sgg
domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init
action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:6114) in /customers/6/e/5/lossi36.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
{"id":6735,"date":"2021-02-24T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T07:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lossi36.com\/?p=6735"},"modified":"2023-03-15T12:42:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T12:42:05","slug":"debunking-victimhood-short-stories-of-pomak-uprisings-in-communist-bulgaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lossi36.com\/2021\/02\/24\/debunking-victimhood-short-stories-of-pomak-uprisings-in-communist-bulgaria\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking Victimhood: short stories of Pomak uprisings in communist Bulgaria\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"Almost eight thousand names of Bulgarians are commemorated as victims of the period between 1945 and 1989 on the commemorative wall of the Monument of the Victims of Communism. Located right in front of the National Palace of Culture in downtown Sofia, this place of remembrance equalises the memory of all victims of the Communist regime, with no distinctions whatsoever. As Tomasz Kamusella notes in his\u00a0<\/span>monograph<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, among the victims commemorated in this manner, Turks and Muslims account for at least a third of all the victims of Communist repression. They are the victims of the so-called \u2018Revival Process\u2019 \u2013 namely, the assimilation campaign initiated in 1984 by the Communist regime that forced ethnic Turks to change their names into new Bulgarian ones, whose history fails utterly to be properly addressed in the Bulgarian and European memory discourse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Likewise, there is also little memory and conscience of the so-called \u2018<\/span>Rebirth Process<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u2019, another assimilation campaign that targeted ethnic Pomaks in Southwest Bulgaria since the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n
Bulgaria\u2019s ethnic Pomaks<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/a>are one of the smallest yet much-debated minority groups in the country, as well as in Northeast Greece and Turkey. Popularised by some\u00a0<\/span>international media outlets,<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0they have always lived in the Rhodopes region. Since they were forcedly converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire, they accustomed themselves to typical livelihoods of Muslims. Bulgarians have always questioned their \u2018identity pedigree\u2019 as Pomaks have historically spoken a large variety of Slavic dialects and<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>embraced only an idiosyncratic form of Islam<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In 1964, the Bulgarian Academy of Science distributed to local teachers and other influential figures a list of \u2018<\/span>acceptable Bulgarian names<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u2019 to convince Pomaks to embrace again their Bulgarian-ness. When the \u2018Rebirth Process\u2019 was launched on the ground, ethnic Pomaks resisted it. Although almost all Pomaks had their original Arabic-Turkish names changed into new Bulgarian ones by 1980, a series of outbursts and uprisings unfolded between the 1960s and the 1970s. Many Pomaks made their voices heard and stood up against Communist policies, paying a high price for their resistance. Many were either interned or brutally killed, and their bodies were thrown into local rivers or mine shafts, as Mary Neuburger recollected in her\u00a0<\/span>work<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In March 1973, a few Pomaks were murdered in the village of Kornitsa for opposing the name-changing campaign. A\u00a0<\/span>commemorative monument<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is today placed in the village, remembering the names of those who opposed the so-called\u00a0<\/span>v\u016dzhroditelen protses<\/span><\/em><\/strong>.<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Interestingly enough, these local stories of revolts against Communism were made available by a Communist persecutor and a presumed scholar, respectively Peter Diulgerov and Peter Marinov. The latter was a renowned ethnographer and notorious figure having joined the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1944 together with his fellows from \u2018Rodina\u2019 \u2013 a cultural movement founded in Smolyan to promote Bulgarian-ness to \u201cmisguided brothers and sisters\u201d. However, after a few years, exactly in 1947, Marinov and his Rodina\u2019s fellows were expelled from the Communist Party since rumours arose regarding their collaboration with the Fascist regime in the pre-war period.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Neuburger\u00a0<\/span>reports<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0how Marinov nevertheless described how revolts of Pomak communities unfolded. He noted the gender dimension of the Pomak resistance in the town of Rudozem, where Pomak women were much more active than men in standing up against the forced name-changing campaigns for newborns between the 1960s and 1970s. For four years, between 1970 and 1974, the local resistance of Pomaks against the name-changing campaign escalated across other regions of Bulgaria. In February 1970, the spirit of this local resistance was so contagious that other small towns, such as Madan, Rudozem, Dospat and Devin, and other surrounding villages, were all influenced by. Thousands of Pomak resisters assembled for several days to contest the assimilation campaigns.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In May of 1972, in the village of Yakoruda in the Western Rhodopes, a few Pomaks with freshly changed-names accepted to promote the \u2018reacquisition\u2019 of their Bulgarian identity as volunteer brigades. The fanfare was utterly interrupted, however. Other local Pomaks began to organise blockades at the exits of the town and later heading to the main town square. There, Peter Diulgerov was holding a speech emphasizing the<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>tragic fate<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that Pomaks happened to face due to the measures of Ottoman colonialists. Pomaks came to incite the locals to oppose the Communists and their subtle plans aimed at healing the ‘wounds of Turkification\u2019. Despite the several hours of threats of bloodsheds with barred doors and physical resistance, they had to give in to the pressure of local authorities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
This year, the commemorations of the Bulgarian victims of Communism sparked some contestation on social media, making room for discussing the issue of victimhood over Communism. When it comes to commemorating Turks and Muslims murdered during the 1980s, many largely recall the \u2018Great Revival\u2019, yet misunderstanding it as a preventive campaign aimed at neutralising some Turkey-backed military operation in support of Turks in southernmost Bulgaria. Instead, the recollection of Pomak victims who opposed Communism remains overlooked.<\/span><\/p>\n
Currently, new studies and research shine a spotlight on a large and diverse number of figures murdered by the Communist regimes: not only victims but also rank-and-file, collaborators, opportunists and careerists who fell under the category of victims. Among Bulgaria\u2019s victims, ethnic Pomaks and Turks compose a category of the unmemorable. Their memories are interlinked with traumatic experiences, like many others in Central and Eastern Europe, but\u00a0<\/span>subtly hierarchic identity discourse strategies<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0against Islam and Muslims have produced official amnesia in Bulgaria.<\/span><\/p>\n
February 1 marked the anniversary of the national remembrance\u00a0of the victims of Communism in Bulgaria. On this date in 1945, the People\u2019s Court handed down death penalties to a large number of political figures from the former royal regime, paving the way to a series of persecutions and murders until 1989. Almost eight thousand names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":6737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,1818],"tags":[405,934,810,955,1182],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-culture","category-southeastern-europe","tag-bulgaria","tag-communism","tag-identity","tag-memory","tag-minority"],"yoast_head":"\n