Religion, politics, and historiography in Bulgaria

RELIGION, POLITICS, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY I N BULGARIA * ' > L I B R A R Y O FT H E r V IT C E N T R A L ^ ^ U EUR...

Author: Carsten Riis

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RELIGION, POLITICS, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY I N BULGARIA

* ' >

L I B R A R Y O FT H E

r

V

IT C E N T R A L

^

^

U

EUROPEAN

UNIVERSITY BUDAPEST

CARSTEN RIIS

East European Monographs, Boulder Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York 2002

CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. NATIONAL REBIRTH

i AND LEGITIMATION

9

J. Introduction

E A S T EUROPEAN MONOGRAPHS, N O . D C V I I I

Copyright 2002 by Carsten Riis ISBN: 0-88033-506-8 Library of Congress Control Number 2002112277

v-

9

2. Chronology o/Process of National Rebirth

10

3. Political-Ideological Causes

12

4. Political-Ideological Arguments

15

5. Religio-Historical and Historica\Legitimation

17

6. Politically Controlled Research: The History of Bulgaria

22

7. The History of Bulgaria; The Editors'Preface

24

8. The History of Bulgaria: Christianity and Islam

27

9. Ottoman Rule as "Yoke" and "Slavery"

31

10. Historiographie Analyses

32

11. True or False?

38

3. "PEOPLE OF THE BOOK" AND THE MILLET

SYSTEM

43

1. Islam and the "People of the Book"

43

2. The Decline of Christianity in Asia Minor

51

3. The Millet System & the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1454

54

4. The Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1454: Sources & Research

56

5. Conclusions

64

4. CHRISTIANITY BEFORE & UNDER THE OTTOMANS

Printed in the United States of America

sV

67

1. Christianity before the Ottomans

67

2. The Church under the Ottomans: A Review of Research

72

3. Christianity in the 14th to 16th Centuries

76

4. The Rila Monastery in the 15th Century

78

5. Two Neomartyrs from the 16th Century

82

6. Conversion and Demography

84

7. Conversion in the 15th and 16th Centuries

87

8. Explaining Conversion

92

9. The Persistence of Christianity

94

10. Summary

96

v

5. THE BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH UNDER SOCIALISM 1. Schism

99 99

2. The Legal Foundation

101

3. Georgi Dimitrov and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church

104

4. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church under Socialism

107

5. Interpretations of the Church's National Function

112

6. The Church and National Continuity

113

7. Summary

.119

6. SAN STEFANO A N D THE NATIONAL TRIUMPH

121

1. Peace and the Borders

121

2. The Bulgarian Exarchate

124

3. Orthodox Christianity and Nation-Building

129

4. Nation and Nationalism

134

7. CONCLUSION

143

There are countries in the world where it is precisely the duty of historians to abolish the past, and their own professional survival depends on their success in keeping it abolished and erecting in its place a socially convenient myth which it is their function to defend, embellish and generally keep up to date.

REFERENCES

147

— Sir Michael Howard

NOTES

175

VI

VII

is-', \

\ '

INTRODUCTION

T

H E FIRST STEP IN THIS WORK was taken in Sofia in the autumn of 1989,

while I was doing research at the Kliment Ohridski University. During this time Bulgaria, was marked by the socialist government's policy towards the country's Turkish minority, which since the mid-1980s had been subjected to a conscious policy of forced assimilation. Following the relaxation of emigration restrictions, Bulgarian Turks had chosen to emigrate by the hundreds of thousands to Turkey. Bulgaria's international reputation lay in ruins, along with its economy I had come to Sofia to carry out historical research on the effects of Ottoman (Muslim) rule upon the Bulgarian (Orthodox) population up to 1878, but my topic was now in the midst of a social and political minefield. Only with the palace coup of November 10th, 1989, when Bulgaria also joined the other East European upheavals, this situation started to change. A more detailed investigation of the relation between religion and national ideology as expressed in Bulgarian historiography convinced me that a fruitful perspective lay in taking the point of departure in the current political and historiographie situation. In Bulgaria I experienced how the country's history under the Ottoman Turks was a living legacy in the self-understanding of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, in the nationally coloured historiography and in the political system generally. This legacy revealed itself in the articulation of religious and national identity, and in the policy which Bulgarian authorities conducted towards the Orthodox and Muslim religious communities. After the momentous year of 1989, my research topic also became more relevant within a broader geographic framework. In Yugoslavia and in other parts of the Balkans, religious identity seemed to impose itself more openly onto the political sphere. It became normal to speak of "religious wars" in the area, to see maps setting off Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim civilizations corresponding to military front lines, to hear of an Eastern Orthodox Athens-Belgrade-Moscow

1

Religion, Politics, and Historiography in Bulgaria

Introduction

axis, and to observe the involvement of Turkey and other Muslim countries in those former Ottoman provinces in the Balkans containing Muslim populations. The political changes in Bulgaria, the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia and national, ethnic and religious tensions and conflicts throughout the Balkans could not avoid making their mark on my own work. The results of my research were written and successfully defended as a Danish doctoral dissertation (roughly equivalent to a German Habilitation) in 1999 at the University of Aarhus. This book, a revision of the dissertation, does not include the introductory historical overview and a concluding comparative chapter on the instrumentalisation of history and religion in power politics and its relation to nationalist conflicts and wars in the Balkans.

as a phenomenon with two aspects: one is with a theory or world-view, the other in terms of processual aspects in which the ideas are transformed into action. The ideological significance of the reception of the religious encounters during the Ottoman era expresses itself in historical and national myths or ideas. Such myths can be falsified, as is brought out in the first part-of the work with historiography, and in this sense they are false. In another sense, however, the historical and national myths are uniquely real: when people believe them to be true and act in accordance with them, ideologies assume their own form of reality because the interpretation of th^ past, the understanding of the present and our perspective on the future all come together. In these cases, the criterion of truth or our search for the past "as it really was," with all the theoretical and methodological difficulties, can not help us understand the political and social impact of the reception of history. The national myths are thus the political and social operationalisations of language, culture, religion, history and symbols. In this connection, we will concentrate on the reception of Ottoman rule as expressed in the role of religion and the religious communities in the Bulgarian constitutive myth, where myth is here understood as the complex of ideas which enter into the formation and maintenance of ethnic and national identity. The national myth depicts the Church and Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity as synonymous with national self-consciousness, as that which saved the national and cultural identity from destruction under Ottoman Muslim rule. This national myth reflects the historical understanding which in modern Bulgaria has profoundly affected the attitude of the political power system to both the Orthodox community of believers as well as the Muslim population.

• Historical research and its dissemination help to enlighten and mark coming generations, to legitimate political power, policies and institutions and to create and maintain individual and social habits and attitudes. Hence, those who wield political power have a definite interest in the writing of history. The practitioners of academic history, for their part, can try to hold themselves aloof from the political organs' desire to control future developments via their control of historical knowledge and its dissemination in schools, universities, etc. The results of these efforts depend on both the researchers' own involvement and especially on the character of the political systems. An analysis of historiography can be conducted with a point of departure in two aspects of historical research and of history writing. The first aspect involves the goals which every scientific discipline sets for itself. The goal of historical research is to confirm truth or falsity using the most adequate, consistent and exhaustive analysis and interpretation of the selected data on the basis of a relevant theory. The second aspect involves elucidating the hidden or implicit functions of the political and national ideologies on historiography. In this book, both aspects are analyzed with a focus on the historical and religio-historical topics from Bulgaria, which in 1878 emancipated itself from the Ottoman empire and became an independent state with a Christian Orthodox majority population and a significant Muslim minority. The core of this presentation sites itself within the field demarcated by power politics, national ideology and historical/religio-historical legitimation. In the Bulgarian historical reception, the religious confrontation between Christianity and Islam under the Ottoman regime is marked by national ideology. Ideology is understood here in neutral terms, but also in a broader sense than simply a society's religious or political world-view. Ideology can be viewed

In making the goal and functions of historiography the objects of the investigation and analysis, it becomes imperative for us to try and understand history despite its elusive character. At the same time, we must have a critical and self-critical view of the organs of power who have the will and the influence to depict their own truth. The precondition for a credible analysis is an academic ideal that maintains a distinction between academic history and myth, but with a necessary understanding of the influence of the mythical and power dimensions on the discipline in concrete historical situations. This topic is linked with the recent debate on essentialism and social constructivism. On the basis of the data presented, it is argued that the past as history, despite the politicisation and ideologisation, can be made into an object for academically sound investigation and analysis. Our inquiry revolves primarily around the question of Islamisation and Islamic religious policy in the Bulgarian Christian areas in the 15th and 16th centuries. This historical perspective is developed alongside with and linked to the analysis of the conventions or ideologies which condition historical myths.

3


Introduction

To the oft-invoked observation that religion has political significance in the Balkans, we add another dimension: that the political power systems, parallel with the political significance of religion, have had strong interests in controlling the religious communities during the socialist period in Bulgaria. That the discipline of history during the socialist era were so politicised and so overtly ideological is due not only to the totalitarian system, with the communist party as the leading political force, but also to a deeper connection between political, religio-historical and historical discourses. The connection between political and historical discourses parallel the connection between past, present and future. In a political discourse, the question of "Who are we?" is essential for the answer to the future-oriented question of "Where are we going?" In a historical discourse, the answer to "Who are we?" is a result of the past-oriented question "Who have we been?" (Kafadar 1995:22). Herein lies the interest of the political system in the interpretation of the history of the religious communities. Moreover, the relationship between religion and politics is an aspect of the relationship between an institutionalised religious tradition and a state, i.e., of a state-church relationship, but it also has a broader perspective. Both religion and politics concern values, ideas and identities, and in this sense religion and politics can interact. They can influence, support or work against each other in a relationship and processual sequence. The formation and maintenance of ethnic, national and religious identities in southeastern Europe is an example of the gradual transition between religious and politically derived values, ideas and identities. Quite often the mutual relationship can make it difficult to distinguish between religion and politics. This study is thus a contribution to the elucidation of the general topics of religion, politics and history However, this is not the place to problematise the concepts of religion and politics as such. In this context, religion is understood as an institutionalised community revolving around the worship of God; while politics is understood as the process at the state or subordinate level by which ideologies and interests are converted into the exercise of power. A great deal of recent research in religion and politics revolves around the challenge posed by religious institutions and movements to secular political forms of government and principles. This research is often known under the rubric of "religious nationalism" or as different varieties of "fundamentalism" (e.g., Merkl and Smart 1985, Kepel 1991, Moyser 1991, Misztal and Shupe 1992, Juergensmeyer 1993, Ramet and Treadgold 1995. Westerlund 1996). These tendencies are indicative of the developments in various areas of the world towards an increasing religious consciousness and an accompanying desire among some religious communities to dominate the political system. Our perspective, in contrast, focuses on a political system's dominance over the social dimen-

sions of religion. The theoretical and ideologically analytical aspects of this study are therefore connected to the national state and political interests in religious affiliation with regard to the formation and maintenance of national identity. The empirically oriented part of the study elucidates the-relations between religious institutions, nation and national state in Bulgarian history We will see how religious identification becomes politicised: the Orthodox Church appears as a national institution, and the Muslim population is marginalised or becomes the object of direct assimilation campaigns. The interaction between formal religious affiliation and political events and processes has a long history in the Balkans. Over five centuries, the Ottoman Turks made this part of Europe an arena for a religious, cultural and political history resulting in the region acquiring an ethnic and religious composition unique in Europe. The consequences for the history of religion and for political life make themselves felt today. In the "official" historiography carried out by the Orthodox Balkan states, there is a characteristic reception and understanding of the Ottoman rule, which has become an identity-creating Feindbild, an image of the enemy Other. It is in opposition to islam and Ottoman rule that the national movements and nation states formed and maintained their self-understanding and national ideas. Religious affiliation, understood as a social category along with the mother tongue, were the key national classifications in the Balkan countries in the 19th century. Following this line of thought, contemporary Islam and the Muslim populations represented a hated religious and political foreign domination, and in contrast the Orthodox Christian churches were seen as institutions which maintained national culture, such as language, literature, art and material folk culture. This perception also marked socialist Bulgaria's policy towards the country's Orthodox Church. Independent of the contradiction between atheism and religion, Bulgaria's socialist regime privileged the Orthodox Church and marginalised Islam because Orthodoxy was viewed as synonymous with being Bulgarian, while Islam was equated with being a Turk, i.e., a legacy from the hated Ottoman rule.

4

Commentators and analysts of eastern and southeastern Europe have often linked the collapse of the socialist systems with nationalism, i.e., with the ideology and the political doctrine of the congruence between a people, a territory, and a sovereign state as expression of the people's political will. The connection between the collapse of socialism and nationalism has been depicted as a "pressure cooker" or "deep-freezer" by which national sentiments were repressed in the socialist countries. When communist parties could no longer withstand the pressure, they collapsed, one regime after the other, or had to reform themselves in such fundamental ways that they could subsequently not be termed socialist.

5


In terms of this explanatory model, the Balkans, after the political reforms of 1989-91, became an arena for innumerable ethnic, territorial, demographic, historical, and religious conflicts, which in one or another way can be traced back to a nationalism that after 1989 obtained a free reign and destabilized the entire region. The pressure-cooker or deep-freezer metaphors, however, capture only one aspect of the situation during the half century of socialist rule, and as causal explanations tend to overlook the communist parties' declining legitimacy because of the economic crisis. The weakness of these metaphors also lies in the fact that as an explanation for the collapse of socialism, nationalism ignores the fact that nationalist appeals were also utilised by several communist parties since the end of the 1950s, thereby creating a nationalist continuum between the period before and after the Second World War. This use of nationalist mobilisation was a prominent part of the communist parties' domestic political legitimisation and cultural policy. In the Balkans, the communist parties in Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania and Bulgaria came to power in countries all marked by interwar nationalism. Socialism introduced a state and society-bearing ideology by which the state was legitimated on the basis of the interests of the working class, with the ultimate goal of proletarian internationalism. In these countries, the national question was theoretically "solved." The legitimation of the socialist state differed from those contemporary national states which rested on a more or less homogenous national population (a Volk), and from the liberal democracies, whose legitimacy was based on the citizenship principle, without regard to class membership or ethnic/national differentiation. Despite their internationalist rhetoric, the socialist regimes, especially in Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, developed a variant of nationalism—national communism—whereby national ideology was integrated into power politics (Kemp 1999). A key instrument in the development of national communism was the writing of history, with a mrxture of nationalist and materialist perspectives, because the nation and the nation's history, with its kinship metaphors and unity thinking, could help nationallyminded regime appear as well-supported and strong (Verdery 1991:307). In several socialist countries, national ideology thus constituted a factor of continuity, more than might be assumed from a purely theoretical understanding of the socialist societies. Bulgarian religious policy towards the Orthodox Church and towards Islam are prominent expressions of this national communism. • In this study, we first discuss how the dominant research paradigm in socialist Bulgaria—with lines dating back to the 19th century—interpreted and depicted

6

Introduction

the history of Christianity during the period of Ottoman Muslim domination. The association of religious and national identity legitimated the religious and minority policy of the socialist regime. Next, a general national politicisation of religious affiliation and religious institutions is demonstrated. Several of the chapters in this study are therefore presented in reverse chronological-order, such that the consequences are brought up prior to the causes; hence, the history of the reception and socio-political impact is analyzed prior to the work with the historical sources. Herein lies an acknowledgment that studying history and the history of religious institutions takes qn its own life, more or less independent of a free academic disciplinary tradition. It is this kind of political surveillance and control over historiography that has had direct consequences for the political, social and economic conditions of the religious communities in Bulgaria. Chapter Two,"National Rebirth and Legitimation" describes Bulgarian policy towards the Muslim Turkish ethnic group during the 1980s. This policy is analyzed according to its ideological basis and in terms of the authorities' demands for legitimation via history. The legitimation activities of the 1980s had their roots in the "official" historiography's research paradigm which also lay behind the depiction of Islam and Ottoman rule as found in Istorija na Bàlgarija, the ambitious multi-volume national history which began publication in 1979. Chapter Three, "'People of the Book' and the Millet system," tests this research paradigm by investigating the foundations of Ottoman religious policy during Islam's constitutive phase in the seventh century. The chapter traces the adaptation of the normative Islamic legacy in the Ottoman territories of the Balkans up to and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Chapter Four, "Christianity before and under the Ottomans," turns to the Bulgarian areas in order to describe Ottoman religious policy in practice during the 14th to 16th centuries. A variety of data is used concerning the institutional history of Christianity and the question of conversion to Islam. Chapter Five, "The Bulgarian Orthodox Church under Socialism," turns our attention to the church as a national institution under socialism. This church's status stood in sharp contrast to the official picture of Islam at the time and derived from a national ideologically influenced understanding of the Ottoman rule. Chapter Six,"San Stefano and the National Triumph," focuses on the transformation from religious affiliation to national identification during the 19th century. During this process, the organisational structure of Orthodox Christianity was linked to the question of national identity and national political objectives. This chapter reviews recent theories of the concept of nation discussing the connection between religion, history and national myths in Bulgaria.

7

\ NATION Beginning

A L REBIRTH

AND LEGITIMATION

in early 1985, Bulgaria's Turkish minority became the object of an

assimilation

campaign

spontaneous

breach with a religio-historicai

which the government

explained

During the summer of 19S9, what was officially termed the

al rebirth

led to a massive wave of emigration,

as the

minority's

legacy from the Ottoman

era.

process of nation-

where over 300,000

members

of the Turkish minority crossed the border into Turkey. By the end of the year, however, the attempt to change an entire group's collective

identity had col-

lapsed.

