Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1949, by Theodora Dragostinova

Abstract

Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1949, by Theodora Dragostinova. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2011. xxii, 294 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). In this deeply researched and thought-provoking book, Theodora Dragostinova uses case of Greeks of Bulgaria during first half of twentieth century to shed new light on agency of ordinary people in shaping notions of national while negotiating their way under pressure of elite-led nationalization projects. Based largely on documents mined in fifteen central and provincial archives in Greece and Bulgaria, this book represents a significant contribution to field of nationalism studies by vividly highlighting fluidness and ambiguity of nationness. Moreover, Dragostinova challenges traditional conceptions about supposed primordial and antagonistic nature of nations in Balkans by highlighting ways in which people adopt, modify, and reject idiota of nationhood at certain times according to their personal needs. Dragostinova's study has a dual objective: to analyze how both states and people dealt with problem of belonging to a single during final transition from empire to nation-states in Balkans. Her study begins with an analysis of development of Greek and Bulgarian national ideas, explaining how murky linguistic and religious conceptions of community gradually transformed into notions of distinct nationhood among elites during nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This top-down part of her study does not diverge much in methodology from earlier studies of nationhood in Eastern Europe and Balkans, which make ideologies of nationalist intellectuals and political elites central focus. But Dragostinova's primary contribution is a fascinating view from below--those Greek and Bulgarian speakers, who were subjected to increasing pressure to declare their alliances with one nation or other. In this part of her study she provides an innovative idea that all students of nationalism will want to have in their conceptual toolboxes. This is notion that, under pressure of elite-led nationalization projects, ordinary people did not simply become' Greeks or Bulgarians, but rather learned to speak national, often in highly instrumental ways (p. 71). Particularly in emergency situations, ordinary people would strategically declare their alliance with one state or other, sometimes going so far as to switch from identifying with one national community to other. Yet when tensions would subside, or political currents would change, some of these same individuals would switch back. This analysis highlights what Dragostinova calls the performative function of nationality as an emergency identity (p. 72). It suggests that ordinary people understood importance that elites attached to idea that exists from time immemorial, as overall, they joined in instrumental ways in response to situational factors. …