This book tells the history of how Ottoman Muslim subjects became citizens of Balkan Christian nation-states. The analysis concentrates on southern Bulgaria, a region marked by shifting borders, ...competing Turkish and Bulgarian sovereignties, rival nationalisms, and migration. These kinds of problems accompanied to the disintegration of the dynastic empires into nation-states. The monograph demonstrates how local post-Ottoman constructions of capitalism engendered nation and citizenship. The analysis shows how land that belonged to Muslims—individually or communally—became symbolic and material resource for Bulgarian state building and capitalism. Muslim land was also the terrain upon which rival Bulgarian and Turkish nationalisms developed. Both also evolved in relation to the late Ottoman Empire and early republican Turkey. Bulgarian statesmen expected of Bulgarian Christian farmers to grow into modern citizens by mechanizing their labor so as to increase revenue for industrialization. By the outbreak of World War II Turkish Muslims had turned into polarized national minority; their conflicting efforts to adapt to post-Ottoman Bulgaria disclosed the increasingly limited citizenship rights available not only to Turkish Muslims but to Bulgarian Christians as well.
This book traces the establishment of a master narrative of the Middle Ages in Bulgaria and its evolution to the present day, including the attempt at a Marxist counter-narrative, thereby offering a ...critical analysis of Bulgarian historiographical views.
By exploring the development of ethnic diversity and national tensions in Bulgaria and Bosnia, while also drawing parallels with Macedonia, this volume uses the three most diversely populated areas ...in the Balkans to tackle complex issues. What institutions of state building are capable of managing diverse ethno-religious traditions and conflicting national identities? How do people on the ground respond to state-sponsored political projects at the local community level? In what ways do studies of cultural representations of ethno-national and religious conflicts call attention to inequality and human rights violations? How have studies of human rights problems in the Balkans contributed to changes in international law? More generally, what is the role of the humanities and social sciences in developing a discourse on the subject of conflict resolution and human rights? The volume engages the question of ethno-national conflicts and identities from three perspectives: historical interpretations of national conflict and ethno-religious tensions in the context of empire- and state-building; cultural debates as reflected in the use of language and dance, film, and media production and circulation as tools for nation-and community-building; and thirdly, current political controversies over national resurgence and human rights both in the post-Yugoslav war context and in connection to European Union integration.
The geographic position of Bulgaria results in a variety of climatic and biogeographic influences on the country’s vegetation. We aim to describe the plant diversity of dry grasslands distributed in ...the transitional belt between the south-eastern European and Mediterranean biogeographic regions in SE Bulgaria, and to reveal if there are any obvious differences in soil properties, presence of life forms and chorotypes between syntaxa. The data set consists of 349 releves of vascular plants and bryophytes sampled in different semi-natural herbaceous vegetation types. By applying TWINSPAN, we classified 176 releves of dry grasslands to eight associations and one unranked community. One association and two subassociations are described here for the first time. Data on soil depth, soil moisture, soil pH, humus and total N content, numbers of different life forms and chorotypes were analysed statistically. The dry grasslands in SE Bulgaria were classified into different vegetation classes sharing the same territory: their communities present similarities in species composition and they have similar ratios of hemicryptophytes/therophytes and Euro-Asiatic/Mediterranean species. Dry grassland vegetation occupies mostly shallow and dry soils that vary slightly in pH, humus content and soil moisture between associations.
Različni klimatski in biogeografski vplivi na vegetacijo so pogojeni z geografskim položajem Bolgarije. V članku opisujemo vrstno raznolikost suhih travišč, ki se pojavljajo v prehodnem pasu med jugovzhodno Evropsko in Mediteransko biogeorafsko regijo in razkrivamo, ali obstajajo očitne razlike med sintaksoni v lastnostih tal, življenskih oblikah in horotipih. Podatkovni niz vsebuje 349 vegetacijskih popisov cevnic in mahov, vzorčenih v različnih polnaravnih zeliščnih vegetacijskih tipih. Z uporabo TWINSPAN metode smo klasificirali 176 popisov suhih travišč v osem asociacij in eno nerangirano združbo. V članku sta prvič opisani ena asociacija in dve subasociaciji. Statistično smo analizirali podatke o globini, vlažnosti in pH tal, vsebnosti humusa in skupnega dušika ter število različnih življenskih oblik in horotipov. Suha travišča v JV Bolgariji smo uvrstili v različne vegetacijske razrede na tem območju: združbe so podobne po vrstni sestavi in imajo podobno razmerje hemikriptofiti/terofiti ter Evroazijske/Mediteranske vrste. Suha travišča uspevajo na pretežno plitvih in suhih tleh, ki se med asociacijami malo razlikujejo v pH, vsebnosti humusa in vlažnosti tal.
