The subject matter of this study emerged from a hypothesis that the members of emigrant groups who left the Czech lands before the period of ''national revival'' did not have shared Czech national identity, which was created only after their departure and was transmitted to these groups within the scope of the 'protection programme for compatriots' implemented by the Czechoslovak Republic in the interwar period. The core of the article is an analysis of the ''nationalising'' process of the community of Vojvodovo, a village in north-west Bulgaria founded by emigrants from the Czech lands. The main emphasis is on comparing the views of proponents of the protection programme for compatriots -who considered Vojvodovo to be a ''Czech'' village defined in the first place by the ''Czechness'' of its inhabitants -and those of the Vojvodovan, who defined themselves primarily in terms of their religion, while lacking (Czech) national consciousness.

As national groups are concerned, constructivist argumentation typically follows the process of establishing national identities. Thus, it commonly studies the development of a nationally indifferent population to a population that is nationally conscious. On a general level, this paper analyses and illustrates the opposite process, i.e., the process of ‘denationalization’, or in other words, the emergence of national indifference (i.e. national indifferentiation). I study how nationally conscious groups of Czech colonists from the military frontier, who in the 1820s settled in the village of Svatá Helena in Banat gradually became a nationally indifferent group (mainly after their migration to Bulgaria where they founded the village of Voyvodovo) whose defining mark and principle of organisation became religion.

This paper analyses the phenomenon of the death of informants. Based on his own experience with the long-term (1999-2016) research of Voyvodovothe only Czech village in Bulgaria, the author shows what the death of one's informants means for the research and the researcher. The author argues that any long-term fieldwork entails emotional involvement of the researcher, and so the departure of his or her informants has a deep impact on the researcher's well-being. The articles also address methodological consequences of the death of informants, namely, the case when the death of all of them leads to a situation that the group ceases to exist. The author shows that with the last member's passing away Malinowski's 'native's point of view' is lost forever. The author also suggests that the topic of death of informants should be included into educational curricula for fieldwork training.

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