1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

O

N DECEMBER 29TH, 1989, the Central Committee (CC) of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), the Council of State and the Council of Ministers acknowledged an abrupt change of course towards the country's Turkish population. The new policy followed a CC plenum which took place after the November 10th palace coup had removed BCP General Secretary Todor Zivkov after his more than thirty years in power. The country was still led by the communist party, but its monopoly of power was no longer uncontested, as shown by large street demonstrations Sunday after Sunday. The first large antiCommunist demonstration took place on November 18th, 1989 in front of Sofia's Aleksandar Nevski cathedral, and the new leaders were forced to introduce reforms. Bulgaria's economy was under pressure, with rationing and shortages everywhere, and in foreign relations, the country's minority policy had become an obstacle to normal relations and obtaining assistance in economic recovery. Since mid-December, members of the country's Turkish population had been demonstrating in Sofia against being forced to take Bulgarian names, the prohibition on public use of the Turkish language and the suppression of Muslim rituals and traditional clothing. During the wave of political changes

9


National Rebirth and Legitimation

throughout eastern Europe in the autumn of 1989, the Bulgarian party elite was forced to change its minority policy. The right to the free choice of names, freedom of religion and public use of one's mother tongue were guaranteed, and the decrees which had limited Turkish-Muslim rights and imposed penalties for violations had been withdrawn. The ending of the assimilation campaign against the Turkish population did not occur without protests the following weeks from Bulgarian nationalist circles, who saw the end of the campaign as a capitulation to the Turks. When the parliament passed a "Declaration on the National Question" on January 15th, 1990, it contained, besides a repetition of the decision from the 29th of December, a series of guarantees to these nationalist circles, who were active and operating in areas with mixed populations (Troebst 1992:1780. In this way, the grandiose process of national rebirth (nacionalnovazroditelen proces) among Bulgaria's Turkish Muslims had failed.

Transsylvania in the 1880s, the Hellenisation of Slavic names in Greece in 1936, and the Albanisation campaign in Albania in 1975. In the Bulgarian towns, the name changing was often executed at the workplaces. After increasing resistance in areas with Turkish dominated villages, however the procedure was to use the military and the police, who in the early morning hours woulcl surround the villages, whereupon officials would go from house to house, or at a meeting with the residents on the village square, orient them about the name changes, distribute new identity cards and demand a signature as acceptance of the name change. In the course of the campaign, e suspended or permanently dismissed on orders of the head of the Directorate. Such an order must be unconditionally followed and would be utilised in cases where the relevant individual, regardless of rank, violated the law, public order and acceptable behaviour or worked against the spate's democratic order and institutions. The 1949 Law on Religious Communities remained in force after the adoption of the new constitution in 1971. which did not fundamentally change the activities, rights or duties of the Orthodox Church within the framework of the socialist republic. However, the elimination of a passage on the rights of national minorities to develop their national culture had consequences especially for the Turkish-Muslim population. Articles 38 and 53 repeat the content of the Dimitrov constitution's articles 76, 78 and 79. hut beyond this, the 1971 constitution contained some amendments which pointed towards a stricter ideological line towards the church as a religious institution. Article 38 mentions parents' rights and duty to manage their children's upbringing and communist education. Article 39 stated that the upbringing of the youth in a communist spirit was an obligation of the entire society, and article 45 emphasized modern science and Marxist Leninist ideology as basis of the educational system. The new constitution also specified the state teaching system's ideological basis in relation to the 1949 Law on Religion, in which article 20 had mentioned that schooling was a state task which lay outside the sphere of influence of the religious communities. Finally, the right to participate in religious rituals was supplemented by an associated right to spread and attend anti-religious agitation. Moreover, it is stressed that the reference to religion could not free one from the obligation to uphold the constitution as well as all other laws (art. 53)56

The legal texts on the relationship between the state, the communist party and the Orthodox Church ensured the church's legality, but also introduced state administrative control and governance while simultaneously marginalising the church from social and political life. This marginalisation of the church from the public to the private sphere was apparently modified by the provision from the Law on Religious Communities regarding the church's possibility to become a popular democratic church. It is precisely here that we see reflected the aforementioned distinction, otherwise formulated through the lens of the communist party, between the church as historical and national institution and Orthodox religion as a suspect ideology. This is emphasised by the 1971 consti-

103


tution's more hostile attitude towards the church's religious dimension, in which the communist party and the state reaffirmed the right to follow an atheistic world-view and obligated both parents and society to practice a communist/ atheistic upbringing of children and youth. The distinction between the church's national and religious dimensions was formulated in 1946 by Georgi Dimitrov, when he laid the foundations for the socialist state's acceptance and even support of the church as a national institution. This acceptance and support occurred along with the efforts of the state, in harmony with the traditional socialist atheism, to limit the church's possibilities to spread the word of God and the Christian way of life. 3. G E O R G I D I M I T R O V AND T H E B U L G A R I A N O R T H O D O X C H U R C H

On May 26th, 1946, the millennial commemoration of the death of St Ivan Rilski was celebrated in the Rila monastery. The communist leader and president of the Central Committee of the Fatherland Front, Georgi Dimitrov, participated together with prominent guests in the commemorative event. On this occasion Dimitrov gave a speech which appeared under the title "The Bulgarian Church's Role and Tasks" (Roljata izadalite na bdlgarskata ctirkva).™ Only six months previously, Dimitrov had returned to Bulgaria from which he had fled in 1923 after the failed communist rebellion that same year. During his exile in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov had made a career within the communist movement, serving from 1935 to 1943 as General Secretary of the Comintern. Attending this commemorative celebration, besides the Bulgarian church leadership led by the Exarch, the most prominent clergyman present was Patriarch Aleksij I of Moscow and all Russia (in office from 1945-70). Georgi Dimitrov's speech set the agenda for the relationship between, on the one side, the state, the Fatherland Front and the communist party, and on the other side the Orthodox Church. The speech clearly bears the mark of his time in the Soviet Union. Dimitrov was personally closely linked to the USSR and had until recently held Soviet citizenship. The Fatherland Front's dominant communist party was politically-ideologically allied with the Soviet Communist Party, and the Orthodox Church was a sister church with the Russian Orthodox Church, which since the 1917 revolution had been operating within a socialist state. In view of the significance of the speech for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church's relationship to socialism and Dimitrov's direct approaches to the Church leadership, the most essential sections of Dimitrov's remarks will be discussed here. 57

Dimitrov began his speech by noting that the millennial commemoration of Ivan Rilski was not only a church festival but also celebrates a true son of the people (1954:186). After a direct greeting to Patriarch Aleksij, Dimitrov turned

104

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church Under Socialism

towards more fundamental questions concerning the significance of the Orthodox Church for the history of the Bulgarian people. He praised the Orthodox Church for its historical effort in maintaining the self-awareness of the Bulgarian people, in contrast to the non-Orthodox churches in the cbuntry. During the years of the oppressive Ottoman yoke and during the struggle foVtiberation, the Orthodox Church and its monasteries maintained the people's national sentiment and deflected the strong Hellenizing forces which made Bulgarian merchants and the wealthy classes and large segments of the educated classes into agents of Greece and enemies of the people. Dimitrov asserted that there would exist no democratic Bulgaria if the monasteries during the dark slave past had not helped sustain Bulgarians' national sentiment, national aspirations and national pride and protected the nation from oblivion; the Fatherland Front and the communists would therefore express their gratitude towards the patriotic clergy in the national church. Dimitrov noted that even though the church had also had incompetent and treasonous representatives, this did not alter the fact that the church had generally played a supremely great patriotic role in the history of the Bulgarians (p. i86f). After these words of praise for the Church as a national institution with a historical mission in the life of the people during the Ottoman political and Greek clerical domination, Dimitrov then turned to the current situation, including the demands on the church and its leaders and more long-term expectations regarding the relationship between the new Bulgaria and the church. The current demands derived from the impending referendum in September on the monarchy, which Dimitrov and the Fatherland Front wanted eliminated as a precondition for building a new society on the basis of a republican constitution. Dimitrov therefore demanded in his speech, and with direct reference to the head of the church, the Exarch, that he and the church leadership should live up to the church's patriotic past and cease the chanting and liturgy in the church for the tsar's dynasty and the monarchy, which had been culpable for Bulgaria's misfortunes. According to Dimitrov, prayers for the dynasty violated the people's genuine longing for freedom and for a people's republic, and one could not have the people rejecting the monarchy while the church supported it (p. 187O. As for more long-term expectations, Dimitrov expressed the hope that the synod's honoured members and all the church's servants would understand that a new era was emerging, new in form, content and spirit, and that in this era the church should be a true church of the people, republican and progressive. This should occur not only by words and declarations of adherence. The Fatherland Front, and especially its communist members, also desired actions on the part

105



of the church in the great work which lay ahead: all branches of society had to contribute to the progress and welfare of the people (p. 188). Dimitrov then discussed the current synod: among the honoured guests it also contained people with ossified minds and deeply conservative views. It was not their own fault, but their misfortune, and Dimitrov expressed the hope that they would understand the need to go forward together with the people's strug-: gle for democracy and for a people's republic. How this should be understood in more detail was made unambiguously clear by Dimitrov in the remarks that followed. He first asked, rhetorically, who in this assembly was not interested in the great Russian church, and then continued by asserting that everyone who knew the history of this church knew very well that if its leaders after the socialist October Revolution had understood the spirit of the new era and had contributed to the freedom of the Russian people instead of supporting the counterrevolution, the Russian church would not have had to endure its unfortunate fate. The persecution of some church functionaries following the 1917 revolution is due to this counterrevolutionary activity on the part of the church leaders, but if the church leadership of the past had been like today's esteemed guest, Patriarch Aleksij, the church would have been on the side of the people, as it showed itself to be during the Great Fatherland War (p. 189). So that the point should not be missed by anyone, Dimitrov ended his speech by addressing himself directly to the religious leaders and representatives in attendance, encouraging them to learn from the Russian experience and the example of the Russian church. If they did so, there would be unity between the Bulgarian church and people in the Fatherland Front, and then the spiritual forces which the church was able to spread could unify the faithful for the benefit of Bulgaria. The history of the entire church and the connections between the majority of clergy and the masses of people showed that this could be achieved (p. 189O. The speech then concludes with Dimitrov toasting the friendship between the Russian church and the Bulgarian people's republican church, the friendship between the Bulgarian people and its Russian liberators, etc. Georgi Dimitrov's speech at the commemorative day for Ivan Rilski is characterised by an open-hearted attitude. Here it was very clearly stated what the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and its leadership could expect from the state, and Dimitrov unambiguously presented the limitations under which the church would come to operate. His words of praise for the church's national historical significance and his emphasis on the Orthodox Church in comparison with other religious communities came to determine the pattern of acceptance and support of the Orthodox Church as a national institution; this became one aspect of the state-church relationship under socialism. In addition, Dimitrov

demanded the church's loyalty, which in the first place should be expressed by the church distancing itself from the monarchy, and then by the church becoming a genuine, profoundly progressive people's church, serving the people whom Dimitrov self-confidently represented via the Fatherland Front. The other aspect of the state-church relationship under socialism was the church as a religious institution, and here Dimitrov was not as specific in his remarks as he was when he expressed his expectations of the church's loyalty and support to the demands of the new era. Dimitrov let the religious activity rest and acknowledged its significance fb* parts of the population, but unarticulated, in his remarks about the form, content and sprit of the new era and in his repeated references to himself as a communist, there can be no doubt that as a religious institution, the church was not in harmony with the visions of the new power-holders regarding the future society and the absolute superiority of scientific atheism vis-à-vis religious views. Yet Dimitrov did not proclaim any conflict about this topic, and this is due not only to the fact that the occasion could be regarded as being poorly chosen, as Dimitrov was in the church's domain at the Rila monastery. From his choice of words and unveiled threats, there is nothing which indicates that the venue should have held him back. The reason, rather, can be found in the Russian/Soviet example to which he repeatedly refers: during the Second World War, Stalin had halted his frontal ideological assault on the church, and it is here that Dimitrov obtained his inspiration.

106

Dimitrov's speech was the commencement of a first conflict-filled period in the relations between the State and the Orthodox Church. The conflicts emerged regarding the demands for loyalty and the demand of the Fatherland Front to separate state and church. After this, however, the relationship found a modus vivendi based on Dimitrov's acknowledgement of the church's national and historical mission combined with strong state control and limitation of the church's religious development possibilities. This status can be observed in the history of the Orthodox Church under the country's socialist regime, and along with this, a preoccupation with the Orthodox Church as a nationality-maintaining institution under the Ottomans remained a prominent research theme among historians during the socialist period. This is in striking contrast to the portrait of the nationality-undermining consequences of Islamisation and Turkification during the Ottoman rule. 59

4 . T H E B U L G A R I A N O R T H O D O X C H U R C H UNDER S O C I A L I S M

In the socialist countries, reliable statistics as to the size of the religious communities were not available, and this lack of official willingness to allow research on the topic also applied generally in Bulgaria. The last pre-war cen60

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sus to include religious affiliation, taken in 1934, indicated that out of total population of 6,077,939,84-4% termed themselves Orthodox, 13.5% Muslim, 0.75% Catholic (of which a small portion were Uniate), 0.39% Armenian Christian, 0.8% Jews and 0.14% Protestants. An incomplete census from 1946 yielded similar proportions: 84.49% Orthodox, 13.55% Muslims and no significant changes as far as the other religious communities were concerned. Thus, both before and after the war. Orthodoxy was the dominant religion, with Islam as a significant, but far smaller community composed primarily of Turkish-speakers, Bulgarian-speaking Pomaks and Gypsies. 61

When the Red Army took control of Bulgaria in September 1944, and with Bulgaria having fought on the side of the Axis Powers, the government was immediately taken over by the Fatherland Front. As a defeated German ally, Bulgaria was subordinated to allied control, which in practice meant the Soviet Union. The communists gradually took full control over the Fatherland Front, but until the final peace treaty was signed in Paris on February 10th, 1947, the communist party moved cautiously on questions of the religious communities' future status. The Fatherland Front's political program from September 17th, 1944. already formulated a demand for the separation of state and church, introduction of civil marriage and elimination of the influence exerted by the religious communities, including foreign-based churches, on the teaching system and the operation of schools. In the first phase from 1946-47. until the communists' secured their grip on power, the goal of the governments' policy towards the religious communities was primarily to weaken the Catholic and Protestant schools which were being operated with foreign funds, and in some cases by foreign Catholic teachers and Methodist and Congregationalist mission institutions. The war had severed the connections to the mother congregations, which were located mainly in France and the United States, and the Bulgarian authorities placed barriers in the path of reestablishing the personal and financial contacts. After 1947, a reinvigorated campaign emerged against the small Catholic and Protestant congregations. The last foreign-supported schools ceased functioning in 1948, and in connection with the passing of the Law on Religious Communities in February 1949, fifteen Protestant ministers were imprisoned. In closed trials, they were accused of espionage for the United States and England, irregularities concerning the possession of foreign currency and anticommunist activity. In the first trial against the church communities having close links to foreign countries, all the priests were given prison sentences, including three life sentences. From 1950, the Catholics were also subjected to anti-religious and Stalinist-

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inspired persecution (Broun 1983). One of the many trials against the priests, nuns and laymen was carried out as a show trial, with standardised accusations of espionage and anti-communist activity, with four executions included among the punishments. This draconian procedure was stopped immediately afters Stalin's death in 1953. but it was not until the 1970s that the regime's isolation of Catholics and Protestants from their foreign mother churches was relaxed. The Roman Catholic Church received an unexpected overture from the Bulgarian regime when Todor Zivkov visited the pope in 1975. A grandiose 1300-year celebration of the Bulgarian state was being planned for 1981, and access to the Vatican's archives was considered valuable for Bulgarian historians, who were preparing several publications for the occasion. The Vatican granted Bulgaria permission to use their archives on condition that the plight of Bulgaria's Catholics be eased and their normal connections with the Vatican be reestablished. The Protestant congregations did not experience such a clear easing of restrictions, and a revitalisation movement among the small Pentecostal congregations in the late 1970s led to intervention by the authorities and the subsequent arrest and trial of five religious leaders. Yet this was an exception from the general atmosphere of the mid-1970s, when a more relaxed attitude to the spiritual movements and values dominated. Here the tone was given by Zivkov's powerful daughter, politburo member Ljudmila Zivkova (1942-81), who was openly interested in religion and mysticism while also strongly engaged in her country's national culture and history. The Armenian Christian congregations did not experience the same hostility on the part of the regime as did the Catholic and Protestant communities. The Armenians in Bulgaria were in relations with the Soviet-recognised Armenian Church in the Armenian Soviet Republic. Moreover, the Armenian Church collaborated to a certain degree with the Orthodox Church. Finally, mention should be made of the Jewish population. During the Second World War, the citizens and authorities refused to send the country's predominantly Sephardic Jews to German forced labour and concentration camps, though did nothing to prevent the dispatch of Jews from the occupied territories in Macedonia and northern Greece. In 1948, Bulgarian authorities allowed emigration to Israel, and a massive emigration wave began; a few months later, the number of Jews had been reduced from about 50,000 to some few thousands. The remaining Jews were for the most part strongly secularised, and Jewish religious institutions rapidly diminished to an absolute minimum. The major features in the authorities' post-war religious policy are well known from several of the eastern European counties in the Soviet sphere of influence. The small religious communities with connections to the capitalist counties were

