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“This timely and important edited volume brings us crucial evidence on
why we cannot understand the populism of today without understanding
memory politics and vice versa. Drawing on a wealth of evidence and based
on numerous case studies from the Southeastern European context, the book
demonstrates the richness, complexity and many layers of the intriguing
intersection between populism and memory politics. Both academic and
nonacademic audiences will greatly benet from its insights.”
Dr Lea David, Assistant Professor, Ad Astra Fellow,
School of Sociology, University College Dublin.
“Contemporary cultures of remembrance are shaped by governmental politics
of history, by the memory of families, generations and other societal strata as
well as by the activities of civil society. In postcommunist Southeastern Europe
actors applying populist patterns of argumentation are gaining ground on all
three levels. The present volume highlights this process brilliantly with the
example of the ‘Yugosphere’ (and Bulgaria) by focussing on populist dis-
cursive strategies during the last decade— a must- read for Europeanists and
Balkanists and for everyone interested in how populists apply memory pol-
itics in pursuing their aims.”
Stefan Troebst, Professor of East European Cultural History,
Leipzig University, Germany.
“Memory politics is of extreme importance for political and social life, espe-
cially in Europe and specically in Southeastern Europe. The volume Memory
Politics and Populism in Southeastern Europe, edited by Jody Jensen, should
be used in high schools and universities, and in seminars because we need
tougher engagement with this issue.”
Erhard Busek, former Vice Chancellor of Austria, and
Special Coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe.
Memory Politics and Populism
in Southeastern Europe
This book explores the politics of memory in Southeastern Europe in the
context of rising populisms and their hegemonic grip on ofcial memory and
politics.
It speaks to the increased political, media and academic attention paid
to the rise of discontent, frustration and cultural resistance from below
across the European continent and the world. In order to demonstrate the
complexities of these processes, the volume transcends disciplinary bound-
aries to explore memory politics, examining the interconnections between
memory and populism. It shows how memory politics has become one of the
most important elds of symbolic struggle in the contemporary process of
“meaning- making,” providing space for actors, movements and other mne-
monic entrepreneurs who challenge and point to incoherencies in the ofcial
narratives of memory and forgetting.
Charting the contemporary rise of populist movements, the volume will be
of particular interest to regional specialists in Southeastern Europe, Balkan
and postcommunist studies, as well as researchers, activists, policy- makers
and politicians at the national and EU levels and academics in the elds of
political science, sociology, history, cultural heritage and management, con-
ict and peace studies.
Jody Jensen is the Director of the Polányi Centre at the Institute of Advanced
Studies, Kőszeg (iASK). She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of
Political Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Southeastern European Politics
Southeast European Studies
Series editor: Florian Bieber
The Balkans are a region of Europe widely associated over the past decades
with violence and war. Beyond this violence, the region has experienced
rapid change in recent times through, including democratization, economic
and social transformation. New scholarship is emerging that seeks to move
away from the focus on violence alone to an understanding of the region in a
broader context drawing on new empirical research.
The Southeast European Studies Series seeks to provide a forum for this
new scholarship. Publishing cutting- edge, original research and contributing
to a more profound understanding of Southeastern Europe while focusing on
contemporary perspectives, the series aims to explain the past and seeks to
examine how it shapes the present. Focusing on original empirical research
and innovative theoretical perspectives on the region, the series includes
original monographs and edited collections. It is interdisciplinary in scope,
publishing high- level research in political science, history, anthropology, soci-
ology, law and economics and accessible to readers interested in Southeast
Europe and beyond.
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Southeast- European- Studies/ book- series/ ASHSER1390
Social Mobilization Beyond Ethnicity
Civic Activism and Grassroots Movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Chiara Milan
Memory Politics and Populism in Southeastern Europe
Edited by Jody Jensen
Forging Transnational Belonging through Informal Trade
Thriving Markets in Times of Crisis
Sandra King- Savic
Balkan Fighters in the Syrian War
Tanja Dramac Jiries
Memory Politics and Populism
in Southeastern Europe
Edited by Jody Jensen
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Jody Jensen; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Jody Jensen to be identied as the author of the editorial material,
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British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Jensen, Jody, editor.
Title: Memory politics and populism in Southeastern Europe / edited by Jody Jensen.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, [2021] |
Series: Southeastern European politics |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identiers: LCCN 2020049847 (print) | LCCN 2020049848 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367624033 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003109297 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Balkan Peninsula–Politics and government. |
Populism–Balkan Peninsula. | Nationalism–Balkan Peninsula.
Classication: LCC JN97.A58 M46 2021 (print) |
LCC JN97.A58 (ebook) | DDC 320.56/6209496–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049847
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049848
ISBN: 9780367624033 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780367624040 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003109297 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents
List of gures ix
List of contributors x
Editorial preface – Jody Jensen xv
Acknowledgments xvii
1 Introduction: memory politics and populism in
Southeastern Europe – toward an ethnographic
understanding of enmity 1
ASTREA PEJOVIĆ AND DIMITAR NIKOLOVSKI
2 (Not) Remembering a populist event: the Serbian
Antibureaucratic Revolution (1988– 1989) 12
RORY ARCHER
3 The modernist abject: ruins of socialism, reconstruction
and populist politics in Belgrade and Sarajevo 27
GRUIA BĂDESCU
4 Whose is Herceg Kosača? Populist memory politics of
constructing “historical people” in Bosnia and Herzegovina 47
IGOR STIPIĆ
5 Of (anti)fascists and (anti)communists: constructing
the people and its enemies at the Partisan Memorial
Cemetery in Mostar 64
MARIJA IVANOVIĆ
6 Populism versus working- class culture in the memory
politics of Korčanica memorial zone 78
MIŠO KAPETANOVIĆ
viii Contents
7 The “War for Peace”: commemoration of the bombing of
Dubrovnik in Montenegro 95
ASTREA PEJOVIĆ
8 Contested narratives of Bleiburg in the context of WW II
remembrance in Croatia 110
ANA LJUBOJEVIĆ
9 Populism, memory politics and the Ustaša movement
1945– 2020 127
LOVRO KRALJ
10 Operation museum: memory politics as “populist
mobilization” in North Macedonia (2006– 2011) 147
NAUM TRAJANOVSKI
11 Integration versus identity: memory politics, populism
and the Good Neighborliness Agreement between North
Macedonia and Bulgaria 159
DIMITAR NIKOLOVSKI
12 Lukov March as a “template of possibility” for historical
revisionism: memory, history and populism in post- 1989
Bulgaria 176
FILIP LYAPOV
Index 194
Figures
3.1 The Ušće tower and shopping center 30
3.2 The Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs (2015) 32
3.3 The General Staff of the Yugoslav Army and the Ministry of
Defense (2013) 33
3.4 The General Staff of the Yugoslav Army and the Ministry of
Defense (2016) 34
4.1– 4.3 View of “Croatian Lodge Herceg Stjepan Kosača” in
Mostar with the monumental cross (left); Kosača and Herceg-
Bosna coats of arms and its ag (center); grafti of imagined
Kosača coat of arms (right). Photos: Igor Stipić 52
4.4 Hum Bosnae, July 2013 edition with portrait of Herceg
Kosača and title “Establishment of Herceg- Bosna is not a
criminal enterprise!” 53
Contributors
Editor
Jody Jensen is the Director of the Polányi Centre at the Institute of Advanced
Studies, Kőszeg (iASK). She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of
Political Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is assistant
professor and director of the International Studies MA Program at the
University of Pannonia Kőszeg Campus, where she holds a Jean Monnet
Chair for European Solidarity and Social Cohesion. She is director of
international relations at the Institute of Social and European Studies
(a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence). She was the regional director of
Ashoka: Innovators for the Public that supports social entrepreneurs.
