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

was cancelled, the papers from the project were published in German and
Bulgarian, i.e. it was meant to reach an international audience. (Baleva and
Brunnbauer 2008). The aim of the international project was to explore the ways -
visual representations (including the famous paintings by the Polish artist
Piotrowski), canonical texts, commemorations, museums etc. - through which
Batak had become the most sacred symbol of Bulgarian martyrdom, the symbol of
Turkish/Muslim atrocities against Bulgarians (Baleva 2008:33-48).
The project was co-sponsored by German educational institutions and
involved leading German and Bulgarian historians and cultural anthropologists
such as Martina Baleva, Ulf Brunnbauer, Evgenia Ivanova, Monika Flacke,
Rumen Daskalov, Alexander Vezenkov, Evgenija Troeva and Dimitrar G.
Dimitrov. Immediately after publication of the papers, the authors of the project
were labeled “deniers” of the historical truth, only because they dared to use the
term “myth” to designate the phenomenon of the formation of the memory about
the events of Batak in 1876.
Each of the contributors had taken up a special point in deconstructing the
functioning of Batak as a “realm of memory”. Alexander Vezenkov summarized
the most discussed issues around Batak as follows.
1. Revolt or massacre
The idea was investigated of whether a peaceful, innocent population, subjected to
Asian atrocities, was sending out a cry for help to “humanistic Europe”. In other
words, was any kind of revolutionary spirit suppressed for the purpose of
establishing a myth of victimization? The contemporaries, first and above all
Zachary Stoyanov, asserted that Bulgarian Muslims (Pomaks) conducted the
massacre. However, it is extremely important to know that the first great historian
of the Revival Period and of the April Uprising itself, Dimitar Strashimirov,
clearly presented controversial explanations about the leader of the revolt in Batak,
Petar Goranov, who left the village with his family and a few others and thus
survived the massacre. Either he abandoned the village to avoid paying the price
for his ill-conceived heroism, or his followers became victims because they did not
of the massacre were preserved, was turned also into a crypt for the “partisans”, guerilla fighters
against the so called “Monarchic-Fascist regime in Bulgaria”. This was part of the specific political
and ideological agenda, adopted by the late Communist governments, which had the ambition to
merge the stories about the freedom fighters in Bulgaria against the “Turks” and those who fought
later on against the “Fascists”-
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