"Post-Stalinism--the last three decades of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe--gave birth to new political ideas and social struggles, which reshaped socialist societies and forged new ...global imaginaries. With a focus on socialist Bulgaria, Restless History traces the dynamic polemical and social shifts that took place during this period. With anti-Stalinist and humanist visions, socialist societies rebuilt their material and social worlds around social-reproductive needs such as care, housing, education, leisure, rest, and access to culture and the arts. In the sphere of global politics, they created anti-racist, feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist solidarities that challenged Western hegemony and reordered the global geographies of power. Yet the changes of the period also took some troubling directions: humanist imaginaries of socialist progress, modernity, and nationhood welcomed ideas of national and social homogeneity, opening the doors to ethnonationalism. Following the promising as well as troubling moments in the history of Bulgarian post-Stalinism, Zhivka Valiavicharska brings to life the complexities of real lived socialism. Restless History re-examines the post-Stalinist period in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, and beyond--in all its tensions and contradictions--to offer the socialist past as an unfinished history, one that cannot be easily put to rest."--
Since 1990, nature conservation NGOs are the main players in the running of nation-wide research and monitoring schemes for raptors in Bulgaria. Among them, the Bulgarian Society for the Protection ...of Birds (BSPB) and Green Balkans are most active, covering the most threatened diurnal raptors in the country. The key species covered by comprehensive monitoring schemes are the Imperial Eagle Aquila heliaca, White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla, Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus, Griffon Vulture Gyps fulvus, Black Vulture Aegypius monachus, Saker Falcon Falco cherrug and Red-footed Falcon F. vespertinus. Information on their distribution, numbers, breeding success, productivity, diet, movements etc. is gathered on annual basis. The Buzzard Buteo buteo and Kestrel F. tinnunculus are also regularly monitored at the national level by the Common Bird Monitoring scheme. Distribution of all raptor species has been studied for the purpose of the Atlas of Breeding Birds in Bulgaria. The contemporary satellite telemetry methods revealed important aspects of movements and threats to eagles and vultures from Bulgaria within the country and abroad. Main threats for the raptors in Bulgaria are related to habitat loss, unnatural mortality and disturbance. The main gaps in raptor monitoring in Bulgaria are related to the lack of coverage of most of the diurnal species and owls. There is a strong national and international cooperation in conjunction with the work concerning Imperial Eagle, Egyptian and Griffon Vultures. However, further enhancement of cooperation on other raptor species and issues such as lobbying for implementation of raptor-friendly agricultural practices and enhancement of various economic sectors are needed
In 1900, some 100,000 people living in Bulgaria-2 percent of the country's population-could be described as Greek, whether by nationality, language, or religion. The complex identities of the ...population-proud heirs of ancient Hellenic colonists, loyal citizens of their Bulgarian homeland, members of a wider Greek diasporic community, devout followers of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, and reluctant supporters of the Greek government in Athens-became entangled in the growing national tensions between Bulgaria and Greece during the first half of the twentieth century.
InBetween Two Motherlands, Theodora Dragostinova explores the shifting allegiances of this Greek minority in Bulgaria. Diverse social groups contested the meaning of the nation, shaping and reshaping what it meant to be Greek and Bulgarian during the slow and painful transition from empire to nation-states in the Balkans. In these decades, the region was racked by a series of upheavals (the Balkan Wars, World War I, interwar population exchanges, World War II, and Communist revolutions). The Bulgarian Greeks were caught between the competing agendas of two states increasingly bent on establishing national homogeneity.
Based on extensive research in the archives of Bulgaria and Greece, as well as fieldwork in the two countries, Dragostinova shows that the Greek population did not blindly follow Greek nationalist leaders but was torn between identification with the land of their birth and loyalty to the Greek cause. Many emigrated to Greece in response to nationalist pressures; others sought to maintain their Greek identity and traditions within Bulgaria; some even switched sides when it suited their personal interests. National loyalties remained fluid despite state efforts to fix ethnic and political borders by such means as population movements, minority treaties, and stringent citizenship rules. The lessons of a case such as this continue to reverberate wherever and whenever states try to adjust national borders in regions long inhabited by mixed populations.
In this compilation, the authors aim to determine whether there was an association between contact with urban greenery and displaced aggression in young people in Bulgaria and, if so, whether nature ...experiences were a significant mediator of that association.
Muslim Lives in Eastern Europeexamines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic ...world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.
Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region's state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women's embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks' new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria's Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.
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