Interwar Bulgaria Research Articles

National Emissaries for Preventive Healthcare. Visiting Nurses in Interwar Bulgaria and Yugoslavia

National Emissaries for Preventive Healthcare. Visiting Nurses in Interwar Bulgaria and Yugoslavia

Interwar East Central Europe, 1918–1941: The Failure of Democracy-Building, the Fate of Minorities

Interwar East Central Europe, 1918–1941: The Failure of Democracy-Building, the Fate of Minorities

Fascism to Complete the National Project? Bulgarian Fascists’ Uncertain Views on the Palingenesis of the Nation

Western comparative studies of fascism have largely neglected to consider the case of interwar Bulgaria, despite a growing number of provocative studies by Bulgarian scholars. Despite significant political and economic crises, indigenous fascism remained split into a number of small movements that failed to become prominent political forces in the country. The paper argues that Bulgarian fascist movements faced problems differentiating their goals and ideologies from other elements of the far right, highlighting the porous boundaries between the two movements. Specifically, it compares the goals and programs of the fascist National Social Movement, the Union of Bulgarian National Legions and the Warriors for the Advancement of the Bulgarian Spirit (or Ratniks) to conservative authoritarian movements in the country. While noting the temporal power of conservative authoritarian rivals who were in control of the government from 1934 to 1944, the paper hypothesizes that the relative lack of distinct ideological features contributed to the weakness of fascist groups, and suggests the utility of including Bulgaria in the field of comparative fascist studies.

Visionaries and the national idea in interwar Bulgaria: The circle of the Orthodox AssociationThe Good Samaritan

A loser of the First World War, interwar Bulgaria is characterized by developments in its spiritual and religious life that reflect the idea, and the feeling, of a “national catastrophe”. One of the expressions of this general mood is the multiplication of religious organizations run by lay people in which religious activism is infused with ideas of national grandeur. Born in the early 1920s, The Good Samaritan was an ultra-Orthodox organization founded by former military officers with the help of an Orthodox priest. Within a few years it entered in conflict with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which treated it as a sect. It was, however, successful in rallying citizens and peasants alike under millenarian slogans. The association relied on visionaries and popular prophets to promote its ideas of Bulgaria as a New Israel. The paper focuses on two of the most outspoken prophets acting on behalf of The Good Samaritan , both women. By examining their visionary techniques and pronouncements, the aim is to show how national ideology and political climate influence the “work” of visionaries and give them credence.

Citizenship Formation in Bulgaria: Protected Minority or National Citizens?

The paper analyzes citizenship formation in Bulgaria between the two world wars. The article approaches this process by studying the tension between national minority and citizenship rights in regard to Bulgaria's Muslim minority. In the interwar period this tension was framed by the emergent regime of minority protection following the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and the crisis of liberal democratic provisions for individual citizenship rights. I illustrate this tension by studying the conflict between Kemalists and Old Turks over leadership of the Muslim minority in Bulgaria. The conflict exposes how discourses of protection enabled a mode of national minority governance, which defined Muslims' rights in terms of reified religion and culture. This kind of definition, I argue, fostered the disempowerment of Muslims in the national public. On the other hand, the discontent with liberal democracy in interwar Bulgaria discloses the apprehension of citizenship among state authorities, Old Turks, and Kemalists as a practice of mediation; that is, acquiring the authority to mediate a particular conception of collectivity, which would be sustained by formal exercise of civil and political rights.

'My War is not Your War': the Bulgarian Debate on the Great War 'The experienced war' and Bulgarian modernization in the inter-war years

This paper explores how the experience of the First World War was represented and instrumentalized in inter-war Bulgaria in debates about social and political modernization and national identity. The main focus is on the memoir writings of a group of middle-class intellectual reservist officers. These authors constructed a generic conventional picture of trench warfare as 'the war of the mud', which in fact reflected their own subjective experience far more than that of the mass of peasant conscripts. A key intention of these texts was to fathom the roots of Bulgaria's defeat in the war, which was largely attributed to the peasant's pre-modern local attachments to family and village that prevented him becoming truly 'national-minded', though politicians were also blamed for failing to pursue policies of social solidarity that would have kept the peasant conscript content. The reservist officers were keenly interested in the social and psychological impact of the war and sought to draw lessons from their own war experience that would facilitate the establishment post-war of sound political leadership, social solidarity and a unified nation of modern patriotic 'moral individuals'. Official memorializing practices also sought to enact a sense of national solidarity by stitching individual victims and survivors into the national body politic, but there were tensions between this project and the intentions of the reservist officers. Memoir writing was thus also an attempt to garner social and political capital for these individuals and their social group, and to create a space outside official political and military memory. The reception of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrated the tensions between these competing memory discourses, but also the public's resistance to all these elite narratives and receptivity to Remarque's fundamentally more pessimistic message. The intent of all these memory projects, however, was fundamentally ideological and future oriented.

Image and Policy: the case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-war Bulgaria, 1918–44 (with special reference to education)

Image and Policy: the case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-war Bulgaria, 1918–44 (with special reference to education)

Image and Policy: The case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-war Bulgaria, 191844 (with special reference to education)

The article aims to reconstruct the public image of Turks in Bulgaria as it is presented by Bulgarian public figures and state officials and to study the influence of their perceptions of Muslim minorities on the formation of state policies. It argues that the prevailing images of 'otherness' and the paternalistic attitudes of suspicion and fear among Bulgarian governmental and administrative officials have enforced and been reinforced by concrete policy measures at local and central levels. The article traces the relation between recommended and real policy measures in the sphere of minority education as an indicator of state-minority relations in the inter-war period.

Image and Policy: the case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-war Bulgaria, 1918–44 (with special reference to education)

Image and Policy: the case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-war Bulgaria, 1918–44 (with special reference to education)

On the History of Rightist Thought in Inter-war Bulgaria: The Existential Dimensions of `Crisis' in the Writings of Yanko Yanev

On the History of Rightist Thought in Inter-war Bulgaria: The Existential Dimensions of `Crisis' in the Writings of Yanko Yanev