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hindered in their activities, the Armenians were treated in accordance with Soviet policy, and the surviving Jewish communities dissolved as an active religious community due to emigration. The situation with the Orthodox Church was different, Under clear inspiration from Stalin's altered position towards the Russian Orthodox Church during the Second World War, which also emerged in Dimitrov's speech at the Rila monastery in 1946, the Fatherland Front supported the selection of a church leader, an issue about which the Holy Synod in Sofia had expressed interest already in 1940. Since the death of the last exarch in 1915, Bulgarian Orthodoxy had not had any leader. The reoccupation of the post had been postponed in the hope of being able to unify all the church provinces within the Bulgarian Exarchate's 1870 boundaries under a new religious leader. The core of the dispute here was Macedonia, but with the war now over, the authorities did not want the church to complicate the relationship to the new political allies in Tito's Yugoslavia. Hence, on January 21st, 1945, an assembly of clergy and laymen chose Bishop Stefan as exarch. Shortly thereafter, with the intervention of the Russian patriarch, the schism between the ecumenical patriarchate and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which had lasted since 1872, was successfully resolved. Exarch Stefan held his post only until 1948, when the government pressured him out of office for refusing to co-operate under the new conditions in the constitution; Stefan had apparently thought that he could utilise the separation between state and church to achieve renewed churchly independence and activism (Raikin 1984b). The period between the ratification of the new constitution and Stalin's death, was the period of greatest tensions between the authorities and the Orthodox Church. Orthodox priests were hindered in their work, especially when it came to work with the youth, and some priests were interned. As a consequence of nationalisations and restrictions of state subsidies, the church also endured some years of financial hardship, causing the synod to finally accept the authorities' demands and agree to co-operate. The co-operation was confirmed by the government's approval of the Orthodox Church's resolutions on December 31st, 1950, as stipulated by the Law on Religious Communities. Metropolitan Kiril from Plovdiv was installed as leader of the synod until May 10th, i953> when he became the first Bulgarian patriarch since Evtimij, who had been removed following the fall of Tarnovo in 1393. Approved in advance by the other Orthodox churches, the naming of a patriarch brought the Bulgarian Orthodox Church onto an equal footing with its sister churches. Following the investiture of Kiril, the head of the Directorate for Religious Affairs declared that the church had shown a willingness to support the new social order and work for peace, and that the church would henceforth concentrate itself on spiritual

no


questions. For his part, Patriarch Kiril declared that the church would fulfill its patriotic duties and live up to the words to render unto God and to Ceasar each his due, i.e., to give faith and conscience to God and total loyalty to the state. This line of co-operation within the limits set by the governmenfand the communist party would affect the relation between the Orthodox Church.and the authorities for decades to come. The governments provided a limited degree of financial support to the Orthodox Church; churches and monasteries were renovated, services held and icons preserved and exhibited. At the same time, the authorities carried out atheistic agitation in the schools and youtfi-organisations, with several attempts to replace church festival days and rites of passage with socialist civil rituals (socialisticeski graidanski rituali). Here we see the socialist authorities' distinction between the church as a national historical force and the church as a religious institution. After the church's leadership had accepted the new conditions, there developed a modus vivendi between state and church. The church became an officially promoted actor in the so-called "struggle for peace" in international fora and was accorded a prominent role in the politically-control led representation of the national history. Clergymen took part in jubileums and commemorative days, and during the 1300-year state celebration in 1981, the church was hailed in both speeches and publications as a key factor in the ethnogenesis of the Bulgarians (Volker 1982). Characteristic of this dichotomy was also that the official formulations concentrated on the church as a national cultural factor, which during important phases of the country's and the nation's history formed the framework of the people's sense of identity or the people's struggle for political independence. The acceptance of the Orthodox Church as a national and cultural institution continued through the socialist period, and precisely the linking together of the church and the people's national history excluded a direct confrontation between state and church on a Marxist ideological basis. On this background, the Orthodox Church could continue its religious life in a formally atheistic social system. Yet, the consequence of this indulgent and restrictive policy towards the Orthodox Church and to Christianity was that the number of priests slowly decreased, the new large residential areas—as mentioned—obtained no churches, and secularisation and atheistic campaigns had their impacts. The number of active believers or religious ceremonies conducted is not known, but especially funerals still continued to take place to a large extent with participation by the clergy. The cause of the two-pronged attitude and policy of the socialist state authorities and the communists party towards the Orthodox Church can be found in the interpretation of Orthodoxy's function under Ottoman rule. Here

III



one encounters a reception of history which consciously served the communist regime's priority on national ideals and values.

around the interpretation of the Bulgarian-Slavic Orthodox Church's social and ideological function under Ottoman rule. At the same time, the basic assumption of the interpretation—that the church made a decisive contribution to the preservation and protection of national identity—meant, as mentioned, that the Orthodox Church under socialism was not only confronted with a uniformly critical anti-religious and atheistic propaganda by the authorities, but that national-political interests allowed the church to function as a historically significant national institution. The following section discusses some representative examples of this research which emphasize the church's function as preserver of Slavic-Bulgarian national identity and self-awareness under Ottoman rule (cf. also Nesev 1974a, 1977,1978b, 1982; Gandev 1982; Kiel 1985:147-66). The discussion begins with Dimitâr Angelov's recent works on national continuity. Among many possible examples of how the relationship between church, Christianity, national continuity and identity was viewed, Angelov is chosen in his capacity as a prominent researcher, and because he summarises the contributions on this topic from several disciplines. The discussion continues with a presentation of several historical studies from recent decades, including an American dissertation which highlights the view of Slavic Christianity as preserver of a specific national identity. The paradigm underlying this research tradition may be termed the continuity theory. The goal of this review is to outline the theoretical and national ideological background behind the research carried out within the paradigm of this continuity theory. At the same time, it is important to remark that what is here called the continuity theory complements the catastrophe theory; i.e., the idea of Ottoman rule as a national catastrophe runs parallel with the view of Bulgarian ethno-national continuity. In the history of modern Bulgaria, the religio-political dimension of the continuity theory constituted the background for the Orthodox Church's privileged status, while the catastrophe theory legitimated the marginalisation of the Turkish population, with the name-changing campaign (process of national rebirth) in the 1980s as the most radical political implementation.

5. I N T E R P R E T A T I O N S OF T H E CHURCH'S NATIONAL F U N C T I O N

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church's formal juridical status under socialism did not essentially deviate from that of other religious communities. In practice, however, the Orthodox Church had a status which clearly distinguished it from other Christian confessions and especially from the Turkish-Muslim population, which was under the surveillance of the politically controlled imams and muftis and who as a minority were the object of an assimilation policy. The decisive factor behind this discriminatory treatment was the overlapping identity between church and nation and the interpretation of the role of the religious communities in the national history; here the Orthodox church occupied a special position vis-à-vis Islam and vis-à-vis other Christian confessions. This special position co-determined, as mentioned, the Orthodox Church's situation under socialism and was also reflected in the political and ideologically controlled Christianity-related research. To the extent that the historical disciplines at all touched upon the history of Christianity, the historiography, since the mid-1950s became part of the relationship between the authorities, the communist party and the Orthodox Church. The interpretation of the history of the Orthodox Church was thus also part of the party's ever more openly nationalcommunist expression and character (M. Todorova 1995). The view of the church's and Christianity's function as preserver of a religiousnational identity was a key topic in the historians' analyses of the period up to the beginning of the 19th century, when the Bulgarians manifested an ever-growing national consciousness. The core of this view is the idea of national continuity, and how the people's national specificities and characteristics were maintained (cf. Arnakis 1963; Petrovich 1980).« Within this conceptual framework, the church and its monasteries, with their Slavic-Bulgarian liturgy, literature and art, were understood as bridge-builders between the Second Bulgarian kingdom and the national revival (VàzraÈdaneto) at the end of the 18th and through the 19th century. The Slavic-Bulgarian local churches and monasteries were viewed as a shield against the Ottomans' Islamisation and the Greeks' Hellenization. Linked to the idea of national continuity, Bulgarian historiography reveals an interest in movements of rebellion and individual resistance against the Ottomans. In this view Ottoman rule was never an uncontested reality but was in conflict with people's natural unity in an independent kingdom. Whereas the catastrophe theory primarily drew a portrait of the onslaughts against selfidentification due to Islamisation and Turkification, the interest here revolved 63

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6. T H E C H U R C H AND NATIONAL C O N T I N U I T Y

In a 1992 issue of the Bulgarian Historical Review, the historian and Byzantinist Dimitràr Angelov published an article summarising the work of several historical disciplines concerning the history of the Bulgarians; in 1994 he published a greatly expanded version of his article in the form of a monograph; the article is entitled "The Bulgarian Nationality in the 9 t h - i 9 t h Centuries. Factors and Conditions of Development" and the subsequent monograph Bàlgarskata nar-

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64

odnostprezvekovete ("The Bulgarian Nationality through the Centuries"). Both publications are contributions to the classical historiographie question of continuity and change, where Angelov understands change as the political-economic changes which followed in the wake of the Byzantine and Ottoman conquests of the Bulgarian medieval kingdoms. Angelov seeks to demonstrate the maintenance of a specific and identifiable sense of national identity among the conquered people in these periods, and his interest therefore centers on demonstrating historical continuity (istoriêeskapriemstvenost) (1992:14; 1994:288; cf. also Cvetkova 1973:71). Here the focus is on Angelov's portrayal of national continuity under Ottoman rule and especially on his discussion of the church and Christianity Angelov takes his chronological point of departure in the union of the Slavic and so-called "proto-Bulgarian" populations in the 9th century, and his time horizon ends with the establishment of the principality in 1878; the monograph traces a time-span to the end of the 18th century. Within this time frame, Angelov follows the development of Bulgarian nationality, using the concept of "nationality" as an ethnic and historical category, which in the 19th century was replaced by the term "nation" (1994:297). Angelov's conceptual usage follows the Soviet tradition, according to which a "nationality" designates a population group with several ethnic characteristics, such as language, culture and traditions, while a "nation" is a state-bearing unit (Connor 1984:452). Angelov cites ethno-territorial and ethno-cultural unity as the decisive factors in the maintenance of national continuity: i.e., a territory inhabited by a people with national self-consciousness expressed in an ethnonym and common language, origin, history, present, as well as a specific culture expressed via customs, clothing and religion (1992:13. 22-24).«* That Angelov emphasises these factors is due, as mentioned, to the socio-economic and political discontinuity of Bulgarian history; hence, evidence of national continuity must be sought outside the political and economic history. 65

The first factor of continuity, according to Angelov, is the territory where the Bulgarians had lived since the Slavic immigration of the Balkan peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries. In association with the territory, Angelov moderates his recapitulation of the fanatic and violent character of Ottoman rule in order to show that the ethno-territorial unity has not been altered during and after the Ottoman conquest: Nor was the ethnoterritorial integrity of the Bulgarian people violated under the fundamentally altered reality as a result of the Turkish conquest. Regardless of the mass killings of people in towns and villages, of the forced assimilation and the mounting mixture of an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous population in individual settlements, the Bulgarians continued to live

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as the overwhelming population in Moesia, Thrace, Macedonia, the Morava valley, in Dobrudza and the Sofia region. (i99*:»5) The second part of the argument for continuity is the culture* for as Angelov states, a territory does not form the people (1992:18), and here he^mphasises the importance of a common language. He writes that language is the most important means of communication for a nationality and its most important tool with which to express itself intellectually, in that the language is literally the soul of the nationality and one of the clearest expressions of its essence (1992:15); there is an obvious connectior\to Johann Gottfried von Herder and German romanticism here. Angelov mentions the evolution, since the 9th century's Old Bulgarian language norm, through a continually increasing differentiation between the literary and the spoken languages, emphasising that the distinction was eliminated with the re-establishment, in the 19th century, of a common language norm which rested upon both ethnic and democratic principles, when the language reformers took into consideration the spoken variants. Despite these changes, the fundamental language continuity is far more important than the differences which have appeared through the centuries. Language unites the inhabitants in the entire territory and it therefore constitutes testimony to the historical continuity of Bulgarians' lives and destiny (1992:200. After discussing the issue of language, Angelov reviews several other ethnocultural characteristics. On the basis of studies of material culture (dwellings, clothing) from the 9th to the 14th centuries, and studies of the Christian-dominated elitist forms of expression within literature, art, theology, music and science, Angelov describes the fate of these cultural forms under the Ottomans: first, Ottoman rule was a terrible blow to further cultural development; second, the first two hundred years entailed a nearly total destruction of the elitist, material and spiritual culture (1992:210. It was then left to the folk culture, with its customs, tools, songs and rituals, to maintain the ethnic integration of the indomitable Bulgarians suffering under political, social and spiritual oppression. At the same time, this folk culture operated as a mechanism of differentiation in relation to the Ottomans (1992:22). Finally, Angelov turns to the question of the function of religion and its significance as creator of continuity. In contrast to the other ethno-cultural elements which created continuity between the Middle Ages and Ottoman period, the significance of religious affiliation was altered by connection between belief and nationality: ... a new element in the conditions of alien oppression was the increased role of the religious belonging as an important constituent of the national

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awareness of the Bulgarians. Along with the notion that the Bulgarians differed from other peoples in language, way of life, culture and past a strong accent was put on the notions that they were Christians and that this was one of their most distinctive qualities. The cause for this is clear: in this way stress was laid on their sharp differentiation from the enslaver, the carrier of a different religion hostile to Christianity. The enhanced role of the 'religious indicator' gradually led to the identification of the concepts 'faith' and 'nationality'. This mixing of the two concepts had been practically unknown during the Bulgarian Middle Ages, but now it was felt strongly as a component of the ethnic consciousness of the Bulgarians. (1992:25).

was not only a religious matter, but a defence of national identity. Georgieva also mentions that the fate of the neomartyrs would be of supreme importance and was utilised by church leaders to mobilise the people towards a political movement for liberation. In this way, the clergy became an organisational force in the Bulgarians' resistance and rebellion against foreign domination, and Georgieva concludes by emphasising that even though the church as an institution was weakened by the Ottomans and had no possibility to conduct its activities freely, it occupied a decisive role as the only means of struggle for consolidating the people's national identity and maintaining Bulgarian's as an distinct ethnic group (1981:101, iosf> Georgieva's article covers all those aspects of how the church and Christianity functioned as preserver of national identity highlighted by this research tradition: culture, monasteries, saints and the clergy. Georgieva has since continued her work in the form of an analysis of the cults of saints, such as those of Ivan Rilski, Gabriel Lesnovski and Petka Târnovska. The cults are viewed as a contribution to maintaining the memory of a free but bygone era in the midst of a period with religious and political oppression, and Georgieva concludes that this function was prominently expressed in the cult of the neomartyrs killed in the confrontation with Ottoman power (1984; cf. also Constantelos 1978)-

According to Angelov, the linking together of religious and national affiliation led to religion playing both a positive and negative role for the Christian Bulgarians under the Ottomans. The church and Christianity maintained and protected their sense of nationality, but the close connection between religion and nationality could also operate to weaken ethnic identity, because when Christians converted, they also lost their nationality and became Turks. Angelov's interpretation of the collision between Christianity and Islam thus unfolds within the research paradigm of the catastrophe theory (cf. also 1992:13), and his view of the significance of religion for the formation and maintenance of ethnic and national consciousness is reminiscent of the publications which appeared as part of the politically controlled research in connection with the name-changing campaign {process of national rebirth) (cf. 1994:292). According to Angelov's interpretation, the church and Christianity did not work in line with the other continuity-creating factors as direct bridge-builders between the Middle Ages and Ottoman rule. According to Angelov, it was only under Ottoman rule that religion and the church obtained a new and valuable function as bearers of national consciousness and self-identification. Angelov's depiction of the national continuity-creating factors and institutions rests on cultural historical research which in recent decades has concentrated upon the church as a social, cultural and national institution in the history of the Bulgarians under the Ottomans. It is in the framework of this research that we observe the unfolding complementarity and parallel between the catastrophe and continuity theories. In this connection, the historian Cvetana Georgieva has underlined the function of the church as preserver of national identity during the rebuilding of the church organisation after the destruction of the conquest phase. She interprets the transferral of Ivan Rilski's relics as part of a strengthening of the national identity, in that the monasteries conducted a conscious policy and did not just follow their traditions. Similarly, the church's resistance to Islamisation

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The church as a cultural institution and the transmission of the medieval literary heritage by monks, priests, copyists, and scribes is a classic topic within the continuity theory and has also preoccupied the medieval historian Ivan Dudcev and the cultural historian Georgi NeSev. In their work on the church's literary culture, they both make a direct connection to the nationality concept and to the view of the Bulgarian nationality's threatened status under the Ottomans. Dujcev argues that the church, with a rich spiritual culture, maintained the national consciousness (1978:850 and for his part, Nesev follows up the idea by emphasising the role of religion as creator of national identity (19783:128). Both Dujcev and Nesev, as well as the other contributions to this research tradition, reveal a clear distancing from the interpretation of the millet system as a religious classification and social organisation. Instead, they promulgate the view that the religious identification was identical to national identification. A subfield of these studies of the function of the Orthodox Church and Christianity as preservers of national identity is within a Marxist-Lenin 1st research tradition. Here the focus is on the Orthodox clergy as a social class. This tradition poses the question of whether the church was also an instrument of class exploitation. In this connection, Hristo Gandev has sought to show that there occurred a direct démocratisation of the church institution in the Bulgarian territories in early Ottoman times, i.e., prior to the growth of Greek influ-

"7



ence (1984). He regards the Ottoman conquest and exile of the higher clergy as evidence that the path had been cleared for a démocratisation and popularisation of the local church. The people and those lower clergy, with origins and direct connection with the folk, themselves became responsible for their church and for Christianity. In this way, the clergy and the church did not stand in a class contradictory relationship to the local population, but, rather, acted as a shield protecting what was authentically Bulgarian (1984). The historian Olga Todorova has worked further on this idea by incorporating the lower clergy's economic status and its ethnic and social origin so as to determine whether the lower clergy contained a significant Greek element, which was the case among the higher clergy. Todorova is unable to confirm this, and even though she acknowledges the weak source basis for her study, she also rejects the argument that the lower clergy, in contrast to the leading church strata, should have belonged to those Christian groups whom the Ottomans favoured with privileges and tax exemptions (1987a, 19870:125-88). Todorova thus concludes that there existed no class differences or contradictions of interest between the lower clergy (including the Greek segment) and the Orthodox Bulgarian population. The incorporation of the church and of Christianity by the continuity theory as the factors which created national continuity, but most often without Angelov's distinction between the non-national and the national function, respectively, before and during the Ottomans, was not limited to the Bulgarian research tradition. We find the same view in the works of American historian Dennis P. Hupchick on the Slavic Orthodox culture and Bulgarian ethnic identity under Ottoman rule (1983b, 1993). Hupchick poses the question of how the Bulgarians as an ethnic group survived until the national awakening at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries without having become Turks or Greeks, despite centuries of Turkish-Islamic political and Greek-Orthodox religious domination. Following recent western research tradition, Hupchick reserves the concepts of "nationality" and "nation" to the period of the emergence of the national movements in the 19th century. Inspired by his teacher and advisor, lames F. Clarke (1971:31"), Hupchick argues that the answer can be found in a collective self-understanding which had its origin in the church, the liturgy and iconography with its Slavic saints, who were identified with Slavic inscriptions (i993:ix). Hupchick's empirical study is based on data from the 17th century, and he chooses to concentrate on Orthodox art, education, and literature within a theoretical framework connecting identity, ethnicity and religion. The foundation and details of the study will not be discussed here any further, but the conclusions are enlightening." Hupchick concludes that there is a clear connection between Orthodox faith and Bulgarian identity, with Islam and

