Scaling the Balkans: Essays on Eastern European Entanglements

684 Pages·2019·5.214 MB·English

by  Maria N. Todorova

Scaling the Balkans
Balkan Studies Library
Series Editors
Zoran Milutinovic (University College London)
Alex Drace-Francis (University of Amsterdam)
Advisory Board
Gordon N. Bardos (SEERECON)
Marie-Janine Calic (University of Munich)
Lenard J. Cohen (Simon Fraser University)
Jasna Dragovic-Soso (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Radmila Gorup (Columbia University)
Robert M. Hayden (University of Pittsburgh)
Robert Hodel (Hamburg University)
Anna Krasteva (New Bulgarian University)
Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London)
Maria Todorova (University of Illinois)
Christian Voss (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Andrew Wachtel (Northwestern University)
volume 24
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bsl
Scaling the Balkans
Essays on Eastern European Entanglements
By
Maria Todorova
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Photograph of the Balkan mountains near Svoge, Bulgaria. Photographer unknown.
Under the lens: photograph of socialists in Geneva, 1900 (Stoyan Nokov, Christian Rakovski and Elisaveta
Riabova), Bulgarian State Archives, C-IV-433. Cover illustration design by Anna Toshkova. Cover design by
Celine van Hoek.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Todorova, Maria Nikolaeva, author.
Title: Scaling the Balkans : essays on Eastern European entanglements / By
 Maria Todorova.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, c2019. | Series: Balkan studies library; 24 |
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018036401 (print) | LCCN 2018037721 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004382305 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004358898 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Balkan Peninsula—Historiography. | Balkan
 Peninsula—Relations. | Nationalism—Balkan Peninsula. |
 Bulgaria—Historiography. | Nationalism—Bulgaria.
Classification: LCC DR34 (ebook) | LCC DR34 .T64 2019 (print) |
 DDC 949.60072—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036401
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1877-6272
isbn 978-90-04-35889-8 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-38230-5 (e-book)
Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
List of Illustrations, Tables, Figures and Maps ix
Introduction 1
PART 1
Concepts
Section 1
Modernism, Backwardness and Legacy
1 The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality and the Study of
Eastern European Nationalism 13
2 Modernism 42
3 Historical Legacies between Europe and the Near East 60
Section 2
Balkanism, Postcolonialism and Orientalism
4 Balkan 83
5 Balkanism and Postcolonialism or On the Beauty of the Airplane
View 93
6 The Balkans: from Discovery to Invention 115
7 The Balkans: from Invention to Intervention 150
8 Does Russian Orientalism Have a Russian Soul? A Contribution to the
Debate between Nathaniel Knight and Adeeb Khalid 162
vi Contents
Section 3
Nationalism, Identity and Alterity
9 Is There Weak Nationalism and Is It a Useful Category? 175
10 Is “the Other” a Useful Cross-cultural Concept? Some Thoughts on Its
Implementation to the Balkan Region 197
11 Isn’t Central Europe Dead? Comments on Iver Neumann’s “Forgetting
the Central Europe of the 1980s” 208
12 What Is or Is There a Balkan Culture, and Do or Should the Balkans
Have a Regional Identity? 221
part 2
Structures, Processes and Events
Section 1
Demography and Social Structure
13 European Population History: the Balkans 237
14 Situating the Family of Ottoman Bulgaria within the European
Pattern 262
15 On the Epistemological Value of Family Models: the Balkans within
the European Pattern 284
16 Historical Tradition and Transformation in Bulgaria: Women’s Issues,
Feminist Issues 300
Section 2
Nation- and Society-Building
17 The Course and Discourses of Bulgarian Nationalism 319
18 Language as a Cultural Unifier in a Multilingual Setting: the Bulgarian
Case during the Nineteenth Century 366
Contents vii
19 Identity (Trans)formation among Bulgarian Muslims 386
20 Midhat Pasha and the Bulgarians 420
21 Improbable Maverick or Typical Conformist? Seven Thoughts on the
New Bulgaria 435
Section 3
Historiography and Memory
22 East European Studies in the US: Thematic and Methodological
Problems 459
23 The Ottoman Menace in Post-Habsburg Historiography 474
24 Conversion to Islam as a Trope in Bulgarian Historiography, Fiction
and Film 483
25 The Balkan Wars in Memory: the Carnegie Report and Trotsky’s War
Correspondence 510
Section 4
Socialism and Communism in Memory
26 Shared or Contested Heritage? Commemorating Socialism and
Communism in Europe 537
27 1917 in the Balkans: Divergent “Horizons of Expectation” 558
28 Was there Civil Society and a Public Sphere under Socialism?
The Debates around Vasil Levski’s Alleged Reburial in Bulgaria 579
29 Blowing Up the Past: the Mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov as Lieu de
Mémoire 594
30 Remembering Communism: Similar Trajectories, Different
Memories 641
Index 663

Illustrations, Tables, Figures and Maps
Illustrations
1 The bronze spire of the Stephansdom 476
2 The University of Sofia with the statues of the brothers Georgievi 595
3 The funeral demonstration 605
4 Final respects 605
5 Cover pages of Gergov’s book 608
6 After the second explosion 610
7 Family photo, March 1957 615
8 Duma, 19 August 1999 623
9 Monument to the victims of communism 627
10 Vienna, Flackturm 629
11 Havana, Cuba, January 2003 631
Tables
1 The territory of the Balkan states (in km2) 239
2 Population in the Balkans at censuses (in thousands) 243
3 Growth rates, 1840–1910 (per thousand) 244
4 Population growth 1880–1920 246
5 Age structure of the Balkan populations as part of total population 247
6 Crude birth rates (per 1000 inhabitants) 249
7 Crude mortality rates (per 1000 inhabitants) 251
8 Proportions of never-married females (per thousand) 255
9 Sex ratio by ethnic groups, c. 1860 265
10 Age at first marriage 266
11 Distribution of households by categories (percentages) 268
12A–B Tendencies in domestic group organization in traditional Europe: Four re-
gions and Bulgaria 271–272
13 Average household size 275
14 Number and proportion of borrowers according to the size of the loan 424
15 Proportion of borrowers and allotted loans in Guruş (Hacioğlu Paz-
arcik) 425