She received her PhD at the Corvinus University of Budapest in the
Department of World Economics. She was awarded a Marshall Scholarship
and Fulbright Scholarship for graduate studies at the University of
Copenhagen. She has taught in the US, Europe and China. Her areas of
research are new social and political movements, particularly in East and
Central Europe and the Balkans, looking at the conjunction of the social
and natural sciences in the study of complexity as it translates to social
phenomenon and change.
Contributors
Rory Archer is a social historian who works on the 20th century Balkans. He
is interested in labor, gender, (post)socialism and the ways in which macro-
level events and processes are experienced, understood and negotiated
in micro, everyday contexts. He received his PhD in History from the
University of Graz in December 2015 and from 2016 to 2018 worked as a
Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the School of Slavonic and East European
Studies, University College London. Since 2014 he has participated in a
research project “Between Class and Nation: Working Class Communities
in 1980s Serbia and Montenegro” nanced by the Austrian Science Fund
(FWF). He continues to explore the role of politicized labor and working-
class subjectivities in the crises of late Yugoslav socialism and the demise of
the state and has published work on this in Labor History, Social History
List of contributors xi
and History and Anthropology. He is currently a post- doc research fellow
at the University of Konstanz in Germany.
Gruia Bădescu is an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow and
a Zukunftskolleg Research Fellow at the University of Konstanz. His
research examines how interventions in urban space relate to societal
and political processes of dealing with a dif cult past, including war
and political violence. In his PhD research, conducted at the Centre for
Urban Con icts Research, Department of Architecture, University of
Cambridge, he analyzed the relationship between postwar urban recon-
struction and dealing with the past in Belgrade and Sarajevo. He has also
published comparative work between urban reconstruction in Sarajevo
and Beirut. He was a Departmental Lecturer and a research associate at
the School of Geography at the University of Oxford. He joined Jan and
Aleida Assmann’s research group in Konstanz, where he is completing
a monograph on postwar architectural reconstruction and dealing with
the past.
Marija Ivanovi ć received her BA, with a major in International Relations and
French in the USA, an MA in Economics and Regional Studies of Latin
America at the University of Prague, MA in Political and Social Studies
at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Chile and MA in Human Rights
and Democracy in Southeastern Europe at the University of Sarajevo.
She holds an MA in Nationalism Studies from the Central European
University. She worked in the United Nations Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago de Chile. Currently, she works
as an Academic Tutor at the European Regional MA in Democracy and
Human Rights in South East Europe.
Mi š o Kapetanovi ć is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of
Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, where he works
on conceptualizations of the Yugosphere with migrant workers moving
between Switzerland and the former Yugoslavia. He received a PhD
in Balkan Studies from the University of Ljubljana and has worked for
NGOs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. He writes on con-
temporary material culture, space, informal architecture and new cultural
developments in the region.
Lovro Kralj is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. He
specializes in the elds of fascism, antisemitism, Holocaust and memory
studies with the geographic focus on Central and Southeast Europe. Kralj
received many research fellowships from the Institute of Advanced Studies
Koszeg, as well as the Sharon Abramson Research Grant for the Study of
the Holocaust and a Junior Fellowship at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute
for Holocaust. He has presented his research at more than 20 international
conferences and workshops. Kralj has written several academic papers
that were published with Palgrave Macmillan, Brill and the Journal of
Perpetrator Studies.
xii List of contributors
Ana Ljubojević is a Marie Curie fellow at the CSEES, University of Graz,
Austria. Previously, she was an EURIAS postdoctoral fellow at the Polish
Institute of Advanced Studies (PIAST) in Warsaw and a NEWFELPRO
postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity, Citizenship
and Migration (CEDIM), Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, Croatia.
She obtained her PhD in Political Systems and Institutional Change at the
Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy. She has conducted research
on the mechanisms of transitional justice in Croatia and Serbia and has
research interests in memory studies, cultural trauma and the social pro-
duction of memory.
Filip Lyapov is a History PhD candidate at the Central European University.
He holds a BA in History from the American University in Bulgaria, an
MPhil in Modern British and European History from the University of
Oxford and an MA in Nationalism Studies from the Central European
University. His dissertation focuses on the royal dictatorships of Tsar Boris
of Bulgaria and King Alexander of Yugoslavia and their relationship
with the army. Lyapov has previously worked on interwar Bulgarian and
Hungarian history and is also interested in contemporary issues related to
right- wing populism, historical revisionism, memory politics and history
textbooks.
Dimitar Nikolovski is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School for Social
Research, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where he researches the
relations between populist parties and civil society in Southeast Europe.
