pressure from the Greek Oecumenical Patriarch, the Porte extinguished the last vestiges of Bulgarian ecclesiastical autonomy by abolishing the Ohrid patriarchate (in present-day Macedonia), and placing the Bulgarian Orthodox community under direct control by the Greek hierarchy centered in Constantinople. In 1870, the Russian imperial authorities and the Oecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople refused to recognize the firman of the Sultan creating the Bulgarian autocephalous exarchate, declaring it schismatic. While simultaneously subjecting the Bulgarian church to mockery and repression, in 1945, the new authorities declared the schism to be over and in 1953, the other Orthodox patriarchates recognized the restoration of the Bulgarian patriarchate, but only within the borders of the Peoples’ Republic of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian patriarchate’s authority does not extend into Macedonia and Thrace and further into the Dobrudja region of Moesia, as did the authority of the old, “schismatic” exarchate.42
Bulgaria and Russia both lacked a broad-based dissident movement such as Solidarity. But Cottam and Cottam suggest that the military was also an institution of significant nationalist symbolic authority in Poland.43 The military and police apparatuses in Russia under Putin seem to have acquired a degree of Russian nationalist legitimacy along with the church as an institution insofar as they embody Russia’s world power recognition status aspirations.44 Some indications exist that the Bulgarian security services have also developed a degree of nationalist legitimacy to produce charismatic figures in the transition period. One such individual is Boyko Borissov, the mayor of Sofia and leader of the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, party, commonly referred to by its Bulgarian acronym, GERB. Boyko Borissov started his professional career in the Communist police, eventually becoming a bodyguard Todor Zhivkov
40 James N. Danziger, Understanding Political World: A Comparative Introduction Science (eighth edition) (Pearson Longman, 2007), p. 65. In this introductory textbook, Danziger provides a typology of political interest groups: “associational,” “institutional,” “nonassociational” and “anomic,” with institutional interest groups including organizations whose primary missions are not political but they also engage in political lobbying.
41 See, for example, “Bulgaria - The Zhivkov Era,” in Glenn E. Curtis, ed. Bulgaria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1992, at
http://countrystudies.us/bulgaria/45.htm, 24.6.08.
42 Kanev, p. 84.
43 Cottam and Cottam, p. 153.
44 Rudra Sil and Cheng Chen, “State Legitimacy and the (In)significance of Democracy in Post-Communist Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3, May 2004, pp. 361-62 at
http://www.polisci.upenn.edu/faculty/Sil-Chen-EAS1.pdf, 18.6.08, writing before the drastic increase in fossil fuel prices and substantial increase in Russian annual GDP growth, and John Anderson, “Putin and The Russian Orthodox Church: Asymmetric Symphonia?” Journal International Affairs, 1 October 2007, pp. 4-7, at
http://www.allbusiness.com/government/elections-politics-politics/8924542-1.html#, 18.6.08. Anderson concludes that the Russian political leadership is clearly the dominant political actor in the “partnership” between the church and the secular state authorities, in which the latter’s public policy initiatives largely receive the support of the former, and policy towards religion is at best a secondary policy realm.
10
and his immediate post-Communist successor. While today arguably the most popular politician in Bulgaria, who compares himself to Arnold Schwarzenegger, some international Bulgarian reports are skeptical of Borissov’s claim be a crusader against corruption.45 Nevertheless, he has culture reputation as being former member police nomenklatura turned away from corruption fight for Bulgaria’s welfare. interviewees have told this writer that gossip circulating claims Borissov uses “connections” liquidate heinous mafiosi rather than wait on hopelessly ineffective corrupt judiciary prosecutorial office.46
In Bulgaria, Volen Siderov is appealing to this belief that the rulers are corrupt and exploit everyone else. He does appear to appeal to order values in associating them with nationalism. The alienation of the Bulgarian citizen from the political class, with the perception of it being parasitic and completely self-interested, is a view which many Bulgarians share. In Bulgaria, the lack of an institutional support for dissent to present an alternative vision for the Bulgarian nation has contributed to the anomic phenomenon of the Attack party as a political movement. Whereas the Catholic Church channeled Polish nationalism in a liberal democratic direction, Bulgarian nationalism lacks an alternative to the state political institutions which the Communist authorities themselves created.
