C.-F. Dobre, I. Epurescu-Pascovici & C. E. Ghiţă (Ed.), Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in History and The Humanities PDF

Myth-Making
and Myth-Breaking in History

and the Humanities
Proceedings of the Conference

Held at the University of Bucharest,
6-8 October 2011
Edited by
Claudia-Florentina Dobre
Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici
Cristian Emilian Ghi
Contents
Acknowledgements ......................... 5
Introduction ......................... 7
Claudia-Florentina Dobre (University of Bucharest)
Creating and Transforming a Dynastic Myth the Commagenian Case ......................... 13
Cristian Emilian Ghi (University of Bucharest)
Fighting a Dying Enemy: The Struggle between Rome and the Parthians ......................... 25
Leonardo Gregoratti (Udine University)
The Protobulgarians: Old Theories, New Myths and the Phenomenon of
Parahistory In Post-Communist Bulgaria ......................... 37

Alexander Nikolov (St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University)
Croatia between the Myths of the Nation State and of the Common European Past ......................... 51
Neven Budak (University of Zagreb)
The Myth of Granada in the Modern Age through its Civic and Religious Festivals
from the 16th to the 18th Century ......................... 73
Ccile dAlbis (Institut fr Europische Geschichte Mainz)
How Old Is the History of Modernity? ......................... 87

Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici (University of Bucharest)
An Obscure Object of Desire: the Myth of Alba Iulia and its Social Functions ......................... 99
Gabor Egry (Institute of Political History, Budapest)
The Turkish Army: Myth Breaking Function of Political Cartoons ......................... 115
Valentina Marcella (European University Institute, Florence)
Deconstructing the Authenticity: Who, When and How Created the Bulgarian Yoghurt ......................... 125
Elitsa Stoilova (Technical University Eindhoven)
4 Contents
Number of Civil Servants and Historiographical Myths in France ......................... 143

Emilien Ruiz (cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Myth or Reality? Women in the Romanian Communist Party or the Image of Evil ......................... 153
Luciana-Mrioara Jinga (IICCMER, Bucharest)
The Biographies of the Romanian Underground Communists between Myth and Reality ......................... 171
tefan Bosomitu (IICCMER, Bucharest)
Memories of Romanian Communism: Myths, Representations, Discourses ......................... 187
Claudia-Florentina Dobre (University of Bucharest)
The New Myths on Communism and the Bulgarian Historiography ......................... 203
Liliana Deyanova (St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University)
The Modern Person and the Myth of Chance: Shapings and Reshapings of Bulgarian
Post-Socialist Narrative Identities ......................... 217
Nadezhda Velinova Gulubova (Institute for Studies of the Recent Past, Sofia)
Scriptural Myths in Some Contemporary British Novels ......................... 231

Ewa Rychter (Angelus Silesius State College, Wabrzych)
Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in Polish-German Relationships after WW II ......................... 249

Izabela Skorzynska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Pozna) &
Anna Maria Wachowiak (The School of Higher Education in Humanities of the Association For Adult Education, Szczecin)
How to Map the Bodys Spaces: Using Foucaults Heterotopology for the Cartography
of Corporeal Myths ......................... 263
Alexandr Stingl (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder)
Note on Contributors ......................... 281

Acknowledgements
The conference Myth-making and myth-breaking in History and Humanities would not
have been possible without the diligent work and the dedication of our colleagues, Valentin
Bottez and Andrei Florin Sora. Therefore we want to express our warm thanks to both of them.
We must also thank Professor Bogdan Murgescu, who co-ordinated the refereed selection
process of the conference papers.
Our gratitude goes to the Rector of the University of Bucharest, Professor Mircea Dumitru,
who supported us in organising our conference and in publishing the proceedings, as well as to
all the other members of staff whose help is often unseen, but often crucial. The funding for the
conference has been graciously provided by the University of Bucharest, through its postdoctoral
programme in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is co-financed by the European Social
Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program Human Resources Development 2007-2013
(POSDRU/89/1.5/S/62259).
Finally, special thanks must go to Professor Diana Mishkova, Director of the Centre for
Advanced Studies from Sofia, and Zoe Petre, Professor emeritus at the University of Bucharest,
for their participation in the conference and their engaging remarks.
The editors
Introduction
Claudia-Florentina DOBRE
University of Bucharest
The notion of myth covers a wide array of meanings and interpretations.1 A sociologist, an
anthropologist, a historian or a political scientist define and understand this concept in very different
ways. Even within the boundaries of the same discipline, definitions vary from one scholar to another.
Our conference, Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in History and the Humanities, has emphasised this
particularity of myth its usage as explicative matrix for different phenomena, be they cultural, social,
historical, political, narrative, or relating to ones identity.
Myth, in a narrow sense, represents a discursive mode with an explanatory role, which defines
the fundamental semiological axes of a given mythology.2 In a broader sense, the myth can be
considered an imaginary construct which attempts to distil the essence of cosmic and social
phenomena according to the values of a community, with the aim of ensuring a certain degree of
cohesion within that particular group. It offers individuals and society at large direct access to an
interpretative system and a behavioural model.3
The papers collected in the present volume provide a fresh perspective on these classic
definitions, broaching new territory in the study of myth-making. The majority of these essays
investigate the construction, cultural significance, and socio-political function of an array of
historical myths, from the ancient world to the end of the twentieth century. Conversely, a number
of papers operate a reflexive turn, spotlighting the role of fiction and myth within contemporary
1
I would like to thank my co-editors, Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici and Cristian Emilian Ghi, for their input to this Introduction.
2
Claude G. Dubois, Introduction: (II) Les modes de classification des mythes, in Introduction aux mthodologies de
limaginaire, ed. Joel Thomas (Paris, 1998), p. 28.
3
Lucian Boia, Pour une histoire de limaginaire (Paris, 1998), pp. 40-41.
8 Claudia-Florentina DOBRE
academic discourse. These analyses do not claim an external or neutral and in this sense
privileged standpoint from which to reflect on historians and social scientists production of
knowledge, but engage in the ongoing methodological and theoretical debates by formulating
new conceptual possibilities.
Let us begin with historical myths. As Ccile dAlbis argues (The Myth of Granada in the Modern Age
through its Civic and Religious Festivals from the 16th to the 18th Century; original French title: Le mythe de
Grenade lpoque moderne travers les ftes civico-religieuses, XVIe-XVIIIe sicles), myths can be viewed
as discursive practices closely connected to the identity and historical memory of a community. In
a similar vein, Neven Budak surveys the myths put forth throughout the history of Croatia, from
the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century (Croatia between the myths of the nation state and of
the common European past). From the legends surrounding the origins of the Croatian people to the
myth of Croatia as the bulwark of a Christendom besieged by the Ottomans, the representation
of Croatian history reflected changing social identities, the needs of dynastic and later nationalist
legitimisation, and religious and cultural ideologies. As Izabela Skrzyska and Anna Wachowiak
show, convictions that are not subject to verification but nevertheless shape the life of society are
brought together under the aegis of myth. Their paper deals with the myth of the evil German, which,
in spite of the civic efforts of the past twenty years, continues to plague some Polish communities
(Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in Polish-German Relations after the Second World War).
One defining characteristic of myth is its ability to cut through the ages while accumulating
new meanings, transforming itself and adapting to new contexts. Biblical myths illustrate this
dynamic particularly well. Although they have lost the aura of mystical authority, they continue
to influence in subtle ways European public life in all its fields cultural, social, political, or civic.
They still represent a fundamental textual matrix for the literature produced in Europe (Ewa
Rychter, Scriptural Myths in Two Contemporary British Novels).
Myth has a powerful simplifying role and is modulated by a drive to manufacture ideological
unity. An event like the Assembly of Alba Iulia in 1918, which proclaimed the union of Transylvania
with the Kingdom of Romania, is transformed into a myth by being celebrated on an annual basis
and by being associated with a much earlier historical character, the sixteenth-century Romanian
Introduction 9
prince Mihai Viteazul, to whom is attributed the same intention of achieving national unity that
animated the people present at Alba Iulia in December 1918 (Gbor Egry, An Obscure Object of
Desire: The Myth of Alba Iulia and its Social Functions, 1918-1940).
Myth may be the result of the perpetual tug-of-war between remembrance and oblivion, and
its purpose is generally that of emphasising the shared values of a community. It may play an
important part in legitimising new political regimes and de-legitimising old ones (Claudia-
Florentina Dobre, Memories of Romanian Communism: Myths, Representations, Discourses; original
French title: Mmoires du communismeroumain: mythes, reprsentations, discours) or act as ideological
scaffolding to uphold the claims of whole dynasties (Cristian Emilian Ghi, Creating and
Transforming a Dynastic Myth: The Commagenian Case). Myths sometimes serve to publicly validate
the position of high-ranking people in a political system (tefan Bosomitu, The Biographies of
Romanian Underground Communists between Myth and Reality: A Case Study, Miron Constantinescu).
The force of the myth is sometimes unstoppable and may dramatically influence the way
in which a society perceives the internal enemy or an external foe. The myth of the Oriental
decadence may have impeded the Roman Empire to decisively gain the upper hand in the struggle
against the Parthians (Leonardo Gregoratti, Fighting an Ever Dying enemy: Western Perspectives on
Persians and Parthians), while the myth of the Turk as a born soldier has considerably delayed the
demilitarisation of Turkish society (Valentina Marcella, The Turkish Army: Myth-Breaking Function of
Political Cartoons). Deconstructing this particular myth through satirical cartoons has allowed the
Turkish nation to manage a period of crisis such as the military dictatorship of 1980. Furthermore,
such ludic means of expression proved instrumental in demystifying an all-powerful institution,
the Turkish Army.
If, in general, myths are used to explain certain social and historical phenomena, in order to
understand the memory and identity of communities and societies from the ancient to the post-
modern the uses of myths must be investigates at all levels, even in the life stories of ordinary
people. They create their own mythical structures in order to make sense of their lives from a
narrative perspective (Nadezhda Velinova Galabova, The Modern Person and the Myth of Chance:
Shapings and Reshapings of Bulgarian Post-Socialist Narrative Identities).

Myths represent a key component of the social imaginary and are often invoked and created
in the process of elaborating an explanatory scheme of national history. In Elitsa Stoilovas
paper, Deconstructing the Authenticity: Who, When, and How Created the Bulgarian Yoghurt, the
analysis unfolds along two axes: the construction of national identity around local traditions (in
this case, traditional dietary practices), and the role of the scientific community and the political
establishment in redefining local authenticity as a marketable, exportable product. Popular myth
and scientific fiction are thus brought together. Similarly, Luciana-Mrioara Jinga investigates both
the socio-political function and the historiographical ramifications of the myths surrounding the
role of women within the Romanian Communist Party (Myth or Reality? Women in the Romanian
Communist Party or the Image of Evil; original French title: Mythe ou ralit? Les femmes dans le parti
communiste roumain ou limage du mal). As Jinga shows, these myths do not stand careful scrutiny,
particularly when confronted with the archival record.
The interest in myth and fiction as part of the historians production of knowledge
informs Liliana Deyanovas paper, The New Politics of Memory and the New Regime of
Historiography. Deyanova shows how contemporary historians have become complicit in
the perpetuation of the mythicised, nineteenth-century nationalistic view of Bulgarian
history and compares this official historiographical perspective with some European
researchers equally hegemonic ambition of accomplishing a unified, univocal perspective
on the history of communist regimes. Moving towards a sociology of historical practices,
Deyanova asks how the institutional contexts in which historians function today impinge
on their efforts to rethink traditional, publicly-sanctioned paradigms.
These themes are echoed by Alexander Nikolovs critical survey of the romanticised treatment
of the early Bulgarian past which can be found in scientific history and even more so in popular
history (The Proto-Bulgarians: Old Theories and New Myths and the Phenomenon of Parahistory in
Post-Communist Bulgaria). Whereas for the past two centuries historians have been instrumental
in the creation of national myths, in todays post-national age they face the opposing imperative
of deconstructing nationalist histories. They also run the risk of replacing one meta-narrative,
rooted in nineteenth-century nationalism, with another, highlighting the common European past
Introduction 11
as the backdrop of todays united Europe. Nikolovs paper shows that the democratisation of
historical interpretation, facilitated by the Internet, can lead to parahistorical perspectives in
which critical thinking and intellectual rigour are cast aside. The recent proliferation of myths
about the origins of the Bulgarian people can be read as an effort to reconstitute national identity
on different bases in the new European context.
Challenging the foundational myths of modernity, its self-definition in sharp contrast with
a medieval period onto which modernitys anxieties and prejudices are projected, can lead to
important advances in our understanding of how historians construct the object of their inquiry
(Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici, How Old is the History of Modernity?). The view that modernity has to
do only with the last one or two hundred years (sometimes going back to the eighteenth century)
denies, against a considerable body of evidence, the possibility of an early history of modernity
and modernisation e.g., during the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. This brings to the fore larger
conceptual issues concerning historical change and human agency, origins and (re)inventions,
and of course periodisation.
Similarly, the analysis of historiographical myths leads to important methodological observations
on the uses of serial history in the study of modern bureaucracies, in Emilien Ruizs paper, Number
of Civil Servants and Historiographical Myths in France (original French title: Nombre de fonctionnaires
et mythes historiographiques en France). Lastly, Alexander Stingls contribution to this volume tests
the limits of a concept with great analytical potential, Michel Foucaults heterotopology, arguing
that it can be redeployed in new contexts, such as contemporary knowledge regimes and decision-
making practices (The Heterotopology of Body and State: Against Essentialism in the History of Democracy
and Medicine with Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and John W. Meyer).
The articles gathered in this volume emphasise the heuristic value of myths, as well as
their importance in constructing and deconstructing broad historical, social, and narrative
paradigms. They suggest new ways of understanding the imaginary universe in which
individuals, local communities, nations, and societies operate at different moments in
history. The papers delivered at the conference Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in History
and the Humanities have used the myth as a pretext to discuss not only its functions in
the lives of communities, but also the role of historians and of humanities scholars in
elaborating meta-discourses: national, European, multi- and trans-disciplinary.
A final word on the research perspectives opened up, explicitly or implicitly, by the
papers in this volume. Several contributions converge in suggesting that the perpetuation of
historical myths in public consciousness reflects the limited success of historians efforts to educate
the larger public. Conversely, the need for more nuanced analyses that shift between different
perspectives, however exasperating this might seem to lay audiences fed on catchy formulas and
sound-bites, also emerges as a common theme throughout the conference proceedings. Rendering
messy complexities intelligible is the task of the social scientist; hiding behind lofty, pompous
catchphrases, that of the myth-maker. This seems all too banal, but several of the papers gathered
here remind us that in their debunking quest historians end up creating new myths. Thus, some
of the historians set on exposing the myths of Communist regimes and historiographies have
evolved their own myths and fictions, only slightly less univocal and ideologically-driven than the
totalitarian visions they denounce. The key issue here is the nature of the fictions that enable our
discourse on history: are they vicious or virtuous? Since historians cannot do without interpretive
models, a way to move forward from (though not out of) this predicament might be to reflect on
the fictions to which we make recourse and continuously replace them with ever more refined
constructs. Concepts like the politics of memory, heterotopology, and multiple modernities are
common currency among researchers these days, and some of them can be even parlayed into the
kinds of syntheses that appeal to general audiences. Behind such constructs, however, looms the
spectre of their ossification into as many historiographical myths. Yet there is also the hope that
before that can happen they will have been replaced by new enabling fictions, more attuned to
the challenges of history writing.

Creating And Transforming
A Dynastic Myth The
Commagenian Case
Cristian Emilian GHI

Abstract The present paper aims to trace the manner in which the rulers of the small
kingdom of Commagene have utilised the dynastic myth to consolidate their
political position, adapting it to suit their momentary needs. Thus, at the height of their power, they
claimed to descend from both Darius the Great and Alexander the Great, the most famous rulers of the
Persian Empire and of the Macedonian Empire, respectively. That the two mighty states of Antiquity
were mortal foes seemed to matter little several centuries after the death of the Macedonian conqueror.
Although this myth lent enormous prestige to the dynasty, one of the last scions of the Commagenian
Orontids, Philopappos, chose to ignore it and placed instead on his funerary monument the images of
other, more modest ancestors Seleukos Nikator and Antiochos IV of Commagene.
Keywords Commagenian Orontids, dynastic myth, Alexander, Darius, Seleukos