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non-Bulgarian identity as ethnic markers because Orthodox culture and the mother tongue provided the Bulgarians with their ethnic self-consciousness (1993:191. 196. 198). A comprehensive quotation from Hupchick's conclusion makes clear the mode of thinking and concludes this review of how various historical disciplines have interpreted the national historical functions ofrhe local churches and monasteries under Ottoman rule: The Bulgarians faced and repulsed these cultural threats by fortifying their sense of self-awareness through Slavic literacy and artistic cultural activity Both existed within the context of a Slavic Orthodox culture that, given the condition of foreign Turkish political and Greek religious domination, could only operate on a local level. Although ethnic awareness never completely died out among the Bulgarians thanks to the cultural activity of those who worked within the Orthodox church, that activity existed in a state of continous poverty right through the nineteenth century and the eruption of western-style nationalism. That it managed to exist at all was more a matter of the Orthodoxy of the Bulgarians—their belief in the Orthodox form of Christianity and the preservation of its Slavic cultural traditions—than of the established Orthodox church organization and the advantages afforded by the Orthodox millet. Orthodoxy ensured that the Bulgarians were able to distinguish between themselves and non-Orthodox peoples (e.g., Muslims, Jews and Catholics) and between themselves and other non-Slavic Orthodox Christians (e.g., Greeks and Armenians). Differences between themselves and other Slavic Orthodox peoples (i.e., the Serbs) were less well defined in the Orthodox context. It took Paisii and his exposure to western and Russian historical literature to commence the last phase of conceptual development within Orthodox tradition that would lead to a definitive Bulgarian self-identity as an ethnic and, ultimately, national entity, By the time that identity matured, it had moved beyond the purely Orthodox context into the realm of modern European nationalism. (i993:i98f)

7. SUMMARY

This chapter has elucidated the historiographie reception and impact of Ottoman rule as concerns the socialist state's policy towards the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The particular historical interpretation of the impact of Ottoman rule on Bulgarian ethnic and national consciousness derived from an interpretation of the church's historical mission which in the atheist context created space for the church as a national institution. It was on this basis that the regime could demand loyalty as a popular democratic and progressive church. The image of the church's historical mission stemmed from the national histor-

ic


ical research tradition prior to socialism, and it is the continuity theory of this • tradition, which remained and was expanded. According to the continuity theo-i. ry, the local church and its monasteries under Ottoman rule, were national institutions, and the church, its monasteries and their cultural activities werecreators of Bulgarian national and cultural continuity; this laid the groundwork for the political liberation of the 19th century. The continuity theory's thus linked national identity and religious affiliation. The theory's subsequent" understanding of the function of Orthodoxy as identity-creating and ethnic boundary-maintaining under Ottoman rule is the reverse side of the assertion, propagated during the name-changing campaign, that the Turkish population were in reality Bulgarians. In conjunction with the continuity theory, the conse quences were interpreted only through a national ideological lens as a painful loss of identity. Common to both the catastrophe and continuity theories, then, is their refusal to acknowledge that the Ottoman empire's millet system, in its' classical phase prior to the 19th century, rested on religious classificatory prin ciples and did not contain ethnic or national preferences or criteria. Let us now take up the question of the Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy's national historical mission under Ottoman. Our point of departure is the sec ond half of the 19th century. Confessional affiliation now when the millet system began to collapse, obtained an indisputably meaning as a mark of nationality. Religion now obtained ethno-political significance, because the movements for national liberation and culture, quite contrary to the classical millet order, made church affiliation a consequence of national identification. It is only with the 19th century's political liberation struggle that religious affiliation is linked together with nationality, and not, as Dimitrar Angelov and other supporters of the con tinuity theory assert, due to the intrinsic character of Ottoman domination. The overlap of religion and nationality first begins with a national ideological inter pretation of the Ottoman rule and takes shape through a combination of the 19th century national idea, a transformed millet system and the Orthodox statechurch tradition. These three elements form the basis for amalgamation of reli gious affiliation with national identity in Bulgaria.

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«x 6 ^ SAN

STEFAN O A N D THE NATIONAL

All nationalist

movements

contain ideas and narratives of the nations

ry. The narratives, often national ment's political,

cultural

cultural and political church membership formation

from

TRIUMPH

myths, provide justification

and eventually

independence.

armed

struggle for

In the Ottoman provinces,

territorial, religion and

in the 19th century occupied a key position in the trans

millet to nation. In the Bulgarian nation-building

religion therefore became a national marker, and from the mid-i9th until the formation

histo

for the move

of an independent

church organisation

church became a vehicle for pursuing Bulgarian national political

process, century

in 1870, the goals.

1. P E A C E AND T H E B O R D E R S

N M A R C H 3RD, 1878,in San Stefano (Yeşilköy) outside Istanbul, the Rus sians and the Ottomans signed a peace treaty ending the war which had broken out between them the year before. The peace marked the end of several unstable years in the Balkans. In 1875. rebellions sparked by the intro duction of changed taxation systems spread through Bosnia, and the following year saw a minor revolt in the central part of the Balkan Mountains (the April Uprising). The poorly organised rebellion, regarded by exile-Bulgarian circles as the prelude to political independence, was quickly and brutally repressed by the Ottoman power. The same year, Serbia and Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman empire, but the Ottomans were still strong enough to handle the chal lenge from the Slavs, whose defeat caused Russia to enter the conflict in the role of protector of all Orthodox Christians. The Russians invaded the Ottoman empire via Romania, but the Russian forces were halted at Pleven (Plevna), where for five months over the summer of 1877 the Ottoman defenders resisted the Russian siege. Pleven first fell, with Romanian assistance, on December 10th, 1877, and in January, the now reinforced Russian advance forces, stuck in the

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San Stefano and the National Triumph

Shipka Pass, could advance southwards with virtually unhindered passage towards the defences of Istanbul. The Treaty of San Stefano was signed in the wake of the Russians' military success, and the sultan had to accept the loss of vast Ottoman territories. The most important new element was the establishment of a Greater Bulgaria, which beyond the areas north and south of the Balkan Mountains would also include nearly all of Macedonia and significant parts of Thrace. Among the other Orthodox Balkan countries, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro would be awarded smaller amounts of territory and at the same time achieve full sovereignty. The Ottoman empire's European possessions were thereby reduced to parts of eastern Thrace, Thessaly, Albania and—via a land corridor through Sandjak Novi Pazar—Bosnia. The Treaty of San Stefano was a disappointment for all parties except the Bulgarians. Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania felt themselves disfavoured in awards of territory. In a larger context, the peace treaty had violated secret agreements between the European Great Powers. Great Power co-operation was certainly weakened compared to the period following the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the century, but Austria-Hungary had agreements with Russia on spheres of influence and the distribution of land areas, following further decimation of the Ottoman empire. For the British, a Greater Bulgaria, which in all probability would become a Russian vassal state, was a step towards Russian control over the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and entailed a general strengthening of Russia's position in the eastern Mediterranean. The protests against the Treaty of San Stefano ended only with a renegotiation at the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, with Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck as mediator. The Treaty of Berlin halted the establishment of Greater Bulgaria. The negotiations instead created a smaller autonomous principality, and south of the Balkan Mountains, Eastern Rumelia was created as a semi-autonomous Ottoman province under the leadership of a Christian governor. All of Thrace and Macedonia were returned to the Ottomans, and Austria took over administration of Bosnia and stationed troops in Sandjak Novi Pazar, between Serbia and Montenegro. Further border changes followed in 1881, when Greece, after agreement with the Ottomans, expanded its territory in Thessaly only to subsequently lose smaller areas following military defeats in 1897, when Greece and the Ottoman empire were at war after yet another crisis on Crete. The Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia were united in 1885, despite Russian resistance. The Russians had found it difficult to retain control of political life in Bulgaria, which in 1908 declared itself sovereign and independent of the Ottoman empire. At the same time, Austria annexed Bosnia and withdrew from

Sandjak Novi Pazar. Beyond this, in the decades following the Congress of Berlin and until the Balkan Wars and the First World War no new border revisions occurred in the region. The Treaty of San Stefano had fulfilled the Bulgarian nationalist circles' greatest hopes, and its total revamping at the Congress of Berlin therefore had enormous influence on the political life in the country. The Bulgarians' reactions operated to destabilize the conditions for the entire Balkans in the decades that followed (Crampton 1983; Perry 1993). The peace of San Stefano was a short-lived national triumph, which the nationalists viewed as an acknowledgement of their national-political right to trie unification of all Bulgarians in a sovereign state territory. In line with a definition of political nationalism as the effort to achieve a congruence between the political unit and the national unit, San Stefano had affirmed the nationalist idea that "ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones" and that the rulers of the political unit should belong to the majority of the ruled (Gellner 1983:1). Even though the Treaty of Berlin cut short the national ambitions, it did not weaken the dreams of achieving them. Rather, the failure only reinforced Bulgarians' struggle over the national identification process in Macedonia and Thrace. Compared to developments in the Danubian principalities and in Greece and Serbia, the national movements emerged rather late in the Bulgarian areas. Proximity to the imperial centre in Istanbul had always entailed a strong Ottoman administrative and military presence, and in contrast to other national movements, the Bulgarians were delayed in forming close relations to one or more of the Great Powers. From the mid-i830s, there had emerged a cultural political movement centred around a Slavic-language school system, but otherwise, the nationalist groups were divided, and the national idea did not lead to any clear political strategy. One group with its locus among the Bulgarian merchant families in Istanbul, worked for reforms and a form of autonomy within the Ottoman empire. Meanwhile revolutionaries and socialist-inspired groups operating out of Serbia and later in Bucharest agitated for and sought to stimulate popular rebellions (Pundeff 1969:1110. The revolutionaries' hopes of a comprehensive popular rebellion were never achieved, however. Before the Russians' military engagement paved the way for the creation of the Bulgarian principality, the national political efforts were channelled outside the small revolutionary circles largely into a conflict over the Orthodox church organisation. The church conflict was not simply religious, however, for the organisational structure of Orthodoxy in the course of the 19th century had become the theatre of struggle for national identification. National thinking had thus transformed the non-national millet system. Traces of this process extend

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themselves to Bulgaria's history under socialism, as the linking together of national and religious affiliation continued to influence the policy towards, respectively, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a national-historical institution : and the attempt to weaken Islam as a factor of national identity among the = Turkish minority. :

In the 19th century church dispute, the political instrumentalisation of reli gion was manifested by the religious affiliation and church organisation becom ing a criterion of national identification. The national and political goal in forging together the nation, its territory and a sovereign state made the nation al identification necessary: who belonged to the nation and thereby to the group affected by the national political goals? In answering this question, the trans formation of the millet system's religious boundaries to the modern national identifications became epoch-making. The borders of Bulgaria set by the Treaty of San Stefano rested upon a conceptual fusion of history, religion, church structure and national characteristics, which since the 1850s lay behind the efforts and the initiatives to establish an independent Bulgarian church organi sation. These efforts came into conflict with the ecumenical patriarchate and with rival Greek and Serbian national and church political goals. The conflict evolved into a church dispute between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Bulgarian church dissidents, whose politics were crowned with success in 1870 with the establishment of the Bulgarian exarchate (Volker 1981; cf. also Jelavich and Jelavich i977:i28-4o). The Bulgarian exarchate's role in the period up to the Peace of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin raises the question of the extent to which the Ortho dox church and Orthodox culture were prerequisites to political nationalism, or conversely, whether the political nationalism itself created the idea that the church and the Orthodox culture were national markers of identification. After a short description of the processes by which the Bulgarian exarchate was estab lished, the following sections discuss the debates within recent nation and nationalism research which bear on this question. 69

2. T H E B U L G A R I A N E X A R C H A T E

During the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century, the Porte eliminat ed the institutionalised social inequality contained in the millet system's reli giously-based classification of the empire's population groups. The hatt-i serif reform program of 1839 recognized the fundamental equality of all inhabitants, at least in principle, and the government sought to hinder the separatist nation al agitation by increasing the millets.' rights, including the steadily more signifi cant right to control teaching institutions, these being linked to the religious

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institutions. However, the turning point of the Bulgarian church struggle first appeared with the hatt-ı hümayun reform initiative, which after the ending of the Crimean War in 1856 introduced a reorganisation of the millet system across the entire empire (Davison 1977)In 1856, the Ottoman government chose to continue the millet system in an attenuated form. The result was that those Orthodox populations in the empire who did not feel themselves represented or included within the ecumenical patriarch's Greek-dominated church could organise themselves as a millet. By 1875, the number of such groups had risen to nine, of which six were of signifi cant size (Karpat 1973:900. In the decades that followed, the number increased further with the formation of the Serbian and Arumanian millets. This initiative meant that the faction of the Bulgarian national movement working for a high er degree of political and cultural independence within the Ottoman state sys tem had to "clothe" their ambitions in church organisational "garb." The Ottomans, for their part, succeeded in deepening the already existing tensions between the empire's Greek and Slavic populations. Compared to the classical phase in the history of the millet system, the reforms of the 19th century introduced a gradual recognition of a type of national identification by which the Porte reacted to the nationalist challenge to the supranational empires of the time, e.g., the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. The religious distinctions among the inhabitants would now be sup plemented with the possibility to make geographic, linguistic or historically grounded distinctions. The ecumenical patriarchate resisted this development, but since the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, the patriarchate had not recaptured its position in the Ottoman empire and was forced to watch as the Porte entered into direct negotiations over the division of the church's canonically- and territorially-based jurisdiction. These events helped consolidate the linking together of faith, church organisation and national identification as an inseparable part of the Bulgarian national revival. The revival, concurrently with the church struggle and via a stream of books, pamphlets and articles clear ly inspired by German national romanticism, sought out the national identity in folklore, language and history (Pundeff 1969:108). The changes in the Ottoman system of administration thus constitute the background for the church struggle. In 1856, as an extension of the reform initiative, a delegation of Bulgarians in Istanbul asked the sultan for permission to form an autonomous church organ isation. The request was yet another step in the attempt to separate the Greek and Bulgarian congregations under the patriarchate, attempts which since the 1840s had been hindered by the patriarchate and by Russian diplomacy, which did not wish to see the Orthodox Church fragment into smaller units, as this x

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would weaken Russia's own possibilities to exert influence in the Ottoman empire. In 1849, however, with the sultan's intervention, the Bulgarian colony in the capital had achieved permission to hold their own Slavic religious services. After the new request in 1856, which did not immediately bear fruit, the Porte demanded of the patriarchate that a church assembly be convened to discuss organisational changes. This assembly, as expected, was Greek dominated and convened between 1858 and i860. However, it did not reach a solution. In the same period, the Bulgarian colony continued its efforts to achieve church independence. During Easter Sunday services in i860, the deacon, with the blessing of both the congregation and of the acting Bulgarian bishop, avoided naming the ecumenical patriarch by name in the liturgy's prayer and instead invoked the name of the sultan. This breach of custom in the Orthodox liturgy and the open protest against the patriarch's resistance towards implementing organisational changes failed to produce any determined reaction from the patriarchate, which because of its precarious situation in relation to the Ottoman government could not intervene in any heavy-handed way. The disciplinary intervention against several Bulgarian bishops, who thereafter introduced the custom of naming the sultan instead of the patriarch, was thus limited, and instead the Bulgarian question came onto the agenda in a new series of church meetings and in commissions during the 1860s. Finally, in 1867, the ecumenical patriarch presented a proposal which would meet the Bulgarians' needs to establish a special status for a geographic area within the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate. The proposal contained plans for partial autonomy under the leadership of an exarch and synod, but the investitures would demand the approval of the patriarch, just as all contact to the authorities should go through the patriarchate. Even though the proposal did not meet the most wide-ranging Bulgarian demands for complete autocephaly, it clearly represented an opening on the part of the patriarch, and the subsequent negotiations were blocked mainly over a dispute concerning the geographic demarcation. The patriarchate would only allow dioceses north of the Balkan Mountains to enter into the jurisdiction of the new exarchate, while the Bulgarian side considered itself entitled to far more dioceses. At this point the Ottoman authorities intervened in the internal church negotiations and in 1868 presented two proposals. The two proposals resembled each other and were based upon the patriarch's proposal, though they extended the Bulgarian exarchate's autonomy vis-à-vis the patriarchate and increased its geographic extent. The Bulgarian bishops in Istanbul, Loveè, Sofia and Vidin applauded the authorities' proposal, but the patriarchate refused to accept either of the solution. A Greek-Bulgarian commission was then established by the Grand Vizier