He has background in Political Science and has studied at the Law Faculty
in Skopje (BA), the Central European University in Budapest (MA) and
the Universities of Sarajevo/ Bologna (MA). He has worked for several
think- tanks in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and currently
acts as external associate of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Koszeg,
Hungary.
Astrea Pejović is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and Social
Anthropology at the Central European University in Budapest. Her PhD
research, “Towards Anthropology of Defeat: Looking for an End of the
Yugoslav Wars in Serbia,” investigates how the notions of defeat and vic-
tory are conceptualized and lived in the context of hybrid wars. It is based
on a year and a half long ethnographic research of the commemorations of
the 1999 NATO bombing in Serbia. The research also looks at the (im)pos-
sibility of closure in a society where both physical and discursive remains
of the war are closely tied to everyday experience. Her special interest is
devoted to the visual language of commemoration, and how it inuences
the formation of narratives about the bombing.
Igor Stipić holds an MA in Political and Social Studies from University of
Alberto Hurtado in Chile and an MA in Political Economy from the
University of Economics in Prague. Currently, he is a Permanent Research
List of contributors xiii
Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Koszeg (iASK), where he
also lectures in the University of Pannonia MA program in International
Studies. While his interest primarily lies within the eld of political theory,
his research is applied in conjunction with sociological and anthropo-
logical perspectives. Concentrated in the eld of political anthropology of
social movements, his work concentrates on questions of identity politics
and its related problematique of national construction, its imagination
and renegotiation, as related to the processes of political transformations
of the 21st century. Region- wise, his work essentially concentrates on the
processes developing in the geographic areas of Southeastern Europe and
Latin America.
Naum Trajanovski is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Institute of
Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and a researcher
at the Faculty of Philosophy, Skopje. His PhD research deals with the
local memories of the 1963 Skopje earthquake and the post- earthquake
reconstruction. He holds MA degrees in Southeastern European Studies
(Graz, Belgrade, Skopje) and Nationalism Studies (Budapest). He was
afliated with the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity as
a project coordinator, the research network “COURAGE – Connecting
Collections,” as an advisor and a proofreader, and a research fellow at the
Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg.
12 Lukov March as a “template
of possibility” for historical revisionism
Memory, history and populism in
post- 1989 Bulgaria
Filip Lyapov
Introduction
Every February since 2004, Soa witnesses a menacing spectacle, harking
back to a past era. The event is Lukov March – a memorial torchlight proces-
sion dedicated to the pro- fascist interwar leader General Hristo Lukov. For
the past 16 years, Lukov March has continuously provoked public controversy
and has been touted by Bulgarian nationalists as the largest annual manifest-
ation of Bulgarian nationalism (“Napred i nagore” 2015). The participants,
mainly young men, clad in black or military uniforms, carry portraits of the
general, torches, ags and wreaths. They march in unison, singing the national
anthem and shouting nationalistic slogans like “For Bulgaria – freedom or
death!,” “Then and now, Macedonia is Bulgarian!,” “Bulgaria, wake up,” and
“Free, social, national” – a popular slogan of the Union of Bulgarian National
Legions (UBNL), the pro- fascist interwar organization which General Lukov
led.1 The procession stops in front of Lukov’s house, and several local and
international keynote speakers hold passionate speeches praising the general
but also denouncing the current unpatriotic spirit in the country and globally.
Frequent targets of the speeches are political elites, liberalism, multicultur-
alism, international nancial circles, Bulgarian Roma and Turkish minorities,
LGBT groups, communists and Jews – the latter two groups are held respon-
sible for Lukov’s murder.2
Events like Lukov March have traditionally played a signicant role in pol-
itics, providing political actors with the opportunity to maintain a regular
public presence, to construct their image, to disseminate their ideas and attract
new followers. In a larger context, events can also gain historical importance
and initiate lasting structural transformations. Nationalistic organizations
particularly prefer hierarchy and discipline, leadership cults, the use of myths
and symbols and displays of power and control over the masses. These are
exploited for the process of “transforming permanently the occasional crowds
of civil events into the liturgical masses of the political cult” – a process called
by Emilio Gentile (2010: 261) the “sacralization of politics.” The distinctive
traits of modern right- wing populist parties, such as “performative strategies
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 177
in modern media democracies,” “focus on ‘charismatic’ leaders,” and “front-
stage performance techniques” suggest a similar reliance on appearance and
performance at events that go beyond the traditional usage of the media
(Wodak 2013: 27– 28).
In addition to this function as a political mobilization tool, events can
also revitalize historical debates, manipulate historical memory or serve as
a “template of possibility”3 for historical revisionism. This chapter analyzes
the role events like Lukov March play in the politics of memory in Bulgaria.
The event’s evolution from a marginal occurrence to a major political and
mnemonic battle offers a lens through which key questions related to memory
politics, historical revisionism and Bulgarian populism can be addressed.
The chapter begins with background on memory politics in Bulgaria after
1989, the rise of populism in the country after 2001, and the particular event
of the Lukov March. It then traces how mnemonic actors,4 like nationalistic
organizations and national populist parties, use Lukov March to establish
a symbolic connection with earlier gures of Bulgarian nationalism and
push forward narratives of Bulgarian history that legitimize their current
political agenda. Furthermore, it illuminates the ongoing process of histor-
ical revisionism that has intensied since the entrance of national populists
into the eld of memory politics in the last two decades. National populists
have continued the mnemonic battles of the 1990s but have superseded the
communist- anticommunist dichotomy to usher in a new ideological consensus
around the triad of ethnonationalism, populism and social conservatism.
Finally, the chapter speculates on the future developments in the mnemonic
landscape of Bulgaria if the current entanglement of memory politics and
populism continues unchallenged.
Memory and politics in Bulgaria since 1989
Bulgaria’s memory politics, understood here as the dynamic process of framing
history for political gain, roughly follows a common East European pattern
shaped by the end of the Cold War.5 This includes the discrediting of the
communist doctrine,6 the gradual liberalization in various spheres of social,
political, economic and cultural life,7 and the incorporation into European
institutions, in particular the EU.8 Other factors related to socioeconomic dif-
culties during the transition period,9 the crisis of national identity and the
privatization of nationalism,10 as well as the changed institutional, cultural
and academic setting11 have unied the regional modes of cultural and his-
torical representation since 1989. However, the factors that have facilitated
the most recent shifts in memory politics after the rise of national populist
parties – the pluralization of memory and the nationalization of history –
reect a European- wide trend.