Bulgarian nationalist sentiments had turned earlier to the phenomenon of Simeon II Saxcoburgotski as a pre-Communist, romantic alternative to the predatory vision of society which the BSP, UDF and MRF and its allies seemed to embody. According to Jan Kubik, the myth of national birth and origins is the fundamental mythical story. National cosmogony focuses on the arrival of a people on present-day territories from a wilderness without definition. A utopian and paradise-like era of national unity and independence follows, which includes youth and purity of society. The establishment of the first state leads to the mythical king, and the historical experience defines the nation’s ethnic and historical borders.47 Simeon Saxcoburgotski, child king of Bulgaria until his exile in 1946 who has never renounced his title as Tsar, exploited it explicitly by taking the name Simeon II as part of his public persona.48 Simeon of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha European dynastic royal family, together with the monarchy, were a romantic symbol for national sovereignty and dignity and of Bulgaria being a part of European civilization. With no party policy platform or formal political organization, Simeon Saxcoburgotski announced in April 2001 that he was relocating to Bulgaria from Spain to run for parliament in the June 2001 elections. As leader of the newborn “National Movement of Simeon II” (NMSII), his few public promises were that the lives of everyday Bulgarians would improve within 800 days, as well as a dramatic increase in pensions and extension of interest free loans. His government kept none of these promises.49 He claimed that as
45 Jeff Stein, “Bush’s Bulgarian Partner in the Terror War Has Mob History, Investigators Say,” Congressional Quarterly, 2 March 2007, at
http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002461932.html , 17.6.08, news reaction, Бойко Борисов отрече написаното в "Конгрешънъл Куотърли" да е истинадата,” [Boyko rejects Quarterly” article], 8
http://www.actualno.com/news_95405.html 17.6.08.
46 Interview with K.B., July 2007.
47 Mitja Velikonja, “Liberation Mythology: The Role of Mythology in Fanning War in the Balkans,” in Religion War Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), p. 21.
48 Simeon I (893-927) ruled during the “Golden Age” of the medieval Bulgarian empire.
49 “Routinized Charisma: Weak Institutions, Corruption and Organized Crime in Simeon's Bulgaria,” 24 March 2004, Staff-prepared summary of the EES noon discussion with Venelin Ganev, Assistant Professor 11
a “businessman,” 800 days was the turnaround timeframe for reform of underperforming large-scale enterprises.50 His new party proceeded to win 50% of the parliamentary seats and he as party leader became Prime Minister for 2001-5 in coalition with the Turkish minority party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. The high expectations which the encouraged and then failed to meet led to the victory of the Bulgarian Socialist Party in 2006, to form a coalition government with the MRF and NMSII. The NMSII government lacked the institutional capability to challenge the hegemony of the post-Communist security and economic structures centered on the party and state structures.51 Surprisingly, Simeon Saxcoburgotski at one point nominated Brigo Asparuhov, formerly a high level figure in the secret police during the Communist period as head of the National Intelligence Service, to be his “special services” advisor.52 An outcry by NATO and EU representatives led Asparuhov to turn down the appointment. In October 2007 nationwide local elections, Asparuhov ran as the BSP candidate for the nationally high-profile position of mayor of Sofia, coming in third behind the winner, Boyko Borissov. Many Bulgarians interviewed today believe Simeon to be motivated primarily by material interests in entering Bulgarian politics, noting the restitution to him of most of the royal properties which the Communist authorities confiscated in the 1940s.53 Siderov had originally sought to join the NMSII as a parliamentary candidate in 2001 but the party leadership rejected him.54
The perception is widespread that the highest officials of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church are also corrupt, with their focus on personal enrichment.55 The Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim is far from being a charismatic, revered authority source on public policy issues in Bulgaria today. A schism within the Church developed following the 1992 ruling by the new UDF government-appointed “Board of Religious Affairs” that
of Political Science, Miami University, at
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=61272, 24.6.08.
50 According to one Spanish interlocutor, Simeon Saxcoburgotski reportedly had engaged in real estate purchase and sales during his residency in Madrid, Spain, i.e. he was not a chief executive office of a business. A Bulgarian interlocutor noted that Saxcoburgotski had struggled in his earlier life with a gambling addiction.
