Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1939

Abstract

In this article Theodora Dragostinova examines the interplay between official policies and popular demands in the nationalization of the Greek minority in Bulgaria. She explores why national activists and ordinary people chose to “speak national” in the context of the conflicting national interests and territorial aspirations of Bulgaria and Greece. At the official level, the national discourse and practice showed the co-existence of essentialist and constructionist understandings of nationhood; while the rhetoric of the primordial nation was ubiquitous, politicians realized that certain policies could “improve” the national body. At the popular level, the profuse use of national rhetoric functioned as an “emergency identity,” or a discursive strategy that allowed individuals to claim social legitimacy in emergency situations. Thus, despite the fact that people were forced to adopt clear-cut national allegiances, national side-switching remained a frequent phenomenon.

Inventing a Prosthetic Bourgeoisie: Romania and the Aromanians, 1848–1906

“…But we may take these numbers as proof that the issue had become ever more pressing at the beginning of the 20th century, when growing violence in Macedonia threatened to set in motion a wave of emigration, even as Ottoman authorities moved to restrict it. This ties in with how, “in moments of hardship, national identity became an urgent point of reference and functioned as an ‘emergency identity’” (Dragostinova 2008, 171): whether on the ground or in Romania, (re)alignment with a national identity impelled individuals and communities to mobilize a language of national belonging in their interaction with other actors, including state authority, as a means of avoiding violence and persecution. The Macedonian-Romanian Cultural Society set up a placement system for Aromanians under the condition that they return to Macedonia, and it lent its expertise to the state by confirming the ethnic status of applicants for citizenship (Vâlcu 2002, 104–105).…”

Migration in the Southern Balkans

“…As Kitromilides (1989, p. 169) writes of the Greek communities in Asia Minor, the identification with the Greek nation 'had to be instilled and cultivated, or "awakened", as older nationalist historiography might say, through a crusade of national education'. Dragostinova (2008Dragostinova ( , 2011 writes in a similar way about the Greeks who lived on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Though most of these Greeks supported the Greek national idea, they had strong ties to their places of birth, were reluctant to emigrate and some opted for Bulgarian nationality.…”

“…Finally, some 140,000 Bulgarians and 12,000 Greeks remained in their places of birth as minorities. For the application of the Convention in the interwar period, see Dimitrov (1982), Dragostinova (2008), Ladas (1932), and Penkov (1946). 14 The overall number of Bulgarian refugees from Western Thrace and Aegean Macedonia in 1924-1925 was 48,680 (Dragostinova 2006, p. 553).…”

Introduction

“…Already in the nineteenth century, as Maria Todorova (1992) has suggested, the emerging Bulgarian anthropology and Völkerpsychologie provided Bulgarian nationalism with sufficient arguments to lay nationalist claims on Macedonia. During the interwar period, Bulgarian nationalists therefore argued that all Slavic-speakers in Macedonia were "Bulgarians" (Dragostinova 2008). Such processes of racial appropriation continued after the 1950s, and intensified during the 1970s, as politicians and anthropologists alike aimed to homogenize the nationalized space, proposing a new vision of the national community, one biologically and culturally purged of all symptoms of otherness (Mărtinaş 1985;Xiro tiris 1980).…”