"Unfashionable" Balkan Nationalism? The rise of ultranationalist politics in Bulgaria

The Balkan states share more things than they would like to admit. Their fates in the supposed “powder-keg of Europe” are closely intertwined, not least through myths and cultures. Krali Marko is a hero for Serbians, Bulgarians and
Macedonians, the drink slivovica has its counterpart in rakia or raki, and of course minorities get left on the ‘wrong’ side of the border. What the Second World War managed to ‘solve’ in Central Europe, with more or less ethnically homogenous states (there are a few exceptions of course) being created thanks to a genocidal policy and mass movements both East and West in the last months of the war, it didn’t do the same in the region between the Black and Adriatic seas. 'UNFASHIONABLE' BALKAN NATIONALISM?
The rise of ultranationalist politics in Bulgaria

ORGANISE #70 (Britain)

The Balkan states share more things than they would like to admit. Their fates
in the supposed “powder-keg of Europe” are closely intertwined, not least
through myths and cultures. Krali Marko is a hero for Serbians, Bulgarians and
Macedonians, the drink slivovica has its counterpart in rakia or raki, and of
course minorities get left on the ‘wrong’ side of the border. What the Second
World War managed to ‘solve’ in Central Europe, with more or less ethnically
homogenous states (there are a few exceptions of course) being created thanks to
a genocidal policy and mass movements both East and West in the last months of
the war, it didn’t do the same in the region between the Black and Adriatic seas.

What runs through the region is a shared accentuated nationalism, arising from
defensive reactions between neighbours. As the recent example in Serbia and
Kosovo has shown, the problem always stems from an uneasy domestic situation.
The history of the Balkans is actually littered with some surprising tolerance
of minorities. Tito’s Yugoslavia was a good example, Mazower paints a picture of
a heterogeneous but prosperous Salonica in his City Of Ghosts, and Bulgaria
saved its Jews from the Holocaust. Yet the nineties and the first years of the
21st Century have seen conflicts arise again. After the horrors of the civil
wars in the former Yugoslavia, many things remained unsolved – Kosovo’s
independence and the consequences for the diminishing, shrinking Serbian
republic; the status of the Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia, poised
precariously between a true independence, claims to its name by Greece and
conflicts over history with Bulgaria. The root cause of all this is nationalism
of a peculiar Balkan variety.

Names and images pop up when we think of nationalism in the Balkans – Milosevic,
Srebrenica, paramilitaries, that famous song by Goran Bregovic – “Kalashnikov”.
Most are, of course, linked with the former Yugoslavia. But there are the other
“quiet” nationalisms that are as potentially dangerous if not more. The
accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union in 2007 not only brought
Cyrillic, more corruption and a new Daily Mail campaign against. It also enabled
the creation of the right-wing and nationalist Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty
group in the European parliament, a group that now doesn’t exist due to the
fallout after Italian measures against Romanian immigrants prompted the Greater
Romanian Party to withdraw from this coalition. However short-lived, the ability
for this group to emerge, thanks to two quite insignificant players in European
politics, does point to the strength of nationalism in these two relatively
stable Balkans countries.

Bulgaria and “Bulgarisation”

The example of Bulgaria is illustrative of the continuing problems in the
peninsula. Bulgaria is a country of nearly eight million people, with a history
of toleration of minorities and with a substantial Roma and ethnic Turk
population. For years, even under the Ottoman rule that was endured for nearly
five centuries, ethnic Bulgarians and ethnic Turks could live door to door. The
program of the Bulgarian Central Revolutionary Committee, the 1870s organisation
for the liberation of the country forbad Bulgarians from attacking ordinary
Turkish citizens in the struggle for independence. This stability did continue
into the 1980s until Todor Zhivkov, the infamous ruler for the majority of the
People’s Republic’s life, started a campaign for “Bulgarisation” of the Turks in
Bulgaria, forcing them to change their names, resulting in almost 300,000
leaving the country. The mid-to-late 1980s climate of terrorism by ethnic Turks,
police actions against whole villages in their drive to “Bulgarise” them and
then the sudden collapse of the monolithic state threw things wide into the
open. Rampant privatisation and ineffectual government of the nineties left a
legacy of division that simply did not exist before. Many Roma families, left
without the jobs provided for them under communism, fell into poverty and crime.
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) monopolised the Turk vote and has
been an element of every coalition government since its inception. Unemployment
rose generally.