51 Kerin Hope and Theodor Troev, “Bulgaria struggles to topple gangsters,” Financial Times, 17 April 2008, at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/232f6608-0c09-11dd-9840-0000779fd2ac.html, 24.6.08. “To some extent Bulgaria’s problems with meeting EU standards on the rule of law reflect the continued influence of communist-era intelligence and security officials, according to local analysts. ... Bulgaria’s secret service under communism was known to be actively involved in drugs and weapons smuggling. It took a cut of the heroin trade from Turkey to western Europe and sold arms and ammunition to pro-Soviet groups in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. The first business groups to emerge from Bulgaria’s transition specialised in trading, mixed with smuggling and organised crime. They recruited former secret service men, police officers, soldiers and wrestlers …”
52 “Bulgaria's Controversial Special Services Advisor Expects NATO Resistance,” Sofia News Agency, 25 September 2003, at
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=26461, 21.6.08.
53 A Bulgarian taxi driver told this writer that Simeon Saxcoburgostki’s brother has acquired 28 Black Sea front hotel properties. Whether or not such a belief is true is distinct from the fact that it exists and is therefore politically significant.
54 Alexandrova, p. 3.
55 See, for example, Milena Hristova, “None of Religion's Business,” 26 January 2007, Sofia News Agency, at
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=75887, 24.6.08. In June 2008, one Bulgarian interlocutor claimed that during the 2006-7 hyperinflation economic crisis that led to the forced, pre-term resignation of the previous BSP government under Jan Videnov, the BOC did not undertake any social relief activities in the midst of widespread poverty. 12
Patriarch Maxim collaborated with the Communist authorities resulting in his uncanonical election as Patriarch by the synod in 1971. An “extraordinary and enlarged synod” declared an end to the schism in 1998 after it reaffirmed Maxim’s position as Bulgarian patriarch. The Oecumenical Patriarch presided and six other Patriarchs, including Aleksy II of Moscow, attended. Unrepentant bishops and priests continued their efforts to depose Maxim to no avail, and in 2004 the Saxcoburgotski government ordered the police forcibly to evict the rebellious clergy from 250 churches and properties.56 This schism in east European churches involving allegations of collaboration is a political vulnerability of any societal institution in the former Communist countries. However, it apparently has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the resurgence of autonomous political influence of the Russian, Romanian or Serbian Orthodox churches in the post-Communist era. By way of contrast, in neighboring (former) Yugoslavia, Bishop Amfilohije Radovic, the Metropolitan of Montenegro, was highly nationalistic, controversial and influential during the war there.57 Other very influential Serbian Orthodox theologian-monks during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia included Atanasije Jeftic and Irinej Bulovic.58
Bulgarian societal preconceptions arguably make for potentially fertile ground for a Bulgarian militant Orthodox nationalist revival. The Bulgarian national cable television channel associated with the militant xenophobic Attack party, SKAT, covers Attack political events at which Bulgarian Orthodox priests are a fixture. It continually plays on the theme of the forced Islamization/Turkicization of Bulgarians during the period of the so-called “Turkish Yoke” of 500 years of Ottoman rule. This forced “Islamization” appears to be a “fact” which the majority of Bulgarians believe to be true. The prevalence of this belief makes it topical.59 The belief that Islamization which through forced conversion and subversion of the conquered peoples created, for example, the Bosnian Muslims out of Croats or Serbs, depending upon the nationalist perspective of the commenter, is a common one in the Balkans.60 More concretely, many Bulgarians see that the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which is the de facto Bulgarian Turkish minority party, violates the Bulgarian constitution, Article 11(4): “There shall be no political parties on ethnic, racial or religious lines, nor parties which seek the violent seizure of state power.”61 Scholarly observers, however, view the Bulgarian Constitutional Court’s narrow majority ruling in 2000 in favor of the MRF’s legality as a critical success in liberal democratic interpretation of constitutional provisions for purposes of overcoming historically explosive ethnic conflict and facilitating ethnic
56 “The Orthodox Church of Bulgaria,” CNEWA, 25 June 2007,
http://www.cnewa.org/ecc-bodypg-us.aspx?eccpageID=20&IndexView=alpha, 24.6.08.
57 Lenard Cohen, “Bosnia’s ‘Tribal Gods’: The Role of Religion in Nationalist Politics,” p. 71, in Religion and the War in Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).
58 Radmila Radic, “Serbian Orthodox Church and the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), p. 164.
59 Nikolay Aretov, “The Abducted Faith and Bulgarian National Mythology,” Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Balkan Studies, Balkan Studies (Institute of Literature), 2003, No 2, p. 122, 131, at
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=42AD67E6-469D-11D8-900D-0002446345DA, 21.5.08.
60 See, for example, Miroslav Kis, “Revenge of Forgiveness,” in Bosnia, Paul Mojzes, ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), p. 257.
