Bulgaria

Lost in Transition tells of ordinary lives upended by the collapse of communism. Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why it is that so many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past. Ghodsee uses Bulgaria, the Eastern European nation where she has spent the most time, as a lens for exploring the broader transition from communism to democracy. She locates the growing nostalgia for the communist era in the disastrous, disorienting way that the transition was handled. The privatization process was contested and chaotic. A few well-connected foreigners and a new local class of oligarchs and criminals used the uncertainty of the transition process to take formerly state-owned assets for themselves. Ordinary people inevitably felt that they had been robbed. Many people lost their jobs just as the state social support system disappeared. Lost in Transition portrays one of the most dramatic upheavals in modern history by describing the ways that it interrupted the rhythms of everyday lives, leaving confusion, frustration, and insecurity in its wake.

Endorsements

“The collapse of the Soviet empire entailed not only the Blitzkrieg dissolution of the socialist economies and one-party states of Eastern Europe, but also immediate accidental and incidental changes in the everyday lives of its residents. With an ear for the ironic, the sensual, the playful, and the tragic, Kristen Ghodsee tells personal stories from this period of dissolution, which began several decades before the Berlin Wall came down. Drawing from her encounters in many years of research in Bulgaria, she portrays the changing nature of experience in that place during that time. Though understood as impoverished at the time, this socialist experiment reveals, in retrospect, lives filled with adventure, surprising friendships, and an openness to forms of engagement and being that makes the fullness of the free market and democracy in the post-Cold War order of today seem, by comparison, pale and predictable.”—John Borneman, Princeton University

“These charming essays have an unintended consequence. Not only are they a documentary ethnography of the lives of people caught up in the painful transition from socialism to capitalism. They are also a sort of Bildungsroman of a young American discovering another world and shedding stereotypes.”—Maria Todorova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This book chapter addresses the decision-making processes that international hotel corporations engage in during their expansion procedures, and focusses on the entry and presence of these corporations in Bulgaria. Our findings show that country- and firm-specific factors play little role in the presence of these organisations in the country. On the contrary, it appears that potential tokenism exists in the selection of Bulgaria as a host destination, with major hotel corporations each being represented by only one or two affiliated properties in the country. This raises the question as to whether these corporations enter Bulgaria in search of expansion opportunities and to offer a greater choice of destinations for their customers, or because they are pursuing their own globalization agenda for achieving wide geographic presence regardless of the destinations entered. This chapter also shows that the chains and their partners have a strong preference for non-equity entry modes (fra...

Това е откъс от дисертацията с минимум теория, за неспециализирано четене. Ударението е на етнографския материал и устната история за Женския пазар. Пълният текст също е на разположение в профила ми. This is a reduced version of the text for my PhD thesis, omitting most theory and emphasising the collected ethnographic and oral history material. (In Bulgarian.)

The issue of Bulgarians and the Bulgarian States has an important place in terms of General Turkish History. Because these ancient people lived religion and politics intertwined. On the one hand, while accepting Islam in the official sense, while experiencing the distinction of being the first Turkish State on the other, they were able to adopt Christianity and become slavicized.
In this respect, if we want to understand the peoples of today's Balkan region correctly, we should start by knowing the Bulgarians. Because the Bulgarians have become our western side in terms of both present and past Turkish history. In our study, we will try to understand how close the Bulgarians are to us and why they are so far away.

Inscriptions on altar tables from Strandzha
Summary

The paper examines the restoration of the church network in the Strandzha Mountains region around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, tracing the interaction between builders and icon painters from the vicinity of Gabrovo and Tryavna within the context of this process. The study is based on fieldwork and archival research under the project entitled Comprehensive and Innovative Methods for Identification and Study of the Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Central and Eastern Strandzha against the Backdrop of Migration and Demographic Decline, funded by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria. Here, published for the first time, are the inscriptions on the altar tables of the churches in that area. The historical records available testify to a large-scale, targeted policy aimed at reviving and fostering local church/religious life in the decades following the Russo-Turkish Liberation War of 1877-1878 in the territory of the Municipality of Sredets (as opposed to the Municipality of Malko Turnovo, which remained within the borders of the Ottoman Empire up until 1912). Under the authority and supervision of Seraphim, Metropolitan of Sliven, and his Vicar Bishop and successor Gervasius of Leuke, the local church municipalities attracted builder teams from the vicinity of Gabrovo, which over time renovated the war-damaged temples in the town of Sredets and the village of Svetlina and built new churches in the villages of Gorno and Dolno Yabalkovo, Bistrets, Momina Tsarkva and, most probably also the churches in the villages of Fakia, Valchanovo and Varovnik. Active participants in this process were Dimitar Minev and Georgi Dimitrov, master icon painters from the town of Tryavna who painted icons for most of the abovementioned churches.

During the last few years in Bulgaria, as well as in other parts of the world, we are witnessing a proliferation of social movements. As far as the current global crisis is defined as predominantly economic and financial crisis, it puts to question neoliberalism as the doctrine with a minimalist vision of the state intervention and deregulation of public goods. What can be seen in social movements around the world, as well as in Bulgaria, are the demands for stronger state with citizen participation and restricted influence of privileged (financial) lobbies on political decision­making. The article presents data collected through in­depth interviews and anthropological observation of protest mobilizations in Bulgaria, analysed with the methodology of grounded theory, to form three core categories: representative democracy and political parties, participation, deliberation. The data show a strong preference for forms of citizen control and a return to established forms of representative democracy in a fraction of the protesters by the end of the studied period.