The production of memory and commemorative practices and also his-
tory writing are no longer the exclusive domain of professional historians but
are increasingly dominated by politicians, the media, nonexperts, NGOs and
178 Filip Lyapov
private individuals.12 At the same time, at both the national and European
levels there is a solid trend toward the nationalization of history.13 According
to K. G. Karlsson, the trend comes as a counter-reaction to the so- called
“third wave of Europeanization,” entailing disputed processes of “linguistic
homogenization and the inculcation of a ‘European’ amalgam of knowledge,
attitudes and values” (Karlsson 2010: 38). The Holocaust has become the
paradigmatic attempt to create a single (West) European memorial and his-
torical prism for the 20th century historical experience.14
In Bulgaria, the impact of the pluralization and nationalization of memory
and history is ambiguous. While historical pluralization in Western Europe is
seen as emancipating for previously neglected communities and minorities,15
Bulgarian scholars lament that the retreat of traditional academic centers (uni-
versities, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, academic institutes) has opened
the space for politicians, journalists and practitioners of “parahistory” that
devaluate professional expertise and favor myths and conspiracy theories.16
The resources and power of these non-academic actors have allowed them
to initiate, dominate and instrumentalize important historical debates and
memory battles, while academics “increasingly lack the political channels
and positions that could enable them to effectively oppose the new canonical
narrative of communism and resist political pressures on the writing of aca-
demic history” (Deyanova 2017: 131).
Dechev (2018), on the other hand, has frequently called out the decits
of Bulgaria’s academic community itself that he nds complicit in reprodu-
cing the nationalistic canons of the past. According to him, the second pro-
cess – the nationalization of history and memory – should be viewed in a
long- term perspective. In many respects, Bulgarian historiography appears to
be stuck in the 1970s and 1980s when the “grand narrative” of Bulgarian
history was produced by a “marriage of convenience” of nationalism and
communism.17 Despite the regime change in 1989, the main historiographical
paradigms continue to be positivism, historical materialism and the belief in
history’s special role in the construction and “fostering of national unity in
the rst place” (Elenkov and Koleva 2007: 409). Thus, the historians’ dilemma
between “the scholarly ethos and the necessity to ‘serve the nation’ ” has fre-
quently been resolved in favor of the former (Elenkov and Koleva 2007: 464).
In effect, there is a continuity in nationalistic discourses from the 19th until
the 21st century that inhibit debates on controversial topics.18
In Bulgaria’s mnemonic landscape and politics of history after 1989, one
dominant narrative of the past has been replaced with an equally rigid one. If
the key mnemonic and ideological battle can be reduced to a simple formula
it would be along the communist- anticommunist dichotomy, with antifascism
and anti-totalitarianism appearing as the main legitimation discourses of the
two sides. Pre- 1944 Bulgaria is now frequently idealized, above all by anti-
communist mnemonic actors, in a deliberate attempt to counter the growing
number of Bulgarians dissatised with the postsocialist reality who reminisce
about socialism.19 The nature of Bulgaria’s interwar political regime, fascist
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 179
or not, the fate of the Jews in Bulgarian territories during the war, the com-
munist takeover on 9 September 1944 and the immediate postwar repressions,
most notably the People’s Court, continue to inspire vehemently contested
narratives.
Paradoxically, the simultaneous nationalization and pluralization of his-
tory and memory risks “a return to a narrative of the past that edits out
the diversity of individual memories and homogenizes – in a mythological
manner – the collective memory” (Deyanova 2017: 131). This continuity of
the nationalistic perspective on Bulgarian history and collective memory that
excludes alternative views may be seen as the scholarly equivalent of the pol-
itical process that unfolded since 2001 and even further hardened the rigid
boundaries of national identity. Borrowing “the etatism, collectivism and aut-
archy” of the last years of the previous socialist regime as well as the interwar
“concept of national unity,” nationalistic conceptions of memory and history
have been reinvigorated in the new multiparty political atmosphere after 1989.
It offered the possibility of accusing competing political parties of sowing
“division of the nation” and endangering its unity (Marinov and Vezenkov
2014: 470). As argued in the following section, Bulgarian national populism
easily capitalized on such interpretations.
Populism enters the stage: Bulgaria’s populist waves after 2001
Populism in Bulgaria, despite being “extremely context- dependent,” (Smilov
and Krastev 2008: 7) has its roots in problems shared with other Central
and Eastern European (CEE) countries, if not with Western Europe as well.
Perceived decit in democratic legitimacy and political representation, rising
socioeconomic inequalities and corruption on national and international
levels, the refugee crisis, global terrorism and lack of political alternatives due
to converging programs of mainstream parties have all contributed to the rise
of populism in the country. Pointing at the importance of populists’ perform-
ance and manipulation of events, Rogers Brubaker calls the coming together
of these various problems a “perfect storm,” which populist political actors
and the media have been able to “dramatize, televisualize, and emotionalize”
(Brubaker 2017: 377).
Smilov and Krastev (2008) divide the populist current in Bulgaria into two
main camps (soft and hard) and three waves: 2001, 2005, 2007. The rst wave,
starting with the 2001 parliamentary elections, brought the “soft” populism
of the newly formed Tsarist party NDSV [National Movement Simeon the
Second], which convincingly won the elections, promising national unity and
an end to political polarization. “Soft” populism’s success was replicated in the
third wave of populism in 2007, when the current Bulgarian Prime Minister,
Boyko Borissov, rst formed his “soft” populist party GERB [Bulgarian for
Citizens for European Development] and began his almost uninterrupted
political domination. In between these two waves came the “hard” populism
of Volen Siderov’s right- wing populist party ATAKA [Attack], which, like
180 Filip Lyapov
other “hard” populist parties in CEE, undermines the very principles of lib-
eral democracy and the protection of individual and minority rights (Smilov
and Krastev 2008).