Nikator.
I. Historical and geographical setting
In this paper, I will discuss the manner in which the kings of Commagene created and
manipulated the myth of their dynastic origin to enhance their status and justify their rule.1 It
1
My research was funded through the University of Bucharests postdoctoral programme in the Humanities and
Social Sciences, which is co-financed by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program Human
Resources Development 2007-2013 (POSDRU/89/1.5/S/62259).
14 Cristian Emilian Ghi
might be necessary, though, to begin by making a brief presentation of what Commagene was
and who these kings were.
Commagene was situated between the Taurus, the Ammanus and the Euphrates. One
hesitates to say it was hemmed in by these geographical features, since it was to these that the
small kingdom owed in times of peace its prosperity and, in times of hardship, its survival.
To the West lay Cilicia, a land looking to the sea, which had given the Achaemenids able and
valiant seamen and would produce, at the dusk of the Hellenistic Age, no less able or less valiant
pirates. To the North lay Cappadocia, a vast cold plateau, home of some of the best horses in the
ancient world and whose kings traced their ancestry back to Achaemenid nobility. To the East
lay Sophene and Armenia, whose influence, as we shall see, would prove to be great. Finally,
to the South lay Mesopotamia and Syria, the two beating hearts of the empire belonging to the
Seleukids, the most influential power in the region.
We do not know much about the history of the region before the second century BC,2 but we
do know that in about 163 BC the governor of the region, Ptolemaios, chose to renounce the
allegiance to his masters, the Seleukids, and set himself up as an independent ruler.3 He was
succeeded in about 130 BC by his son, Samos, who consolidated the kingdom and founded
(or re-founded, as the common practice went) the city which was to become the capital of
the kingdom, Samosata. This is a period of great turmoil in the area, and Samoss prosperity
is a testament to his diplomatic ability. In 96 BC, it was time for his son, Mithradates I, to
take up the crown. He was married to a Seleukid princess, Laodike, a marriage that was, in
effect, a certificate of nobility, for in spite of the fact that the Seleukids had all but lost their
political power, they still possessed the highest royal credentials and thus it seemed that the
Commagenian dynasty had reached the peak of respectability among the royal houses of the
age. But not before long, the remnants of the Seleukid kingdom were taken over by the greatest
king of the Armenians, Tigranes the Great, who was welcomed by the former Seleukid subjects,
even in the capital, Antiocheia.4
2
The most comprehensive treatments of the Commagenian dynasty are due to Sullivan (1977) and Facella (2006).
3
Diod., 31.19a.
4
Justin, 40.1.1-3.
Creating And Transforming A Dynastic Myth 15
In 70 BC, Mithradates died and left the crown to his son, Antiochos I. This was the age of the
titanic conflict between Mithradates VI of Pontus, Tigranes the Great of Armenia, and Rome.
On their way to battle the Armenian king, the legions of the Republic received the allegiance
of the Commagenian ruler, apparently all too happy to be relieved of his fealty to Tigranes.
Not long afterwards, however, the same Antiochos would be besieged by Pompeius, who was
determined to mould the region according to his vision of an Eastern frontier safeguarded
against the Parthian threat.5 The king found it highly advisable to accept this vision and he was
soon enlisted among the friends of Rome, which he publicised at the top of his voice, adopting
the title Philorhomaios, Rome-lover. He lived long enough to be drawn into the conflict
between Caesar and Pompey. His small detachment of horse archers may have been destroyed
at Pharsalus, fighting on the wrong side,6 but Caesar, the victor, showed his clemency and
took no retaliatory action. Antiochos was to suffer one more siege, led by Antony, but this was
short and was ended with promises of future loyalty and hefty bribes.7 When he died, in 36 BC,
Antiochos left behind him not only a prosperous kingdom, but also a magnificent monument,
the hierothesion of Nemrut Da, of which more will be said shortly.
Other kings followed on the Commagenian throne, until in AD 17, upon the death of Gaius
Iulius Antiochus III, the region was transformed into a Roman province, though the Empire
treated the heirs of the dynasty with all the respect due to royalty. Thus, Antiochos IV befriended
Caligula and was for a brief period of time reinstalled as king of his ancestral domain. This
favour was withdrawn for unknown reasons, but granted to him again by the next emperor,
Claudius. When Vespasianus came to be emperor of Rome, Antiochos saw himself deposed once
again. His descendants lived in wealth and honour, well integrated in the Roman aristocracy.
His nephew Philopappos, for example, would live to be consul under the rule of Trajan and
would commemorate his activity in another crucial monument for this paper, his grandiose
tomb in Athens.
5
App., Mithr., 497. Pliny, in his Nat. Hist. (2.235), hints at another siege, by Lucullus, but he is most likely mistaken. Neither Appian,
nor Plutarch, in their accounts of Lucullus crossing of the Euphrates mention any such military exploit and emphasise, instead, the
speed with which he headed towards Armenia, all the more so as, Appian observes, the locals had no intention to fight or suffer
any damage, waiting rather for Lucullus and Tigranes to solve their dispute amongst themselves (App., Mithr., 377).
6
Caes., BC, 3.4.5.
7
Dion Cass., 49.20-22; Plut., Ant., 34.
It is thus, in two great monuments that the kings of Commagene chose to inscribe their
dynastic myth, the hierothesion of Nemrut Da and the tomb of Philopappos in Athens.
Their comparison will, I believe, yield interesting conclusions about how a dynasty made and
transformed its identity in the course of time.
II. The myth
II.a. Nemrut Da
Both of these monuments are grandiose tombs and both use sculpture and inscriptions to
identify and describe the ancestors of the interred king, informing the audience (Commagenian
subjects in the case of the former, Athenian contemporary co-citizens in the case of the latter)
about the way in which they perceived their ancestry and, consequently, themselves.
The great sanctuary at Nemrut was rediscovered in the nineteenth century and has since
received a great deal of attention. T. Goell provides a synthetic description of the site:
Unique in situation, scale, and plan, the monument occupies an irregular area embracing 2.6 hectares,
and is dominated by a central stone tumulus 50 m. high, its diameter at the base measuring 150 m.
from east to west. It is flanked on the east, west, and north by terraces hewn from the living rock, the
East Terrace being higher than the West by 10 m. The East and West Terrace courts are adorned with
limestone colossi (7-8 m. high) representing Antiochus enthroned beside his tutelary deities, flanked
at each end by guardian lions and eagles. Lining the sides of the courts were walls of sandstone
orthostates with life-size portraits in relief of his ancestors, and of himself being greeted by his gods.
The backs of the colossi and the reliefs bear Greek inscriptions recording genealogies and dedications.8
The list of ancestors on this monument starts with Darius the Great and lists four more
Persian kings, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Dareios II and Artaxerxes II. Next in line is the satrap
Aroandes (generally known from Greek sources as Orontes). There follow a number of satraps
of Sophene, some of whose names are completely lost, and on the thirteenth stele (upright
8
Goell (1957), p. 5.
stone slab) the man who is honoured is the first man to be properly designated as ruler of
Commagene, Ptolemaios. He is in turn followed by his son, Samos, and by his grandson,
Mithradates Kallinikos. Kallinikos is honoured throughout the Nemrud Da complex, as the
father of Antiochos I Theos, and it is with him that the list of paternal ancestors ends.
On his mothers side, Antiochos wished to pay homage first and foremost to Alexander
the Great, then to Seleukos Nikator, Antiochos I Soter, Antiochos II Theos, Demetrios I Soter,
Demetrios II Nikator, and his own wife, Isias Philostorgos. If the lineage presented for the
paternal side is dubious, but not completely irrefutable, the maternal lineage is certainly
fictitious, as there is no blood relation between Alexander and the Seleukid dynasty: all of
Alexanders children had been assassinated before they had a chance to produce offspring and,
besides, the Seleukids themselves advertised their ancestry not from the Argead line, but from
the god Apollo himself. How could, therefore, the Commagenian Orontids claim this lineage?
A possible solution has been put forward by Tarn,9 who, while trying to find the propagandistic
fundament for the Alexander connection claimed by the Bactrian king Agathocles in his pedigree
coinage, suggests there may have existed a legend which made Apama, Seleukos Is wife, into the
daughter of Alexander and Rhoxane. He points out that within the space of a few generations the
chronological asperities of such legends tend to become ignored. It remains curious, however,
that such a gratifying legend has the character of a folk tale and is not picked up by the official
Seleukid propaganda, but only by collateral dynasties, which used this fabricated ancestry to
add another dimension to their dynastic claims and implicitly, to their political ambitions.
The visual setting of the two lists is symptomatic for the dynastic conception of the
Commagenian king, for the two are presented in parallel lines, facing each other over the
causeway, and being given, therefore, equal weight. The king is careful to underline this in
writing as well, for while referring to the Greek and Persian tradition, he calls them the most
fortunate roots of my family.10
9
Tarn (1938), pp. 446-51. Many historians have raised doubts about the validity of Tarns speculations about the
Bactrian kings and their political programme, but this does not detract from the usefulness of his observations
regarding the genesis of the legend about the connection between the Argeads and the Seleukids.
10
IGLSyr1, 1, vv. 30-31.
II.b. Athens
This balanced vision, or, at the very least, this balanced public statement, is discarded in the later
phases of the dynasty, for C. Iulius Antiochus Philopappus chose to be represented on his Athenian
funerary monument in the company of just two male ancestors, identified in the inscriptions
as King Antiochos, son of King Antiochos (which refers, in all probability, to Antiochos IV, his
grandfather, the last true ruler of Commagene)11 and King Seleukos Nikator, son of Antiochos.
Two ancestors stand out by their conspicuous absence: one is Dareios, the other Alexander.
It could be that Philopappos, an educated man, understood the historical asperities of the
stories contained within the dynastic myth and decided to reduce his claims to what was actually
verifiable with documents. However, academic scruples alone could hardly motivate a royal
scion to contradict the official story, inscribed in stone with complete confidence by one of his
ancestors. Perhaps it would be better to seek an explanation through the political context of the
day. Due to the fact that the emperor Trajan is named Optimus, but has only two martial titles,
Dacicus and Germanicus (i.e., he is not yet Parthicus), the monument must have been built
between 114 and 116 AD. At the time, the emperor was waging a successful, but nevertheless
taxing war against the Parthians. The Eastern rivals of Rome made much of the Achaemenid
tradition and, therefore, had Philopappos placed on his tomb an inscription honouring Dareios,
he would have certainly been accused of open Parthian sympathies. Another hypothesis, less
attractive though, is that the dynast was mindful of Athenian sensitivities, since Dareios had
been, after all, one of the great enemies of the city. It is doubtful, however, that in contemporary
Athens the Median Wars still represented an issue with enough political significance to make a
dynast reassess his dynastic origins.
The omission of Alexander had probably been prompted by the status of the Macedonian in
the high imperial age: from a symbol of the despotic monarch in Seneca, he became the epitome
of the virtuous king, who treasures education and who can successfully serve as a role model
for the Roman emperor. At least, these are the main coordinates alongside which his image
is constructed in Dion Chrysostomos series of speeches Peri Basileias. Moreover, it is known
11
IG II, 3451.
that Trajan himself sought to imitate Alexander.12 It is, therefore, not improbable that claiming
descent from the great Macedonian king in that political context would have been assimilated
to putting forward ambitious political claims.
A great difference is therefore to be noted between the dynastic representations of these two
representatives of the Commagenian house: if Antiochos I portrayed himself as great as he

could, through the magnifying glass of his ancestry, C. Iulius Antiochus Philopappus portrayed
himself as great as he could without attracting the wrath of the truly great people of his age in
particular Trajan.
III. Usefulness of the myth
As seen from all of the above, the dynastic conception of the royal houses under scrutiny is
not static, as an immutable truth, but rather fluid, adapting itself to suit the needs of the day,
that is, attracting positive responses from an increasingly diverse audience.
III.a. Dynastic and mythical memory
Given the very detailed character of the genealogy put forward, one must naturally wonder
what the source was for such reconstructions, whether it was oral history we may no longer
possess traces of, internal dynastic narrative, or even Greek written sources.
It is unfortunate that we do not possess examples of aristocratic genealogies apart from
those of the royal houses, but these alone coupled with the numerous attestations of Iranian
names among the aristocracy elsewhere in Anatolia13 are enough to stand as proof that Persian
descent was prestigious. It is hard to tell to what extent the written sources have influenced the
image the royal houses had of themselves, but it is relatively easy to point that there must have
been an independent tradition, preserved by the dynasty itself, given the differences in names
12
Dion Cass., 68.29.
13
Mitchell (2007).
that sometimes appear: the Orontids of Commagene claim descent from Aroandes, a much
closer approximation of the Iranian *Aruuanta than the form or preserved
in the Greek histories.14
III.b. Constructing and projecting the dynastic image
As often happens in politics, merely generating a set of ideas or representations is never
enough. These ideas need to be conveyed to the community in such ways as to be at the same time
comprehensible and acceptable. We possess little evidence for the way in which the dynasties
advertised their descent to their own subjects, but these bits and pieces deserve further analysis.
The imitatio maiorum, the imitation of the ancestors performed in public gestures, is a very
potent message for a monarch to send forth. Echoing an ancestors iconic gestures can be said
to have almost ritual significance, as it places the monarch in a direct line of continuity with the
heroicised ancestor.
The imitation of Alexander was very much in favour. An example of outspoken imitation
of the Macedonian king is offered by the Commagenian prince Antiochos V Epiphanes: in AD
70, he came to the aid of Titus, then involved in the siege of Jerusalem, at the head of a body of
cavalrymen trained from a young age to rival Alexanders Companions.15
However, public gestures such as these were accessible only to a limited number of
people (those who were present at the specific time and place in which the gesture was being
performed) and written accounts could only reach the literate (who in all likelihood represented
a minority in Eastern Anatolia at the time). Monarchs, therefore, needed more potent means of
communicating their ideas regarding ancestry in order to consolidate their power. Thus, they
resorted to artistic depictions, whose appeal cut across social and cultural strata. And now we
must return to our two monuments, and analyse the way in which art was made an ancillary to
dynastic engineering.
14
Facella (2006), p. 104.
15
Ioseph., B.Iud., 5.460.
The architectural complex of Nemrut Da is a very interesting illustration of
architectural eclecticism. The general design gravitates physically and symbolically
around the central mound, which forms in effect the mountaintop, and it is well-
known that Persian kings were said to offer sacrifice in such dramatic spots.16 Yet the
arrangement of the different items that form the complex had been determined after
painstaking calculations inspired by astrology, itself a field of knowledge that resulted
from the osmosis of Oriental and Hellenic influences.
The same process is at work in the creation of the statues that adorn the monument. In terms of
general style, the combination of traditions creates a striking effect. The majestic heaviness of the
volumes of Middle-Eastern inspiration complements well the elegant poses and realistic treatment
of certain bodily features, such as the eyes and beards, inspired from Classical Greek art.
Royal iconography is revealing for the manner in which Commagenian kings (and Antiochos
I in particular) wished to be perceived by the participants in the rituals at Nemrut Da. The
king is portrayed as an equal of the gods, both on the great East and West terraces and on the
bas-reliefs lined next to the colossal sculptures. While there are Oriental precedents to this
imagery, most notably in Egypt, where the Pharaoh is depicted in the same size as gods, thus
implying, according to the rigorous canons of Egyptian art, an equality of status, the idea of
the deified ruler seems rather rooted in the royal Hellenistic ideology. The telling difference is
that in the Commagenian case, we are dealing with the divinisation of the living, rather than
the deceased king, and this idea seems to have been anticipated by Alexanders father, Philip II
of Macedon, who had his own statue paraded alongside those of the twelve Olympian gods, a
gesture that invited the audience to see him as the thirteenth.17
The costume of the king is equally charged from the imagological perspective: the
Commagenian king invariably wears the tiara, a symbol of Oriental in particular Persian
and Armenian regal power entwined with the diadem,18 a symbol of Macedonian kingship.
16
The classical passage referring to this is Hdt., 1.131. There is another interesting passage, in App., Mithr., 276-77,
in which a similar ritual, performed by Mithradates Eupator, is said to have been inspired by the Persian tradition.
17
< >
, , Diod., 16.92.5.
18
Cf. Young (1964) for a detailed discussion of the tiara as symbol of political and divine authority.
The decoration of the tiara varies from one relief to another. It is sometimes decorated with
the image of a lion, sometimes with an eagle flanked by stars or even with a thunderbolt. The
presence of the lion may be explained as a reference to the kings zodiacal sign, while both the
eagle and the thunderbolt may be interpreted as symbols of royalty in Greek key, given that the
eagle was the iconic bird of Zeus and the thunderbolt his weapon of choice. Moreover, these
two symbols are highly reminiscent of Alexander, on whose coins the thunderbolt and eagle
hold a prominent place and who appeared in a painting by Apelles as holding himself the
thunderbolt.19 The rest of the royal attire bears the mark of the same distinctive combination of
traditions: Antiochos wears a tunic with long sleeves and trousers, which are reminiscent of the
Persian tradition, but also a mantle, which is part of the Macedonian kings regular outfit. The
decoration of the tunic features prominently the Macedonian eight-rayed star, laurel leaves
(reminding one of the Greek symbol of Olympic victory) and oak leaves, which in all likelihood
point again to a privileged relation with Zeus-Oromasdes, the king of all gods.
In his left hand the king carries a long sceptre, an ancient Indo-European symbol of royalty,
present both in Achaemenid imagery, and in Greek representations of kings and gods Zeus in
particular. On his right thigh the king has a short sword, of the akinake type, the iconic sidearm
of the Persian soldiers, which in time gained ritual significance, becoming, for example, the
weapon used by the god Mithras to slay the bull.
The visual representation of the king is therefore complementary to his vision as expressed
in epigraphic form and synthesised best in the formula the Persians and the Greeks the
most fortunate roots of my family. The union of the two traditions in the person of the king is
communicated programmatically through the means of monumental art.
Antiochos Is monuments are extremely important, because they are at least for the time being, until
archaeologists uncover new monuments in Eastern Anatolia unique in their quality of being a domestic document:
they are addressed to the kings own subjects, to whom they communicate the kings own vision about the manner
in which his heritage justified his rule, and have been in all likelihood carved by indigenous artisans, whose work
has at least received the final approval from the king personally, if it was not guided to a good degree by him.
19
Plut., Alex., 4.3.
What about Philopappos monument, then? Its style is purely Greek, with no trace of his
ancestors syncretistic taste in art. One might explain that, quite simply, invoking the availability
of local craftsmen, but this is not entirely convincing. After all, the costs of inviting one master
sculptor from the East would have been quite small compared to all the other expenses that
Philopappos incurred while constructing his ample and costly funerary monument. It must
mean, therefore, that he simply did not consider it important to remind his audience of the
artistic tradition of his ancestral domain.
The lower portion of the funerary monument depicts the highlights of Philopappos political
career: a procession in which he, as the consul, is preceded by lictors. His other representation,
the larger-than-life statue, represents him dressed in a fashion which makes him bear a closer
resemblance to good old-fashioned Socrates than to his ancestor, Antiochos I. Thus, it seems,
biculturalism remained a feature within the Commagenian royal house, but while Greek values
endured, the Persian side was conveniently forgotten and replaced by a Roman component.
IV. Success of the myth
At the end of this paper, it may be useful to conclude by asking what was, ultimately, the
success of the strategies employed by the Orontids of Commagene. An anecdote in Josephus
might illuminate this point:
So Antiochos,20 the king of Commagene, died, and there was dissension between the common people
and the nobles. Both sides sent an embassy to Rome, the powerful desiring to change their polity into
a province, while the people wished to be ruled by kings, according to the ancestral custom.21
If the wealthy desired the country to become a Roman province, possibly stimulated by the
prospect of greater economic freedom or eager to obtain greater guarantees of security with
regard to their Eastern neighbour, Parthia, the people wanted to preserve the dynasty and
20
Antiochus III, who died in AD 17.
21
Ioseph., A.Iud., 18.53.
the ways of their forefathers. This, I believe, is the most telling evidence of the success of the
propaganda programme devised by the kings of Commagene.
REFERENCES
Ancient sources
App., Mithr. = Appianus, Mithridatika, in Goukowski, P. (ed.) Appien, Histoire Romaine. La Guerre de Mithridate,
Paris, 2003.
Caes., BC = C. Iulius Caesar, Bellum Civile, in A. Klotz (ed.), C. Iuli Caesaris Commentarii, vol. 2, Leipzig, 1950.
Dion Cass. = Cassius Dio, Historiae Romanae, in U.P. Boissevain (ed.), Cassii Dionis Cocceiani historiarum
Romanarum quae supersunt, 3 vols., Berlin, 1895-1901.
Diod. = Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheke Historike, in F. Vogel and K.T. Fischer (eds.), Diodori bibliotheca historica,
5 vols., Stuttgart, 1964.
Hdt. = Herodotos, Historiai, in Ph.-E. Legrand (ed.), Hrodote: Histoires, 9 vols., Paris, 1932-1968.
IGLSyr I = Jalabert, L. and R. Mouterde (eds.) Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, I. Commagne et
Cyrrhestique, Paris, 1929.
IG II = Kirchner, Johannes (ed.) Inscriptiones Graecae II et III: Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores, 2d
ed., Berlin, 1913-1940.
Ioseph., A.Iud. = Iosephus, Antiquitates Iudaicae, in B. Niese (ed.), Flavii Iosephi opera, 4 vols., Berlin, 1887-1890.
____., B.Iud. = Flavius Iosephus, Bellum Iudaicum, in B. Niese (ed.), Flavii Iosephi opera, 4 vols., Berlin, 1887-1890.
Justin = Iustinus, Epitoma Historiarum Philipicarum Pompei Trogi, in Marcus Junianus Justinus: Abrg des
Histoires Philippiques de Trogue Pompe, ed. and trans. Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, 2003. http://www.
forumromanum.org/literature/justin/index.html, retrieved 10.02.2012.
Plin., Nat. Hist. = C. Plinius Secundus, Naturalis Historia, in Roderich Knig et al. (eds.), Plinius Secundus d.
. - Naturkunde, Darmstadt, 1973-2004.
Plut., Alex. = Plutarch, Vita Alexandri, in K. Ziegler (ed.), Plutarchi vitae parallelae, vol. 2.2, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1968.
____., Ant. = Plutarch, Vita Antonii, in K. Ziegler (ed.), Plutarchi vitae parallelae, vols. 1-2, 3rd ed., Leipzig, 1964.
Modern literature
Facella, Margherita. La Dinastia degli Orontidi nella Commagene ellenistico-romana. Pisa, 2006.
Goell, Theresa. The Excavation of the Hierothesion of Antiochus I of Commagene on Nemrud Dagh
(1953-1956). Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 147 (1957): 4-22.
Mitchell, Stephen. Iranian Names and the Presence of Persians in the Religious Sanctuaries of Asia Minor. In
Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics: 151-71. Ed. E. Matthews. Proceedings of the British Academy
148. Oxford, 2007.
Sullivan, Richard. The Dynasty of Commagene. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der rmischen Welt, II.8: 732-98.
Ed. H. Temporini and W. Haase. Berlin, 1977.
Tarn, William W. The Greeks in Bactria and India. Cambridge, 1938.
Young, John H. Commagenian Tiaras: Royal and Divine. American Journal of Archaeology 68.1 (1964): 29-34.
Fighting an Ever Dying Enemy:
Western Perspectives On Persians
And Parthians
Leonardo GREGORATTI
Udine University
Abstract From the mid-first century BC, when Crassuss legions suffered a disastrous
defeat on the open steppes of northern Mesopotamia, until the early decades
of the third century AD, Romes expansionist goals in the East were fiercely opposed by the Parthians.
What is now known about the history and structure of the Parthian kingdom is mainly based on the
incomplete and largely stereotyped accounts given by Roman and Greek writers of the Imperial Era.
Influenced by the attitude of the Classical Greek writers towards the Persians and by the needs of the
Imperial propaganda, they depicted the Arsacid Empire as a weak opponent, lacking strong leadership
and permanently on the brink of collapse as a consequence of internal struggle. Many modern scholars
began to question this perspective. Modern research attempts to abandon the description that Roman
writers offered that of a weak Oriental empire trying to set aside the myths and prejudices which the
Europeans shared concerning great kingdoms of the Near East in every period.
Keywords Parthian Kingdom, Achaemenids, Rome, Ottoman Empire, Greek

