Traumatizing History: Textbooks in Modern Bulgarian History and Bulgarian National Identity (1917–1996)

Abstract

The theoretical framework of this study rests on the assumption that historical narrative can ‘establish the identity of its authors and listeners’ (Rüsen 1993: 5); it is grounded on the new status of history as a ‘resource for solving the problems of the national emancipation and identity, and for legitimizing the political élites’‘power struggles’ in the modern public space (Grekova et al. 1997: 15). I use theoretical concepts in my analysis of the ways through which historical narratives (forming the structure of the educational content of the obligatory history textbooks) construct the national community, articulating its relation with ‘the surrounding world’. This analysis examines the process of re‐writing the history textbooks1 (as a legitimizing resource of the changing political élites during the periods 1917–1946; 1946–1955; 1963–1984‐1989; 1990–1993‐1996) in order to discern the value‐normative scale of the historical narrative's chain of events, which builds and carries the national identity. Our study deals with the obligatory history textbook in its capacity of official pedagogic discourse that is charged also with the expectations to provide historical resources for solving the crisis of the national identity, caused by the changed direction of Bulgarian historical time as a result of the flow of world history (Bundzhulov et al 1995).