In contrast to ATAKA’s “hard” populism, the “soft” populism of NDSV
and GERB is considered “a more moderate kind of populism that does not
denounce the merits of representative democracy and is far from the extremism
and cultural conservatism of the populist radical right” (Zankina 2016: 193).
Yet, “soft” populism still represents a “challenge to the existing system of
representation and mainly to the existing party system” and “is a signal of
a crisis of representation” (Smilov and Krastev 2008: 9). Such distinctions
among populists are also maintained by Avramov (2015) who divides the key
actors of Bulgarian populism into “generic” (NDSV, GERB) and “radical
right” populism (ATAKA and subsequent splinter and/ or related formations
such as VMRO [Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization]).
In terms of discourse, Bulgaria’s “soft” populism ts within Cas Mudde’s
inuential “ideational” denition of populism as “an ideology that considers
society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic
groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that
politics should be an expression of the volontégénérale [general will] of the
people” (Mudde 2004: 543). Nevertheless, elite demonization has never been
a particularly strong discursive trope for the “soft” populists NDSV and
GERB and has been toned down even further once they were elected. On
the contrary, when the “hard” populist ATAKA entered Bulgarian politics
in 2005, it launched an all- out assault on the entire political establishment
and introduced, for the rst time in parliament, the whole ideological and
discursive repertoire of the populist radical right – nativism, authoritar-
ianism and populism (Mudde 2007: 22). Yet, some Bulgarian scholars have
preferred to refer to the whole spectrum of Bulgarian populism as “national
populism”(Todorov 2007; Krasteva 2016), thus highlighting the prominence
of nationalism in both ideology and discourse and hinting at the increasingly
blurred boundaries between its “soft” and “hard” versions.
The impact of populism on Bulgarian politics is the area where the mutual
“pollination” of the strands of Bulgarian populism can be most strongly
felt. NDSV, GERB, ATAKA and subsequent national populist formations
have each played their part in dismantling various aspects of the fragile post-
1989 liberal- democratic consensus. The rst two parties dealt a mortal blow
to the left- right bipolar political model of the 1990s, gradually undermined
traditional parties and representative institutions, set a model for the rise of
populist- personalist parties (Zankina 2016), and made discursive references
to the “people” and the “nation” a must for parties across the political spec-
trum. Building on that, ATAKA and its varieties contributed to a process
of mainstreaming their own radical discourse,20 resulting in “a growth of
hate speech and intolerance in public life” (Avramov 2015: 315). They can
be “credited” with articulating and disseminating “several core far- right
themes”:
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 181
preservation of the “heartland,” that is, a conception of an idealized and
romanticized community untainted by globalization, Europeanization,
intellectuals, politicians, and bureaucrats; defense of national sovereignty;
national narratives; territorial nostalgia; nativism; monoculturalism;
anti- Semitism; religious fundamentalism; economic nationalism and pro-
tectionism; and welfare chauvinism.
(Sygkelos 2015: 164)
Populist actors, in general, have “created a demand and made space for
new entrants ready to supply even ‘harder’ versions of populism” (Avramov
2015: 315). Zankina (2016) predicts an increasing use of populist strat-
egies and a potential rise of new populist- personalist parties. Her argument
that “populism and personalist parties have become a permanent factor in
Bulgarian politics” (Zankina 2016: 188) is shared by other scholars who agree
that the phenomenon is only likely to grow in importance.21
Finally, in her discussion of national populists, Krasteva (2016) singles out
another key result of their entry into Bulgarian politics. She says that the most
signicant and detrimental legacy of national populists for Bulgarian democ-
racy may not even be the mainstreaming of nationalist discourse but the “new
type of cleavage” they introduce, that is, “transitioning from party politics to
symbolic politics, from ideological to identity politics, from socio- economic
and political to cultural cleavages” (Krastevа 2016: 163). Populists’ memory
politics and attempts for historical revisionism should both be viewed pre-
cisely in conjunction with these shifts in the essence of Bulgarian politics.
Before, however, discussing the specic entanglements of populist politics,
memory and history, the chapter turns to the event that best illustrates the
situation.
“Free, social, national” – Lukov March over the years
In retrospect, Lukov March may seem like just one of the many polit-
ical protests, commemorations and rallies that Bulgarian nationalists have
organized throughout the years. The main actors in such events, the extreme
right organization BNS [Bulgarian National Union] and supporters of
the national populist parties ATAKA and VMRO regularly try to attract
public attention and ag their patriotism, be it celebrating Liberation Day,
anti- Neuilly treaty marches, or commemorations of Bulgarian national
heroes. These events attract a uctuating group of attendants – from the
formations’ hardcore base to MPs, football hooligans and unafliated citi-
zens. Nationalistic formations also organize public demonstrations on
issues they perceive as crucial to the national interests, e.g., anti- NATO
and anti- LGBT marches or anti- Turkish/ Roma protests. Event mobiliza-
tion has become so crucial for these groups that the Bulgarian State Agency
for National Security noted in its 2018 annual report that “participation in
commemorations of historical events and counter- reactions against events of
182 Filip Lyapov
people with unconventional sexual orientation” represent almost their entire
activity (SANS 2018: 9). Equally important in light of the already mentioned
mainstreaming of extremist discourses, the security agency tellingly records
the ongoing attempts of these groups to alter their traditional image of xeno-
phobic and racist organizations by legitimizing themselves as patriotic and
nationalistic (SANS 2018: 9).
Yet, among the long list of “patriotic” events, nothing may be more
emblematic of post- 1989 Bulgarian nationalism than Lukov March, the
memorial torchlight procession dedicated to the pro- fascist interwar leader
General Hristo Lukov. Through the choice of its patron, the ideas, slogans
and symbols of its organizers, the event establishes a symbolic connection
between members of contemporary nationalistic organizations and their
interwar counterparts, suggesting discursive continuities and pointing at the
rehabilitation of some of Bulgaria’s most notorious historical movements
(Lyapov 2016).