historiography, Roman propaganda.
According to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, the British ambassador to St. Petersburg, it was
Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia in 1853, in the run up to the Crimean War, who first spoke about the
Ottoman Empire utilizing the well-known expression sick man of Europe. More precisely
the Russian emperor referring to the Sublime Porte, which was increasingly falling under the
financial control of the European powers and had lost territory in a series of disastrous wars,
26 Leonardo Gregoratti
stated: It is a sick man, a very sick man, a man who has fallen into a state of decrepitude.1
Four centuries after the fall of Constantinople, the Turkish hordes no longer represented
a threat for the European countries. By that time, the fierce and dreadful warrior who had
previously fought at Mohcs and Vienna, the gates of Western world, and had threatened to
conquer all of Christian Europe, had come to be perceived as a weak and indolent old man,
slowly progressing towards the inevitable end.2
This idea of a once powerful oriental empire now depicted as sick and dying was not at
all new among Western writers and historians. In the view of most Western observers, the
empire built by the Ottoman Turks on the ruins of the Eastern Roman Empire had shared,
since its inception, most of the characteristics (or topoi, if one is to use literary terminology)
which Europeans had ascribed in the course of history to any Oriental state: the vastness of its
domains, the exotic luxury, the flaunted opulence, the despotism, the intrinsic weakness, the
extreme instability of its monarchs (and of any form of central authority, for that matter), the
intermingling of private and public life in the secret chambers of the harem, where intrigue,
seduction and murder constituted natural means of political action.
Exploring the origins of this characterization based on sheer prejudice and applied to any
large kingdom in western Asia, takes us back in time to the work of none other than the Father
of History, Herodotus, who in his Historiai describes to a Greek audience the history, the
culture, the customs, and the administrative structure of the neighbouring kingdom of Persia,
ruled by the powerful Achaemenids, the first serious threat to Greek cities coming from the
East, in other words the other par excellence.
Discussing the Greek historians approach to the Achaemenid state, Arnaldo
Momigliano wrote: There was no effort to see what kept the empire together behind
1
In a letter from SirGeorge Hamilton Seymour to LordJohn Russell: Temperley(1936), p. 272. Source: Parliamentary
Papers. Accounts and Papers: Thirty-Six Volumes: Eastern Papers, V. Session 31 January-12 August 1854, Vol. LXXI
(1854), doc. 1, p. 2. The actual use of the expression sick man by the Russian monarch is still is disputed. What is
certain, nevertheless, is that the reference to Europe appears to have been added later and may very well have been a
journalistic misquotation. The first appearance of the phrase as such is in theNew York Times(12 May 1860).
2
Cirakman (2002).
Fighting an Ever Dying Enemy 27
the administrative faade.3 Thus, from the very beginnings of Western historiography,
within the framework of Greek historical investigation, there arose a series of tales,
legends, and pseudo-historical episodes, some patently fictitious.4 These narrations
dealt mainly with the exercise of power, the role of the king and the relationship
between the sovereign and his court, and were fundamental in developing the Western
mythos of the Oriental Empire: a stereotype which, due to the scarcity of local sources
or, more often, due to ignorance concerning the Oriental world, survived until at least
the nineteenth century.
Even though many of the accounts Herodotus records had no historical foundation,5 they
were used by later authors to prove the superiority of the Greek world in comparison to the
Oriental one, particularly underlining the fact that the democratic solution the most original
contribution to world politics made by the Hellenic culture was the best and most successful
form of government, standing in stark contrast with the despotism of the Eastern monarchs.6
In this regard, it is significant how the Greek historians represented or, indeed, imagined
the way in which the king made his political decisions and in particular the role of women
within the Persian court. As early as the reign of Xerxes7 (spurred, no doubt, by his unsuccessful
attempt to conquer Greece), Hellenic historiographers began to consider the Achaemenid court
as weakened by luxury and wealth. Persian policy and royal decisions were, in the eyes of the
Greeks, strongly influenced by palace intrigues.8 According to Herodotus, for example, the
political influence of Queen Atossa9 on her husband, the Great King Darius, was so strong
that she was able to induce him to make war on the Greeks, because she wanted to have Attic,
Argive, and Corinthian maidservants.10
3
Momigliano (1979), p. 150.
4
Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1993), p. 22.
5
Snodgrass (1980), p. 168.
6
Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1993), pp. 32-33.
7
Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1989).
8
Amestris: Hdt. 9.110-112; Ctesias, FGrH 688 F 14 (36, 39, 42-43); F 15 (51, 54-55); Deinon FGrH 690 F 15b; D1 105;
Plut., Art., 14.10; 16.1; 17.1; 19.2-3; 23.1.
9
Hdt., 7.69.2; Hdt., 7.3.2; Schmitt, Atossa, (1987), pp. 13-14; Tourraix (1976), pp. 377-380; Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1993), p. 25.
10
Hdt., 3.134.1; Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1993), pp. 24-25; Brosius (1996), p. 107.
In Herodotus, the desire for power of the Persian queens was linked to the stereotypical idea
which the Greeks had about Oriental despotism. Those women could be strong because the
kings, their husbands and sons, were weak. Herodotus so called harem tales, i.e. episodes of
court life featuring merciless queens as protagonists, suggested to the Hellenic reader that a
state where women wielded such influence on the kings could not be a properly ruled state.11
The Persians described by Herodotus and Ctesias (a Greek physician who lived and worked at
the Great Kings court)12 were decadent because they let their women have a voice in political
affairs. A state ruled by women instead of men, the Greeks reasoned, could not be a healthy
state. This was the main symptom of the decaying condition in which the Achaemenid Empire
found itself: a state once powerful, feared and healthy, was now weak and diseased.
It would be going too far to ascribe to Herodotus the intentional invention of this sort
of decadent portrait of the Persian Empire. Nonetheless, the historical information and
in particular the references to luxury, pomp, alcoholism, polygamy, and court conflicts
contained in his work were predominantly used by later writers to depict the Persians as
a society in full decay, who lost the austerity and the strength they had when Cyrus had
founded the empire.13 For Plato, the balance between royal power and slavery on the one hand
and freedom on the other, which had been preserved by Cyrus, had been gradually lost under
his successors.14 The princes of the Persian court had been educated in luxury and indolence
since Xerxes time, that is to say, since the women of the court had assumed responsibility for
educating the future leaders.15
According to Xenophon, a problem of education was also the basis of the alleged military
decadence of the Persians during the 4th century BC.16 The Achaemenids were no longer able
11
Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1993), p. 22.
12
Ctesias, FGrH 688 F 15 (48-50); Auberger (1993), p. 263-267; Brosius (1996), p. 100-112; Lenfant, (1996), pp. 348-80.
13
Bichler and Rollinger (2000), p. 223-227 and 269-277; Bichler and Rollinger (2000), p. 87-90; Bichler and Rollinger
(2002); Rollinger (2004).
14
Plato, Leges, 3.693c 697e.
15
Plato, Leges, 3.697c 698a; Briant (1989), pp. 33-34.
16
An idea already present in Herodotus, for example in 5.49-50, where Persian military weakness is put in direct
relation with their legendary wealth; Briant (1989), p. 38.
to plan a military campaign without employing Greek mercenaries.17 Preferring to live in the
luxury and opulence typical of the Medes18 they gave up training as warriors through hunting
and physical exercises,19 resulting in their military inferiority, a topic picked up again by the
Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, a great supporter of pan-Hellenism and a vociferous promoter
of the war against the Great King.20
It seems clear that the main purpose of Plato, Xenophon and Isocrates was not to provide a
reliable historical portrait. Their intentions were, of course, ideological. So their description of
the Persian reality was conceived in order to better explain and show their political ideas and
their message. For these authors, dealing with Achaemenid policy was a merely a rhetorical
device, an instrument they deployed to make more convincing their speeches concerning
contemporary Greek policy.
New approaches to Persian history, recuperating local, Oriental sources, helped
establish that the Achaemenid Empire was not the sick state described by many Greek
writers at any point in the fourth century, not even in 334 BC, when Alexander launched
his Oriental expedition.
About five centuries later, another Western power, the Roman Empire, was once again facing
a powerful Oriental enemy: the Parthians.21 In the war against two of Romes most dangerous
enemies, Mithridates, King of Pontus, and his ally Tigranes of Armenia, Pompey the Great
occupied Syria (first century BC), thus dealing the coup de grace to the Seleucid dynasty, which
had been severely weakened when, just a few years previously, the Armenian king had expelled
them from their last Syrian possessions. Rome inherited the Seleucid territory and its enemies
as well. These included, beyond the Euphrates, the Parthians, who were forced to abandon their
plans of conquering Syria and reaching the Mediterranean coast after Romes intervention.22
17
Xen., Cyr., 8.8. 22; 24-27; Briant (1989), p. 35.
18
Xen., Cyr., 8.8. 15.
19
Xen., Cyr., 8.8. 8-12; 16-17.
20
Isocr., Paneg., 4.141; 150-151; 162; 165; 184; Philipp., 5.126 ; followed by Arr., Anab., 3.22.2-3; Briant (1989), pp. 36-38.
21
In general on the history of the Parthian Kingdom: Debevoise (1938); Schippmann (1980); Bivar (1983), p. 21-99;
Dabrowa (1983); Frye (1984); Wolski (1993); Wiesehfer (1994).
22
Plut., Pomp., 39.3. In general on the Roman presence in the East, see the fundamental: Millar (1993); Sartre (2001).
Also useful: Ball (2000); Butcher (2003).
In 53 BC, Crassuss legions suffered a disastrous defeat in northern Mesopotamia. From that
time until the early decades of the third century AD, Romes expansionist goals in the East
were fiercely opposed by the Parthians. The kingdom of the Parthians was established a few
decades after Alexanders death, in central Asia, close to the remotest borders of the Seleucid
Empire. Its monarchs were members of the Arsacid dynasty and were able to gain the best
advantages from the weakening of the house of Seleucos and the consequent disintegration
of that huge Hellenistic state. They managed to spread their control over large territories of
Southern Asia. The Parthian heavy cavalry, after overrunning the whole of the Iranian plateau,
Babylonia and Mesopotamia, stopped on the Eastern bank of the Euphrates River, which was
to remain the Western limit of Arsacid expansion. For more than three centuries, the Euphrates
constituted the dividing line between two superpowers struggling for supremacy in western
Asia: Rome and Parthia.23
Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Plutarch have dedicated large portions of their works to the narrative
of Romes policy in the East, dealing in detail with the events connected with the difficult
cohabitation with the barbarians beyond the Euphrates and with the struggle for supremacy
in Western Asia. Due to the general scarcity of Parthian (and, in general, Oriental sources), our
knowledge of the Parthian kingdom and its administrative structure depends almost exclusively
on the stereotyped accounts drawn up by Roman and Greek writers. Unfortunately, they were
interested almost exclusively in the Arsacid provinces closest to the Roman borders and in the
historical episodes more closely connected with Romes policy.24
Charlotte Lerouges recent work, Limage des Parthes dans le monde grco-romain
demonstrated that the Roman concept of the Arsacid kingdom and its inhabitants, its
organization and culture, is a rchauff utilising several of those same old elements, which
had been previously ascribed by Classical Greek historians to their Persian enemies.25 In this
23
As described by Velleius Paterculus, witness of the meeting on an island in the middle of the river between Gaius
Caesar and the Parthian Great King Phraates V (1/2 AD); Velleius Paterculus, 2.101.2-3; Cassius Dio, 55. 10.18-19;
Suetonius, Tiberius, 12.2; Orosius Adversum Paganos, 7.3.4; Ziegler (1964), p. 53-54; Zetzel, (1970), p. 259-266; Romer,
(1974), pp. 171-173; Luther (2010), pp. 103-127.
24
For the sources concerning the history of the Parthian Kingdom: Wiesehfer (1998) and the recent Hack, Jacobs and
Weber (2010).
25
Lerouge (2007), pp. 349-363.
context, the Parthians, much like the Achaemenids five centuries before, were described as a
decadent people, addicted to luxury and pleasure.
The fabulous retinues of men, animals and carriages which accompanied General Surena
on the field of Carrhae26 and Tiridates, the Arsacid prince who travelled from Parthia to Rome
in order to be confirmed on the throne of Armenia by Emperor Nero,27 caught the imagination
of the contemporary Romans and found a place in the chronicles of later historians. Recurring
references to Arsacid wealth, luxurious banquets and clothing can be also found in the works of
Pompeius Trogus,28 Tacitus,29 Philostratus,30 and Herodian.31 Other common features attributed
to the Parthians were the despotism of their kings,32 their insatiable sexual appetite,33 and
political instability:34 all of these elements had already been attributed to the Persian monarchs
by Greek writers.
Roman historians were faced with a difficult task: having to provide the Western public with a
representation of the only people daring to challenge Romes supremacy over the whole known
world. They found that the best solution was to provide a moral representation of the Parthians
using the same stereotypes which the Greeks had conceived and handed down with regard
to their enemies. A series of familiar ethnographic topoi were picked up and amalgamated
in order to create a new artificial model for the Parthian people.35 Nonetheless, such a model
proved useful in describing to the Romans this exotic people, capable of building a kingdom
which, unlike all the others, Rome was not immediately able to subjugate, a kingdom which
forced the greatest empire of that time to compromise.
Similarly to what happened to the Persians after they failed to conquer Greece, the Parthians
26
Plut., Crass., 21.6-9.
27
Cassius Dio, 62.1-2.
28
Just., 41.2.4.
29
Tac., Ann., 2.57.
30
Philostr., Ap. Tyana, 1.25; 30; 33-34.
31
Herod., 3.4.8; 9.11; 4.10.4; 11.3; 11.6; 15.3; Lerouge (2007), p. 450.
32
Just., 41.3.9; Plut., Luc., 21.5-6; Tac., Ann., 12.10.2.
33
Just., 41.3.1; Plut., Crass., 21.7; Joseph., B.Iud., 7.247.
34
Just., 42.4.1-4; 5.1-2.
35
Lerouge (2007), pp. 262-267.
also began to be described as a weak and inconstant people, after the defeat the Romans suffered
at Carrhae (53 BC), when the leadership of the universal Roman state was forced to admit the
existence of something beyond Rome. The needs of imperial propaganda thus imposed an ideal
representation of the other: the Parthian state could not be allowed to be perceived as a viable
political alternative.
The Parthians, the Oriental enemies, were thus for the Roman historians the New Persians,
heirs of the Achaemenids in the East, while the Roman Empire stood as the defender of the
Western culture, much like the Athenians of old.
Unlike the Persian Empire, which experienced a period of economic prosperity just after the
Greek wars, at the beginning of the first century AD, the Arsacid Empire reached the peak of a
long-lasting condition of social and institutional instability. The Parthian aristocracy succeeded
in overriding the Kings authority. Monarchs were maintained with the only intent of providing
a formal legitimacy for the power gained by one or the other among the aristocratic groups.
Parthia was torn by the competition between the two main noble factions: on the one hand,
the Oriental families were always engaged in the struggle against nomadic invaders from
Central Asia; on the other hand, the Mesopotamian families were connected with the Greek
urban aristocracy and were well-disposed towards a settlement with Rome. Both groups were
interested in weakening the crown in order to extend their own power and to consolidate their
independence from the king.36
The Roman chroniclers failed to understand the causes of this internal struggle, preferring
to adopt a more superficial explanation, based on well-known stereotypes regarding the
Oriental barbarians. Tacitus words concerning the Parthian attitude towards their kings, for
example, appear significant in this regard. After the end of the reign of King Phraates (4 AD)
some Parthian nobles sent envoys to Rome in order to ask Augustus to send as new king
Vonones, one of the Arsacid princes since many years living in Rome (6-8 AD).37 Tacitus states:
36
Wolski (1980), p. 141; Wolski (1981/1984), p. 13-21; Boyce (1994), p. 241-251.
37
Joseph., A.Iud., 18.46-47; Suet., Tib., 16.1; Res Gestae 33; Tac. Ann., 2.1-3; 6.36 and 6.42; Cass. Dio, 40.15.3-4; Debev-
oise (1938), p. 151; Kahrstedt (1950), p. 17-18; Ziegler (1964), p. 56; Pani (1972), p. 125; Angeli Bertinelli (1979), p. 53;
Schippmann (1980), p. 49; Dbrowa (1983), pp. 44-45; Frye (1984), p. 237; Sellwood (1980), typ. 60, pp. 194-195; Wolski
(1993), p. 150.
The barbarians received him joyfully, as is usual with new rulers. Soon they felt shame at
Parthians having become degenerate, at having sought a king from another realm.38 Great
King Artabanus II was well aware of this mental attitude of the Parthians toward their rulers.
After being overthrown by a coup dtat supported by Roman authorities (35-36 AD),39 he
sought refuge by fleeing to the easternmost provinces of the empire hoping that the Parthians,
who do not hate the ruler who is afar, but are ever ready to betray him who is near at hand,
might come to regret their previous deeds.40 At a later time, Caius Cassius Longinus, governor
of Syria, was commissioned to escort the young prince Meherdates (49 AD) to the bank of the
Euphrates.41 Having encamped at Zeugma, where the river was most easily fordable, they
awaited the arrival of the chief men of Parthia and of Acbarus (Abgar), king of the Arabs.
There, the governor reminded Meherdates that the impulsive enthusiasm of barbarians soon
flags from delay or even changes into treachery, and that therefore he should urge on his
enterprise.42 In fact, in the course of the Eastern campaign, Izates king of the Adiabeni and
then Abgar of the Arabs deserted with their troops, with their countrymens characteristic
fickleness, writes Tacitus, confirming previous experience, that barbarians prefer to seek a
king from Rome rather than to keep him.43
Tacitus point of view demonstrates that the Roman explanation for the condition of
political crisis in Parthia was ascribed to the very nature of the barbarians. In the absence
of a real historical investigation, the temporary weakness of the Arsacids was seen as a
natural consequence of their whimsical and inconstant nature. The Parthians were seen to
be politically unstable, because they were unfaithful, treacherous and unable to consolidate
a kingdom always on the brink to collapse. 44 According to the Romans, the reality could
38
Tac., Ann., 2.1-2: Et accepere barbari laetantes , ut ferme ad nova imperia. mox subiit pudor: degeneravisse Parthos; petitum
alio ex orbe regem [].
39
Tac., Ann., 6.36-37; Schippmann (1980), p. 52; Bivar (1983), pp. 73-74; Dbrowa (1983), pp. 90-91; Dbrowa (1989),
pp. 317-318; Wolski (1993), p. 161; Olbrycht (1998), pp. 151-155.
40
Tac., Ann., 6.36.
41
Tac., Ann., 12.10-14; Bivar (1983), pp. 76-77; Dbrowa (1983), pp. 121-122.
42
Tac., Ann., 12.12: Cassius []monet Meherdaten barbarorum impetus acres cunctatione languescere aut in perfidiam mu-
tari: ita urguere coepta.
43
Tac., Ann., 12.14: levitate gentili, et quia exprimentis cognitum est barbaros malle Roma petere reges quam habere.
44
Lerouge (2007), pp. 267-270.
not be different: the Parthian kingdom was weak because the nature of its monarchs and
subjects was weak.
Such a short-sighted approach did not allow Western historians to understand the
transformations which took place within the Parthian society starting from the second half of
the first century AD. Vologaeses I, who ruled from 51 AD, was able to strengthen the Crowns
presence across the land and the trade routes, effectively eliminating the overwhelming
influence of the aristocracy.45 By making his two brothers, monarchs in Armenia and in Media
Atropatene, associates to the throne, he conferred stability to the top of the state structure,
setting the foundation for the success of his rule. From this time on, the royal institution was
able to face any situation of international crisis.
Over the course of the following 170 years of almost incessant confrontation, Rome tried several
times to cross the boundary of the Euphrates in order to extend its power and influence over
Armenia and Mesopotamia and deprive its rival of these strategic areas. Vologaeses was able to
defeat the Romans after a long war in Armenia and his successors managed to oppose all military
campaigns which the Emperors launched against the heart of the Parthian kingdom. Parthia
managed to resist the Romans at the maximum of their power without crumbling to pieces.
It seems clear that the long-lived propagandistic myth of the intrinsic weakness of all Oriental
empires caused the Romans to underestimate their oriental adversarys capacity for recovery.
The same mistakes were repeated many centuries later in the years following the First World
War, by European powers eager to share the spoils of an Ottoman empire which had been sick
for a long time, but was perhaps too hastily declared dead.
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The Protobulgarians: Old Theories,
New Myths and the Phenomenon of
Parahistory In Post-Communist Bulgaria
Alexandar Nikolov
St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia
Abstract The question of the origin of modern Bulgarians was a scientific, but also
a political issue as early as the nineteenth century, at the time of the so-called
National Awakening. The alleged or real role of the Proto-Bulgarians in the foundation of medieval
Bulgaria and their relation to modern Bulgarians was a subject of heated debate among Bulgarian and
international intellectuals and a political issue, related to Russian Panslavist propaganda and its opponents.
The issue of the Proto-Bulgarians continued to be a subject of contention after the liberation of the country
from the Ottoman rule. A generation of younger scientists in the beginning of the twentieth century started
to emphasize the contribution of the non-Slavic Bulgars in the historical process. Following the Second
World War, the Proto-Bulgarians were neglected for a long time: their role and presence during the medieval
period was minimized for purely political reasons. The balance tipped in the other direction in the 1970s,
when Communist Internationalism and Pro-Soviet Panslavism were slowly replaced by the nationalism of
the Late Communist regime. After the political changes of 1989, research on the Proto-Bulgarians turned into
a crucial point in many nationalist, but also pro-Western debates. Many authors started to deny completely
the supposed Turkic origin of the Bulgars, emphasizing their probable Iranian (Aryan) roots. Another group
of intellectuals and scientists tried to present modern Bulgarians as direct descendants of these non-Slavic
Bulgars, thus supporting the pro-Western orientation of the country and expressing their negative attitude
towards pro-Soviet and pro-Russian past of the country. The myth of the wild Asiatic horde is slowly
replaced by the myth of the highly civilized Bulgars and the first Europeans the modern Bulgarians.
Keywords parahistory, palaeo-nationalism, nationalism, propaganda
The democratic political changes of 1989 throughout Eastern Europe coincided with the
beginning of a major technological revolution. These two factors helped develop a phenomenon
to which one could apply a conventional label of parahistory. A plethora of theories emerged
with almost no concern for scientific probity in scholarly research and in quasi-scientific
writings, and increasing options for dissemination in printed and electronic form meant they
38 Alexandar Nikolov
reached an increasingly wide public. These theories included the most extravagant opinions,
especially in the field of history. In this field, there were many publications which had not
emerged from academic circles and were radically at odds with the widely accepted opinions
upheld by the official historiography. Perhaps they were sparked by the general trend set
by the attempts to rethink and deconstruct national mythology and national narrative from
the perspective of liberalism and postmodernism. However, there parahistorical theories
challenge the validity of all academic science, in all its varieties, and label all the works
produced by academics as a desire to conceal the truth about the history of the Bulgarian
people, or of any other Eastern-European nation, for that matter. The seeds of this manner
of thinking could be found in the practice of totalitarian regimes to seek support in large-
scale manipulation and falsification of the past. Therefore, studies in this area were under
strong quasi-academic and political control. The official historiography played an important
role in the imposition of certain political directions, which it justified using more or less by
scientific arguments. These circumstances, combined with the collapse of the old regime led
to a serious shaking of its authority after 1989. Another factor to be taken into consideration
is the total restructuring of the nationalist paradigm in the context of globalization, certain
elements of the crisis of the nation-state and the creation of post-national constellation.1
In Eastern Europe, the parahistoric discourse is largely the creation of social and political
changes which have caused much distress there, but in other societies, it finds its expression
as a result of the pressure brought about by the world risk society.2
This paper is the result of a long period of research on the parahistoric discourse in Bulgaria,
in particular that related to the Proto-Bulgarian Studies, one of the major mythourgical fields
in Bulgarian historiography since its emergence during the nineteenth century. In the course
of the preliminary research, the author has encountered very similar manifestations in many
historiographical and parahistoric publications, throughout the region. Thus, a comparative
study of a number of paradigms frequently encountered in this type of publications would
1
Habermas (1998).
2
Beck (1999).
The Protobulgarians: Old Theories, New Myths 39
enable us to create a framework of interpretation for this phenomenon and would provide an
answer to numerous questions. It would also create a typology of the messages propagated by
these theories and help identify its intended audience. Moreover, it would help to understand
the reasons behind its popular success and even its political influence among certain nationalistic
organisations and circles.
Theories of Bulgarian ethnogenesis as a political tool
As already mentioned, Proto-Bulgarian Studies in Bulgaria have already been investigated
from this prospective. Issues such as the ethnogenesis of modern Bulgarians, the role
played by the non-Slavic Bulgars in the formation of the later Bulgarian ethnic community,
as well as their role in the formation of medieval Bulgaria, played a significant role not only
in Bulgarian historical science, but also in the formation of Bulgarian nationalism and the
official ideology of modern Bulgaria. During the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, there
were bitter disputes among supporters and opponents of the Proto-Bulgarian dominance in
early Bulgarian history. The supporters of this idea emphasized the key role played by the
Bulgars in the historical process throughout the Middle Ages and attempted to link modern
Bulgaria (as well as modern Bulgarians) to the Proto-Bulgarian heritage. The opponents
of this idea emphasized the obvious linguistic and cultural vicinity of modern Bulgarians
with the wider Slavic community. This debate emerged during the nineteenth century and
involved not only Bulgarian scholars and intellectuals, but also foreign academics. Johann
Christian von Engel,3 Yuri Venelin,4 K. Jireek,5 Marin Drinov,6 and Gavril Krystevich7 are
only a few of those who supported one stance or another in their works. The debate also
reflected the political ambitions of Russia and Austro-Hungary in the Balkans, as each
great power sought its own answer to the Eastern Question, i.e. acquiring the territories
3
Engel (1797).
4
Venelin (1829).
5
Jireek (1876).
6
Drinov (1872), p. 210-238.
7
Krystevich (1869).
held by the Ottoman Empire. A third theory emerged in the process, which stated that
Bulgarians were, in fact, an autochthonous people of the Balkans, direct descendants of the
Thraco-Illyrians and ancient Macedonians (who were regarded as non-Greeks), and thus
possessing full rights to live in the Balkans side by side with their prominent Greek, Serbian
and Romanian neighbours and rivals.
The Turko-Tatar or Turkic theory for the origin of the Proto-Bulgars and modern Bulgarians was
refuted by most of the Bulgarian historians and intellectuals in favour of the Slavic option. It was
extremely popular, however, in Greece and Serbia, among certain nationalistic circles, trying to present
their Bulgarian neighbours as Asiatic, Barbarian, thus not belonging to the civilised Europeans.
In fact, Engel, who could be regarded as the founder of the Turko-Tatar theory, was a typical
scholar of the late eighteenth century, even though he may have been influenced by some
political objectives of the Habsburg Empire in the Balkans. His main point was that, despite
the fact that modern Bulgarians belong to the Slavic linguistic community, their ancestors were
a Turko-Tatar people. In his opinion, the general trend in the history of the Bulgarians was
the process of their Slavicisation, linked with the activities of SS. Cyril and Methodius and the
process of Christianization in medieval Bulgaria. Nevertheless, even the modern Bulgarians,
being Tatar descendants are closer by blood to the Turks and the Hungarians, than to the
Serbians and the Russians. The only solution for them would be liberation from the Turkish
yoke....a human, European, Hungarian rule, in short words: realization of the title King of
Hungary and Bulgaria. The obvious bias of Engels theory and the political awkwardness of
a theory proposing close relations between the Bulgarian Christian reaya and their Ottoman
masters meant Engels views could not hope to gain much popularity among the Bulgarian
intellectuals. It was, however, accepted and used as a propaganda tool by some nationalist
voices among Bulgarias neighbours.8
As already mentioned, the Slavic theory proposed for the origin of the Bulgarians enjoyed
much more favour. This theory was rooted in the Slavic Renaissance tradition and in the Bulgarian
Late Medieval literature. In 1601, the Ragusan abbot Mauro Orbini stressed that the Bulgarians
8
Engel (1797), p. 60-61.
were Slavs, having their distant origin in Scandinavia, and that they migrated later in the basin
of the Volga River. There, they accepted the name Vulgarians and one branch of this people
later migrated to the Balkans.9 This picture of the early Bulgarian migrations was widely popular
(especially the argument linking their name to the Volga) and went largely unchallenged until the
twentieth century. This theory was embraced by Paisij Hilendarski, Spiridon Gabrovski and other
early revivalist authors among the Bulgarians. It has also received support from Jovan Raij a
Serbian theologian and historian, who compiled a history of different Slavic nations, mostly the
Bulgarians, the Croats and the Serbs. Using generally linguistic arguments, Raij supported the
Slavic theory of the origin of the Bulgarians (not surprisingly, perhaps, as he was a Serb, while his
father was a Bulgarian from Vidin) and refuted the Turko-Tatar theory, as well as the theories
about the identity between the Bulgarians and the Valachs (Romanians), also encountered in the
works of several eighteenth century German scholars.10 A most radical approach to this topic may
be found in the writings of Yurij Venelin, an Ukrainian and Russian writer, who not only stated
the total identity between the ancient and modern Bulgarians as Slavs, but also presented them
as a branch of the Russian nation.11 Venelins theory was very influential among the Bulgarian
intelligentsia during the first half of the nineteenth century. For example, it was embraced by V.
Aprilov, a representative of the first wave of Bulgarian nationalists, confronted mostly with Greek
nationalism and the Greek cultural and ecclesiastical dominance among the Bulgarians.
The Turko-Tatar theory, however, gained support within some nationalist circles in Greece
and Serbia, in an environment of competition among the corresponding nationalist movements.
One of the main arguments of these circles in Greece was that the Proto-Bulgarians were a
wild Asiatic horde of nomadic invaders, while modern Bulgarians were a mere continuation
of a Barbarian mix of Slavs and Proto-Bulgars. Thus, they did not belong to the family of the
European Christian nations, and their aspirations for influence in Macedonia and Thrace and for
the restoration of their independent Church and state should not be supported. One author went
as far as stating that these claims should also be avoided because of the Panslavist propaganda
9
Orbini (1601), p. 50.
10
Raij (1796), pp. 72-76.
11
Venelin (1829), pp. 198-199.
of Russia, which supported their aspirations against the historical rights of the noble Hellenic
race (Joannis Kalostypis).12 The Serbian views on this matter presented the Proto-Bulgarians also
as wild Tatars, who conquered a large group of Slavic (i.e. Serbian) tribes and created a mighty
Barbarian state during the early Middle Ages. These Tatar-Bulgarians, however, reduced their
ethnic presence only to the northeast corner of the Balkans (i.e. Dobrudzha or Scythia Minor). The
rest of the territory continued to be inhabited by Serbians or Serbo-Bulgarians (Milo Milojevi).13
Such theories provoked parallel parahistoric myths among the Bulgarian intellectuals and
political leaders. Thus, Georgi Rakovski, one of the first prominent Bulgarian writers, political
leaders and journalists, coined the theory according to which the Bulgarians were an autochthonous
population of the Balkans, known to the ancient writers as Thracians and Macedonians. The Old
Bulgarian language preceded even the Sanskrit language (in fact, he stated, all Indo-European,
or Aryan, peoples originated from Hindistan, but they had migrated to Europe in prehistoric
times). Consequently, Alexander the Great, Philip II and even Aristotle were of Bulgarian origin,
and Thracians, Macedonians, Slavs and Bulgarians were simple synonyms.14 The attempt of
a scientific debate on these matters among the Bulgarian intellectuals in the 1860s and 1870s
brought about the clash between Gavril Krystevich and Marin Drinov. The former, being not only
an intellectual, but also a highly positioned Ottoman clerk, defended the view that the ancient
Bulgarians were connected to the Huns and the Eurasian nomadic world. This theory implicitly
supported some neo-Ottoman views, trying to incorporate closely the Christian subjects of the
Empire in the spirit of Tanzimat.15 The main opponent of Krystevich turned to be Marin Drinov,
a Bulgarian who taught at the Universities of Harkov and Kiev. He fiercely attacked the views of
Krystevich, proving that modern Bulgarians were Slavs, whose ancestors migrated to the Balkans
during the late Antiquity from modern Russia (thus being closely related to the Russians). Even
the small non-Slavic horde of the Proto-Bulgars migrated from the basin of the Volga and was
quickly absorbed by the Slavic majority.16 In his view, the theories put forward by both Krystevich
12
Kalostypis (1993), p. 107.
13
Milojevi (1872).
14
Rakovski (1984), pp. 379-380.
15
Aretov (2006), pp. 122-123; Stamatopoulos (2009), pp. 146-182.
16
Drinov (1872), p. 210-238.
and Rakovki were total nonsense, which deserved nothing better than to be refuted and omitted.
Drinovs theory became extremely popular among the Bulgarians, and the Slavic ancestry was
greatly emphasized, at least until the first decade of the twentieth century, in tandem with the
strong pro-Russian feelings harboured by many Bulgarians.
After the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), there was widespread disappointment with Panslavism,
Russia and Serbia. Later, in the 1920s and the 1930s, the Turanian Proto-Bulgars were rehabilitated
and slowly proclaimed to have been a race of masters and creators of states, a discourse which
had no trouble being appropriated by pro-Fascist and pro-Nazi politicians. Iranian-Aryan and
autochthonous views and theories also re-emerged. However, they did not find significant
support in the academic circles.
The most influential proponent of the Turanian theory of the origin of the Proto-Bulgars was
the famous linguist Stefan Mladenov. He was deeply convinced that the Protobulgarian language
was Turkic, belonging to the Aryo-Altaic family. This was perceived as undignified and clashed
with the anti-Turkish feelings, deeply rooted among Bulgarian intelligentsia. Mladenov had to
explain that Aryo-Altaic peoples were not Asiatic barbarians, but mighty transmitters of the
great civilization of China and the Far East to Eurasia and Europe.17 Vasil Zlatarski, the leading
name in Bulgarian Medieval Studies, elaborated a complex theory, unifying the Hunno-Bulgars
and the Slavs as creators of medieval Bulgaria. However, he stressed the leading position of the
Bulgars in this process and labelled them as state-creators. Of course, the idea of any lineage
connecting the Proto-Bulgars and modern Bulgarians with the Turks, deemed our oppressors
for five long centuries, was difficult to be absorbed by many within the Bulgarian society.18 Thus,
some parahistorical ideas gained support among certain circles, mostly non-academic. Gancho
Tsenov, a historian with German training, rebelled against the Vienna School and tried to prove
in numerous publication that the Bulgarians were a very ancient race in Europe and Western
Eurasia. He revived to a great extent the autochthonist theories of Rakovski.19 Another writer,
Dimityr Syselov (an architect by education), fiercely opposed the Turanian theory, claiming that
17
Mladenov (1928), p. 49-71.
18
Zlatarski (1928), pp. 74-112.
19
Tsenov (2005), p. 183.
the ancient Bulgarians were highly civilised Indo-Europeans (Aryans), originating from Pamir.20
During the 1930s and the Second World War, the anti-Slavic rhetoric increased, and writers like
Nikolay Sheytanov claimed that the Bulgarian masters had, in fact, exterminated the local Slavic
population, just like it had been done in North America with the native Americans.21
After the Second World War, defeated Bulgaria became part of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet-
Russian domination was total, at least in the beginning. A pro-Soviet Neo-Panslavism spread
among the satellite states, and even non-Slavic countries like Hungary, Romania and Eastern
Germany had to overstress the presence and the traces of Slavic minorities and Slavic culture
within their territories. In this political context, it was easy for Bulgarian historians to rediscover
the Slavic theory of the Bulgarian ethnogenesis. In this process, an important role was played the
Soviet academic Nikolay Derzhavin. In his Marxist history of medieval Bulgaria, he minimised
the role of the Proto-Bulgars to the greatest possible extent and, using the linguistic theory of J.N.
Mar about the Yaphetic linguistic community, proclaimed that even the ancient Thracians and
Illyrians were Proto-Slavs, thus giving a new impetus to the autochthonic views.22
In the 1970s, the time of the mature socialism, Bulgarian nationalism was revived, perhaps in
a desperate attempt to consolidate the nation-state at a time when Communist internationalism