Latent nationalism lifts its head

It was, in short, a good climate for latent nationalism to come to the fore –
one that was present since the 80s. The National Union Ataka is the natural
outgrowth of this. This is a party that was created only two months before the
2005 legislative elections, a coalition of insignificant right-wing and
ex-communist splinters. It managed to win 9% of the popular vote in June of that
year, bagging 21 seats out of 240 in parliament. Little, you might say, but
considering it was running against parties with decades long histories such as
the Socialist Party (BSP) or ones that had already had a stint in office such as
the National Movement Simeon II (NMSII), it is no mean feat. What’s more, its
leader – Volen Siderov – managed to poll 25% at the presidential elections of
2006. He was the only candidate apart from the winner, Georgi Parvanov, who made
it to the second round, brought about by low voter turnout. For a party that is
based around a strong Fuhrerprinzip (leader principle akin to that in Nazi
Germany), that is significant.

This use of evocative language by the author is of course, deliberate. The party
has been called fascist by many, and its members do appropriate the jackbooted
style of many ultranationalist groupings. A closer examination of its stances,
set out in the “20 Points of Ataka”, reveals a nationalist, populist party. What
are its main currents? At the heart of Ataka’s political program lies a
statement that Bulgaria is a monolithic, one-nation state, indivisible along
ethnic or religious lines. The party also attacks the MRF and the national
channel’s news in Turkish indirectly by stating that the national language is
Bulgarian only, and that any ethnic parties should be prohibited. The party also
supports an ill-defined criminalisation of verbal attacks on national “holies”.
On economic issues, it supports a protectionist policy and state provision of
health, social security and “spiritual and material prosperity” for all
citizens. The party aims for isolationist foreign policies, including a
withdrawal from NATO, operations in the Middle East and the expulsion of US
bases from national soil. Quite apart from that, unofficially but widely
supported, is the inclusion of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in political
decisions – a de-facto merging of state and church.

What emerges is a party that cleverly combines populist policies designed to
appeal to both business people and the common person on economic ground, and a
tapping of cultural chauvinism that is an expression of dissatisfactions on the
part of many Bulgarians with the current state of affairs. It is easy to blame
Romas for crimes and the West for poor conditions and whipping up the historical
Turkish threat is also popular. Calling to spirituality, which is on the upswing
amongst the traditionally conservative country, is also a good source of
support. The official program of Ataka is worrying enough – it would create a
state based on ethnic supremacy where other ethnic groups would not be allowed
to be heard in the political process.

Traditional scapegoats

Privately, things are worse. The author himself has seen the graffiti – “all
gypsies into soap” – and a visit to the forums of Ataka’s newspaper would reveal
what its members really want. Complete social regression is the norm of the day,
the ideals of Christianity imposed on all society; scapegoating of the
traditional suspects – Romas and ethnic Turks which goes hand-in-hand with
anti-Semitism (which Siderov himself is guilty of in his various books). Ataka
is not a fascist party then - if it was it would by easy for people to dismiss
it. It is an ultranationalist entity that has addressed real poverty, income
disparity, crime and corruption at the highest levels of politics in radical
ways – nationalisation, exclusion of foreign business in preference for domestic
firms, for example. At the same time it has taken unofficial harsh actions
against ethnic minorities and has branded the current government as one of Turks
and not Bulgarians. Centred around a charismatic ‘strong’ and ‘intelligent’
leader figure with a sharp tongue, the party is rallying social conservativism
and economic promises that hark back to an almost quasi-Communist state of the
nostalgic yesteryear. Alongside Christianity and populist history that is
directed against “those other Bulgarians – the Macedonians” the party has a
strong base from which to build on.

The consequences would be disastrous, of course. Bulgaria is not faced with the
same problems that Serbia is – sectarian troubles – but it has a very sizable
and growing Roma population while the nominally Bulgarian population is facing a
demographic collapse, a Roma population that, it has to be noted, was not forced
to revert to crime when they had housing, educational and job prospects in the
years of Communism (not to excuse that state of affairs, of course). But
rational debate is thin on the ground in Bulgaria. The popular media is
distinctly patriotic, as in the popular history show of Bozhidar Dimitrov that
champions any Bulgarian achievement with little academic justification, plus
Ataka with its own channel. People find it easier to blame others rather than
take action themselves. You might say that the election results show little, yet
the voter turnout has always been extremely low – under 50% - and Ataka can only
grow, with many of the voters who didn’t support the party in 2005 now turning
towards it. The last polls in Bulgaria showed the party second in popularity
only to the ruling Socialists. When the generation of the “red grandmas” – the
elderly who vote Socialist out of nostalgia and promises of social security –
leaves the political scene, and with some flocking to a party that is also
promising pensions, who knows what might happen?