The event began in 2004 when a dozen activists of the marginal extreme
nationalist organization, Bulgarian National Union, organized their rst
March on the 61st anniversary of Lukov’s death. For the nationalists the event
is “a symbol of the rising and united nationalistic youth in Bulgaria” because
“General Lukov’s name and ideas unite nationalists from various organizations
and groups” (“Napred i nagore” 2015). Other “patriotic organizations,” par-
ticipating throughout the years, include National Resistance and the Bulgarian
fraction of Blood and Honor, the latter being recognized internationally
(and banned in some countries) as an openly neo- Nazi formation (Todorov
2012: 7). The event has emerged as a rallying point for various nationalistic
formations, which is also reected in its growing support – from a dozen
participants in the rst March to around two thousand recently. Leaders of
VMRO,22 the nationalistic formation in Parliament, Krasimir Karakachanov
and Angel Dzhambazki, have expressed their support for the March and
deny its relation to neo- Nazi propaganda (“Dzhambazki” 2014; “Krasimir
Karakachanov” 2013). The latter, currently vice- chairman of VMRO and an
MEP, has personally attended the March and was once supposed to deliver a
speech at a nationalistic conference organized afterward (“Programa” 2012).
The national populist party ATAKA and its Führer- esque leader, Volen
Siderov, has also shown sympathy for the event on their TV channel (Siderov
2005b). A former leader of the BNS and then chief organizer of the March
was a guest on Siderov’s TV show in 2005 when the two nationalists still
collaborated (Siderov 2005a).
The organizers vigorously deny any allegations of antisemitism, fascism,
(neo- Nazism) or xenophobia against them or the historical UBNL and its
leader Lukov. According to the BNS, the memory and the image of both
interwar and modern “patriots” have been tarnished in the past by the
“Bolshevik occupiers” and now by their heirs: the Turkish minority party,
NGOs with foreign nancing such as the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee
and the Open Society Institute, who “receive money to conduct subversive
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 183
activity, incite inter- ethnic tension and destroy the national consciousness
of Bulgarians,” and nally, by the “Zionist lobby” in Bulgaria, which “aims
at guaranteeing the vassalage of the Bulgarian political class to the state of
Israel” (“Pozitsiya” 2014). This list of “enemies” of Bulgarian nationalism
roughly coincides with what modern nationalists have been preaching against
and bears some resemblance to the perceived threats to the nation, identied
by interwar nationalists (Lyapov 2016).
It is not without signicance that organizers and participants in the March
devote so much attention to historical revisionism regarding the UBNL and
its leader Lukov. In 2006, BNS ofcially proclaimed General Lukov as their
patron (“Lukovmarsh 2006”). Furthermore, the leader of the BNS stated that
“today the sole successor of the ideas of the UBNL is the BNS because only it
combines the ideas, youth and the energy of the legionnaires” (“Lukovmarsh
2006”). In addition, the organization’s uniforms are to be “a continuation
of the traditions of Bulgarian nationalistic organizations,” among which are
the UBNL, the Ratniks, Fatherland Defense, Brannik,23 the historical VMRO
as well as earlier Bulgarian resistance groups (“Simvoli” n.d.). Perhaps most
revealing of the organizers’ ideological indebtedness to interwar national-
istic organizations, above all the UBNL, is their program. The most famous
legionnaire slogan about a “nationally mighty and socially just Bulgaria”
appears in the BNS program and the style and ideas in the entire document
are staggeringly similar to the programs of the UBNL (“Kakvo iskame” n.d.).
The symbols, style and slogans of Lukov March have led a prominent scholar
of Bulgarian fascism, Nikolay Poppetrov, to declare it a kind of a “remake”
of similar interwar events (“Nikolay Poppetrov” 2013).
National populists, memory and historical revisionism
Had the event remained conned to the BNS and other far- right fringe groups,
the effects of its revisionist agenda might have been limited. That leading
politicians from the current governing coalition have throughout the years
proclaimed their support for the event is what raises the stakes. Despite some
half- spoken words of disapproval by a few members of VMRO (Angelov
2018), partners in the coalition government, VMRO’s previous support for
Lukov March as well as the active participation of its youth section unequivo-
cally gives legitimacy to the event’s ideas. Even the leading political party
GERB’s much stronger condemnation of the event over the last few years
and particularly in 2018 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018), when the March
coincided with the Bulgarian Presidency of the European Parliament, rings
hollow as merely a tactical move to placate GERB’s foreign partners rather
than an honest response to growing criticism (Kassabov 2018). Furthermore,
GERB’s coalition government with an alliance of the three leading national
populist formations has been implicated from the start with multiple scandals
involving expressions of extremist ideology, for example, Nazi salutes and
jokes, and hate speech against minorities (Cheresheva 2017).
184 Filip Lyapov
Furthermore, the event seems to be multiplying – similar torchlight mar-
ches, often with related slogans – are now an established part of the nation-
alistic repertoire in other Bulgarian cities such as Stara Zagora, Plovdiv,
Pleven, Lovech. In September 2018, the rst Day of the Bulgarian Youth was
held – the latest replica of Lukov March but also a clear historical reference
to interwar youth marches (“Za DBM” 2018). The event, although organized
by the same extreme nationalistic organizations as Lukov March, had a
much more conservative appearance, reecting the recent shift in Bulgarian
public discourse toward social conservatism in the aftermath of the so- called
Istanbul Convention debates. Neither the Day of the Bulgarian Youth, nor
the other copy- cat marches can match Lukov March in terms of visibility,
number of participants and symbolic importance, yet their accumulated
impact and increasing frequency raise important questions about the appeal
of far- right views under a government with a strong national populist
outlook.