was in a state of crisis. There was an attempt to create a balanced, tripartite ethnogenetic theory,
which depicted Slavs, Proto-Bulgars and Thracians as equal partners in the process.23 In the
1980s, the Turkic theory proposed for the origin of the Proto-Bulgarians was used extensively,
in the attempt to prove that the Turkish-speaking minority of Bulgaria had full Bulgarian
pedigree and thus belonged without a shadow of doubt to the Bulgarian ethnic group. In this
respect, Strashimir Dimitrov, the leading scholar in the Ottoman Studies and Turkology, was
extremely prolific. He claimed extensively that a group of Hunnic-speaking Bulgars had not
been assimilated by the time of the Ottoman conquest and they had had been at the core of the so-
called Turkish-speaking Bulgarians. As living proof for his theory, he invoked the small Gagauz
20
Syselov (2010), pp. 515-588.
21
lenkov (1998), pp.120-140.
22
Derzhavin (1946).
23
Angelov (1981).
minority (a Turkish-speaking but Orthodox community, often used for many linguistic, historical
and political experiments).24 All these theories were revived or refuted after the changes of 1989,
when the monopoly of the stately supported academic science was challenged on all fronts.
The situation after 1989
Since 1989, Bulgarian nationalism continues to live off cosy reminiscences of the Revival
ideology. Anti-Turkish rhetoric is now reflected in the theories that challenge the thesis of Turkic
origin of the Proto-Bulgars. Alongside the Iranian or Aryan theory, there appeared arguments
favouring an autochthonous origin. In parallel with the scientific discussion on these issues, there
emerged some extreme views, often with political agendas in mind, taking their final form in the
activities of certain Internet forums, nationalist organizations and parahistory groups. Among
the foundations that sponsor research in Proto-Bulgarian Studies, Tangra TanNakRa is probably
the most generous. Its activity is not confined to sponsoring parahistoric publications, but extends
to seeking support in certain political circles.25 For example, its luxury publication, Bulgarian
civilization, printed in 2007, was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and was associated with
celebrations devoted to Bulgarias accession to the European Union that same year.26
In a sense, its publications reflect in part theories of the official Bulgarian historiography,
though colleagues have expressed objections with regard to the theories popularised by this
foundation. The parahistoric theories, very often politically loaded and have almost nothing to
do with objective scientific research in the field of Proto-Bulgarian Studies, could be summarized
in several directions:
(1) Continuity theory. The first of these lines is to establish the complete continuity between
ancient and modern Bulgarians. Authors like Georgi Rakovski and Gancho Tsenov
have been rediscovered. Their autochthonic theories of the origin of the Bulgarians
have been upheld as an alternative to the accepted migratory theories. Ancient
24
Dimitrov (1988), pp. 33-56; 46.
25
Vachkova (2008).
26
Fol (2007).
Thracians and sometimes ancient Macedonians are considered simply ancestors of the
later Bulgarians and the continuity of modern Bulgarians is projected back to the pre-
historic times.
(2) Paleo-nationalism and biblical nations. Another direction for development of
parahistoric quest in the Proto-Bulgarian Studies is the field of etymology, where