This article analyzes the speeches prepared by John Paul II for the annual visits of Bulgarian delegations on the occasion of celebrations of the Saints Cyril and Methodius (around May 24 th). The fourteen texts prepared for these visits together with his speeches during the Pope's Apostolic Journey to Bulgaria in 2002 and during the presentations of letters of credence for Bulgarian Ambassadors to the Holy See present a very interesting and understudied material for a better analysis of the Pope's Slavic, ecumenical and European ideas. The Pope sees this tradition as a continuation of politics of John XXIII and Paul VI.

The current investigation was carried out in selected vineyards in Plovdiv region, South Bulgaria. The GIS database was created including factors influenced on nematode distribution in the soil. The plant-parasitic nematodes from family Longidoridae associated with grapevine and soil type of the region were described. The impact of longidorids as virus vectors and some ecological aspects of their occurrence in vineyards in South Bulgaria are discussed.

El presente trabajo tiene por objeto llevar a cabo un análisis sobre la corrupción en el contexto de los países de la Europa Central y Oriental, así como sobre las instituciones y estructuras jurídicas e institucionales a través de las que sus gobiernos están intentando combatir esta lacra a la vista del proceso de adhesión a la Unión Europea y de la necesaria asunción de las normas y estándares comunitarios en dicha materia.

The text explores the historicаl dialogue between Bulgaria and Asia in the context of moving pictures, as the theoretical focus is set on the earliest silent period of a “cinema of attractions”. The main question
is: what is the stepping stone for the cinematograph trying to articulate exotic remoteness? Contemporary archival studies dealing with film history and re- contextualisation of film distribution tend to tackle
the question of the connection between the viewer and the movingpictures on the screen. It is treated in terms of deictic modes, and especially with regard to visual deixis. The movie screen triggers a meta-visualization of already accumulated knowledge which, before
the emergence of cinema, had already evoked images in the minds of Bulgarians as to „what Asia is”. The early cinema opens new vistas to unknown worlds thus stimulating a grasp of cultural diversity.
Key words: Far East, Bulgaria, silent era, reception, communication,
archives



Теоретичният фокус на изследването върху историческия диалог между България и Азия е насочен към най-ранния, ням период на " забележителности и атракциони " в киното. На какво стъпва кинематографът в своя любопитен стремеж да обговори екзо-тичната далечност? В съвременната архивистика, посветена на филмовата история и реконтекстуализация на филмопоказа, се повдига въпросът и за връзката между зрителя, екрана и движещите се образи. Тя се преразглежда с оглед на модусите на деиксиса, особено на визуалния деиксис. Екранът активира и метавизуализира вече натрупано познание, което до появата на киното е успяло да реализира въображаеми картини в съзнание-то на българина за това, " що е Азия ". Ранното кино отваря врати към непознати светове и стимулира разбирането на културното многообразие.

Ключови думи: Далечен Изток, България, нямо кино, рецепция, комуникация, архиви.

Microsatellite instability (MSI) is a frequent event in different types of cancer. In several studies MSI was shown to have both clinical and prognostic value. The aim of our study was to determine the frequency of MSI in Bulgarian patients with endometrial cancer (EC) and the possible relation of this phenomenon to their clinicopathological characteristics. A total of 33 histologically confirmed EC patients were analyzed for tumor MSI using a panel of 6 microsatellite markers. We identified MSI in 30% of endometrial cancer cases. Six of them had high degree of MSI (MSI-H), and 4 displayed low degree of MSI (MSI-L). The frequency of MSI in Bulgarian EC patients does not differ significantly from that reported in other European studies.

Gerald Creed's Masquerade and Postsocialism: Ritual and Cultural Dispossession in Bulgaria is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated analysis of the postsocialist condition in rural Bulgaria. Using the Bulgarian ritual of mumming as a window onto the lived experiences of ordinary men and women, Creed masterfully explores a variety of scholarly themes. Grounded in beautifully wri en thick descriptions of mumming rituals across Bulgaria, Creed uses the kukeri to explore the local impacts of the social, political, and economic upheavals of the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Creed is an anthropologist who has been conducting fieldwork in Bulgaria for over twenty-five years, and his expansive knowledge of local customs and cultures enriches this book.

Резюме: В последните години ЕС възлага или подкрепя редица изследвания, свързани с мястото на културата и креативността в процесите на развитие. Усилията са насочени към изравняване на възможностите на развиващите се с развитите страни и една от тенденциите е да се започне от по-малките единици като общини, региони и провинции в зависимост от устройството на съответната страна. Затова специално внимание се отделя на мястото и приноса на културната политика за развитието на населените места.

The pressures that started with the name changes of Turkish villages in the 1930s began to rise even further with the “one nation” decision of the communist regime in 1956. By the year 1984, the Turks whose names were changed perforce due to the assimilation policy in Bulgaria and whose languages were banned started a resistance campaign, which was widely supported by the Turks in the resistance zone.

Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.

Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region's state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women's embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks' new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria's Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.

The article deals with significant aspects of Bulgarian poetry and its historical evolution over the span of a millennium. The particular importance of the Cyrillic alphabet is emphasized and exemplified through selected poems and political writings in translation. Resumo O artigo aborda aspectos determinantes da poesia búlgara e sua evolução histórica no decorrer de um milênio. O papel crucial do alfabeto cirílico é enfatizado e exemplificado através de alguns poemas e escritos políticos traduzidos em inglês Palavras-chave: poesia búlgara, alfabeto cirílico, eslavo antigo, tradução, Bizâncio, Igreja Ortodoxa.