So, where does Lukov March t within the courses and discourses of
Bulgarian national populism, within the memory battles and the new
Kulturkampf (Trencsényi 2014)? Could the March be the strongest proof
that interwar nationalism and fascism are currently being rehabilitated and
we might be heading toward a new 1930s? Yes, say the March’s strongest
critics (liberal and human rights NGOs, members of the Bulgarian Socialist
Party and its afliated formations such as the Bulgarian Antifascist Union,
smaller leftist and anarchist organizations, as well as the Organization of the
Jews in Bulgaria Shalom) and a number of researchers.24 Such attempts have
proceeded from the very rst years after 1989, simultaneously with the dis-
mantling of the ofcial and unofcial symbols, structures and legacies of the
previous regime. Under the clout of anticommunism, both “the hardware,”
museums and memorials, as well as “the software,” narratives and lms
(Etkind 2004), of socialist memory were transformed, sometimes leading to
the complete annihilation of the physical contours of the pre- 1989 period
and its replacement with selective elements of the pre-socialist past. Leftist
historian Iskra Baeva (2018: 139) claims that the 1990s anticommunism in
Bulgaria followed a classical scheme:
it started with questioning the ideas and practices of Bulgarian com-
munism during the whole duration of its existence, but with an emphasis
on the years after 9 September 1944, then passed through a change of the
symbols – names, the commemorative calendar, textbooks and school cur-
ricula, the ofcial interpretation of history, nally reaching the attempts
for a legislative condemnation not only of the carriers of communism but
of everything related to Bulgaria’s communist movement from its 19th
century birth to 10 November 1989.25
The most recent removal of an iconic monument from the socialist era and
its replacement with a replica of an interwar one, symbolizing the irredentist
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 185
aspirations of interwar nationalists, could then be related to Lukov March via
the obvious anticommunist agenda and positive reference to pre- 1944 nation-
alism of the two acts (Tsoneva and Valyavicharska 2017). What emerged as
a counterpoint to the discredited socialist imagery was not a new or modern
concept of a political, socioeconomic or cultural project but a recourse to
crude nationalism and the presocialist authoritarian regime, its symbols,
ideas and gures uncritically resurrected. Similar to other CEE countries,
the Bulgarian postcommunist right was most active in the ensuing memory
politics and committed itself to “institutionalize, both domestically and in
Europe, a version of the past that is generally inspired in theories of totali-
tarianism and places almost exclusive stress on the criminal features of the
communist regime” (Dujisin 2015: 561). Yet, anticommunism as “the ‘social
magic’, which enables ‘short circuits’ between seemingly incompatible polit-
ical ideas as liberal democracy and monarcho- authoritarianism” (Tsoneva
and Valyavicharska 2017), and unites liberals, conservatives and radical
nationalists against their common enemy on the left, seems to be wearing out
or at least transforming.
As the fragile liberal consensus that diminished parties’ socioeconomic
differences in the name of the coveted European integration also vanished
around the years of the EU accession in 2007, Bulgarian anticommunism
morphed in a new ideological constellation more radical than its earlier version.
All across CEE, a new Kulturkampf replaced “the previous anticommunism
(…) rooted in a liberal antitotalitarian framework” with one that is “mark-
edly antiliberal and questioned the legitimacy of the whole transition process”
(Trencsényi 2014: 137– 138). In addition, the new ideological confrontation
is fought with populist strategies, including “strong mobilization of civil
society – on an antiliberal, antidemocratic, and ethnonationalist platform,”
whereas “its main battleeld is the new politics of memory” (Trencsényi
2014: 140, 151).
In this new clash of two irreconcilable Weltanschauungs, anticommunism
is only one of the building blocks in the rightist camp. Among the other
ingredients in the ideological mix are ethnonationalism, as espoused by the
“hard” national populists ATAKA, VMRO, and particularly the organizers
of Lukov March from BNS, and staunch social conservatism. The latter is
the latest addition to the ideological concoction and came to light recently
and intensied since 2018 with the strong opposition in many CEE countries
against the so- called Istanbul Convention. However, this has been brewing
for a while in milder forms of opposition to gender equality, LGBT rights
and other socially progressive causes. Some scholars see the newly coined
term “gender ideology” as the new “ ‘symbolic glue’ that ‘helped create broad
alliances and united actors that have not cooperated in the past,’ including
the different Christian churches, mainstream conservatives, far- right parties
and fundamentalist groups” (Andrea Pető, cited in Ciobanu 2018). In the
Bulgarian case, the issue allied almost the entire political establishment,
including both the “soft” and the “hard” populists, as well as the Bulgarian
186 Filip Lyapov
Socialist Party that usually has stood in opposition to the ruling populist
coalition when it comes to memory and historical politics.
Due to this new ideological reorientation and subsequent convergence of
Bulgaria’s main political actors toward ethnonationalism, populism, social
conservatism and memory politics have all become more relevant. Mnemonic
battles such as the one surrounding Lukov March and its intertwined topics
of fascism/ antifascism and communism/ anticommunist full key roles for all
the affected parties. On a general level, four main functions of such memory
battles can be identied: (1) as legitimation of parties’ present agenda; (2) as
substitutes for real discussions/ solutions of socioeconomic issues or of national
and/ or European project/ vision; (3) as tools in attacking political enemies;
(4) as tools in identity construction. In relation to these functions, memory
politics bears a striking resemblance to the role of populist discourses and can
thus be perceived as a distinct populist strategy. Just as “populist extremist
discourses seem to ll the gap created by the public’s disenchantment with
(mainstream) politics” (Wodak and Khosravinik 2013: xviii), memory politics
and historical revisionism can be perceived as a substitute for policy- making –
or as “legitimation surrogates and policy ersatz” (Stanoeva 2017). According
to Miller (2010: 19f), “when the real political agenda has been emptied of sub-
stance and, in their battles for votes, rather than addressing today’s real devel-
opment issues, they [politicians] turn to interpretations of the past instead.”
In addition to the lack of solutions to socioeconomic problems, political
actors in Bulgaria, and seemingly in other parts of Europe, turn into mne-
monic entrepreneurs when they struggle to construct a meaningful long- term
vision about the future of the state and the collective identity of its citizens
(Georgieva 2017). The great transformations brought to Eastern Europe with
the fall of socialism initiated a quest for the “reformulation of collective iden-
tities” (Kubik and Bernhard 2014: 8). In Bulgaria, this search for meaning after
the dramatic change in 1989 was supplemented by a failure of “the national
elites to preserve their monopoly on the construction of a large imagined
community within the limits of the nation state” (Kyosev and Kabakchieva
2013). Thus, nationalism and the ability to formulate, articulate and propa-
gate various versions of national identity were privatized and claimed by a
variety of actors, among which nationalistic far- right activists appeared to
be the most vocal (Kyosev and Kabakchieva 2013). These radical movements
proted from one of the legacies of communism in CEE – “to eliminate
real discussion or examination of fascism, leaving it only in idealized pri-
vate memory or as a nationalist caricature” – and “opportunistically married
fragments of interwar fascist discourse with conservative and socialist visions
of the state and nation” (Frusetta and Glont 2009: 578, 569).
