MINNE OCH MANIPULATION - Centre for European Studies - Lunds ...

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I don’t know if we need a group psycho-analysis of the nation. In all cases we need
gaining knowledge of ourselves, inner exploration and national self-identification.
Demythologization is also needed, and a new determination, too. And most
important, we need a new enlightening/public awareness campaign based on truth
that will help the true face of our race to emerge again beneath the make-up.
It is a known fact that the strong, overt commitment to – and even obsession with -
history is specific for the Balkans. The roots of this commitment are to be found
not only in the tragic and tangled history of the region itself. I believe this
phenomenon can also be explained by specific “contaminations” of the modern
historiography of the Balkan nations. The widely popular, fully accepted and
persistently revived heroic memories, romantic interpretations and ideological
(mis)use of history - mainly for the assertion and promotion of national pride – are
common features in Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, not to mention young
Macedonia. History is the main building material in the formation of national
cultural identity. Public knowledge of history has not yet reached the level of an
objective, unbiased and fair analysis of the ups and downs in national history. Both
state and political institutions exploit history and subject it to their own agenda.
Social inertia, cultural stereotypes and the passive (or indifferent) attitude of
intellectuals, who “fathered” all this, provide convenient background for both
authors and “users” of history.
Demythologization, including the revealing of historical deception, is the first
step to the new national self-determination that N. Dimu speaks of.
The Scandal
In 2007 a notorious public scandal arose around the international project entitled
“Batak as a Realm of Memory”. It turned an academic project into a political and
even a physical clash. The project concerned the epochal Bulgarian uprising in the
village of Batak against the Ottomans in 1876 26 . Although the planned conference
26 The story is the following: In April 1876 in certain parts in Bulgaria there was an insurrection
against the Ottoman Empire which ended with a massacre in the village of Batak with around 1500
victims. The slaughter of an unarmed civilian population which had sought refuge in the local church
became one of the most important “realms of memory” for Bulgarian national history for the entire
Ottoman period. The news about the massacre and the incorrect number of 5000 (in some accounts
even 7000) victims was first spread by the American journalist MacGhahan. Then the story about
Batak was retold in the famous “Notes of Bulgarian Uprising” by Zachary Stoianov, and finally the
poet Ivan Vazov sealed the national memory about the devastated village. Since the end of the 19th
century Batak has become the most sacred lieu de memoire of the Bulgarian national pantheon, and
the church in the village was turned into a museum, where almost every Bulgarian child is taken as a
part of mandatory school study trips. Later on, the crypt of the church, where the sculls of the victims