ТHE BULGARIANS ON THE BALKANS

"Сhronica" Journal of the University of Szeged (Hungary), 2023

The author offers a new perspective on the fundamental question of the Bulgarian ethnogenesis. Bulgarians and Khazars came from East Turkestan, a region of Turpan-Urumqi-Hami; and their earliest traceable origin is Tocharian. Living in the Sarmatian environment, they gradually acquired Iranian languages. In the I century AD they had already moved in the Caucasus and came in the academic focus of historical analysts (Movses Khorenatsi).

Studia Ceranea. Journal of the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe

ACADEMIE BULGARE DES SCIENCES Institut d’Etudes balkaniques Etudes balkaniques, 3-4 , 1998

In the 13 centuries of its history, the Bulgarian nation fell under foreign political power twice. More or less, that foreign political domination reflected on modern Bulgarian mentality and conditioned their present attitude to neighbouring nations. According to this author, living conditions in the periods of foreign political domination to a certain extent also stipulated the attitude of Bulgarians towards their own statehood in the last hundred years or so. What is more, it is my opinion that they shall also influence the process of our integration into the future united Europe. This article is part of a larger study of the formation, structure, expressions and tendencies in the development of Bulgarian ethnic self-awarenss in the period between the 7th and the 17th century. It is dedicated to the first "stateless" period in Bulgarian history. This author's interest in ethno-social processes explains why we shall discuss at length problems of ethnic modelling rather than the first expressions of Bulgarian ethnic self-awarenss. In Bulgarian history, the period of Byzantine rule is marked by the first recorded expressions of Bulgarian ethnic self-awarenss, ones that have long been the object of study and analysis1. In most of the cases, however, these publications discuss the dating and the historical reliability of the information in Bulgarian manuscripts of that age. Much less attention is paid to the ethnic self-awareness of their authors. Considering the fact that those works were written in the conditions of foreign political domination, I think that the consciousness of ethnic affiliation of their authors deserves a special study. This article shall try to reveal some aspects of Bulgarian ethnic self-awareness under Byzantine rule. Because of the limited space of the publication we shall ana lyse only two of the most significant works of the time, the Bulgarian Apocryphal Chronicle and Homily to Cyril the Philosopher and how he Christened the Bulgarians.

THE PANNONIAN BULGARIANS, CUBRAT, 2023

The superficial reading of history ignores the enduring presence of the Bulgarians in the Balkans two hundred years before Asparuh, which reading allows for statements like “as all raids before 540 targeted the eastern Balkans, especially Thrace and Moesia Inferior, it is likely that these originated in the steppe lands north of the Lower Danube and the Black Sea”. The facts show another reading, presented in this book.

Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog instituta, 2023

This paper analyzes the information provided in the Byzantine historical narratives composed between the end of the 10th and mid-13th century on Bulgarians, Serbs and the Rus as these peoples permanently settled or just temporarily resided in the area of the Central Balkans. This paper attempts to show how the Byzantine historiography of the mentioned period presented the peoples in question.

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES, LVI, 2, 341-357, 2020

The object of commentary in the text is the Bulgarians who come from Western Thrace and who live in these cities throughout the period 1913-1919. I will try to shed light upon a scarcely developed matter, or at the very least, upon some parts of it. I have headed towards a modern rendition of well-known Bulgarian authors and I have put together their pieces with archived and scientifically non-interpreted until this moment materials. I will describe a part of the image of the Bulgarians from the cities of the said community. In these cities they consist of old and new migrants. They are placed in certain spaces of life and commerce. The official institutions influence their lives to a certain degree but these people remain heavily connected to their familial-kin structures, as a whole. Elitist fractions have been formed in their communities. Furthermore, specific elements could be found in their identities.

Yura Konstantinova, Eleonora Naxidou (eds.), Greeks and Bulgarians. Parallels and Intersections in History and Culture, Sofia: BAS, Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology, 2021, 2021

The splitting of the Christian Orthodox community in the 19th century Ottoman Balkans and the concomitant formation of national entities based on ethnic characteristics led to the gradual dissociation of the ethnic Bulgarians from the dominant Greek educational and cultural environment and the formation of a distinct Bulgarian national identity. In this context one of the major strategies that the nationalist intellectuals adopted, in order to cultivate the particular features of the Bulgarian national character, was the creation of a national narrative. During this process of nationalizing the past, it was very important for them to add value to the Bulgarian nation by demonstrating its antiquity following the tradition of the search for origins, which was a popular concern among modern and pre-modern European historians. At the same time, several intellectuals tried to show how Bulgarians belonged to a significant nation in relation not only to the Greek but also to other Slavic nations. This antagonistic stance can be attributed to the psychological reaction of ressentiment, which according to Liah Greenfeld, a renowned theoretician of nationalism, is the degrading of one’s national culture by another nation, which had previously used it both as a model and a source of inspiration. This paper aims to show how this type of behavior can be traced in the viewpoints of some Bulgarian nationalist intellectuals towards the Greeks in the course of the 19th century. More specifically it focuses on the most indicative example among them, that of Georgi Stoikov Rakovski (Kotel 1821 – Bucharest 1867), who was one of the protagonists of the Bulgarian national movement in the 19th century.