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in 1869 and was given the task of presenting yet another solution to the crisis, but the patriarch rejected these proposals as well. The next step in the dispute was taken on February 28th, 1870, when the sultan issued a decree {firman), which unilaterally established a new Christian church organisation: the Bulgarian exarchate. The sultan's decree was j i compromise between the various interests and proposals which since 1867 had been submitted by the patriarch, the Bulgarian bishops and the Porte. According to the sultan's decree, the exarchate would not be an autocephalous church but would have autonomy under the ecumenical patriarchate. The sultan's decision regarding the exarchate's geographical ext\nt was especially important as a solution to the core of the dispute and attained wide-ranging consequences. The dioceses currently located in Bulgaria (i.e., Ruse, Silistra, Shumen, Tarnovo, Sofia, Vraca, Lovec, Vidin, Kjustendil, Samokov, Varna and Plovdiv) as well as the bishoprics of Nis, Pirot and Veles came under the jurisdiction of the exarchate. Excepted from this, however, were certain areas in the Rhodopes and along the Black Sea coast containing compact Greek populations, as well as several monasteries all of which remained under the direct supervision of the patriarchate. Finally, the sultan's^rman decreed that all dioceses where two-thirds of the Orthodox population so desired, should be transferred to the Bulgarian exarchate. This unusual initiative was the sultan's attempt to secure the loyalty of the Bulgarian-dominated territory and at the same time weaken the ecumenical patriarchate, which could become a dangerous focus of unity for anti-Ottoman forces during the unstable times in the latter half of the 19th century. Even though the direct diocese allocation led to disappointment in Bulgarian circles, the "two-thirds rule" was encouraging. The struggle for the adherence of the dioceses and the possibility to thereby affect the school system placed the Orthodox church organisations at the forefront of disputes in the coming decades, where the ecumenical patriarchate and Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians and their national churches would demand to be seen as sole representatives of the inhabitants' national feelings of identity and church membership in the geopolitically important territories of Thrace and especially Macedonia (cf. Stavrianos 1939)The ecumenical patriarchate protested immediately against the sultan's intervention and decision, accusing the Ottoman authorities of interference in their internal millet affairs. The patriarchate refused to cooperate within the framework of Xht firman and blocked its practical implementation. As a protest, the Bulgarian exarchate, in May 1872, seceded unilaterally from the patriarchate, which in turn, during a September church meeting, declared the exarchate to be schismatic under the accusation of "phyletism" (i.e., church separatist thinking or religious nationalism). 70

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In the years following the declaration of ecclesiastical independence, the: exarchate leadership was largely preoccupied with organisational matters. However, with the outbreak of the rebellions in the Balkans in 1876, the December 1876 Great Power conference in Istanbul concerning the oriental question, and the outbreak of war between Russia and the Ottoman empire in 1877, the exarchate succeeded in becoming an internationally recognised political factor. With its organisation, it entered into the struggle over the boundaries and power domains in the southern Balkans. This role appeared clearly when the exarchate, after the creation of the principality in 1878, remained in Istanbul. From there it could legally operate in the Ottoman territories of Macedonia and Thrace, and with both the sultan's and the Bulgarian government's support, it succeeded in installing its own bishops in 1890 in Ohrid, Monastir (Bitola) and Skopje (Oskup) (Perry 1993:151). In the same way, the government in Sofia, under the improved relations between the exarchate and the Catholic Prince Ferdinand (ruling from 1887-1918), chose to offer support to the exarchate's schools in Macedonia. The events connected with the establishment of the Bulgarian exarchate in the course of the 19th century show how religious affiliation among the Ottoman empire's Orthodox population had obtained a political dimension. In contrast to the classical millet system, there triumphed an ethnic and nationally differentiated principle which for its part was marked by the even elder Orthodox tradition whereby a sovereign empire had to have an independent church. With the millet system, the Ottomans had unintentionally created an organisational framework for the operation of destabilising political forces, for the millet system formed the basis for the church politics of the national movements. These movements made use of millet thinking in a nationally transformed form in order to subvert the empire. Since the 1820s, the ecumenical patriarchate's geographical area was gradually decreasing. National Orthodox churches in Greece, Serbia and Romania had been organized according to each country's political secession and with international recognition (Suttner 1992). However, the Bulgarian church organisation had split from the ecumenical patriarchate before the political secession. Hence, the Bulgarians used the church issue as a first step towards achieving political independence (Vôlker 1981:720. This policy left the Patriarchate of Constantinople the loser. The various national movements demanded national churches. Affiliation to a national church was regarded as a question of national identification and political loyalty. The Patriarchate of Constantinople, on the other hand, being incorporated into the Ottoman social and political structure, was linked to no Christian nation-state power structure.

it relevant to investigate two key topics which were touched upon in connection with the description of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church under socialism. The first topic revolves around religious faith and ethnic identity under the Ottomans, and the second concerns the politicisation of religious affiliation during the spread of the national idea in the 19th century.

The events surrounding the establishment of the Bulgarian exarchate make

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3. O R T H O D O X C H R I S T I A N I T Y AND N A T I O N - B U I L D I N G

In a 1989 article entitled "'Imagined Communities'and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans" the Greek historian and political scientist Paschalis M. Kitromilides utilises results from research on nationalism to reassess the conventional views among Balkan historians regarding the function of the Orthodox Church under Ottoman rule and its relation to the history of the national movements. Kitromilides argues that nationalist mythology has obfuscated our understanding of the relation between Orthodoxy and nationalism (1989:149)Kitromilides' critical reassessment is directed towards general assumptions and stereotypical interpretations in the historiography of eastern Europe, which in connection with Orthodoxy and nationalism promote the view that: ... the Orthodox Church played a major role in preserving and cultivating the ethnic identity of the nations of south-eastern Europe under Ottoman rule and in guiding their national 'awakening . An explicit claim of this assumption is the identification of Orthodoxy with nationality, while an unstated implication points to the recognition of the Orthodox Church as a vanguard of nationalism. This assumption, whose intellectual origins are easily traceable to the second half of the nineteenth century, has prevailed in twentieth-century Balkan historiography.,. (i989:i5of 1

Kitromilides' reassessment builds, firstly, on what he regards as the theological and moral contradiction of values between Orthodox Christian and national communities. Second, he incorporates recent theories of the nation and of nationalism, including Anderson's (1991) concept of "imagined communities," into the analysis of the national identification process among the Orthodox Balkan populations. Here he criticises the interpretations which see Orthodoxy as preserver of collective identity under the Ottomans, i.e., the continuity theory's image of Orthodoxy as preserver of a collective identity, which created the basis for nation-building and political independence (1989:178). Kitromilides views the contradiction between the religious and national community as deriving from Christianity's biblical emphasis that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ" (Galatians 3,28). According to Kitromilides, this idea and Chris-

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tianit/s demand for universalism constituted the basis for Orthodoxy's ecumenism and operated to prevent the Patriarchate of Constantinople from being affected by ideas of national identity and national states, when these spread after the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Nationalist ideas soon began to cast a grip on the Orthodox populations in the Ottoman empire, leading the church leadership to initiate active resistance (p. 177O. According to Kitromilides, the nationalisation of the church organisation, with the Greek secession in the 1820s as the first example, thereby entailed a radical break with the Orthodox tradition. When the patriarchate and the synod in Constantinople, in the second half of the 19th century, condemmed this development as "phyletism," it occurred as a logical consequence of the theological and canonical antinomy between Orthodoxy and nationalism, even though certain circles in the patriarchate in the long run were eventually affected by national ideas (p. 179,181, i83f ). Kitromilides' criticises the uncritical way in which Balkan historiography has linked Orthodoxy with national identity, a link which we have followed on the basis of Bulgarian primary sources. He acknowledges that at a certain analytical level and in specific historical contexts, Orthodoxy could and did operate as a preserver of national identity, but that this occured is not to say that the Orthodox church has always fulfilled this function under Ottoman rule. Thus, one of the greatest anachronisms in Balkan historiography consists in viewing the Ottoman religious political system as based on a national difference. The difference, however, consisted of a religious distinction between Christians and Muslims, and only in a religious, i.e. non-national, sense did the Orthodox church as an institution contribute to maintaining a collective sense of identity among Christians in the Balkans. In this system, argues Kitromilides, the church, according to its own religious principles, was not national, and the conceptual mixing of Orthodoxy and nationality occurred only with the renunciation of the Orthodox Church's ecumenism and subsequent nationalisation of the church (p. 178O. Kitromilides' article is a thought-provoking contribution to the analysis of the Ottoman legacy in the Orthodox successor states. We have elucidated the reception of this legacy in the national political process, whereby religious affiliation and national identity became conceptually combined and several of Kitromilides' points found confirmation in the Bulgarian primary source material. The relationship between the political powers and the religious communities in the successor states thus showed themselves to be marked by a form of secularised millet thinking, and this perception is a child of modern national ideology. Nevertheless, Kitromilides' reassessments require additional comment. First, his presentation of the antimony between Orthodoxy's biblical foundation and the national communities is too idealised. It fails to incorporate the

church's relation to political powers prior to the emergence of modern nationalism and the resulting emergence of political units based on nation-state ideals. Since its recognition by the Roman empire in the beginning of the 4th century, the church has maintained a close, but not always unproblematic, relation to the political powers that be. In the eastern Mediterranean area, the relationship found its classical formulation and practice under the Emperor Justinian I (527-65). Justinian's formulation of the relationship between emperor and archbishop/patriarch in Constantinople is found in the preface to his sixth edict (novella) from 535:

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The greatest blessings of mankind are >he gifts of God which have been granted us by the mercy on high: the priesthood and the imperial authority. The priesthood ministers to things divine; the imperial authority is set over, and shows diligence in, things human; but both proceed from one and the same source, and both adorn the life of man. Nothing, therefore, will be a greater matter of concern to the emperor than the dignity and honor of the clergy; the more as they offer prayers to God without ceasing on his behalf. For if the priesthood be in all respects without blame, and full of faith before God, and if the imperial authority righdy and duly adorn the commonwealth committed to its charge, there will ensue a happy concord which will bring forth all good things for mankind (Geanakoplos 1984:136). The idea of harmony or symphony between the political and religious spheres derives from the premise that both offices and powers derive from God. In the earthly realm, the offices are installed so as to harmoniously transmit and realise God's will, and this Byzantine view of the association between Christianity and the ruler ideology found expression in court ceremony and iconography. The image of perfect cooperation between emperor and church in the Byzantine empire is contested by the term caesaropapism, an understanding of the church as subordinated to the political sphere, as a tool for the emperors in their exercise of power. Hence, the talk of harmony and symphony between emperor and church is viewed as an expression of the emperor's distorted image. Even in the classical Byzantine context, however, the relationship is more complicated, and there are good reasons to refine simplistic views of the power relations between the emperor and the church. The existence of serious conflicts between the emperor's power and the church, e.g., the iconoclastic controversy, indicate that the church was not always so pliable and subordinate, and the conflicts did not always end with the church being the losing and subordinate part. Yet i f we leave out the question of caesaropapism and the internal power relations, there is no doubt that in a Byzantine imperial understanding

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the emperor and the church were closely connected: a sovereign empire required an autocephalous church. Together with the Christianisation of the Slavic populations in the Balkans from the second half of the 9 t h century, there followed massive Byzantine cultural export to the Slavs, who quickly appropriated Byzantine ideas and traditions. Cultural export, however, did not succeed in making the Slavs into loyal political allies. Seeking independent domain or empires, they tried to loosen their bonds to Byzantium, with especially Serbian and Bulgarian tsars being successful in this enterprise. Their political goals were accompanied by efforts to create church organisations independent of the Byzantine patriarchate in Constantinople. We have followed the Bulgarian tsars' initiatives in this direction, and in connection with the development of the Serbian kingdom, the local church organisation in the same fashion loosened its bonds in 1219 and subsequently became an autocephalous Serbian patriarchate. The Slavs thereby demonstrated that they had also adopted the Byzantine model: a full independent political power required its own church organisation which should be autocephalous, albeit in theological and liturgical unity with the other Orthodox churches. This entailed that if the political power became divided or collapsed, church independence also collapsed. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453- and the incorporation of the Orthodox inhabitants into a single church organisation, the Ottomans' millet system therefore became a logical consequence of the Byzantine imperial church ideal. Unified political organisation in turn required unity of the religious institution. The history of Orthodoxy does not contain an antimony between the church organisation and territorially delimited political units. On the other hand, Kitromilides is correct in his rejection of Orthodoxy as a synonym for national identification in the period prior to the 19th century. The medieval Orthodox churches in the Balkans were neither ethnically nor nationally defined. Rather, they were defined politically. The medieval churches were not national churches because the empires were not national; such an assertion, says Kitromilides, is anachronistic (1989:178). The empires were dynastic and power-based, and were therefore not based on national or ethnic legitimation principles; their church structures contained all believers in the territory controlled by the political power. This relationship changes only with the advent of the modern nationalism. The fragmentation of the Orthodox church in the Ottoman empire into smaller units during the 19th century occurred as a result of a radically new national ideological idea which transformed the millet system and Orthodox tradition into the idea that nation-building must be accompanied by church institutional independence.

The millet idea and the Orthodox tradition are part of the historical legacy which, combined with the modern nation-state and nationalism, are unique to the religio-political development in the Orthodox successor states. When the national idea and the confrontation with the Absolutist state transferred sovereignty and power from the regent to the nation-state's legitimating cëntre, the people/nation, the result in the Balkan Orthodox context was unique. The emperor or tsar could thereby no longer determine the kingdom's religion and church organisational situation, for here, too, the nation-bearing people had to be in the centre. This gave the question of nationally organised church structures a prominent place on the agenda of the national political movements among the Orthodox Balkan peoples in the 19th century. As a consequence of nation-building and the homogenous national state idea, the Orthodox church divided into smaller segments and often with a basis in language or history. The ecumenical patrarichate's resistance to these developments must be seen as a theologically founded rejection of Enlightenment ideas, and as an opposition which derived from the patriarchate's weakened position within the Ottoman empire, which was itself undergoing political dissolution and territorial decimation. The Ottoman empire's decline also became the decline of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The second of Kitromilides' reassessments which requires commentary is his critique of historiography's image of the Orthodoxy as a creator of collective identity and Orthodoxy's role as having created the basis for the national movements and political independence in Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria. Nation-building is the creation of a feeling of belonging between the inhabitants on the basis of common cultural characteristics. It develops with the help of language, schools, military, communication system, historical memories, the press, cultural policy, etc. Kitromilides' critique is based on results from the comprehensive and still ongoing debate on the concept of the nation and nationalism, and his arguments are connected to that most contentious of questions: Do nations and the nation-transforming processes have their origin in modern political, social and economic conditions, or should the roots be sought in more ancient ethnic-cultural raw material decisive for the formation of the modern nations? Connected with this stands the debate over the degree to which the creation of nations derives from objective factors or whether nations are subjectively determined by a state power apparatus' national homogenisation policy. The main positions in the debate are taken by the "modernists" contra the "essentialists" or "primordialists" ("from the beginning," here as a label for the view that the characteristics of nations have existed from all time), with variants in between. In other words: are nations constructions or given by nature?

U3


The nation and nationalism debate can be usefully included here because Kitromilides' critique raises two questions: Was Orthodoxy an institution which became politically instrumentalised in the national movements's nation-building and their effort to achieve nation-state sovereignty? Or were the church and Christianity institutions and collective identity creators on which natural communities had based themselves for centuries, before, during and after the Ottomans? The latter view is closer to the developments outlined in the foregoing chapter in connection with the discussion of Dimitrar Angelov and other contributions to the continuity theory. It is a question of the degree to which national characteristics are learned or acquired in a modern and conscious national construction process, or whether they are "eternal," as was generally assumed around the beginning of the 20th century, when the modern nation-states were viewed as organisational continuations of ancient or medieval kingdoms and the national peoples, i.e., as continually existing peoples (Smith 1996:109). This nationalism debate can therefore contribute to our understanding of the relationship between church and national movements in the Orthodox Balkans. 4. N A T I O N AND NATIONALISM

Through the 1980s and 1990s research connected with the concepts of "nation" and "nationalism" has attracted attention from a range of fields. Nationalism research has become an especially dynamic field (see for example Alter 1994; Guibernau 1996; Breuilly 1994; Smith 1992; 1998; Hastings 1997 and anthologies such as Hutchinson and Smith 1994; Wolff 1996; Balakrishnan 1996 and Augustinos 1996). Monographs and articles of theoretical and empirical character written from historical, sociological, political science or anthropological perspectives have contributed to the analysis of collective identities and their political forms of expression. The comprehensive recent academic interest in the concepts of nation and nationalism stand in contrast to the immediate postwar period, when nationalism was thought to have died together with Nazism. Nevertheless, political developments from the 1980s have shown that ethnic, regional and national questions and disputes can in no way be considered completed phases in social, economic and political development and history. In our context, it is relevant to incorporate the social anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Gellner's theory of the origin of nations, and to apply it to the analysis of eastern European and southeastern European history. Especially relevant is also Anthony D. Smith's important and on some points controversial contribution to ethnicity research in several publications (e.g. 1983; 1991; 1992; i999)> including his major work The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1986). Smith's most important contribution is his development of a model for the

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emergence of modern nations on the basis of pre-national collective identities. In our context, his theory can be advantageously incorporated into elucidating the importance of the national idea for linking together politics, history and history of religion during the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, because it is precisely the pre-national characteristics which were decisive for thes.Uccessor states' interpretation of their Ottoman past. In Ernest Geller, the debate on the origins of nation had a prominent advocate for a theory of the nation's modern character and origins in industrial society, Gellner pointed out that industrial society had broken down the economic and family structures of agrarian society atad instead made demands for a flexible workforce with common values and language. Modern states fulfilled these demands by homogenising their populations into a single common national culture. In his main work on this topic, Nations and Nationalism (1983), Gellner defines nationalism as a feeling or movement which as a political principle holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. As an identity-creating ideology, nationalism connects peoples who due to industrialisation and urbanisation have lost their identity-creating factors once found in the kin group, feudal relations, landscape or religion. The national identity is the population's feelings, whereby the political system, territory and power apparatus are connected in the nation-state, and nationalism the glue which holds together the post-absolutist state and the modern national folk. Gellner emphasises that nation-states are a product of recent social and economic development regardless of what nationalist mythmakers might assert about the nations' antiquity. At the same time, he points out that nationalism and national states do not rest upon a natural ethnic basis. Nations are created from human groups by standardising the language, introducing uniform schooling and uniting the group through a common labour market; it is the nationalist project. Therefore nationalism, according to Gellner, is also a modern ideology and the nation-state a modern political organisation which has emerged as a result of the social conditions in the western world from the late 18th century Within nationalism research, this theory is known as the "modernist" position. The "modernist" position has wide-ranging consequences for our understanding of the concept of the nation, as nations thereby become a phenomenon which emerge out of the social and economic changes since the 18th century. Two short quotations from Gellner illustrate the extent of the theory: 71

1. Two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture, where culture in turn means a system of ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and communicating.