61
http://www.parliament.bg/?page=const&lng=en13
minority integration.62 In contrast, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church does have official recognition in the Constitution in Article 13, clause 3, “Eastern Orthodox Christianity shall be considered the traditional religion in Republic of Bulgaria.”63
During nearly two decades since the proclamation of the 1991 constitution, many legal and political struggles in Bulgaria have concerned themselves precisely with what rights and obligations Bulgaria assigns to every person in the state. These struggles have related to different cleavages, including ethnicity and religion. Majority and minority intensely nationalistic self-identifiers are more likely to know intuitively what is “right.” Ethnic identity has the assumption of a unique and common culture and history.64 A shared catastrophic experience such as the “regeneration process” would serve to reinforce this shared feeling of ethnic identity while simultaneously serving as a barrier to ethnic reintegration.65 The terrible personal experience of the regeneration process among the Bulgarian Turks requires a stronger authority source to counteract it. It includes specific authority sources who clearly are empowered to represent and wield a surprising amount of power in the Bulgarian political system, which Ahmed Dogan and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms appear to do. But unlike the Muslims peoples of the former Yugoslavia, the Bulgarian Turks and Muslims live today amongst a nationalistic Slav Orthodox majority whose Church is a comparatively weak, institutionalized source of “political knowledge.”
Bulgarian Turks and Muslims suffer from the stereotype that they are the legacy of Bulgaria’s domination and degradation by a culturally inferior, non-European, “Asiatic” imperial power for 500 years. The Hispanic and African-American minority groups in the US are examples of the progress and obstacles to integration of ethno-racial minorities which appear to be culturally relatively “backward” in the view of majority core cultural community of the polity. Elaboration on the case of the Bulgarian Turks through comparison with the American case offers further insights into the “Bulgarian ethnic model.”
A factor shaping predisposition to strive for complete national self-determination includes self-perception of historical uniqueness, as well as the political capability to achieve the national sovereignty dream. An observer should give a people high marks in self-perception of community uniqueness due to a prevailing belief in sharing a common, long history with great triumphs and tragedies. A people may accept highly fanciful and romantic historical tales, and even outright historical mythology. This acceptance serves to strengthen the appeal of attractive historical images.66 While the Bulgarian people have a perception of being heirs to a political community which is many centuries old, the Turkish minority’s self-identification is also with the former imperial hegemon in the area, the Ottoman Empire. The ambivalence in Bulgarian Turkish identity stems from the ambivalence of the Turkish national community in general regarding the Ottoman Empire. Ataturk’s rejection of the defining legitimation values of the Ottoman Empire in terms of the correspondence of church and state meant that Islam as a unifying factor between Balkan Muslim minorities and the post-Ottoman state would weaken. Appeals
62 Venelin I. Ganev, “The Bulgarian Constitutional Court, 1991-1997: A Success Story in Context,”
Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 55, No. 4, (Jun., 2003), p. 602, at
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594549, 10.6.08.
63
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Bulgaria, 8.6.08.
64 Cottam and Cottam, p. 28.
65 Cottam and Cottam, p. 77.
66 Cottam and Cottam, pp. 44-45.
14
to pan-Turanism would remain but Islam would remain a complicating factor here. Membership of the ummah, i.e. the worldwide community of Muslims, was and historically remains a defining feature of “Turkishness” in the Balkans where ethno-sectarian community identity is the typical, strongest community basis for nationalism. In other words, the fact that Ankara rejected Turkey’s political obligations to the welfare of the ummah meant that Balkan Muslim minorities were cast adrift in a region in which sectarian community membership is inseparable from ethnicity. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian Communist authorities led an assault on the role of religious institutions in society, at times forcibly assimilating the Bulgarian Muslim and Turkish minorities into the socialist Bulgarian culture and state.
