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

mingling of a syndrome of self-victimization with a desire for self-glorification
and a process of hero-making 25 . It is a common place that a conquered nation
needs both victims and heroes in order to improve its self-confidence…
Although this canon of the historiografical representation of the Ottoman rule
was a fabrication of the Revival Period in the middle of the XIXth century (the era
of the formation of the Bulgarian nation), it still remains an untouchable “truth” in
25 See for example A History of Bulgaria in an Outline, Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press,
1998 by Milcho Lalkov, Professor of Balkan History and Chair of the Department of Balkan Studies
at the History Department of the Sofia University. In the chapter entitled “In the shadow of the
Ottoman Empire” the author accepts the common theory that the Ottoman conquest was an
unmitigated catastrophe. He repeats the allegation that over 1000 of the elite – Boyars, clergy and
intellectuals – were massacred during the conquest. He maintains, in addition, that at least 600,000
were slaughtered in the course of the invasion, while another considerable number were enslaved and
that 1.5 million people left Bulgaria. Those were the parameters of the demographic catastrophe. The
author also maintains that the Ottoman conquest severed Bulgaria from the rest of Europe and the
Renaissance, as well as from the Slavonic culture, and caused “tangible retardation” of the Bulgarian
people. In addition, the Ottoman military and feudal system, characterized as a typical Asiatic mode
of production, is considered to be “by far more primitive then the social, economic and political
relations that the Turks found in the Peninsula”.
All the possible means of the planned assimilation were listed: from mass Islamization to the
devshirme. Lalkov stresses that Bulgarians at the beginning of the 15 th century initiated a “consistent
epic struggle, which helped safeguard their identity as a people, and he presents a list of all
international military campaigns against the Ottomans, along with Haidouti movements -- in the 16 th
and 17 th centuries there were detachments that numbered 400-500 people. Lalkov quotes the “mass
Tarnovo uprising” in 1598, which has been proven to be a 19 th century falsification.
The Revival period is also treated separately, without real connection to the processes in the Ottoman
Empire. The only well-established relation is the crisis and the beginning of the disintegration of the
Empire in the 18th century. There is no sound explanation for the rapid economical development of
the Bulgarian regions. The author does mention the names of the greatest Bulgarian international
merchants, but fails to draw conclusions from this. Lalkov’s conclusion is thus ambiguous: on one
hand, he outlines the barriers to the Bulgarian economy by the “foreign bondage and the Ottoman
feudal and despotic system” while still acknowledging the rapid economic progress during the
Revival.
The contention about the revolutionary struggle falls into the same well-known pattern. There is no
mention of the different wings among the political emigrants, or of the projects of some Bulgarian
political leaders. The climax of the revolutionary trend is, of course the April Uprising of 1876.
There is an emphasis on the Batak massacre, which became the epitome for “Turkish atrocities
against Bulgarians”. The number of the estimated innocent victims of the massacre varies between
1200 and 7000 people. This was the main event which eventually provoked international attention
toward the Bulgarian issue in the framework of the Eastern Question and led to the Russo-Turkish
war 1877-1878. The latest is seen above all as the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
Lalkov characterizes the policy towards the Muslims as a “swing of the pendulum – from purposeful
tolerance to persecution on religious grounds and coercive replacement of names with Bulgarian
ones.” There is no mention of the so-called “Regenerative Process.” Obviously, this process is
considered neither a violation of basic human and civil rights, nor a further cause for the international
isolation of Bulgaria.
96