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2. Two men are of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are the artefacts of men's convictions and loyalities and solidarities. A mere category of persons (say, occupants of a given territory, or speakers of a given language, for example) becomes a nation if and when the members of the category firmly recognize certain mutual rights and duties to each other in virtue of their shared membership of it. It is their recognition of each other as fellows of this kind which turns them into a nation, and not the other shared attributes, whatever they might be, which separate that category from non-members. (1983:7)

In this light, a nationalist view of history consists of a construction of the nation's and the country's history, which in turn builds upon a notion that the nation in question has always existed, and that its true essence and potential is realized in the nation-state. Nationalist ideology retrieves from history the symbols, myths and values which it uses to show who belongs to the nation, what characterises it, and which territory its members claim as theirs. The nationalist view of history is in this sense ideological, as the history of the people, often under desperation and foreign domination, always points towards the homogenous nation-state in which the people's cultural and civilisational potential is realized. The "modernist" position has diffused widely, and Benedict Anderson, with the term "imagined communities," has expressed the same idea (1991). Anderson argues that all communities are imagined; nations are imagined in the sense that they build upon the ideas and expectations of a political community invented by those who construct the nation, the folklorists, historians and propagandists. The "modernist" position is also found in the work of Eric Hobsbawm: "historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms" (quoted in Balakrishnan 1996:255). Yet Hobsbawm also operates with the concept of popular protonationalism and thereby clears the way for a chronological predecessor for modern nation and nationalism thinking (1992). The theory's influence is also seen in innumerable empirically oriented studies which have appeared in recent years, studies in the "the invention of . . . " genre (e.g. Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). This composite genre includes detailed and well-documented examples of how symbolic universes, stereotypes and world-views are constructed or manipulated in political and cultural discourses. The theory that the modern concepts of nation and nationalism, with the associated constructed national myth, have emerged as a necessary and unavoidable consequence of the west European socio-economic transforma-

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tion from the 18th century, however, has also been criticised and problematised. Anthony D. Smith has already been mentioned as a representative of the school which rejects the premise of the "modernists" regarding the pre-existing culture's presumed arbitrary significance. Paul James, too, has sought a middle path in the debate on the modern construction of nations versus their naturally given and "eternal" origin. With this objective, James outlines a social theory of the nation, in which he criticises the scholarship for focusing on nationalism, the nation-state or concrete national movements instead of proposing a theory without essentialising the past and fictionalising the present: Such a theory would, it is hoped, allow us to say that while nations do not come into being until they are lived as such (or at least abstracdy recognized as such, usually in the first instance by intellectuals or persons lifted out of the face-to-face) the social forms which ground national formation are already lived prior to the generalization of this new sense of historicity, (p. 122) Paul James also offers a critical analysis of Gellner's "nationalism before nation" theory (1996:126-50) and in an effort to bridge the"primordialist-modernist" gap, James argues for the need to consider pre-modern and modern nations as part of a continuity in the discontinuity. He thus argues that modern nations exhibit somecontinuities in social forms in relation to the medieval "nations" (1996:192). In general, the 'modernist' position is poorly suited to analysing nationbuilding and the emergence of nation-states in eastern and southeastern Europe because this area lay outside the west European economic and technological developmental trajectory on which the theory is based. Hence, from a predominantly historical perspective, typologies of different forms of nationhood and nationalism have sought to account for the fact that not all modern nation and nationalisms have emerged on the basis of identical socio-economic conditions, and that nations and nationalisms do not have the same characteristics in all places and at all times. Precisely these nation typologies are important for understanding nation-building and nationalism in southeastern Europe. The classical typology for modern nations has its roots in Friedrich Meinecke's distinction between Staatsnation and Kulturnation (1908), designating nations based on adherence to political institutions contrasted with nations based on cultural similarities such as language, folklore, religion, history, etc. English and French do not have entirely similar terms for Staatsnation and Kulturnation. Subsequently, Hans Kohn became the most well known representative of the historical research which continued Meinecke's distinction. Kohn distinguished between a west European (voluntarist, subjectivist) and east European (determinist, objective) concept of nation, and he established a chrono72

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T " Religion, Politics, and Historiography in Bulgaria


logical sequence between them. According to Kohn, the modern nation concept and the accompanying ideology of nationalism emerged in the west during the 18th century as a result of a popular will to community in a specific historical development and in a specific territory. With the transformation of the kingdoms/countries into nation-states, citizenship became synonymous with national affiliation. From western Europe the idea of nation penetrated eastwards, where the social and historical basis differed. The concept of nation instead became a mystical and historically fixated construction linked to seemingly objective factors such as language and common historical background (1961:339; cf. 1965). Elaborating on Kohn's evolutionary model, Theodor Schieder has proposed a three-phase developmental scheme of European nation-state forms. The first stage was the establishment of the modern national states in England and France, the second the German and Italian national unifications into nationstates and the third step was the formation of eastern European nation-states and nations in confrontation with the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires. Schieder's phases can be succintly characterised as, first, a chronological development within a state, then for a state and finally turned against supranational states/empires. Meinecke's Staatsnation-Kulturnation dichotomy and Kohn's and Schieder's west-east development and differentiation reappear in various incarnations with varying terminology in more recent historical and sociologically oriented nation and nationalism literature. Anthony Smith, for example, distinguishes been a western, "civic" national concept and an eastern, "ethnic" nation concept (1986:134-44) corresponding to modern legal concepts of citizenship, where French law is based on ius soli, territorial law, while German law is based on the right of blood, ius sanguinis. Liah Greenfeld also operates with the typological difference between nations which is created around a state, laws and citizenship, and ethnic nations, which define affiliation on the basis of cultural-historical criteria (1992:11). Inspiration from the ideal-typical forms of nation and of nationalism is also clear in the work of Peter Sugar, who distinguishes between a western political nationalism and a Central European cultural nationalism, while east European nationalism is classified as a mixed form with special expressions such as xenophobia and historical obsession. In the history of east European nationalism, Sugar further distinguishes between four types: (1) bourgeois (Czechs), (2) aristocratic {Poland and Hungary), (3) popular (Serbia and Bulgaria) and (4) bureaucratic (Turkey, Greece and Romania) (1969:19,35ff, 6 f f ) . Common to these types is that historical interpretations, in combination with cultural characteristics, are decisive in the east European constructions of national collective identity. Here we can observe the interaction of national pol73

4

¡38

itics, national historiography and national religious communities characteristic of what we have investigated in Bulgaria. As a logical consequence of this connection between politics, historiography and religion, the Orthodox church becomes privileged while the Turkish community is marginalised and oppressed. The axis revolves around historiography, i.e. national historiography's image of the deeds and defeats as a component in the creation of collective identities: So kreist das sogenannte "Erwachen der Völker"... um die Fixierung einer Schriftsprache, um die Erweckung eines nationalen Erinnerungsbildes, um die Überwindung des Bruches de\ nationalen Überlieferung; die Geschichtsschreiber gehören zu den Mitschöpfern des Nationalbewußtseins dieser Völker. Sie machen den Rückgriff in eine oft legendäre Vergangenheit, schaffen eine nationale Mythologie und führen den Kampf um den Nachweis der nationalen Autochthonie. (Schieder 1991 [ 956] :35o) ]

The nation concept used by social constructivists and "modernists" refines this insight, emphasising how national movements' constructions of nation are random in their use of historical traditions. The question, then, concerns how far this randomness can extend, and precisely in this context, Anthony Smith's research contains fruitful perspectives. Does the nationalist historiography see the past as "full" or "empty," to use Smith's terminology? To which he responds that it seems to be "fuller" than is often assumed by advocates of the "modernist" position (1986:177; cf. also Armstrong 1982; Hutchinson 1994:1-63)- A significant part of Smith's work therefore centers around discussing which raw materials of a cultural and historical kind must be possessed by a rising national movement in order to have any chance of realizing its fundamental political goal: a nation-state. Applied more directly to our topic, is the conventional historiographie tradition which asserts that the Bulgarians Orthodoxy was an ethnic or national identity-preserving factor historically justified, or is it an expression of a nationalist continuity-creating historical fiction? Smith acknowledges that there is no causal or necessary cultural continuity between pre-national ethnic groups and modern national communities, as the nationalists and nationalist historiography assert. However, he nevertheless maintains that there are clearly identifiable features behind the constructions which successful ethnic groups utilise in their national identity forming processes. Smith cites three reasons to seek the origins of nations in pre-national ethnic communities: The first is that, historically, the first nations were ... formed on the basis of pre-modern ethnic cores; and, being powerful and culturally influential,

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they provided models for subsequent cases of the formation of nations in many parts of the globe. The second reason is that the ethnic model of the nation became increasingly popular and widespread not only for the foregoing reason, but also because it sat so easily on the pre-modern "demotic" kind of community that had survived into the modern era in so many parts of the world. In other words the ethnic model was sociologically fertile. And third, even where a nation-to-be could boast no ethnic antecedents of importance and where any ethnic ties were shadowy or fabricated, the need to forge out of whatever cultural components were available a coherent mythology and symbolism of a community of history and culture became everywhere paramount as a condition of national survival and unity. Without some ethnic lineage the nation-to-be could fall apart. (1991:410


The difference between an ethnic community and a modern nation (name, territory, culture, economy, educational system and law) is precisely that the nation is formed by modernity and springs from the nation's connection to the bureaucratic state and nationalism. As concerns western Europe>Smith in this sense acknowledges the correctness of the "modernist" position that nations are modern. But he then raises the question of whether there could also exist other forms of enduring cultural communities in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and on the basis of comprehensive historical data, responds that these were indeed ethnic communities. Among the ethnic communities, it is necessary to distinguish between two ideal types, whereVthe first is: ... a type of ethnic community that can conveniently be termed 'lateral'. This type of ethnie was usually composed of aristocrats and higher clergy, though it might from time to time include bureaucrats, high military officials and richer merchants. It is termed lateral because it was at once socially confined to the upper strata while being geographically spread out to form often close links with the upper echelons of neighbouring lateral ethnies.... In contrast, the'vertical' type of ethnie was more compact and popular. Its ethnic culture tended to be diffused to other social strata and classes. Social divisions were not underpinned by cultural differences: rather, a distinctive historical culture helped to unite different classes around a common heritage and traditions, especially when the latter were under threat from outside. As a result the ethnic bond was often more intense and exclusive, and barriers to admission were higher. (Smith 1991:53)

For a theory of the nation, the problem thereby arises as to whether the difference between ethnic identity and nations is only a chronological one—that modern nations follows an ethnic group—or whether there is also a typological relationship (Smith 1986:1). For a nation, formation and maintenance of the sense of nationhood is decisive. The sense of nationhood constitutes and is normally diffused from a centre and an elite to other layers of the population, and the feeling of nationhood is expressed in common symbolic representations and historical narratives, myths and symbols. The possibilities for a nation to exist are thereby conditioned by myths and memories. Smith's working definition of a nation is "a named community of history and culture, possessing a unified territory, economy, mass education system and common legal rights" (1996:107). Ethnic communities, or to use Smith's preferred French term "ethnie" can be described as an ideal type, i.e., by a series of characteristics which mark the ethnic community, but these characteristics do not all need to be represented or to be equally important in order to designate a given population as an ethnic community. The most important difference between a nation and an ethnic community is that an ethnic community need not comprise an economic and political-juridical community, just as the definition of an ethnic community marks the difference from pure class communities, religious communities and solely territorially defined political units. According to Smith, ethnic communities exhibit the following common features: (1) a collective name, (2) a common myth of descent, (3) a shared history, (4) a distinctive shared culture (e.g., language, religion, customs, laws, institutions, architecture, clothing, food, art, skin colour or appearance), (5) an association with a specific territory, and 6) a sense of solidarity among significant parts of the population (1986:22-30; cf. 1991:20).

According to Smith, the two ideal types, aristocratic or popular, also determine the two main developmental trajectories which have formed modern nations. The first derives from an aristocratic upper class's incorporation of other population groups into a new and broader cultural unity via a bureaucratic apparatus (England, France and Spain). In contrast, the state and the bureaucracy were less important in the process by which popular ethnic communities became the basis for modern nations, which was frequently the case in eastern Europe. In the geographic and social diffusion of myths, symbols, memories and values, Smith finds that organised religion and the clergy often played a prominent role; but the transformation from popular ethnic communities to a nation was borne by a nationally aroused secular intelligentsia, who "rediscovered" the nation's ethnic past. The change from a popular ethnic community to a civic nation contains several processes. The historical trajectories of nation-building differ, but all nationalist movements dispose of a myth about the ethnic origin. And it is precisely this aspect of Smith's analysis of the concept of nation which is especially

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141


relevant in connection with the Bulgarian national movement's and state's linking together of religion and national identity. The national movement's origin myths contain a series of common motifs: (1) a myth of origin in time, (2) a myth of origin in space, (3) a myth of ancestry, i.e. a symbolic kinship between all presently living members, (4) a myth of migration, (5) a myth of liberation, (6) a myth of the golden age, the heroes and the culture's era of greatness, (7) a myth of decline, and (8) a myth of rebirth which as a normative narrative reveals the authentic in the nation and how the nation shall be restored to its former glory in the golden age (i984:iooff; cf. I986:i92ff). The intellectuals in national movements often had to choose new myths, symbols and historical interpretations in order to complete the national portrait^ and to this extent Smith again offers support to the social constructivists and "modernists." His thesis, however, is that this could only have occurred within a limited selection of already existing symbols and memories in the ethnic community. Hence, Smith rejects the more radical social constructivist ideas about randomness and fiction in the formation of national identity and nations. Smith's model for how national movements rework historical symbols and memories constitutes a helpful framework for understanding the religio-historical dimension of Bulgarian nation-building. The formation of national identity in Bulgaria took place in the 19th century within the framework of the millet system, and the national myth was then created in interaction with a social organisation based upon religious criteria. At the same time, this meant that the modern national idea and the nation-state institutional frameworks transformed religious affiliation into national identity. Orthodoxy formed a background for the unfolding of the national myth, in that ethnic categories were blended together with religion. In the classic Ottoman millet system, a millet was not a nation. Yet, the national idea transformed the millet organisation into national categories. An eminent example of this development is found during and after the dispute about the independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church, where church and Christianity, in a remarkable way became instrumentahsed in the Bulgarian nation-building process. In the same manner, the church entered the struggle about national identification in Macedonia and Thrace. The Bulgarian exarchate thus became an instrument for promoting national political and territorial ambitions and demands. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church could play these roles because the national myth pointed to the church as the decisive continuity-creating institution in the Bulgarians' history during Ottoman rule.

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\

\ C O N C L U S I O N

O

N T H E BACKGROUND OF BULGARIAN SOURCES, the preceding chapters

have shown how the national origin myths unfold within a framework which corresponds to Anthony Smith's description of the common features of national movements' origin myths. In conclusion, however, there are reasons to add a few commentaries germane to the special features of nationbuilding in an Ottoman successor state and its particular national perception of Orthodox state-church tradition and millet thinking. The chronological and typological connection between popular ethnic communities and modern nations is a model which must be treated cautiously so as not to reproduce the national movement's own ideas and often distorted view of the nation's history. Anthony Smith remarks in passing that the vertical, popular, type of ethnic communities correspond to the Orthodox peoples under the Ottomans, and he finds that among these ideal typical ethnic communities, religion and religious institutions could play a special role: It was organized religion and its sacred scriptures, liturgy, rituals and clergy that acted as the chief mechanism of ethnic persistence among vertical communities. (1991:61; cf. 1986:119) Religion, then, may preserve a sense of common ethnicity as if in a chrysalis, at least for a period, as was the case with Greek Orthodoxy for the self-governing Greek Orthodox millet under Ottoman Rule. (1991:35; cf. 198673)

Here Smith thus supports what we have labelled the continuity theory. We have in some detail described this continuity theory in chapter 5 as an supplementary theory to the research paradigm behind the catastrophe theory which was an integral part of the official Bulgarian historiographical tradition analyzed in chapter 2 and critically reexamined in chapter 3 and 4. However, in the

143


quotation, Smith does not take account of the fact that the Orthodox millet in the Ottoman empire was not ethnically homogenous, and that both the Slavic and Albanian national movements in the 19th and early 20th centuries broke with the G reek-dominated patriarchate in Constantinople as part of their own nation-building. How could religion provide a sense of ethnic identity when the Orthodox millet was not based on ethnic criteria? The process by which the Bulgarian exarchate was formed and the creation of the Greek, Romanian, Serbian and Albanian Orthodox national churches in the 19th and 20th centuries, therefore, points in the direction of a modification of Smith's interpretation. These processes demonstrate that Orthodoxy was not an ethnic church under the Ottomans. Rather, it became politically instrumen¬ talised within the modern movements for national self-determination. In the process towards national independence, Orthodoxy had to be "dressed up" in national garb in the form of a cultural and linguistically grounded and churchhistorical, but not theological, demarcation in relation to the ecumenical patriarchate. The patriarchate in the Ottoman capital was subject to strong pressure from political and church independence movements which in their struggle for seccession from the Ottoman rule also utilised the church as part of their national aspiration for sovereign nation-states. The national historiographical continuity theory which we have concentrated upon in the Bulgarian socialist research tradition portrays a connection between the political and the ecclesiastical structures dating back to the Bulgarian medieval kingdoms, thereby parallelling the 19th century national continuity thinking. Thus the medieval church history and the Ottoman millet organisation became the raw material for creating the national myth's selfunderstanding about the Bulgarian nation's continuity and identity. But in their depiction of continuity, the historians seem to ignore the fact that the medieval connection between a dynastic realm and an autocephalous church rested upon a medieval imperial legitimation basis and thereby on a fundamentally different basis than nation-church relations in the modern nation-state. In the political movements for a sovereign state on the ruins of the Ottoman empire, religion and the church became politically operationalised in order to achieve a national goal, and this development represents not continuity but a break with both Orthodoxy's Byzantine legacy and the non-ethnic character of the millet system. The Bulgarian national movement, with the exception of some small revolutionary groups, thus defined national characteristics by transforming millet thinking and emphasisinga cultural, linguistic and church historical difference vis-à-vis both the Muslim Ottomans and the Greeks. The idea of the nation's historical roots and unique cultural features thus marginalised all Muslims as

144

Conclusion

well as justified the will to pursue a singular national and religious identity and an urge for freedom. The same legitimation of the modern national idea is emphasized in descriptions of the Bulgarian medieval kingdoms political and religious efforts to secede from Byzantium and from the P a t r i a t e of Constantinople. Neglected was the fact that the medieval kingdoms *vere not nationally legitimated, as was the fact that Ottoman domination was reBgjoudy and not nationally organised. The national idea thus transformed both medieval history and Ottoman rule, first by placing the people (the nation) in the political centre and second, by transforming the concept of millet into the concept of nation. This turned national identity into a question of religious affiliation and vice versa.