Tragedy is more important than triumph in reinforcing the intensity of national self-identification.67 The contemporary impact of the Holocaust on Jewish nationalism illustrates this point.68 National tragedies in the Balkans include the Greek loss of Smyrna/Izmir in the twentieth century, and also the Serb defeat at Kosovo Polje in the fourteenth century. The same is true with regard to San Stefano versus Congress of Berlin Bulgaria, in which the Russians and the British played a key role.69 The rebirth of the old Ottoman state in the form of Ataturk’s Turkey played a role in the strength of Turkish nationalism. It followed the steady loss of influence and territory by the Ottoman Empire, at terrible cost to the Muslim diaspora left behind with the retreat of the Ottoman imperial boundaries throughout the nineteenth century.70 The climax of this national catastrophe was the rise of the victorious Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk” and the Republic of Turkey. It occurred concomitantly with the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I and the humiliating Treaty of Sevres, which Ataturk renounced. The legally sanctioned population exchanges/ethnic cleansing between Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne was the culmination of the sacrifice of the European Muslim diaspora to the process of building modern Turkey. One writer claims that about one-half of the population of Turkey today are descendents of Muslim refugees fleeing the new states with predominantly Christian nationalist movements created from the slow breakup of the Ottoman empire.71 Still, millions of Muslims remain in Southeastern Europe.
Determining how to measure the intensity with which members of a diaspora continue to share self-identification with the perceived homeland is a challenge. Operationalization by the analyst would have to include a resolution of questions such as how should the analyst determine how a citizen’s and a group’s perceptions, through the psychological balancing process, accommodate to events such as the failure to annex the irredenta after repeated, costly failures. It requires determining perceptually the effect on predisposition towards national identification of a people as a result of great triumphs and
67 Cottam and Cottam, p. 45.
68 Cottam and Cottam, p. 45.
69 J.F. Brown highlights the paradox in Bulgarian nationalism with the choice of 3 March after the fall of Communism as the new national holiday, the day on which the Treaty of San Stefano was signed, contrasting it with Romania’s 1 November, the day on which Romania regained Transylvania: “On the Romanian side, fulfillment; on the Bulgarian, pathos.” [J.F. Brown, The Grooves of Change: Eastern Europe at the Millennium, (Duke University Press, 2001), p. 19.]
70 Charles King, Black Sea: A History (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 206-9.
71 This same writer claims that 5,5 million Muslims died during this period, including the 2.3 million who died as a result of war in Anatolia itself from 1912 to 1923: David Barchard, “Letters to the Editor: 'Clash of civilisations' could become reality, Financial Times, 9 September 2005 at
http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=%2Bottoman+%2BBalkans&aje=true&id=050909000330&ct=0&page=315
failures of another state which has a community with which the people of the former state strongly identify.72 On a related point, then, the observer might wish to know how does the prospect of Turkey joining the EU strengthen or weaken pan-Turanist sympathies among Bulgarian Turks, or will it have no effect. A strong assimilationist trend appears to be at work among so-called “Euro-Turks” in the EU today.73
Interviews which indicate the intensity and direction of affective responses to memories of critical historical episodes are likely to be the best means by which to glean the measure of the strength of this predispositional factor.74 This writer’s efforts to interview Bulgarian Turks about the issue found among the older generation a general reluctance to discuss the case of the “regeneration process.” Interviewees became visibly distressed in discussing the matter with an American professor from the American University in Bulgaria. They discussed it, but clearly it was emotionally distressing to dredge up these experiences which they appeared to wish to forget.75 This writer inferred that these interviewees are clearly focusing on the brighter economic prospects and opportunities which appear to be growing from Bulgaria’s integration into the EU and the provision of economic development opportunities for the region. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms appears to the Bulgarian Turkish minority to be the channel through which these economic opportunities are arriving to the Kurdzhali region.
Expectations that people will continue living a common life in the future would be a particularly important source for evaluating the factor of history as a predispositional factor for perceiving uniqueness.76 Once again, the balancing aspect is present. To compensate for the negative memories of conflict, a community with an inevitable expectation of a common future prevailing within it will likely behave nationalistically to avoid painful cognitive dissonance. By asserting its common identity to the outside world, it may strive to overcome the memory of brutality and persecution, regardless of whether it was reciprocal. It could lead to a common culture justification as well: ‘Europeans do not treat each other that way and that evil was a Communist derogation away from European culture which all Bulgarian citizens today do not accept and which they do not now permit.’ In this sense, one might find parallels with African-American political perceptions, attitudes and values. African-Americans tend to have a primary intensity self-identification both with the US national community and the African-American community while at the same time this self-identification with the US is ambivalent.77 Therefore, given the heretofore competitive, marginal political sovereignty maintenance capabilities of the nations of the Balkans, the communities of Southeastern Europe may be a test case of the ability to promote pan-European primary intensity self-identification.
The Bulgarian Turks would receive a ’plus’ for history as a uniqueness factor predisposing them towards Bulgarian nationalism if the Bulgarian Turks demonstrate an expectation of a common future with th