famous and infamous authors try to present the Bulgarian language as the mother of
all European and indeed world languages. Traces of Proto-Bulgarians are found in the
Holy Scriptures, Mesopotamia, Egypt.27
(3) Aryan roots and the enigmatic Eurasian homeland. Meanwhile, another group
of authors is looking eagerly for the supposed homeland of the ancient Bulgarians
(they dismiss the term Proto-Bulgarians as unscientific) in the vast areas of Eurasia,
perhaps by conscious or unconscious opposition to the pro-Western orientation of
modern Bulgaria. At the same time, with little regard for consistency, they also oppose
the Turkic (Turko-Tatar) theory, probably because this is in sharp contradiction with
the anti-Turkish feelings shared by nationalistic circles.28
(4) Anti-Slavism. These theories reject or minimize, often aggressively, the affiliation of the
modern Bulgarians to the Slavic linguistic and cultural space. This direction is sometimes
related to attempts of dissociation from the past of Bulgaria as the most loyal Soviet
satellite and efforts to doctor up its image in the eyes of its new, European-Atlantic allies.29
Possible parallels and general directions of a further research
Of course, these passions are not typical only for the Bulgarian scientific or quasi-scientific
milieu. Similar examples could be identified in Hungary, ex-Yugoslavia, Russia, Slovakia,
Romania and even Germany. Essential are, however, the dimensions of this phenomenon that go
27
Mutafchiev (1995); Vylchev (2001).
28
Dobrev (2005), p. 207.
29
Tsvetkov (1998), p. 26.
beyond marginality in some countries, affected to a greater degree by the negative phenomena
that accompany globalisation. It fits in the paradigm of anti-globalism, well accepted among these
social groups, which perceive themselves as victims of the rapid changes produced in recent
decades. My preliminary study of similar phenomena concentrated mostly on ex-Yugoslavia
(Macedonia/FYROM, Serbia, Croatia) and Russia. Thus, one could identify some of the trends,
presented in Bulgaria, such as Aryan-Iranian theories (Croatia), autochthonism (Macedonia,
Serbia), exceptionalism and propaganda of biblical (i.e. extremely ancient) roots of a given
nation (Macedonia, Serbia, Russia). In my opinion, it is also connected with the reshaping and
constructing of new identities in the post-Communist world, in a time of relative crisis of identities
and values and in the midst of a process of reconsidering some axiomatic views on nation, nation-
state and nationalism in the face of globalisation. In certain countries, such as Macedonia, there
is a reconstruction of the historical paradigm as a whole. From a pan-Slavic concept about the
South-Slavic origin of modern Macedonians (strictly opposed to Tatar Bulgarians), connecting
them to the rest of the nations formerly included in the Yugoslav Federation, the new official
historiographical trend emphasizes the ancient roots of modern Macedonians. It has caused
a row with Greece, known popularly as the dispute over the name and had strong political
implications.30 Similar anti-Slavic trends denying the common Yugoslav past may be found in
Serbia (mostly in the theory of the deep local roots of the Serbs, projected back to the ancient
Triballians and the conspiracy theories about the academic science, which is suspected of hiding
the truth about the glorious past of the Serbs) and Croatia (a strong emphasis on the theory of the
Aryan / Iranian, thus non-Slavic, origin of the Croats).31 Extremely interesting is also the process
of reviving old ethnic and national identities and even creating brand new ones, such as the
Montenegrin (opposed radically to the Serbian), Bosniak (among the Bosnian Muslims, but also
among people of Sandzhak and Gora), Pomak (in Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey). In this respect,
historical and parahistoric debates are extremely heated.
A characteristic example is the debate on the origin of the Pomaks. Besides older theories,
presenting this Bulgarian-speaking Muslim community as either Islamicised Bulgarians or
30
Stefov (2003).
31
About the phenomenon in Serbia and Romania: Jovanovi and Radivoj (2009) and Boia (1997).
Slavicized Turks, there arose a variety of new theories, used by different circles in their attempt
to gain influence among the Pomaks. Thus, in Greek historiography, there are attempts to present
the Pomaks as the autochthonous population of Thracian tribes, who had close cultural ties to the
Hellenic world. According to others, they are descendants of Cuman and Pecheneg tribes (thus of
Turkic origin). The most extravagant theory turns them into descendants of alleged medieval Arab
settlers.32 There is also a strong attempt to expand the Bosniak identity over all Slavic-speaking
Muslim groups in the Balkans, based on the historical tradition of the medieval Bosnian Kingdom
and the local heretical Bogomil tradition, envisaged as a proto-Islamic phenomenon.33
In general, parahistory and paleonationalism could have a stronger influence among weaker
societies, social groups and among newly constructed ethnic or national communities in Eastern
Europe. A broader project will attempt to analyse the process in a broader regional framework, on
a comparative basis. This should not be restricted to the investigation of publications originating
in academic or non-academic circles, but should extend to coverage in the media, to Internet sites
and to the programmes of political parties and organizations with nationalist orientation.
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Aretov, Nikolay. Natsionalnata mitologiya I natsionalnata literature (National Mythology and National
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Beck, Ulrich. World Risk Society. Cambridge, 1999.
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Derzhavin, Nikolay. Istoriya na Bylgariya (The History of Bulgaria). Vol. 1. Sofia,1946.
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bylgarskite zemi prez XV-XVII v. (Some Problems of the Ethnic and Islamic Assimilation Process
in the Bulgarian Lands, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries). Problemi na razvitieto na bylgarskata
narodnost i natsiya (1988): 33-56.
32
Theocharidis (1995).
33
Friedman (2011).
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lenkov, Ivan. Rodno I dyasno (Patriotic and Right-Wing). Sofia, 1998.
Engel, Johann Christian v. Geschichte der Nebenlnder des Ungrischen Reiches. Geschichte der Bulgaren in
Msien. Halle, 1797.
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the History of the Serbs and the Serbian-Yugoslav Countries in Turkey and Austria). Belgrade,
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ezitsi (The Position of the Asparuh Bulgars in the System of the Turkic Branch of the Aryan-
Altaic Languages). Bylgarska istoricheska biblioteka 1 (1928): 49-71.
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Raij, Jovan. Istoriya raznyh slavyanskih narodov, nay-pache Bolgar, Horvatov I Serbov (A History of Different
Slavic Nations, Mostly the Bulgarians, the Croats and the Serbs). St. Petersburg, 1796.
Rakovski, Georgi. Sychinenija (Works). Vol. 3. Ed. V. Traykov. Sofia, 1984.
Stamatopoulos, Dimitrios. To Vizandio meta to ethnos (Byzantium beyond the Nation). Athens, 2009.
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com/html/articles/stefov/stefov16.html (retrieved 22.02.2012).
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Side and Beyond the Pamir Mountains). Ed. D. Syselovson. V. Tyrnovo, 2010.
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Xanthi, 1995.
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Political, Ethnological, Historical and Religious Aspects). Moscow, 1829.
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Zlatarski, Vasil. Obrazuvane na bylgarskata narodnost (The Formation of the Bulgarian Ethnicity).
Bylgarska istoricheska biblioteka, , (1928): 74-112.
Croatia Between the Myths of the
Nation State and of the Common
European Past
Neven Budak
University of Zagreb
Abstract Throughout the history of Croatia, myths have been instrumental in forging a
sense of identity and in justifying political positions. The endurance of several
myths can be attributed to their flexibility, as they were adopted by several regimes and adapted to suit
their particular needs. Moreover, myths have a component of ambiguity, which allows, for example,
the co-existence of two mutually exclusive concepts: on the one hand, Croatia is seen as the bulwark of
the West, and on the other hand, as a bridge between East and West, North and South. This process is
ongoing, as old myths are now harnessed to bolster the European aspirations of the Croats. While myth-
making is probably inextricably linked with the social and political condition of humankind, historians
should nevertheless attempt to isolate fiction from facts.
Keywords Croatian history, medieval origin myths, historiographical myths,