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1989. Bälgarskata Eksarhija 1870-1879, Sofia.

Meininger, T. 1987. The Formation of a Nationalist Bulgarian 1835-1878, New York and London.

Mordtmann, J.H. 1912. "Die Kapitulation von Konstantinopel im Jahre Byzantinische Zeitschrift, vol. 21, Leipzig, 129-44.

e

Nesev, G. 1974a. "Pravoslavnite institucii prez X V - X V I I I v.," Pravoslavieto v Bälgarija (teoretiko-istoriâesko osvetlenie), Sofia, 125-91. 1974b. "Die bulgarische Kultur und die osmanische Eroberung," Bulgarian Historical Review, vol. 2, nr. 4, Sofia, 4 6 - 6 1 .

1977. Bälgarski doväzrozdenski kulturno-narodnostni sredista, Sofia. 1978a. "Bälgarskite duhovno-prosvetni srediâta i predväzrozdenskite osvoboditelni stremizi u bälgarskija narod," Izvestija. Bälgarska patriarlija, Tom I , Sofia, 117-29. 1978b.

Kulturni projavi na bälgarskija narod XV-XVIII

vek, Sofia.

Mihajlova-Mrävkarova, M. & M . Stajnova 1987. "Tvorceskoto delo na D. Ih£iev, N. Popov, G. Gàlàbov i B. Nedkov—prinos za razvitieto na osmanistikata v Bälgarija," in Istoriografski izsledvanija, Sofia, 309-18.

1982. "Manastirke kato paziteli na bälgarskite därzavni i kulturno-religiozni tradicii prez X V - X V I I I v." in Bälgarija 1300. Institucii i dàréavna tradicija, Sofia, 413-18.

Miklosich, F. & J. Müller, J. 1 8 6 0 - 6 2 . Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitani, I—II* Vindobonnae (cf. Hunger, H. & K. Otto, Das Register des Patriarchats

Nikov, P. 1928. "Vladislav Gramatik—prenasjane moütite na Sv. Ivana Rilski ot Tärnovo v Rilskija monastir," Bälgarska istorièeska biblioteka, god. I , torn I I , Sofia, 165-87.

von Konstanünopel,W\tn

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162

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Actes du premier congrès international des études balkaniques et sud-est européennes, III, Sofia, 567-72.

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Osavkov, Z., red. 1968. Procesät na preodoljavaneto na religijata v Bälgarija: Sociolo gitesko izsledvane, Sofia. Oschlies, W. 1975. "'Überwundene Religion?' Zur Gegenwartssituation von Religion und Kirche in Bulgarien," Evangelische Theologie, 35. Jahrgang, nr. 5,

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164

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Central Asian Survey,

1986b. L'Islam balkanique. Les Musulmans du sud-est européen dans la période post-ottomane, Berlin.

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1971. "Ottoman Documents From the Archives of Dionysiou (Mount Athos) 1495-1520," Südost-Forschungen, Band XXX, München, 1-35. Zeljazkova, A. 1982. "Etno-religiozni promeni v Makedonija i Osmanskata därzavna tradicija," in Bälgarija 1300. Institucii i dârlavna tradicija, Sofia, 427-34.

1985. "Social aspects of the process of islamization in the Balkan posses sions of the Ottoman Empire," Études balkaniques, vol. 21, nr. 3, Sofia, 107-22. 1990a. Razprostranenie na isljama v zapadnobalkanskite zemi pod osmanska vlast XV-XVIII vek, Sofia.

NOTES 2. NATIONAL

REBIRTH

AND LEGITIMATION

1990b. "The Problem of the Authenticity of some Domestic Sources on the Islamization of the Rhodopes," Études balkaniques, vol. 26, nr. 4, Sofia,

A selection of documentation can be found in Amnesty International (1986) and Helsinki Watch Reports (1986,1987). Other documentary evidence is available in Stidosteuropa, 34. Jahrgang, München 1985:359-67« 477"5°6, Hoppe (1986) and Poulton

105-11.

(1993:105-71).

Zientara, B. 1981. "Nationale Strukturen des Mittelalters. Ein Versuch zur Kritik der Terminologie des Nationalbewusstseins unter besonderer Berücksichti gung osteuropäischer Literatur," Saeculum, Band 32, München, 301-16. Zitija na bälgarskite svetci 1974. (v novo-bälgarski prevod ot Levskijski episkop Partenij), I , Sofia. Özoran, B.R. 1965. "Turks and the Greek Orthodox Churches," Cultura Turcica, vol. II, nr. I, Ankara, 28-41.

1.

2. Introductions to the history of the Turkish-Muslim population in Bulgaria since independence in 1878 are found in Popovic (1986a; i 9 8 6 b : 6 6 - i o 6 ) , Crampton (1990), Nitzova (1994), Stojanov (1994) and Höpken (1997). Strong opposition to the official Bulgarian view is found in several of the contributions in Karpat (1990); cf. also Eminov (1986,1997) and Şimşir (1988). From the Turkish side, efforts were made to demonstrate that since the 19th century, the Bulgarians had conducted a genocidal policy towards the Muslim, Turkish-speaking minority. Soon after the beginning of the name-changing campaign the Turkish Historical Society issued a refutation of the Bulgarian version in The Turkish (1986), An impression of the sharp and emotional polemic can be seen in Memişoglu (1989).

3. A historical overview of the changing measures toward the country's Muslims is found in Tafradjiski, Radoeva and Minev (1992). Earlier campaigns were directed espe cially toward Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (Pomaks), and these campaigns contain the most important elements in the ideological justifications of the name-changing campaign which were further developed in the second half of the 1980s (cf. M. Todorova I992b:i54ff). 4. After 1989 several human rights and research centres (with support from the Euro pean Union and the United States) published seminar reports and analyses of the nation al question and the ethnic tensions: see for example Aspektİ (1992a and 1992b), Etniceskata kartina (1993) and Vrâzki (n.d.). For further discussion of the conditions of minorities, including the Turkish population's new political mobilisation, see Borisov and Zecev (1990), Riedel (1993), Stojanov and Höpken (1996) and Troebst (1996). Bulgaria's political development since 1989 has been described and analysed in Höpken (1996). 5. The speech was published in Ğernomorski Front in Burgas on March 9th, 1985; here it is rendered according to the text and retaining the value-laden words and concepts fol lowing the documentation in Hoppe (i986:A476-A478).

175

Notes to Pages 25-43


6. The speech was published i n SHvensko Deb i n Sliven on M a r c h 12th, 1985; here ren dered f o l l o w i n g the documentation i n Hoppe (1986: A478-A481). 7. Representative justification for the process is f o u n d i n Andreev, Lazarov a n d Ivano¬ va (1987), Istorijata

İ nie (1986), Petrov (1987-88; 1989). A t the 1986 International Con

13. This is the conventional designation for the Bulgarian cultural a n d political move m e n t f r o m the end o f the 18th century to 1878, which must n o t be confused w i t h the process of national rebirth (the name-changing campaign) i n the 1980s. 14. Since the Second W o r l d War a n d u n t i l i 9 6 0 , Bulgarian historical publications were

gress o f Bulgarian Studies i n Sofia, this political agenda was reflected i n several o f the

registered i n the Jahrbuch für Geschichte der UdSSR und der volksdemokratischen

conference papers: Vtori meidunaroden

1989 (cf. Petrov and Gandev). The same agenda

Europas vol. 3,1944-55 (Berlin 1959:497-529) and vol, 7,1956-60 (Berlin 1963:645-706).

can be traced i n S. D i m i t r o v (1986) a n d i n the collection o f sources entitled Osmanski

Since i 9 6 0 , the w o r k has been continued under the editorship o f E. Kostova as Bälgars-

izvori (1990). The Bulgarian authorities published a stream o f pamphlets aimed at an

ka istoriéeska nauka. Bibliografija (covering five year periods).

international public and diffused t h r o u g h channels such as embassies a n d consulates justifying the policy being carried out ( w i t h o u t indications o f authors a n d all translated into major w o r l d languages, e.g., Qui s'inquite (1985) and Die Wahrheit (1986)), Begin n i n g i n 1986, the official foreign language press agency and publisher, Sofia Press, pub lished a series o f pamphlets including those b y Petrov (1988) a n d S. D i m i t r o v (1989). The same project is passionately p r o m o t e d i n Sagorow (1987). 8. Problemi was p r i n t e d i n 10.000 copies, a n d the sale price was an especially l o w 3.63 leva. Straniciv/zs p r i n t e d i n a massive press r u n o f 100,114 copies a n d sold at 1.19 leva can o n l y be characterised as a gift.

Länder

15. Via the national epic o f the author and, politician Ivan Vazov, entitled Pod igoto (1888), the "yoke" metaphor has diffused widefy i n t o Bulgarian historiography, popular w r i t i n g , teaching manuals, newspapers and literature. 16. "Osnovni etapi v razvitieto na balgarskata istoiiceska nauka sled vtorata svetovna vojna" ( " M a i n stages i n Bulgarian historical science after the Second W o r l d W a r " ) , pp. 13-99¬ 17. I n a later historiographie lecture, Georgieva expands on the ideological factors w h i c h lay b e h i n d the theses about the character o f O t t o m a n rule, a n d she is n o t b l i n d to

9. As evidence o f forced assimilation, Petrov includes a quotation f r o m 1878 b y the O t t o m a n governor M i d h a t Paşa. D u r i n g the name-changing campaign, the quotation was constandy repeated, b u t strongly abridged a n d taken out o f context. I n unabridged f o r m , the quotation can be f o u n d i n N o r r i s ( i 9 9 3 : x v i i i - x i x ) . 10. As evidence o f the O t t o m a n policy o f forced assimilation, Jankov also refers to the priest M e t o d i Draginov's chronicle o n the conversion o f the Bulgarians i n the Rhodopes i n the 1660s (p. 10). This source is cited innumerable times i n the Bulgarian scientific l i t erature (and school textbooks) describing O t t o m a n rule, but there is considerable evi

the fact that recent Bulgarian historical research may have made a mistaken interpreta t i o n . Georgieva praises the w o r k carried out w i t h i n the Marxist-Leninist framework b u t is also critical o n several points: the labelling o f local Catholics as agents o f the Roman curia and the Austrian court, the thesis o f the closed subsistence economy basis i n agri culture a n d unscientific aspects such as the attempts to study the Islamisation processes w i t h o u t familiarising oneself w i t h Islam as a religious and ideological doctrine (1983). 18. The research-historical chapter o f Hupchick's unpublished dissertation (1983b: 1-18) has been left out o f the revised a n d published version (1993).

dence that the source is a forgery f r o m the 19th century. I n western research, this source

19. Kiel provides many other examples o f the catastrophe theory as a research paradigm,

c r i t i c i s m was p r o m o t e d i n the first half o f the 1980s i n H u p c h k k (1983a) a n d i n Kiel

but also mentions (p. 35) a weak counterflow o f less emotional publications and c o n t i n u

(1985:5-7). I n Bulgaria, A n t o n i n a Zeljazkova raised the question i n July 1988 i n a c o n t r i

ally incorporates them into his work. One recognises the key elements in Kiel's paraphrase

b u t i o n to the Summer School for Historians; an English translation could appear o n l y i n

of the catastrophe theory i n the description above of Volume Four o f Istorija na Bälgarija,

1990 (1990b).

20. Shortly after 1989, Bulgarian historical circles began to openly criticise a n d revise

11. Since the 1989 changes i n Bulgaria, funds for the c o n t i n u a t i o n o f the w o r k have

the catastrophe theory. A n analysis o f the precarious situation o f the discipline o f histo

been l i m i t e d . Its political-ideological basis is gone, e.g., for the final volumes, w h i c h fol

r y a n d its practitioners after the upheavals o f 1989 can be f o u n d i n M . Todorova (1992a)

l o w i n g indications o f the Politburo were to emphasise the p r o f o u n d and grandiose

i n w h i c h she discusses an article b y M i t o Isusov, director o f the Institute o f H i s t o r y o f the

socio-economic, political and cultural results after the i n t r o d u c t i o n o f socialism under

Bulgarian Academy o f Sciences, w h o assesses the heavy legacy w h i c h also rests on the

the leadership o f the communist party. By 1993 they had reached Volume Seven, w h i c h

historians and presents perspectives for the discipline's future (Isusov 1991).

covers the p e r i o d up to 1903; by 1999 they had succeeded i n publishing Volume Eight. 12. "Qb$t predgovor," pp. 13-29; i n the following, reference is made to page numbers. In the text, references to the authors' value-laden words a n d concepts are retained.

176

3. " P E O P L E OF T H E B O O K " AND T H E MILLET

SYSTEM

21. Similar arrangements were f o u n d i n the Near East, i n Byzantinum a n d i n the Sasanid empire p r i o r to the f o u n d i n g of Islam (cf. Bosworth 1982:37-40). T h e literature o n this

177



topic i n c l u d i n g the debate on Islamic tolerance, is comprehensive. The discussion here

27. H e r i n g is aware o f the Chronicon Maius's compiled character, b u t denies that this

has relied o n works b y W i s m a r (1927), Dennett (1950), Gauss (1968), Goitein (1970), Watt

should be any p r o b l e m , as its i n f o r m a t i o n , according to H e r i n g , accords w i t h the histor

(1976,1991),Khoury (i98o),Ayoub (1983,1990),Sachedina (1990),Troll (1991) andWaar-

ical facts; his interest is actually n o t i n the content o f the privileges, b u t the conditions o f

denburg (1992). I n opposition to the prevailing line i n the above-mentioned literature,

possibility for a concordat, a n d i n this sense he can choose to ignoré the Sphrantzes

there exists an alternative interpretation o f the dhimma system w h i c h emphasizes its

problem.

repressive a n d d i s c r i m i n a t o r y features. This view and further literature can be f o u n d i n Ye'or (1985, esp. 43-77). I n addition, one finds an emphasis o n the conversion p r o m o t i n g

^

28. The basic features o f the argument are also k n o w n f r o m Papadopoullos, a n d Pan-

features o f the dhimma system i n Binswanger (1977, esp. pp. 8-39,326-53). For a critique

tazopoulos later supports b o t h Papadopoullos a n d H e r i n g i n the assumption that i t was

o f Binswanger, see Hans-Jürgen K o r n r u m p f ' s review i n Südost-Forschungen,

a case o f a genuine investiture w i t h privileges to the patriarch (Pantazopoulos 1967:19).

v o l . 39

(1980), pp. 49^-95-

29. Braude's statement o f the millet system's age and its o r i g i n as a m o d e r n m y t h is

22. Adel K h o u r y (1980) has assembled a n d analysed the Koran a n d hadith data o n the relationship between Muslims a n d n o n - M u s l i m s i n early Islamic times. Two i m p o r t a n t

also opposed b y Michael Ursinus (1989) and in\jrsinus* entry o n "Millet" i n the pedia of

Encyclo

Islam.

monographs on the later developments are T r i t t o n (1930) a n d Fattal (1958). The various

30. Mehmed's overtures towards the O r t h o d o x patriarchate a n d his Christian subjects,

positions on Jews a n d Christians i n the Koran are i n this context n o t i m p o r t a n t ; see the

however, has also been the object o f other interpretations. Karl Binswanger, for example,

relevant articles i n Encyclopaedia

of Islam i954ff, i n c l u d i n g "Ahl al-Kitäb," "Banü Israel,"

"Yahüd" og "Nas ära I n the Koran, the t e r m "people o f the Book" {ahl al-Kitab)

denotes

demonstrates a "Turkophobic" interpretation o f the millet system i n parts o f his analysis, w i t h emphasis o n its repressive and conversion aspects (1977). Similarly, there exist exam

Jews a n d Christians, a n d the concept appears frequenüy i n Sura 2-5. There also exist var

ples o f propagandistic portrayals o f the Ottomans' tolerance and o f the relationship

ious other "people o f the Book," e.g. i n Sura 2,62; 5,69 a n d 22,17.

between the O r t h o d o x Church and the Ottomans (e.g., Usakligil 1964 and Ozoran 1965).

23. Vryonis follows the cultural, religious and political transformation process i n Asia M i n o r using Greek, Persian a n d O t t o m a n chronicles, travellers descriptions, hagio

4. C H R I S T I A N I T Y B E F O R E AND U N D E R T H E O T T O M A N S

graphie literature, synod decisions a n d correspondence. There exists a general acknowl

31. Gjuzelev (1993:25) recapitulates the widespread view o f f u l l autocephaly, b u t there are

edgement o f the value o f his study a n d analysis, b u t critical voices have noted that the

g o o d reasons to doubt this; cf. O. Todorova (1987^53-58).

topic is n o t exhausted, as Vryonis neglects n o n - O r t h o d o x and non-Greek peoples i n Asia M i n o r , a n d because he has i n some cases extrapolated the situation backwards f r o m the relatively well-documented 15th century; for a the critique see Claude Cahen' review i n International

Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 4 (1973), pp. 112-17. I n a comprehensive

article, Vryonis has defended his b o o k (1982). 24. Carroll (1985) provides English translation of the Sphrantzes' chronicle i n t r o d u c e d by a discussion o f its authenticity a n d history o f compilation (pp. 7-10). The Greek edi t i o n o f Maius is f o u n d i n Migne, PG, 156,637-1023; o f Minus i n M i g n e , PG, 156,1023-80! 25. A newer critical edition i n Reinsen (1983); English translation: Kritovoulos (1954). 26. Italian e d i t i o n i n Barboro (1856). English translation i n Barboro (1969). Dukas: newer critical text e d i t i o n i n Ducas (1958); English translation i n Doukas

{1975).