What we are facing is quite frankly a quiet nationalism rising up in a country
that, for the Balkans, is stable and on the upsurge in economic terms. This
nationalism threatens civil war between ethnic groups, even if a Kosovo scenario
is unlikely because there are no real regions in the country that could secede
or are likely to do so (even where ethnic Bulgarians are the minority). Time
will tell. The next legislative elections will show whether the nationalist
party have retained their appeal. But as long as it manages to play at its
populist game while the establishment does nothing to address organised crime
and corruption among its own ranks, the mentality of the population is unlikely
to change. With the centre and centre-right of the political spectrum fractured
in a way that we only think Communists can follow, there are few alternatives to
the status quo in a political sense. Whilst everyone looks to Serbia or the
Caucuses for the obvious signs of nationalism and ethnic trouble – as has been
fashionable for a long time, a quiet, ‘unfashionable’ force is arising in a
country that the EU would like to portray as a model for the Western Balkans.

Bulgarian anarchism

Unfortunately outside the parliamentary alternatives, the grassroots base of
activism in Bulgaria is currently weak, although the Federation of Anarchists in
Bulgaria (FAB) is fighting hard to raise awareness of issues, and there are
tactical struggles that are rays of light. Amongst these campaigns were the
eco-protests of summer 2007 which aimed to preserve the Strandzha mountains as a
national park, since the land there was being sold to developers. Despite the
High Administrative Court’s dismissal of the case, a genuine and popular
campaign sprung up in many towns and cities in Bulgaria. Residents protested
against the Sofia Council’s inactivity over the landfill in the capital’s
Suhidol quarter, employing peaceful protest to fight for a cleaner living space
in the face of disinterest on the authorities’ part. But overall, Bulgarians
seem reluctant to organise in a de-centralised manner. The hardships of
transitional life (as Bulgaria is still in transition) could be a catalyst for
activity – or apathy, but so far the latter has come out on top. From a purely
theoretical standpoint, Bulgaria has both currents of anarchist and dictatorial
thought that have been evident throughout its history. Georgi Cheitanov is just
one of the names that stands out amongst the ranks of Bulgarian anti-state
activists. But, without trying to make sweeping statements about the history and
culture of Bulgaria, it is a fact that 55 years of the twentieth century were
spent under some sort of authoritarian regime, while early governments of
post-Liberation Bulgaria were also prone to excesses.

This situation has created a dual attitude to the left as well. It is
automatically associated with the communist rule post-1944 which saw the country
become the staunchest Soviet ally. Nostalgia, so common in the Eastern Bloc,
harks back to the state socialism of “Bai Tosho” (the affectionate nick-name
given to the Communist Leader Zhivkov) while any attack on that period by the
centre and right is seen as an indictment of all left ideas apart from the most
watered-down social democracy. The bogey-man of state socialism is exemplary of
the binaries that often dominate traditional Bulgarian discourse – either
communism or democracy; Europe or Russia; national hero or national traitor.
This is a state of affairs that is not given to tactical action. Yet, this
gloomy picture may reveal why Ataka rose. There are no absolutes and it cannot
be said that this is the “Bulgarian nature” any more than one can talk of
immutable human nature. The spread of independent media is still not as wide as
in the West, but local action can only grow and come out of the post-Communist
shadows of derelict trade unions with no power. Until that tipping point in the
public mind is reached though, the far right still poses a significant danger to
the integrity of all classes and ethnicities in the country, capitalising on
simplified “black or white” politics.

Scapegoating is easier than action. And we know what that has meant in the Balkans…

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Postscript: The International of Anarchist Federations (IAF or IFA,
http://www.iaf-ifa.org) was founded during an international anarchist conference
in Carrara, Italy, in 1968 by the three existing European federations of France,
Italy and Spain as well as the Bulgarian federation in french exile. Things are
now much improved. The IAF-IFA has grown in members in the past decades,
including the Anarchist Federation (see www.iaf-ifa.org) and will meet in
Carrara again this year for its 40th anniversary congress. Plus, the FAB is
alive and well in Bulgaria once more, and we are very pleased to announce that
they have, in recent months, made contact with autonomous groups in Turkey,
which we hope will come to be an antidote to the poison of nationalism described
in this article.

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