nationalism, European integration.
If we examine concepts of the Croatian past as they have been recorded throughout history,
we shall notice that in all periods, from the earliest attestation of the ethnonym Croatian in the
ninth century and until the most recent times, mythology played an important role in the creation
of Croatian memory and thus in conceptualising Croatian self identity. The first two of such
myths, regarding the very origins of Croats, were written down in Constantine Porphyrogenitus
52 Neven Budak
De administrando imperio.1 Others were composed later, in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries,
while several were the result of nineteenth-century professional historiography.
What should be discussed first is the relation between myths produced in different periods
and especially the difference, if any is to be found, between myths created by pre-modern
writers of history and modern, professional historians.
Defining a myth is a difficult task, because there are many such definitions. I will therefore
simply go back to what Mircea Eliade offered as a definition of myths: a myth is communicating a
sacred story, describing an event that happened in primordial times.2 It explains the beginnings
be they the origins of the universe, of a people, of an institution etc. by describing the actions
of supernatural heroes. It is a holy story, and therefore not subject to any doubt. By repeating
a myth, some communities believed that they invoked the presence of the heroes or recreated
the primordial act of creation.3
Such a definition is, maybe, not perfectly adequate for explaining historiographical myths,
mainly because these tend to illustrate more than merely the moment of creation of a nation
(people), social group or institution. They also justify the claim to certain rights, political or
territorial. However, I would argue that even so, historiographical myths contain elements
which make them comparable to real myths. They tell stories not to be doubted, containing
unquestionable truths. They talk about people, individuals or groups, who achieved something
in the past which is of great importance for the myth-tellers and their audience. In this way, these
predecessors from the distant past become some kind of supernatural heroes. The act of repeating
mythical stories by telling them or reading them, by presenting them in pictures or on monuments,
and finally by organising commemorative ceremonies and introducing them into the educational
system is intended to revive the past and to enable the listeners/observes/participants to identify
themselves with their mythical ancestors, gaining additional strength and self confidence.
As I have already mentioned, the oldest forms of a Croatian historical or historiographical
1
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, 122-153. On Constantines De administrando imperio see, most
recently: Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest (Proceedings of the Institute of Croatian History) 42 (2010), pp. 13-165.
2
Eliade (1970), 9-10; 20-21.
3
Ibid., 16.
Croatia Between the Myths of the Nation State and of the Common European Past 53
myth can be found in De administrando imperio, a work edited, if not written, by the Bzyantine
emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the mid-tenth century. This work actually contains
two versions about how the Croats came to Dalmatia and how they conquered this province
which was to become their future homeland. Both are written in the form of an origo gentis, a
mythical story explaining the origins of a nation.4 In both of these cases, it is not the roots of the
original Croats that the authors try to explain, but rather the beginnings of the history of the
Dalmatian Croats, who are presented as descendants of those living somewhere in the north,
in Great or White Croatia.5 The stories differ in a number of important details, although they
follow the same pattern: the Croats come to Dalmatia, find the province in the hands of the
Avars, fight against them and conquer the land for themselves. The first version, unanimously
declared by scholars to be the older one, gives credit for this Croatian action to the seventh-
century emperor Heraclius, who is supposed to have ordered the newcomers to fight against
the Avars. The more recent version was composed shortly after the first had been written down,
maybe just a few decades later. According to it, five brothers and two sisters led a part of the
White Croats from their Northern homeland to Dalmatia, where they found the Avars and
successfully fought against them.
Many medievalists considered the latter to be the genuine Croatian national myth, and gave
it priority over the former version which, they argued, must have been invented by Constantine
himself in order to claim the right of Byzantine suzerainty over the Croats, since they ruled their
land by the will of a Byzantine emperor. According to their logic, the second story would have been
older than the first. It is plausible, nevertheless, that this second version was composed at a time
when relations between the Croatian rulers and the Byzantine court changed in favour of the Croats,
whose help was once again needed in the wars against Bulgarians.6 So, to please the Croatian ruler,
who also received a crown and the title of king of Croatia and Dalmatia, a scholar at the court in
Constantinople was instructed to invent a more suitable version of the Croatian conquest myth,
which was then included into Constantines work, curiously without omitting the older narration.
4
On the origo gentis as a textual type: Wolfram (1990), pp. 19-33 and Wolfram (1995), pp. 40-53.
5
For a recent survey on the literature regarding the origins of the Croats, cf. Dzino (2010).
6
Ani (2010), pp. 133-51.
54 Neven Budak
We shall never learn who exactly commissioned the composition of this story, or in what
ways it was used after it was written down. We also have no idea about the potential sources
used by the Byzantine historian, but it is unlikely that he used a story extracted from Croatian
folk tradition. Did this story ever reach a Croatian audience? It probably never left the shelves of
the Constantinopolitan court library, since there is not the slightest trace of it in any subsequent
Croatian source. In that case, one could argue that since it was not read or told by anyone in
Croatia, it was not really a myth. But on the other hand, a segment of the narrative included
in both versions was known in Croatia/Dalmatia: it was the story about how the Avars (and
the Slavs) had taken Dalmatia from the Romans. The story tells us how the Avars (who are
sometimes also called Slavs) captured Roman soldiers coming from Salona, the capital of
Dalmatia, to guard the frontier on the Danube. They took their uniforms and ensigns and,
deceiving the Roman outposts, entered Salona without fighting. They sacked the city and in
this manner conquered the whole of Dalmatia.
This story is, of course, far from what actually happened, but we can find it in similar versions
in later Dalmatian histories, the most famous of which was written in the thirteenth century by
Thomas, the Archdeacon of Split.7 This means that, contrary to the story about the origins of
Dalmatian Croats, this one has survived for centuries in Dalmatia. It was used to enforce the
sense of identity felt by the people inhabiting the cities and their territories, especially those on
the islands, because, according to this description of the events, the Romans had been driven by
the invaders into their fortified towns and on the islands, as well as into mountainous regions of
the Dalmatian hinterland. So, by virtue of their Roman origins, the Dalmatians differed from their
Slavic neighbours. We do not know how this myth was presented to the broader population, if at
all, but from the fact that it is recorded over a long period and in several independent sources, I
would argue that it was a genuine historical myth, although not Croatian in the narrower sense.
It became Croatian only in the nineteenth century, when national historiography incorporated the
history of Dalmatia into Croatian national history, following the first attempts in this direction
made by early modern historians (e.g., Johannes Lucius in his De regno Dalmatiae et Chroatiae libri
7
An English translation and commentary with bibliographical notes on all editions has been published by Damir
Karbi, Mirjana Matijevi Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney in 2006.
sex, Amsterdam, 1666). The Slavic invasion of Dalmatia in the seventh century has been seen until
recently as the formative action of the Croatian medieval realm and thus as the origin of Croatian
history per se.8 Only in the last few years have scholars begun to question this picture (which goes
back to a tenth-century Byzantine author), arguing for the improbability of a great Slavic invasion
of Dalmatia in the seventh century.9
The first phase of genuine Croatian myth-making was the fourteenth century. It was a period
of instability, caused by the ambitions of the Angevin kings to impose their authority on the
Croatian lords who, for some time, have ruled Croatia and Dalmatia almost independently
of the waning power of the Arpadian dynasty.10 To understand the story better, one has to
go back more than two centuries, to the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth
century. At that time, the Croatian throne was empty, because the last king, Stephen III, had
died without an heir. Basing his claims on his sisters marriage to Zvonimir, the previous king
who had also died heirless, the Hungarian king Ladislav invaded Croatia in an attempt to
gain the crown. However, Byzantine diplomacy, concerned for the security of the Dalmatian
towns, persuaded the Pechenegs to attack Hungary from the north, thus forcing Ladislav to
withdraw without accomplishing his goal. A decade later, his nephew, Koloman, managed to
become king of Dalmatia and Croatia under unclear circumstances.11 His successors showed
less interest in the affairs of the kingdom, thus enabling Croatian lords to gain more power and
finally independence. This changed with the ascension to the Hungarian throne of the Italian
branch of the Angevins. Feeling threatened in their hitherto undisturbed position, the Croatian
lords had to find an excuse for the evil fate that had befallen them. So the story was invented
that Zvonimir decided to respond to the Popes call to lead a crusade into the Holy Land, but
his subjects were so much against the idea that they killed him. Dying, the king cursed the
Croats, wishing they would never again have a king of their own nation (King Stephen III, who
ruled for just two years, was obviously forgotten by the mid-fourteenth century). In this way,
8
Among many histories of the Croatian Early Middle Ages, three are most revealing on this question: ii (1925),
Klai (1971), and Goldstein (1995).
9
Dzino (2008), pp. 223-41.
10
Budak and Jurkovi (2001); Budak and Jurkovi (2003).
11
Budak (1994), pp. 111-27.
56 Neven Budak
fourteenth-century lords explained why they had to suffer under the pressure of the Angevins.12
But their own subjects, the Croatian gentry, also invented a story in support of their efforts
to have their noble status recognised. For a long time, they were oppressed by the mighty lords
who wanted to convert them into serfs. Now, when a strong king appeared, wanting to crush
the power of the lords, both sides found mutual interest in supporting each other. King Louis
organised a county (upanija) in central Croatia, and the gentry living there organised itself
into the so called Twelve Croatian kindreds. To support their nobility claims they invented
the story about how, in 1102, their representatives had elected Koloman as king of Croatia by
their own will. In turn, he granted them exemption from taxes and other privileges typical for
the late medieval nobility. The text is preserved in one of the manuscripts of Thomass Historia
Salonitana and it is best known under the name Pacta conventa.13
Both these stories, the one about the death of the alleged last Croatian king Zvonimir
and the one about the twelve noble kindreds who by their own will became subjects of the
Arpadian king, became in the next few centuries arguably the most important Croatian
myths, explaining the political position of the Croatian nobility throughout the late-medieval
and early-modern period. Gradually, the Croatian identity of the lesser nobles was confirmed
by the Croatian Diet (Sabor), which consisted of the lords and higher nobility. Whenever the
members of the Diet were not satisfied with their rulers, they referred to the myth about the
free election, threatening that they could decide to choose another dynasty instead of the one
in power. They had no means to carry out these threats, but they obviously were retelling
the story in order to build their self-confidence (or to console themselves in their inability to
undertake real action).14
It is also interesting that both myths found their inspiration in the turbulent times surrounding
12
On the legend about the assassination of King Zvonimir: Goldstein (1984); Rokay (1997); Bratuli (1997). In support
of the idea that the legend actually represents a reliable report of events and that Zvonimir was indeed invited by
both the Pope and Emperor Alexius to join the crusade see: Frankopan (2004).
13
The literature on Pacta conventa is immense. Best overviews can be found in: Antoljak (1980) and Raukar (2002), pp.
28-33. Raukar follows the opinions of Milan ufflay, Nada Klai and other authors, who believed Pacta was composed
only in the 14th century, while Antoljak represents those researchers who are convinced that it tells the true story
about the events, and should be dated to the very beginning of the twelfth century.
14
Budak (2002/2003), pp. 135-55.
the extinction of the line of Croatian national kings and the beginnings of the long-lasting
incorporation of Croatia into the lands of the Hungarian Crown of St Stephen. Thus, they also
represented a reflection on a particular type of beginning.
In this way, the myth invented to support the lesser nobility against the lords became a
founding myth for the lords themselves and for the entire Croatian nobility. Given that in the
course of the sixteenth century the kingdoms of Croatia and Dalmatia on the one hand, and
of Slavonia on the other were reduced, as a consequence of the Ottoman conquests, to the
remnants of the remnants (reliquiae reliquiarum), the diets of both kingdoms were united. Later,
the Slavonian nobility accepted the myth as their own and adopted the Croatian identity. This
was a long-lasting process, ending only in the eighteenth century.15 The first common history of
Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, written by the Slavonian George (Juraj) Rattkay in 1652, does
not contain the myth of the election, although it does mention the one about Zvonimirs death.16
The difficult situation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries resulted in the creation of yet
another Croatian myth that will prove to be enduring and adaptable to very different political
situations and ideologies. It was the myth of Croatia as the bulwark of Christianity.
This myth was discussed in detail some years ago by Ivo ani, who documented its
existence as early as the sixteenth century: in 1523, Count Krsto Frankapan held a speech in
Nrnberg, before the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, describing Croatia as the outer wall or
bulwark of the Christian Austrian borderlands, Istria and northern Italy.17 ani showed that
this myth was operational in different periods and under different political systems. It was
used by the so called Croatian or Illyrian national revivers in the first half of the nineteenth
century, though in a modified way: since at that time the Ottoman empire presented no threat
to Christianity, nationalist ideologists turned to the Mongol invasion from seven centuries
earlier, creating the myth of a decisive Croatian victory over the invaders a victory that saved
Europe. Some Croatian politicians and intellectuals in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
century used the motif of the bulwark to illustrate how Croatia was defending Serbia and the
15
Beuc (1985), pp. 190-94; Budak (2007), pp. 81-82; Budak (2000).
16
Rattkay (1652), p. 57. On Rattkay and his writings: Bene (2001).
17
ani (2003), pp. 161-202.
58 Neven Budak
Slavic Southeast from the German threat. During the Ustaa regime of 1941-1945, the idea of
an outer wall was revived, but this time turned against the Bolshevik danger coming from
the East. Maybe the most interesting example comes from 1952, when Tito on two occasions
stressed that Yugoslavia, by defending itself from the Soviets and their satellites, is like a rock
defending the Western world. Clearly, as ani claims, this motif of a rock defending the West
is nothing else but a variation of the old myth of Croatia as an outer wall of Christian Europe.
Of course, the wars of 1991-1995 provided an excellent occasion for the reuse of the myth, but
the Croatian propaganda had to readjust it, as the wars were changing their character. In the
beginning, while Croats and Bosnian Muslims were fighting together against the Serbs (to give
a summary description of the events), it was more appropriate to create a picture of a bulwark
against a communist, i.e. Serbian threat. Later, as the Croats started fighting against a part of
the Bosnians, it became possible to talk again about defending Christian Europe or the West
against Islamic terrorists. In the post-war period, the myth, it seems, lost its practical value, but
that does not mean that it will be forgotten forever.
ani also showed that there was an opposite myth: rather than Croatia being an outer wall
of Europe, it was also viewed as a bridge between East and West. This myth was used by those
ideologists and politicians who supported the idea of South-Slavic integration, for which it
was necessary to overcome not only political barriers, but also religious and, more broadly
speaking, cultural differences. Since this mythologem was closely related to the creation and
legitimising of Yugoslavia, it never became as popular among the Croatian population as did
the one of antemurale Christianitatis.
ani aside, nobody in Croatia was interested in the critical examination of this myth (as
we have seen above, myths are by definition exempt from critical analysis). It is not necessary
here to point out that many other European nations developed exactly the same myth of being
the defenders of Christianity, but those Croats who made or occasionally still make use of the
idea of the antemurale believe that it is exactly this position of an outer wall of the Western
world that makes them unique and special in European history. Although it makes little sense
to criticise myths, anybody who is not a believer cannot fail to notice that the idea of antemurale
(outer wall) suggests that those defending what is behind their backs are actually excluded
from the community they are defending so eagerly. They may be manning the outer wall, but
the real wall separates them from those living in the security provided by the bravely defended
fortifications. Those outside sacrifice their lives in a somewhat masochistic way, without getting
recognition from the defended. It is interesting that already in the sixteenth century the Croatian
nobility was more or less aware of this fact, which in the coming centuries became increasingly
clear. Nevertheless, the elites still insisted on the myth because they had no other means to
convince themselves of their importance for the Western world. It is even more interesting that
today as well there are some who believe that placing Croats in the position of a nation destined
to suffer for the benefit of others is a positive ideological construct, which will support Croatias
efforts to integrate into the European Union. On the other hand and this is something needing
further research the myth is also popular among conservative circles which oppose Croatias
entry into the Union. Perhaps the myth is a means of saying: We are part of the West, but
we have never been treated accordingly and things should remain that way. Our permanent
sacrifice made us survive all these centuries and it is the tragedy of our history that is the
guarantee of our existence. This tragic aspect of history is again not specific to Croats, but may
be found throughout Europe.
The myth of antemurale Christianitatis is of course closely related to, or is part of, the use
of Catholicism as one of the main arguments for supporting Croatias belonging to the Western
community. This ideological construct had its origin in much earlier periods, and we can trace it
to the beginning of the seventeenth century: in 1604, the Croatian Diet passed a law forbidding
members of all other religions except the Catholic to settle in the territory of the Kingdom.18 The
Orthodox were a tolerated exception, because they were needed for supplying manpower for
the military border. This Catholic exclusiveness developed into a myth about Croats being one
of the oldest Catholic nations in Europe, accepting baptism immediately after their settlement in
the seventh century, when they made a treaty with the Pope, according to which they will never
attack other nations, and God will, in return, protect them.19 Although this construct is partly
18
Budak (2007), p. 179.
19
Klai (1971), p. 195.
60 Neven Budak
supported by evidence from early medieval sources, it is still a myth, whose final embodiment has
been produced by early-twentieth-century scholarship.20 It gained growing importance during the
communist period, when the Catholic Church was the only organised opposition to the regime.
Mass open-air celebrations were held in 1976 and 1979, commemorating thirteen centuries of
Christianity in Croatia, 1100 years of the so called recognition of Croatia by the Pope, and the
millennium of Queen Helen (Jelena), who erected the burial chapel of Croatian kings in Solin,
near Split.21 It is a paradox that such a globalising institution as the Catholic Church became the
backbone of Croatian nationalism. However, the Church was not the only source of nationalism or
the only agency that perpetuated the tradition of nineteenth-century national ideology.
The nineteenth century deserves special attention in the present article. It witnessed an
intensive production of myths, but this time their creators were professional or quasi-professional
historians. As in many other countries, this was the century of national integration (or of the
creation of the modern nation) and historiography was a diligent servant of national ideology.
In Croatia this was even more so, because after the Napoleonic wars and until 1918 Croats found
themselves divided between the two parts of the Habsburg monarchy, the Hungarian and the
Austrian. This was in itself an insurmountable obstacle to national integration, but furthermore,
in both Austria and Hungary Croats represented a marginal political element, in no way
comparable in political importance to the Austrians and Hungarians. Therefore it seemed that
their only weapon in fighting for more autonomy or even integration was the so called historical
right.22 This historical right, Croats claimed, allowed them to have a united kingdom of Croatia,
Dalmatia, and Slavonia (which was indeed the official title of the Hungarian part of the Croatian
lands), complete with the right to elect the ruler and to manage the relations with the Kingdom of
Hungary and the Habsburgs, who were both Hungarian and Croatian kings. In order to support
these claims in a politically hopeless situation, historians had to create the image of a large and
20
Saka (1931).
21
Oblak (1980); Perii and kvorevi (1986); on the celebration of the recognition of Croatia in the time of dux Bran-
imir also: www.zadarskanadbiskupija.hr (accessed on 17 June 2012); on the celebration of the millennium of queen
Helen, held in 1976: www.nadbiskupija-split.com/katehetski/vijjesti/.../izlaganje.doc (accessed on 17 June 2012).
22
One of the most influential political parties in the second half of the nineteenth century was the Party of the rights,
whose programme was based on the historical rights of Croatia. Its leader, Ante Starevi, himself became a mythical
figure in the twentieth century. On the party, its history, and programme: Gross (2000).
independent early medieval Croatian kingdom, whose rulers successfully fought against mighty
neighbours like the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, the Hungarians, or Venice. The establishment
of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (1867) and of the University (1874, following a
Jesuit academia established in 1669), both in Zagreb, set the grounds for the development of
professional historiography, whose protagonists started producing literature not only for their
colleagues, but also for a broader audience.23
Apart from the myth of a strong primordial state during the Middle Ages, other myths were
created, using elements from later periods. The myth of the bulwark of Christianity has already
been mentioned. Another motive which became extremely popular was the conspiracy of the
Zrinski and the Frankopans against Leopold I in 1670-1671.24 Members of the two Croatian
magnate families were unhappy with the way the Viennese court treated them, and equally
with the manner in which it dealt with the Ottoman question. Several Hungarian magnates
were of the same opinion. This resulted in a conspiracy to overthrow the Habsburgs, but the
plan failed. Finally, Peter Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan even offered Croatia to their
archenemy, the Turks, under the condition that Peter would become king of an autonomous
kingdom of Croatia within the Ottoman Empire. The sultan, for political reasons, betrayed the
plan to Leopold, who had the two lords arrested and executed in 1671. Their large possessions
were confiscated, thus weakening even further the remnants of the remnants of Croatia. In the
interpretation of nineteenth-century historians, the Zrinski-Frankopan conspiracy became an
example of how bravely Croatian lords stood for the independence of Croatia and how badly
the deceitful Imperial Court of Vienna handled the Croats. At least two facts were forgotten in
order to make this a useful and functional myth. First, the Hungarians were left out, although
they were the stronger party within the conspiracy. Second, the unpleasant episode of Peter
offering Croatia to the Sultan in order to become king himself was somehow avoided in the
descriptions of the events. The whole myth became extremely popular after Eugen Kumii, a
novelist and politician who championed the cause of Croatian rights, wrote a novel about the
23
Mirjana Gross invented the term scientification of Croatian historiography to explain the changes happening
with writing about history in the second half of the 19th century. See: Gross (1996), pp. 172-88.
24
Budak (2007), pp. 158-62.
62 Neven Budak
conspiracy.25 Paintings were produced, showing scenes related to the conspiracy and the fate of
those who participated in it. This myth was used as a rallying cry against the Habsburgs, but
something else was needed to oppose the Hungarians.
Two mighty myths were created for this purpose. The first is relatively recent, related to
the 1848-1849 Revolution and the war which the Croats, siding with the Habsburgs, fought
against the Hungarian revolutionaries. The Croatian army was lead by Ban (Viceroy) Josip
Jelai, who fought with relative success against both Hungarians in Hungary and Austrian
revolutionaries in Vienna. Although he died as an unpopular servant of the Viennese court,
only a few years after his death he was resurrected in order to become a symbol of resistance
against constant Hungarian pressure, the goal of which was to diminish or even extinguish the
Croatian autonomy. Money was collected to erect a monument in the main square of Zagreb,
the first of its kind in Croatia, and images of Jelai became broadly distributed. Within a short
time he became the most prominent hero of Croatian history.26
It is interesting that Friedrich Engels expressed criticism regarding Jeais counter-
revolutionary activity, giving the communist authorities a reason to remove the bans monument
from the square, which subsequently changed its name from Ban Jelai Square to the Square of
the Republic. In 1990, the monument was placed back, almost in its original position, as a first act
of restoration, although the communists were still the ruling party. After lengthy discussions, it
was decided to turn Jelai in the opposite direction, facing south rather than pointing his sword
towards the north, in the direction of Hungary, as he originally did. Hungary was at that time
considered to be an ally of Croatia and Jelais mythological power was intended to be harnessed
against new enemies, the Serbs. However, he was not entirely suitable for that purpose, since the
original Jelai fought side by side with the Serbs against the common opponent.
The other myth that was created against the Hungarians, but also as a tool for the general
mobilisation of Croats, was the myth about King Tomislav, allegedly the first crowned king of
Croatia.27 Until 1871 it was believed that, according to the writings of Thomas of Split, the first
25
Kumii (1893).
26
Smetko (2009).
27
The literature on Tomislav is immense. A survey of literature from the formative period of the myth can be found in: Zbornik
Croatian ruler to receive a crown (from the Byzantine court) was Stephen I, sometime in the
second half of the tenth century. But in order to make the Croatian kingdom much older than
the Hungarian one, two prominent historians, Ivan Kukuljevi and Franjo Raki, created the
myth about the coronation of Tomislav in 925.28 Allegedly, his coronation came as a result of
his successful wars against the Bulgarians and Hungarians, while among his achievements he
could also count the fact that he acted as the governor of the Dalmatian towns. This is not the
place to discuss the methods used by these two historians or to engage in a detailed analysis of
the sources. Suffice it to say that the interpretation offered by Raki, who was a serious scholar,
can be subjected to criticism and scholarly debate, while Kukuljevis writings on this matter are
an excellent example of deliberate myth-making. The whole project of turning Tomislav into the
founding ruler of real Croatian statehood lasted for decades. Popular literature and historical
paintings preceded the celebration of the kingdoms first millennium (1925). By that time
Hungarians had ceased to present a threat, and the myth had to be used for different purposes.
While for the Croatians the myth was an expression of resistance to Serbian dominance in the
newly formed Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, for the Serbian royal dynasty and
its supporters it represented a symbol of Serbian-Croatian unity (this was based on Tomislavs
support for the Serbs in their fight against the Bulgarians). Commemorative plaques were put
on parish churches wherever Croats lived, including in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, and a
monument was planned to be erected in Zagreb. This, for different reasons, happened only after
the Second World War.
Besides the Austrians and the Hungarians, the Croats had a third enemy during the
nineteenth century: the Italians. The Italian minority in Dalmatia, often supported by the
Austrian administration, opposed the idea of uniting Dalmatia with Croatia and Slavonia.
Taking advantage of census suffrage, the rich Italian citizens were dominant in city councils,
often adhering to the policy of the Italian irredenta which saw Dalmatia as part of Italy. There
were also those, called autonomists, who identified themselves as Slavs, but opposed the idea
of a union with Croatia. The clash with Dalmatian Italians and autonomists created the need
kralja Tomislava, 1925. A recent display of the functionality of the myth, with a review of secondary literature: Bratuli (1998).
28
Zbornik kralja Tomislava, pp. 1-18, 40-85.
64 Neven Budak
for a myth that would support the Croatian attitude towards Dalmatian towns. In this case, an
ecclesiastical person was chosen to be the hero. He was Gregory, an obscure bishop from the
tenth century, whose name was recorded in the text describing the ecclesiastical councils in
Split in 925 and 928, which means that he was a contemporary of King Tomislav.29 Although
lacking any form of support from the preserved sources, nineteenth-century Croatian
historiographers ascribed to him the role of champion of Slavonic liturgy and enemy of the
Latin one, which in their eyes meant that he was a medieval Croatian nationalist, opposing the
Italian clergy of the Dalmatian towns. Gregorys later fate is also revealing of the usage of myths
in everyday politics. Supporters of the Yugoslav idea saw him as a symbol of Yugoslavism,
because he supported the common Slavonic liturgy. Mainstream Croatian nationalists placed
his monument, created by sculptor Ivan Metrovi, in three towns (Nin, Split, and Varadin)
and celebrated him as a protector of Croatian national interests in Dalmatia. For the extreme
Croatian nationalists, however, he was a persona non grata because he introduced, as they
thought, the Byzantine, i.e. Eastern Orthodox, Slavonic liturgy, trying to detach Croatia from
the Catholic West to which it naturally belonged. Croatian Catholic dissidents saw Gregory
as the paradigm of opposition to the Pope, and the Old-Catholic Croatian church proclaimed
him a saint. For the Italian fascists, he was a symbol of Slav barbarism, and they pulled down
his monument in Split as soon as the Italian army occupied the city in 1941. After Italys
capitulation in 1943, Croatian fascists, the ustaa, accused their former allies of vandalism
because of the destruction of the monument, which had come to represent in their eyes a
national symbol of the Croatian rights on Dalmatia. However, it was the communists who,
after 1945, re-erected the monument of this bishop, who was used once again as a symbol of
Yugoslavism. Today, needless to say, he is again a Croatian national symbol. Bishop Gregory
and King Tomislav appear as twin-myths, as historical contemporaries, but also as symbols
used by the same political groups for the same purposes.
It was not only simple nationalism which felt the need for legitimising myths. There were
also myths with a more pronounced social character, although they too included nationalist
elements. Two outstanding myths of this kind were the myth about the peasant revolt of 1573
29
A complete survey of the development of the myth in: Budak (1994), pp. 159-98.
in northern Croatia, and the one about the mutiny of the commoners against the patricians on
the island of Hvar in 1510-1514. The myth about the peasant revolt and its leader, Matija Gubec,
was produced by a nineteenth-century novelist, August enoa, obviously with the intention of
showing how the poor but honest Croatian peasants were morally superior to the nobles, who
were often not even Croatian.30 The foundation of the Croatian (Republican) Peasant Party gave
a new impetus to the myth, and the communists used it for attracting peasants into partisan
units, one of which was called Matija Gubec. During the communist regime, a huge monument
was erected in the place where the final battle between the insurgents and the army of the
nobility took place, while a spectacular movie reconstructed the whole event. Needless to
say that the newly created memory of the revolt blew out of all proportion what had actually
happened during the few winter days of 1573.31
The Hvar revolt was used and stimulated by the communist regime for similar purposes,
but it remained more locally focused than the previous example. Its momentum was very much
diminished during a conference when Nada Klai, a historian famous for her criticism of myths,
questioned the most important elements of the myth.32 Instead of recognising Matija Ivani, the
leader of the uprising, as a fighter for social justice and freedom, she suggested that he was
instead fighting for his own privileges. In a similar way, she also criticised enoa for producing
the myth on Matija Gubec. Her persistent public appearances and her active involvement
in scholarly debates indeed had some effect on the public opinion, at least concerning some
elements of Croatian mythology.
A significant role in supporting Croatian national exclusiveness (and not only Croatian,
when we talk about Yugoslavia) was the educational system, especially in the use of History
as a school subject. Many analyses of textbooks have been performed in recent years, and
one of the conclusions is that there is a certain degree of continuity in presenting the same
mythologems those related to the continuity of state and nation throughout the twentieth
30
enoa (1877).
31
Adamek (1968); Budak (2007), pp. 148-49.
32
Klai (1977); Kasandri (1978); Raukar (1997): pp. 224-25; Vrandei and Bertoa (2007): pp. 36-37.
66 Neven Budak
century.33 There is no difference in this respect between the communist period and the time
after 1990. Maps suggesting the existence of a state of unchanged character and only with
changing territory appear in all textbooks. In trying to achieve a certain balance among all
the republics of Yugoslavia, authorities introduced the idea of a greater national state for each
of the republics. Slovenia thus had its golden period in the time of the duchy of Caranthania
in the eighth century; Croatia in the time of its national kings in the tenth and eleventh
centuries; Bosnia in the fourteenth century, under king Tvrtko I; Montenegro in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, in the form of the kingdom of Dioclia; Serbia under tsar Duan in the
fourteenth century, and Macedonia under tsar Samuilo around the year 1000. All these myths,
included into textbooks and created with the exception of the Croatian and Serbian ones
by nineteenth and twentieth century historians, served to show that every Yugoslav nation
was once upon a time great, occupying the territory of others and suggesting in this way a
certain equality among them.
History as it is taught in schools is, of course, only a reflection of history as a scholarly
discipline. An intensified production of Croatian histories since 1990 supports such a conclusion.
Mostly brief overviews of political history, these had to serve several purposes.34 One of them
was purifying Croatian history of (alleged) Yugoslav and communist misinterpretations, another
reaffirming the continuity of Croatian history from at least the seventh century onwards, and
finally supporting the idea of Croats as belonging to the Western world. In this way, Croatian
historians supported both myths: the exclusiveness of a thousand-year-old nation-state and
Croatias justified pursuit of membership of the European Union.
The insistence on the continuity of nation and state in modern Croatia is best expressed
in the preamble of the Croatian constitution where we can read that:
The millennial national identity of the Croatian nation and the continuity of its statehood, confirmed by the
course of its entire historical experience in various political forms and by the perpetuation and development
33
One example: Karge (2003): pp. 489-93. An excellent analysis of Croatian History textbooks and the educational
system after 1918 is provided by Petrungaro (2006).
34
Among others: ovi, Niki, and entija (1991); Macan and entija (1992); Macan (1995); Pavlievi (1998).
of the state-building idea grounded in the historical right of the Croatian nation to full sovereignty, has
manifested itself:
in the formation of the Croatian principalities in the seventh century;
in the independent medieval state of Croatia established in the ninth century;
in the Kingdom of the Croats established in the tenth century;
in the preservation of the attributes of statehood under the Croatian-Hungarian personal union;
in the independent and sovereign decision of the Croatian Parliament in 1527 to elect a king from the
Habsburg Dynasty;
in the independent and sovereign decision of the Croatian Parliament to ratify the Pragmatic Sanction in 1712;
in the conclusions of the Croatian Parliament of 1848 regarding the restoration of the integrity of the
Triune Kingdom of Croatia under the authority of the ban (viceroy), rooted in the historical, national
and natural right of the Croatian nation;
in the Croatian-Hungarian Compromise of 1868 regulating relations between the Kingdom of

Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia and the Kingdom of Hungary, resting on the legal traditions of both
states and the Pragmatic Sanction of 1712.35
The preamble of the Constitution, thus, contains references to several of the myths mentioned
so far, as well as some that will not be further elaborated in this text. In this way, myths became
a legislated truth, some kind of a warranty for Croatian independence, because nobody should
dare to challenge the Constitution as the expression of the will of the Croatian nation.36
Taking into account that Croats had no power and no opportunity to create a state of their own
in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, this insistence on the historical roots of
statehood and national continuity is understandable. On the other hand, the power of the nineteenth-
century myth of continuous statehood was strong enough even without the war of 1991-1995, which
gave it a fresh stimulus. Accustomed to being in an inferior position, Croatian politicians viewed myths
(in particular, but not exclusively so, of statehood) as an important weapon in opposing foreign centres
of power. Historical right, thus, remained part of the ideological system until today, although at the
present moment it is confined within the private sphere or promoted openly only by radical nationalists.
35
www.sabor.hr (accessed on 17 June 2012): The Constitution of the Republic of Croatia (consolidated text).
36
The preamble was discussed by Petrungaro (2006), pp. 25-30.
68 Neven Budak
Apart from history and religion, the third tool for supporting Croatias belonging to the West
was art history. Since its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, it was used first of all to support
Croatian national individualism. For this purpose, the term Old Croatian art/culture (Starohrvatska
kultura) was created, in an attempt to describe features of early medieval material culture in Croatia
as something specific and unique. This, of course, is mainly not true, because Croatian culture
was just part of a broader cultural area of Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque art. Nevertheless, a
set of symbols, based on the Pre-Romanesque pattern of interlacing ribbons, came to be seen as
a Croatian logo (alongside the chequered red-and-white coat of arms, globally known because
of the successes of the national football team).37 Today, the unique character of Croatian material
culture is emphasized to a far lesser degree than its belonging to the overall Western culture.
Art history proved instrumental in supporting another myth, the one of Croatia belonging to
the Western world (read the European Union), from its inception. This myth became important
in Croatian politics after the country gained its independence and was seeking international
above all EU support. A number of large exhibitions were organised, in order to stress the
connections of Croatia with, for example, the Carolingian realm, the Angevin commonwealth
or the world of the Renaissance.38 The first of these large exhibitions, held in the Vatican and
presenting the thousand years of Croatian culture, combined two myths: the one about Croatia
belonging to Europe, and the other about it being at all times Catholic.39
At the same time, in the rhetoric of Croatian politicians one can very often hear the claim that
Croatia is finally coming back to where it has always belonged. This implies that at some point
it was not part of Europe, and we can safely guess that it is the Yugoslav period they have in
mind, because they equate Yugoslavia with the Balkans, and the Balkans are not as is generally
known part of Europe. Since, however, Croatian authorities want to be leaders in helping other
states in the region on their path to becoming members of the EU, it is unclear (as it always is
when myths are used as political arguments) whether they want to make these countries finally
European, or whether they also want to bring them back to where they had once belonged.
37
Budak (2009).
38
Miloevi (2000); Budak and Jurkovi (2001); Erlande-Brandenburg and Jurkovi (2004).
39
Hrvati: kranstvo, kultura, umjetnosti, 1999.
This brings us to some final considerations about the future of the use of myths in Croatian
politics. It should be stressed that only some of the most important myths were discussed in the
preceding pages, but all of them fit into one or two of the aforementioned categories, so I felt no
need to present them all separately. In a sort of epilogue to his article, ani briefly turns to the
(then) recent situation, quoting Joschka Fischer, at the time Germanys minister of foreign affairs,
to the effect that in the future Croatia shall have the function of a bridge towards the South-
East, just as it had been for centuries under the Habsburgs.40 A part of the Croatian political
elite, I suppose, will embrace this anachronistic comparison as a definition of the Croatian
foreign policy. Others, especially when Croatia will attempt to enter the Schengen agreement,
will revive the myth of the bulwark. It is almost impossible to destroy myths, because they are
so adjustable and there are always new impulses to give them new life. And yet, what choice
does a professional historian have but to go out into the field and try to kill the dragon?
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Primary Sources
Constantine Porphyrogenitus. De administrando imperio. ed. G. Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins. Budapest,

1949.
Thomas of Split. History of the Bishops of Salona and Split. Ed. Damir Karbi, Mirjana Matijevi Sokol, and
James Ross Sweeney. Budapest and New York, 2006.
Modern Literature
Adamek, Josip. Seljaka buna 1573 (The peasant revolt of 1573). Zagreb, 1968.
Ani, Mladen. Zamiljanje tradicije: Vrijeme i okolnosti postanka 30. glave djela De administrando imperio
(Imagining tradition: When and why was chapter 30 of De administrando imperio written?). Radovi
Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest 42 (2010): 133-51.
Antoljak, Stjepan. Pacta ili Concordia od 1102 (Pacta or Concordia from the year 1102). Zagreb, 1980.
Bene, Sandor. Ideoloke koncepcije o stalekoj dravi zagrebakog kanonika (A canon of Zagrebs ideological
concepts about a state of estates). In Juraj Rattkay, Spomen na kraljeve i banove Kraljevstava Dalmacije,
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The Myth of Granada in the
Modern Age through its Civic
and Religious Festivals from the
16th to the 18th Century
Ccile DAlbis
Institut fr Europische Geschichte, Mainz
Abstract Granada, conquered in 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and

Ferdinand, builds itself at first through external narratives, which develop
the ideology of the early-modern Hispanic monarchy and make of the Andalusian town the mythical
city it is still today. To anchor itself within the Hispanic kingdoms, establish the autochthony of its
new inhabitants, and finally organise its relations to the modern State, the city gradually develops
complex narratives, in which the oral character challenges the intellectual discourse. These processes
are particularly visible in the civic-religious celebrations. To understand the background and the texture
of these narratives during the early-modern times, we shall study here the main terms which compose
the myth of Granada in the course of its tumultuous history.
Keywords Granada, urban myth, civic-religious celebrations, martyrdom,