Chalkokondyles: Chalcocondylas (1843); the excerpt on the siege a n d the conquest o f Constantinople is also available i n English translation i n The Siege (i972:42ff). O n Tur sun Beg: facsimile a n d English translation i n Türsün Beg (1978) a n d i n t r o d u c t i o n to the chronicle i n İnalcık (1977); Aşıkpaşazade: German translation i n Aşıkpaşazade (1959). The O t t o m a n chroniclers' silence regarding the O r t h o d o x Church's conditions is gener al (cf, also Giese 1925).

32. Five years p r i o r to D r i n o v , Zachariae v o n Lingenthal i n Russia had published a comprehensive article o n Bulgarian church h i s t o r y (1864), w h i c h D r i n o v used diligent ly. Von Lingenthal's goal was p r i m a r i l y to clarify the diocese boundaries a n d the series o f archbishops a n d patriarchs, especially i n connection w i t h the archbishopric i n O h r i d . 33. I n addition, there is the historian Tatjana Haardt's smaller, unpublished s u m m a r y dissertation (1948). I n m o d e r n times, the theologian Teodor Sâbev has taken the i n i t i a tive to a m u l t i - v o l u m e Bulgarian church h i s t o r y (1987). The first volume covers the p e r i o d up to 1393. 34. Beyond his doctoral thesis, Kiel has developed a r i c h a n d well-founded authorship concerning the O t t o m a n Balkans (1990c collects fourteen previously published articles f r o m before 1983 o n architectural history); see also Kiel (1989,1990a, 1991a, 1992). 35. There exist several editions o f the text; e.g., the O l d Church Slavonic and m o d e r n Bulgarian commented edition i n Pohvalno slovo 1971 (on the conquest o f Tarnovo and the fate o f Evtimij see pp. 199-217). Camblak's life a n d career are treated i n Heppell (1979). 36. The discussion o f the sources is f o u n d i n Ivanov (1936). Evtimij's vita can be f o u n d i n K a l n z n i a c k i (1901:5-26); m o d e r n transcription i n Èitija (i974:i56ff). O n the r i c h l i t erature o n Ivan Rilski a n d the Rila monastery, see Dujcev (1947).

178

179



37. The text is published i n two variants: Kafuzniacki {1901:405-31) a n d N i k o v

w o r k is also p a r t i a l l y connected to the process of national rebirth and the attempts to

(1928:165-87). The O l d Church Slavonic e d i t i o n is also accessible i n Dinekov, Kuev and

prove that the vast m a j o r i t y o f Bulgaria's T u r k i s h population were descendants o f Chris-

Petkanova (1967:463-76). Here i t is paraphrased f r o m Dinekov (1972:191-201).

t i a n converts (1989:5850.

38. Machiel Kiel proposes that the destruction can be the w o r k o f marauders as

47. A m o n g Bulgarian researchers, a cautious criticism is expressed by Ivan Undziev i n

revenge for the Bulgarians' aid to the Catholic crusaders, w h o i n the w i n t e r o f 1443-44

his review i n Bulgarian

had reached Sofia (1985:70).

etrating critique by Mutafcieva (1973); cf. also Ivanova (1987:159). Similar sharp c r i t i c i s m

39. Pop Pejo's biography and works are described i n Dinekov (1939,1941); cf. also the texthistory i n B. Angelov (1967:268-79). The text is available i n Zitija

(1974:43ft).

40. The text h i s t o r y a n d the sources are described i n Snegarov (1931-32). Matej Gramatik's biography and works are described i n D i n e k o v (1963:396-401). The text can be f o u n d , for example, i n Angelov a n d Genov (1922:565-74). 41. The uncertain statistical data is published i n Karpat (1985); cf. also Courbage a n d Fargues (1997:91-129)- The final large-scale Balkan census listing religious affiliation a n d prior to the loss o f great O t t o m a n areas i n the second h a l f o f the 19th century stems f r o m 1831.

Historical

Review, v o l . 2, no. 2 (1974), pp. 73-75 and a*more pen-

appears i n Karpat (1973:12). 48. Foreword to the republished e d i t i o n o f Gandev (1972) i n 1989, p. 11. The editorial changes were already undertaken i n connection w i t h the d i s t r i b u t i o n o f the G e r m a n translation i n 1987 (Das bulgarische Volk im is*Jahrhundert. graphische

Charakteristik,

Demographische

und ethno¬

Sofia), i n w h i c h Gandev himself had w r i t t e n a new foreword.

The G e r m a n e d i t i o n does n o t m e n t i o n that his estimates have been changed. 49. The research effort has been comprehensive, as it is documented i n the b i b l i o g r a phies i n Alexandre Popovic's standard w o r k (1986b). Registers have been used as p r o o f of Islamisation as early as the periods 1464-65 and 1478-79 i n n o r t h e r n Greece by

42. I n t r o d u c t i o n to this source material is given i n Barkan (1970) a n d w i t h special ref-

Nàsturel a n d Beldiceanu (1978) and by L o w r y (1981; 1991) i n connection w i t h the

erence to the Bulgarian areas i n Kiel (1990b); cf. also Cvetkova (1975). A systematic

monasteries o n M o u n t Athos, etc.; see also Filipovic (1978), Vasic (1985) a n d Balivet

review o f the types o f sources for studies o f Islamisation i n the Balkans can be f o u n d i n

(1992).

Vryonis (1990:189-94).

50. The Ottomans generally respected the Islamic prohibitions o n forced conversions;

43. The legal protocols can also elucidate the Islamisation process, but f r o m the Bul-

cf. Kissling (1961:19). But the devsirme i n s t i t u t i o n is controversial, as i t was i n such open

garian areas they are an i m p o r t a n t source only f r o m the e n d o f the 16th century; cf. D u d a

contradiction w i t h this policy; cf. W i t t e k (1955), Vryonis (1965), Papoulia (1963), Ménage

( i 9 6 0 ) . F r o m the p e r i o d after 1648, there exist sources dealing w i t h prospective converts'

(1966) andGeorgieva (1973).

applications for conversions. Part o f these applications are published together w i t h other material f r o m the later O t t o m a n era (Qsmanski 1990:98-248; cf. also Gradeva (1988). 44- Gradeva (1988:122-25) contains a nearly complete record o f all published Balkan timar and cizye registers f r o m the 15th a n d 16th centuries. 45- The register's m a i n figures, w h i c h cover b o t h Asia M i n o r a n d the Balkans are utilised by Barkan {1957) i n an i m p o r t a n t c o n t r i b u t i o n to the study o f the relative p r o p o r t i o n s between Christians and Muslims a n d the Balkan Muslims' ethnic background. 46. The terms "historical demography" a n d "ethnodemography" i n connection w i t h the early O t t o m a n p e r i o d are often used i n studies o f Islamisation, b u t the registers' i n f o r m a t i o n cannot f o r m the basis for demography i n the traditional sense o f fertility and

m o r t a l i t y rates, marriage patterns a n d lifespans (cf. Erder 1975; Todorova and

Todorov 1987). F r o m the 18th a n d 19th centuries there exists a far broader data base, w h i c h makes possible traditional demographic studies; cf. M . Todorova (1993). Comprehensive analyses o f the population's geographic a n d social d i s t r i b u t i o n , family and household size, religion, marital status, fertility a n d m o r t a l i t y rates and age and econ o m i c conditions i n the 17th century can be f o u n d i n Grozdanova (1989). Grozdanova's

180

51. I n a subsequent study o f conversion to Islam, Bulliet proposes that i n s t u d y i n g the Christian communities i n various "conversion situations," one can analytically d i s t i n guish between "process" a n d "status "Process" is the way i n w h i c h members o f one religious c o m m u n i t y are received i n another. "Status" refers to the view w h i c h societies have of each other i n a certain area a n d at a certain point i n time. I n this context, "process" connotes conversion a n d "status" connotes continuity; "process" points i n the d i r e c t i o n of d y n a m i c exchange a n d thereby diachronic analyses, while "status" focuses on reciprocal views (synchronic analysis); cf. 1990:4-8. Emphasis is thus placed o n the social a n d ethnic aspects o f conversion; this contrasts w i t h the registers' and the f o r m a l conversion's tendency to regard Islam a n d Christianity ahistorically a n d to view conversion as a purely religious act; cf. also the m o d e l for conversion studies i n Humphreys (1991:2750. 52. Karl Binswanger (1977) seeks to show the dhimma's repressive character, and it should n o t be denied that i n d i v i d u a l Muslims and O t t o m a n authorities persecuted Christians, such as, for example, i n the aforementioned cases o f the neomartyrs. However, zimmi status was basically a f o r m o f protection and left its clear traces i n the l o w rates of conversion a n d revival o f O r t h o d o x Christian activity i n literature, church a n d monastic construction as well as icon painting.

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53. Here Kiel links O t t o m a n religious policy directly w i t h Islamic law a n d theology although he overlooks the question o f whether a dhimma i n this t r a d i t i o n was a permanent system or a temporary protection, w h i c h i n t i m e w o u l d become superfluous


nuit. Si la religion n'avait pas sauvé la nationalité, les Bulgares auraient alors complément disparu" (1913:3030. Furthermore, Tatjana Haardt also argued for a direct connection

because the "people o f the Book" i n dar al-lslam w o u l d convert. The latter view finds

between national consciousness a n d an independent church: "Es ist keine Uebertreibung zu behaupten, dass das Auslöschen jegliches Nationalbewusstseins i n Bulgarien auf die

support i n Islam's h i s t o r y and universalist character; cf. Gibb & Bowen (1957:258). This

Vernichtung der kirchlichen A u t o n o m i e i m Jahre 1393 zurückzuführen ist" (1948:43), and

leads to a conclusion that the O t t o m a n millet system rested to only a l i m i t e d extent o n an Islamic basis a n d deviated b y i n c o r p o r a t i n g n o n - M u s l i m religious communities i n the administrative system. I n this way, the millet system actually operated to m a i n t a i n religious boundaries a n d groups.

thus, the 19th national revival among the Bulgarians was so difficult i n comparison w i t h ,

5. T H E B U L G A R I A N O R T H O D O X C H U R C H U N D E R S O C I A L I S M 54. A n i n t r o d u c t i o n to the relationship between state a n d church i n the socialist republics, i n c l u d i n g c o u n t r y overviews a n d theoretical models, are the three volumes edited b y Sabrina Petra Ramet, w h i c h appeared just w h e n political upheavals were openi n g new possibilities for the churches and Christian life i n eastern Europe a n d the Soviet U n i o n (Ramet 1988,1990,1992); cf. also B r o u n a n d Sikorska {1988).

for example, the Serbs. Nevertheless, Haardt maintains that the church kept the national consciousness alive: "die Kirche var ja die enizige Trägerin der nationalen Bestrebungen diser Völker während der ganzen Zeit der Osmanenherrschaft" (1948:83). 63. Studying resistance movements, Bistralfvetkova was a nationally m i n d e d scholar w h o diligently concerned herself w i t h hajduk movements i n order to demonstrate the u n b r o k e n struggle w h i c h finally achieved success i n the 19th century; see Cvetkova (i960,1965,1968,1971 (sources pp. 75-387), 1982); cf. also Adanir (1982). 64. Subsequent references for the year 1992 refer to the article and for 1994 to the monograph.

58. The speech was published the same day i n the c o m m u n i s t p a r t y newspaper, Rabotniéesko Delo a n d was later reprinted i n G. D i m i t r o v (1954:186-90).

65. A n evolutionary perspective is thus placed on the concepts o f nationality (narodnost) a n d nation (nacija). Narodnost can o n l y approximately be translated as "nationalit y " a n d the concept corresponds more to the German Volksgeist. Angelov's use o f the concept can be traced back to Stalin, w h o defined "nationality" as a level i n the development o f social groups corresponding to a certain mode o f p r o d u c t i o n , i.e., the social organisation corresponded to stages i n the development o f the relations o f p r o d u c t i o n and the forces o f p r o d u c t i o n . This understanding does n o t stem f r o m M a r x or Engels, w h o connected the concept w i t h the 19th century's historical-political situation a n d defined a "nation" as a nation-state, supplemented by a distinction between historical and non-historical peoples, while "nationality" more imprecisely denoted the nation's characteristics or eventually an ethnic group w h i c h h a d n o t f o r m e d a nation-state (cf. Zientara 1981:306).

59- For a general treatment o f state-church relations i n socialist Bulgaria, see Pundeff (i975.1990) a n d Slijepcevic (1957); cf. also Oschlies (1975; 1983) and Spas T. Raikin's sharp critique o f the church's leadership (1984a; 1988; 1992).

66. I n his m o n o g r a p h , Angelov provides a general characterisation o f the ethno-territorial u n i t , language, culture, and the ethnic/national consciousness (1994:66-87). I n chapters devoted separately to each century, he then treats the individual topics more

60. The exception is a comprehensive sociological survey f r o m 1962, based o n over 42,000 interviews, the goal of w h i c h was to clarify the effectiveness o f atheistic propaganda, and, where a g o o d 35% o f the respondents termed themselves "religious" (OSavkov 1968).

exhaustively. The m a i n points are presented very precisely i n the English-language article quoted here, w i t h further references to the Bulgarian-language monograph.

55. The Law on Religious Communities was published i n Dàrzaven Vestnik (Official Gazette), no. 48, M a r c h 1st, 1949; for a German translation, see Stupperich (1971:5-11). 56. The o n l y exceptions were i n the penal code, art. 26-28, w h i c h had been replaced by articles i n the country's general penal code; cf. Pundeff (1975:349). 57. The Fatherland Front (Otecestven front) was a c o m m u n i s t - d o m i n a t e d coalition w h i c h included the Agrarian Party, the Social Democrats a n d others. The Front governed Bulgaria i n the interval between the capitulation o n September 9th, 1944, a n d the end o f 1947, when the communists i n practice assumed total control o f the Fatherland Front.

61. Pundeff (1975:347) compared w i t h Oschlies (1975:457). I n addition, there were v e r y small groups o f adherents o f Petàr Dânov's (1864-1944) " W h i t e B r o t h e r h o o d " a n d the Jehovah's Witnesses, about w h i c h knowledge was poor b o t h before a n d after the war. 62. This view is n o t l i m i t e d to the Bulgarian research t r a d i t i o n ; e.g., R.P. Guérin Songeon formulated this line o f t h i n k i n g w i t h the words. "La conquête turque, ce fut la

182

67. H u p c h i c k first describes the Bulgarians' social position i n the towns and i n the countryside, as well as the questions centered u p o n conversion to Islam, Greek cultural dominance a n d Catholic missionary activity. He then concentrates on the Slavic O r t h o dox culture i n churches a n d monasteries. Several sections are too uncritical. This is the case, for example, i n his use o f Grozdanova's (1989) statistical data ( H u p c h i c k 1993:183-90) and his references to Petär Petrov's national ideologically coloured a n d anti-Islamic publications concerning conversion (e.g., H u p c h i c k 1993:59).

183


6. SAN S T E F A N O AND T H E N A T I O N A L T R I U M P H 68. I n none o f the countries d i d a popular national consciousness emerge p r i o r to the achievement o f political independence. National consciousness was an elite phenomen o n , while the scattered rebellions of the b r o a d population were n o t nationally inspired; rather, they were reactions to exhorbitant taxation a n d the social and legal instability (cf. L o n g w o r t h 1994:106,152). F o r m a t i o n o f a n a t i o n a l l y - m i n d e d intellectual g r o u p i n Bulgaria is described by Thomas Meininger (1987). O n the spread o f the national idea t h r o u g h o u t the Balkans, see Sugar a n d Lederer (1969) a n d Sugar (1995). 69. Richard v o n Mach (1906) has p r o v i d e d an i n t r o d u c t i o n to the h i s t o r y o f the exarchate using comprehensive statistical data about its diffusion and activities i n the early 20th century i n the disputed territories o f Macedonia and Thrace. Z i n a M a r k o v a (1989) has analysed the exarchate's role as a national i n s t i t u t i o n i n the years up to the ratificat i o n o f the Tärnovo constitution i n 1879. 70. O n the "Macedonian question" a n d the dispute about the Macedonians' national affiliation, see W i l k i n s o n (1951), Adanir (1979), Poulton (1995, c h . 1-4) a n d D a n f o r t h (1995, ch. 1-3). 71. Gellner's two w o r k i n g definitions o f a nation, one cultural, the other voluntaristic, read as follows: "Nationalism ... sometimes takes pre-existing cultures a n d turns t h e m into nations, sometimes invents t h e m , a n d often obliterates pre-existing cultures .,. But nationalism is n o t the awakening a n d assertion o f . . . m y t h i c a l , supposedly natural a n d given units. I t is, o n the contrary, the crystallization of new units, suitable for the c o n d i tions n o w prevailing, t h o u g h admittedly using as their raw material the c u l t u r a l , historical a n d other inheritances f r o m the pre-nationalist w o r l d . " (1983:49). 72. There exists no consensus as to a general t h e o r y o f the multifaceted a n d complex phenomena o f nation a n d nationalisms, nor has the question o f definition been clarified. Recent discussions o f nations a n d nationalism ("modernists," "primordialists," "essentialists," social constructivist a n d historical perspectives) can be f o u n d i n Seton-Watson (1977); Kemiläinen (1984); Kedourie (1993); C o n n o r (1994); Estel (1994); H u t c h i n s o n (1994:1-63); Llobera (1994); Jenkins (1995) and Periwal (1995). 73. The stages are described i n Schieder (1991:69-71, orig. 1966): "Typologie u n d Erscheinungsformen des Nationalstaats i n Europa" a n d i n "Der Nationalstaat i n Europa als historisches Phänomen" (1991:87-101, o r i g . 1964).

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