Once these ideas were recovered by the Bulgarian far right and popularized
through Lukov March, national populists selectively appropriated parts of
these refurbished interwar discourses that could easily be adapted for con-
temporary relevance, for example, against minorities (ethnic, religious,
sexual), against the left, against local and foreign elites, against liberalism,
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 187
cosmopolitanism, etc. National populists introduced the logic of populism in
historical and mnemonic debates, which couched the conicts in moral terms
and created a Manichean division between the supporters of each side. Thus,
Lukov March could be seen, if not as a trigger, then at least as an important
factor that contributed to the new “illiberal consensus” (Stanoeva 2017) and
the populist Kulturkampf (Trencsényi 2014) in Bulgarian politics.
Conclusion
The forceful entry of national populists into the eld of memory politics has
led to an unprecedented polarization of historical debates and the gradual
rehabilitation of certain historical narratives, previously popular mainly among
a minority of far- right activists. The populists’ normative vision of history as
a black and white morality tale of good vs evil, winners vs losers and patriots
vs traitors precludes dialogue and threatens to destroy the very foundations
on which both history and memory are constructed – uidity and plurality of
opinion. In this endeavor, national populists were greatly assisted by the post-
1989 ideological, institutional and academic setting, which actively promoted
historical revisionism, by already existing academic and popular discourses of
nationalism formed in the previous period of intense national communism,
as well as by a number of new bottom- up initiatives such as Lukov March.
The growth and mainstreaming of the March integrated it into the longue
durée tradition of Bulgarian nationalism despite its obvious connection to the
interwar period’s most extremist discourses. Once the March’s transforming
potential was realized, the event became instrumentalized as a tool to win
political dividends through mnemonic and historical battles. As a populist
strategy, its functions varied from attacking political opponents, shifting away
public attention from the immense socioeconomic and political challenges
of the post- 1989 transition and the lack of a new political and social vision
of the state. Moreover, it compensates for the disenchantment with (main-
stream) politics by stoking new societal fault lines based on an exclusivist
ethnonationalist, populist and conservative understanding of identity.
Events such as Lukov March have provided an opening for such polit-
ical actions. The March and the discourse around it have also had a detri-
mental effect on Bulgarian memory politics as Bulgaria could well be on the
path toward dangerous historical revisionism regarding certain aspects of its
interwar and WW II history. The potential long- term consequences entail a
reimagining of the national self and identity in a strongly conservative and
ethnonationalist tone. It is thus paramount that Bulgarian academics defend
their turf from party politics, actively engage in debates about the past and
reach out to a wider audience lest they nd themselves in the dustbin of his-
tory, branded according to the populist Manichean worldview as national
traitors.
Such a doomsday scenario, however, might not be in store. There is some
room for optimism that, given memory’s uid, volatile and “polysemic” nature,
188 Filip Lyapov
“there will always be memories that resist the politics of memory produced
by authorities and institutions, which is reductive by denition” (Todorova
2014: 7). After all, the pluralization of the academic and public sphere does
open space for individual narratives of the past to nd their way into alterna-
tive outlets and challenge the dominant mnemonic paradigm. A new event,
similar to Lukov March, might again turn the tide of memory and produce a
reverse wave of historical revisionism.
Notes
1 Although not among its founders or ideologues, Lukov was UBNL’s most prom-
inent leader due to his post- mortem glorication and post- 1989 rediscovery as a
staunch anticommunist.
2 Lukov was assassinated in 1943 by Violeta Yakova – a Bulgarian communist par-
tisan of Jewish origin. Her double identity as both Jewish and communist provided
further conrmation of the conspiracy theories involving these two groups.
3 Berezin 2012.
4 Bernhard and Kubik 2014.
5 Müller 2004; Pakier and Strath 2010.
6 Dujisin 2015.
7 Karlsson 2010.
8 See, Karlsson 2010; Pakier and Strath 2010; Mink and Neumayer 2013; Trencsényi
2014; Dujisin 2015; Sindbaek Andersen and Törnquist- Plewa 2016.
9 Baeva and Kalinova 2010; Ghodsee and Sehon 2018.
10 Kyosev and Kabakchieva 2013; Georgieva 2017.
11 Brunnbauer 2004; Antohi 2007; Mink and Neumayer 2013.
12 Pakier and Strath 2010; Miller 2012; Mink and Neumayer 2013.
13 Elenkov and Koleva 2007.
14 Dujisin 2015; Sindbaek Andersen and Törnquist- Plewa 2016.
15 Nora 2002.
16 Mishkova 2007; Atanassov 2011; Nikolov 2017.
17 Elenkov and Koleva 2007; Marinov and Vezenkov 2014; Dechev 2018; Georgieva
2017.
18 Todorova 1995.
19 Baeva and Kalinova 2010; Ghodsee and Sehon 2018; Traykov 2017; Georgieva 2017.
20 Avramov 2015; Marinos 2015; Sygkelos 2015; Krasteva 2016.
21 Krasteva 2016; Smilov and Krastev 2008.
22 Both VMRO and ATAKA are currently part of a nationalistic coalition, which is,
since 2017, junior partner in a coalition government, led by GERB.
23 All of these nationalistic organizations existed in interwar Bulgaria and borrowed
extensively ideas, symbols and slogans from German Nazis and Italian Fascists.
24 Baeva and Kalinova 2010; Georgieva 2017; Tsoneva and Valyavicharska 2017;
Ghodsee and Sehon 2018; Baeva 2018).
25 Baeva and her colleague Evgeniya Kalinova were recently involved in yet another
public scandal related to the representation of communism in history textbooks.
According to their critics, the textbooks distort the “truth” about communism and
fail to unequivocally condemn the regime and its ideology.
Lukov March as a “template of possibility” 189
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