autochthony, Marian devotions, early-modern period.
Grenade, comme Venise ou encore Alexandrie, pour prendre des exemples mditerranens, est-ce
que lon appelle communment une ville mythique. La spcificit des villes mythiques, cest peut-
tre le fait quen les arpentant on ne peut sempcher davoir la vision trouble par des tlescopages
entre limaginaire des lieux, le prsent et une vision globale et strotype des vnements passs.
Quelques dcennies aprs la chute de Constantinople aux mains des Ottomans en 1453, la conqute
74 Ccile DAlbis
de Grenade par les Rois Catholiques Isabelle et Ferdinand en 1492 reprsenta en effet un vritable
tournant symbolique et pistmologique dans lhistoire europenne. Grenade tmoigne de la prsence
et de la dfaite dun Islam conqurant et baroque dans les limites de lEurope, dans un autrefois qui
nous semble dun autre monde. Elle atteste aussi de lexistence et de lachvement dun pnible conflit
intrieur qui a contribu construire lEurope et la Mditerrane telles que nous les connaissons.
Mon propos en voquant cette perception extrieure et construite de ville mythique propos du
cas de Grenade est justement de situer et de dfinir les lments de cette construction et de tenter den
comprendre la chronologie, les motivations politiques, en examinant de lintrieur la manire dont la
ville vit avec le poids de sa lgende. La succession des clbrations civico-religieuses, tudies sur les
trois sicles des temps dits modernes, les rcits locaux, dans lesquels les clbrations tiennent un rle
majeur, ou les traces iconographiques et architecturales, nous offrent des lectures locales sur la manire
dont la ville sest approprie et a pu faire vivre et voluer cette mmoire dans un contexte changeant.
Ces expressions, forcment officielles et orientes, se confrontent dans lespace toujours vivant quest la
fte, o elles sont rinterprtes. Une telle analyse nous montre aussi que Grenade, comme les autres
villes hispaniques modernes, cherche avant tout se conformer au mme grand schma politique et
mmoriel, qui fonde lunit idologique des royaumes hispaniques lpoque moderne.
Je commencerai par expliquer pourquoi il me semble utile davoir recours au terme de mythe dans ce
contexte, afin dapprocher lhistoire de la ville et son appropriation locale sur la longue dure et pourquoi
les ftes civico-religieuses constituent une source particulirement riche pour entreprendre ltude des
mythes collectifs urbains lpoque moderne. Je marrterai ensuite sur les principaux lments qui
constituent le mythe de Grenade depuis 1492 jusquau XVIIIe sicle, en insistant sur les points de rupture
et dvolution du rcit collectif provoqus par les crises et les bouleversements politiques et socitaux.
Les ftes civico-religieuses et le mythe urbain lpoque moderne
Dans les territoires hispaniques lpoque moderne, la vie urbaine sorganise largement autour
des clbrations. Parmi elles, les ftes organises par les autorits locales, civiles et ecclsiastiques,
sadressent la population la fois en tant que Civitas (communaut des citoyens) et Ecclesia (assemble
The Myth of Granada in the Modern Age through its Civic and Religious Festivals 75
des fidles). Les ftes civico-religieuses dploient la fiert et la conscience de lappartenance civique,
les liens de la communaut avec la communitas largie du royaume et avec lternit idalise de
son ordre social et politique1. Elles se prolongent dans les proccupations des autorits, les conflits
juridiques de prsance, les chroniques festives et les histoires locales. Ces clbrations faites de
processions, de fonctions liturgiques et rituelles ou encore de jeux allgoriques, mettaient en scne
et confirmaient les lgendes locales, qui soutenaient elles-mmes les privilges de la ville confronte
lintrusion grandissante de ladministration et des symboles royaux2. Ltude des clbrations,
qui entrecroise les sources et cherche dcrypter les motivations des acteurs, le sens du spectacle,
tel quil peut chapper linstrumentalisation politique immdiate, nous offre de nombreux
renseignements sur lorganisation de la vie urbaine, mais aussi sur les raisons et la manire dont la
communaut choisit de mettre en scne pour elle-mme et pour le monde extrieur3. Lorsque lon
entreprend ltude de ces sources festives sur une longue priode, il est possible en effet disoler
des thmes rcurrents et des rfrences symboliques qui sont transmis de gnration en gnration.
On constate quautour de thmes centraux, qui constituent un noyau dur qui demeure peu prs
inchang au cours du temps, le rcit dans son ensemble volue en fonction du contexte, et se trouve
particulirement influenc par les grandes ruptures historiques. Certains thmes disparaissent,
dautres trouvent une vitalit nouvelle, actualisant ainsi un systme toujours vivant et crateur.
Pour comprendre et replacer les discours urbains qui transparaissent travers les clbrations,
lemploi du terme de mythe a mon sens plusieurs avantages dans le cadre souvent flou des
nombreuses tudes qui touchent la mmoire et lidentit collectives4. Alors quils levaient dautres
1
Ronald Grimes, Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1976. Bram Kem-
pers, Icons, Altarpieces, and Civic Ritual in Siena Cathedral, 1100-1530, dans Barbara A. Hanawalt, Kathryn Reyerson
(dirs.), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, University of Minessota Press, 1994, p. 89-136. Sur les liens identitaires entre les
villes et le royaume la fin du Moyen-Age, voir Adeline Rucquoi, Les villes dEspagne: de lhistoire la gnalogie, dans
Hanno Brand, Pierre Monnet, Martial Staub (dirs.), Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mmoire et conscience urbaines en Occident la
fin du Moyen Age, Herausgegeben vom Deutschen Historischen Institut Paris, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2003, p. 145-166.
2
Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale, Darmstadt, Primus Verlag, 2003. Pour un tat des lieux des dbats, voir Jean-
Marie Moeglin, Performative turn , communication politique et rituels au Moyen ge. propos de deux
ouvrages rcents, dans Le Moyen Age, 2007/2, p. 393-406.
3
Voir Alain Boureau, How Christian was the Sacralization of Monarchy in Western Europe (Twelfth-Fiftenth Centu-
ries)?, dans Jeroen Deploige, Gita Deneckere (ds.), Mystifying the Monarch. Studies on Discourse, Power, and History,
Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2006, p.25-34.
4
Sur les problmes poss par linterprtation des lieux de mmoire, les identits collectives et les dbats thoriques
actuels, voir Malgorzata Pakier (d.), A European memory? : contested histories and politics of remembrance, New York,
NY, Berghahn Books, 2010. Etienne Franois, Uwe Puschner (ds.), Erinnerungstage : Wendepunkte der Geschichte von
der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Munich, Beck, 2010.
76 Ccile DAlbis
types de narration, le discours historique en particulier, au statut de seul discours crdible, les Grecs
rejetrent le mythos, le discours traditionnel et oral, en tant quinterprtation valide de la socit.
Les ethnologues perurent assez vite toutefois lintrt interprtatif des mythes. Mais cet intrt ne
sest pas appliqu la culture chrtienne occidentale avant les annes 1970 et 19805. Ce nest donc
que tardivement que le mythe sest trouv rintroduit dans les sciences sociales, plus seulement
pour comprendre les rcits collectifs de civilisations lointaines ou de lgendes folkloriques dites
populaires. Aujourdhui, lanalyse du mythe comme un phnomne historique, autrement dit un
phnomne volutif, que lon peut tudier en tant que tel6, cherche dconstruire limpasse dans
laquelle nous place le prsuppos grec, pour tenter de comprendre comment la mmoire fabrique
la tradition, la prserve et la transforme dans lacte de transmission, en fonction de lvolution du
systme social. Les travaux sur la construction des mmoires, la transmission symbolique, les rituels
ou les idologies ont permis de dvelopper lemploi du terme de mythe et denrichir son horizon7.
Historique, le mythe est donc li aux volutions politiques et sociales. Parce quil constitue un
comportement de communication, il a un lien spcifique avec la fte qui lexprime et le transforme.
La dimension locale y est aussi fondamentale et des contraintes extrieures psent autant sur lun que
sur lautre8. Les ftes de la Renaissance et de lge baroque font appel des images sacres, se rfrent
une antiquit idalise et ractivent un fond de valeurs partages. travers ltude des ftes dune
ville moderne, on peut aisment voir se formuler et se dconstruire pour se reconstruire un mythe qui
articule les questions de pouvoir, didentification et de reprsentation de la ville.
Cest dans ce sens que le terme de mythe, employ dans un contexte urbain renaissant pour saisir
5
Sur la gnalogie du mythe en Occident, voir en particulier Paul Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru leurs mythes? Essai
sur limagination constituante, Paris, Seuil, 1983 ; Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le corps, les rites, les rves, le temps. Essais
danthropologie mdivale, Paris, Gallimard, 2001.
6
Voir Louis Cardaillac, El mito de Santiago en Espaa y Amrica, dans Juan Luis Castellano Castellano, Francisco
Snchez-Montes Gonzlez (coords.), Carlos V. Europesmo y universalidad, vol. V, Madrid, 2001, p. 107-131; et Raoul
Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques, Paris, Le Seuil, 1986.
7
Ces dernires annes, les travaux qui insistent dans la ligne de la sociologie pragmatique sur laction et la prise en
compte du rle des acteurs ont accentu cette perspective. Voir Marc Breviglieri et al., Comptences critiques et sens de
la critique, Paris, Economica, 2009. Sur la question de ladquation rythmique entre lexpression discursive de laction
et lvnement historique, voir Reinhardt Koselleck, Social history and conceptual history , dans International
Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, II-3, 1989, p. 308-325.
8
MarcelDtienne, Linvention de la mythologie, Paris, Gallimard, 1981; voir Clarisse Coulomb, Les rituels dans les histoires
des villes, dans Gilles Bertrand et Ilaria Taddei (coord.), Le destin des rituels. Faire corps dans lespace urbain, Italie-France-
Allemagne. Il destino dei rituali faire corps nello spazio urbano, Italia-Francia-Germania, Rome, cole Franaise de Rome, 2008.
un cadre idologique fond sur des images et des rfrences issues de lAntiquit, a t employ par
les historiens et historiens de lart anglo-saxons depuis les annes 1960. Ces chercheurs semparaient
l dun terme qui dsignait un imaginaire spcifique: lorsque les Britanniques en voyage en Italie
au XIXe sicle parlent du mythe de Florence ou de Venise, ils font rfrence un hritage idalis,
qui transforme leur propre manire dtre Anglais9. Par la suite, la notion de mythe, reprise dans
un sens anthropologique, servit dterminer lidologie et les reprsentations qui permettent de
comprendre larchitecture, les soubresauts politiques ou les clbrations de villes de la Renaissance,
dabord parce que ces villes se comprennent elles-mmes en rapport avec la mythologie antique10.
Le terme de mythe implique donc lide dun discours spcifique sur le pass, cest une sorte de lieu
de mmoire en lui-mme, qui se transmet et affecte donc le prsent. Autre atout de ce cadre danalyse,
le mythe conserve encore malgr tout le sens gnralement admis de faux discours, ce qui comporte
lavantage daider lhistorien garder une certaine distance avec son objet et questionner son sens politique
et social lintrieur de la communaut envisage. Enfin, le mythe, ce discours sans auteur, contient
galement lide dinconscient, dincontrlable, et par l aussi dmotion et de normativit suprieure, qui
sont galement des dimensions importantes considrer dans lanalyse des discours partags. Comme les
autres villes hispaniques conquises avant elle au cours de la grande geste mdivale de reprise des territoires
anciennement wisigoths, Grenade hrite dun ensemble de rfrences associes la guerre de conqute.
Le mythe royal
Les Rois Catholiques Isabelle et Ferdinand entrent Grenade le 6 janvier 1492. Aprs dix ans
de guerre, le dernier bastion musulman de la pninsule hispanique disparaissait pour toujours.
Ctait la fin de la grande geste de restauration hroque de lEspagne antique, qui avait dur
des sicles. Lvnement, ralisation danciennes prdictions, fut clbr travers toute lEurope
9
Voir Christian Del Vento, Xavier Tabet (ds.), Le Mythe de Venise au XIXesicle. Dbats historiographiques et reprsenta-
tions littraires. Actes du colloque de Caen (19-20 novembre 2004), Caen, Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2006. I giardini
delle regine. Of Queens gardens. The myth of Florence in the Pre-Raphaelite Milieu and the American Culture (19th-20th Cen-
turies), Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Livorno, 2004.
10
Sur les modles antiques des mythes urbains et le lien entre fte, mmoire et identit locale la Renaissance, voir
en particulier Richard E.Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Ithaca-Londres, Cornell UP, 1991 [1980]. Edward
Muir, Ritual in Renaissance Venice, Princeton, Princeton UP, 1981. Iain Fenlon, The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and
Myth in Renaissance Venice, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007.
78 Ccile DAlbis
comme le signe annonciateur de la Parousie, la victoire finale de la foi chrtienne dans le monde et
le retour du Christ. Quelques mois plus tard, le succs de lexpdition de Christophe Colomb au
nom des Rois Catholiques confirmait lexceptionnelle faveur divine accorde lEspagne, charge
de la mission dunifier le monde sous la bannire de la foi chrtienne.
Grenade devint naturellement la capitale symbolique de ce projet idologique dont les rois
dEspagne firent le fondement de leur nouveau pouvoir europen. Cette situation motiva un
grand nombre de projets institutionnels, dvotionnels et artistiques prestigieux dans la ville
conquise. Les traits de tolrance conclus pour obtenir la reddition pacifique de Grenade, les
Capitulations, empchaient a priori les nouveaux colons de sapproprier la plus grande partie de
la ville musulmane11, mais Grenade se trouva pourtant parseme de signes chrtiens et royaux,
depuis la plus haute tour de la forteresse de lAlhambra jusquaux portes de la ville. Grenade tait
la ville promise, la nouvelle Jrusalem partir de laquelle les rois allaient conqurir le reste des
anciennes colonies romaines de Mditerrane, puis anantir la menace ottomane et reconqurir les
lieux saints. Surtout, Isabelle et Ferdinand dcidrent dtre enterrs dans une chapelle construite
ct de la grande mosque de la ville transforme en cathdrale. partir des annes 1510,
les corps des rois victorieux tinrent la fonction de saints fondateurs et de reliques au pouvoir
mdiateur au cur de la ville o senracinent le christianisme et le pouvoir castillan.
Lempereur Charles Quint dveloppa encore la position de Grenade lintrieur dun empire dilat
la dimension europenne. Il transforma en particulier la chapelle personnelle des Rois Catholiques
en un panthon destin abriter les membres de la nouvelle dynastie des Habsbourg. Il se situait ainsi
dans une geste la fois patriotique et universelle, confirmait la grce qui tait donne lEspagne
et sa ligne, et soulignait limportance du rle accord Grenade dans le cadre idologique de la
monarchie. Jusquau milieu du XVIe sicle, les arrives successives de corps royaux Grenade et les
clbrations funbres scellrent lalliance de la nouvelle communaut avec ses rois12.
Comment ce rle unique pouvait-il saccorder avec la ralit? La conqute de Grenade avait
11
Migel Angel Ladero Quesada (d.), La incorporacin de Granada a la corona de Castilla, Grenade, Diputacin de
Granada, 1993.
12
Alain Milhou, Pouvoir royal et absolutisme dans lEspagne du XVIe sicle, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du
Mirail, 1999.
sembl effacer dun coup toute lhistoire des sept sicles passs, oprer une boucle miraculeuse du
temps sur lui-mme, la victoire des Rois oblitrant la dfaite du roi Rodrigue face aux envahisseurs
Maures13. Mais ce retour aux origines tait aussi un tournant. En effet, puisque 1492 ouvrait une
nouvelle poque dattentes et de valeurs, elle clturait dfinitivement la prcdente. Et cela avait
deux consquences majeures.
Tout dabord, le sens symbolique large de lvnement ne pouvait voiler trs longtemps la ralit
complexe dont la ville avait hrite aprs la conqute. La cohabitation pacifique entre les colons
chrtiens, de plus en plus nombreux, et les autochtones musulmans rests Grenade se rvla
rapidement conflictuelle. Au tout dbut du XVIe sicle, la suite dune rvolte, les Capitulations
furent abroges et les Mudjares forcs daccepter les termes dune conversion qui ne leur offrait
quun statut social infrieur, celui de Nouveaux-chrtiens, ou Morisques14.
La seconde consquence tait que la conqute ne pouvait suffire pour jouer le rle de rcit
fondateur, ncessaire pour construire une marque identitaire forte pour la nouvelle ville
hispanique et ancrer ses habitants dans une filiation collective. Alors que le critre de noblesse
devenait essentiel pour dfendre les villes contre lintrusion croissante de ladministration royale,
la prise de Grenade tait en elle-mme un vnement trop rcent pour qualifier la noblesse de la
ville, principalement fournie par lantiquit de lhistoire.
Par ailleurs, les nouveaux habitants de Grenade ne pouvaient continuer longtemps sidentifier
en priorit au groupe restreint des glorieux conquistadors, car cela soulignait le fait quils taient
des nouveaux venus et finalement des occupants illgitimes. Suivant la tradition mdivale, la
guerre contre les Musulmans tait une guerre juste, pour la restauration de lEspagne et les
nouveaux arrivants taient donc naturellement les premiers habitants lgitimes du territoire.
Mais la coexistence des communauts sur le mode mdival, alors que saffirment de plus en
plus les notions dappartenance confessionnelle et ethnique de la premire modernit, imposait
13
Sur la coexistence des communauts et le destin des Morisques, je renvoie aux travaux de Bernard Vincent et de Louis
Cardaillac, en particulier Morisques et Chrtiens, un affrontement polmique, Paris, Klincksiek, 1977. Voir galement le
volume 79/2009 de la revue Cahiers de la Mditerrane (en ligne) consacr lanniversaire de lexpulsion des Morisques:
Les Morisques. Dun bord lautre de la Mditerrane., http://cdlm.revues.org.gate3.inist.fr/index4897.html.
14
Pour reprendre le titre de larticle de Marcel Dtienne, Lart de fonder lautochtonie, dans Vingtime Sicle. Revue
dhistoire 69/2001, p. 105-110.
80 Ccile DAlbis
une redfinition de la tradition. En dautres mots, il tait ncessaire pour les colons chrtiens de
fonder leur autochtonie15, de saffirmer comme les premiers habitants dun territoire dj occup
par dautres, daccorder leur histoire celle des autres Castillans.
Le mythe martyrial et la qute des origines
Le martyr, dans de multiples composantes et traditions hrites de la priode mdivale, des
changes entre lEst et lOuest, le dveloppement dimages de lautre forges lpoque des grands
affrontements contre lEmpire ottoman et lessor des dvotions martyriales la Renaissance, joua
un rle capital dans lenracinement dune autochtonie dans la Grenade moderne.
De nombreux rcits de martyrs circulaient dj Grenade depuis la priode mdivale. une poque
o les villes se peuplent de nouveaux lieux de sociabilit, de marques symboliques et sacres, o les ftes
rassemblent les habitants dans une communaut largie, les lgendes locales ou importes contriburent
tablir une gographie sacre dans la ville rcemment christianise au dbut du XVIe sicle16. Dans le mme
temps, dans le contexte des affrontements directs qui opposent lempire de Charles Quint aux ambitions
dexpansion ottomanes en Mditerrane et des guerres de religion en Europe, le martyr redevint une figure
dactualit. Les reliques antiques venues des catacombes romaines envahirent lEurope catholique. La peur
dune nouvelle inversion de lhistoire, soutenue par les prophties, marque profondment le royaume de
Grenade soumis aux oprations de piraterie venues de lautre ct de la Mditerrane et incapable de rgler
la cohabitation de plus en plus tendue entre les communauts. Les autorits sinquitrent de plus en plus
de ce royaume priphrique, mal intgr, o vivent nombre danciens Musulmans, considrs comme de
possibles tratres. Ds le milieu du XVIe sicle, Grenade nincarnait plus la promesse optimiste dun monde
uni prochainement sous la bannire de la croix, mais une mixit religieuse et ethnique dsormais suspecte
et mprise. De Nouvelle Jrusalem, Grenade tait devenue une Nouvelle Babylone17.
Le fils de lempereur Charles Quint, Philippe II, le plus puissant souverain ouest-Europen de la
15
Katie A. Harris, The Sacromonte and the Geography of the Sacred in Early Modern Granada, dans Al-Qantara
XXIII/2, 2002, p. 517-543.
16
Sur limaginaire babylonien de la ville, voir Myriam Jacquemier, Lge dor du mythe de Babel, 1480-1600: de la
conscience de laltrit la naissance de la modernit, Mont-de-Marsan, ds interuniversitaires, 1999.
17
Ignasi Fernndez Torricabras, Philippe II et la Contre-Rforme, lglise espagnole lheure du Concile de Trente, Paris,
Publisud, 2001.
deuxime moiti du sicle, fait le choix dune politique de rationalisation et dunification politique et
religieuse volontariste de ses royaumes. Avec lavance de la Rforme, le souverain est confront aux
dsirs dindpendance des marges issus des hritages mdivaux. Dans ce cadre, la question morisque
de Grenade, perue comme une vritable menace gostratgique, devient un objectif prioritaire18.
En 1568, pousss bout par les vexations et les interdits dont ils sont lobjet de la part de la
majorit chrtienne, les Morisques de Grenade se soulvent. Pour le pouvoir royal, cette rvolte est
loccasion de mettre fin une situation de mixit devenue intolrable dans une Europe o les tats
refltent de plus en plus une unit culturelle et religieuse. Il en rsulte une guerre civile violente
et traumatique, qui tente de rsoudre les questionnements identitaires complexes de ce territoire
colonial. lissue de leur invitable dfaite, en 1570, des dizaines de milliers de morisques sont
expulss dans des conditions terribles du royaume de Grenade19. Quelques annes plus tard, le
roi prend la dcision de retirer les corps des Habsbourg qui avaient t enterrs Grenade pour
les installer dans un nouveau panthon situ au cur de la Castille, lEscorial.
Cette double disparition traumatique, celle de la population et de la culture indigne dune part, celle des corps
royaux dautre part, entrana une rorientation force de la mmoire et de lidentit locale sur lesquelles stait
forge la premire socit grenadine. Alors que les certitudes de la Renaissance sloignaient et que le Concile de
Trente rationalisait et renforait la position catholique, le mythe grenadin prit une tonalit loyaliste et hirarchique
qui tentait de retrouver le lien perdu entre la ville, son pass, son environnement hispanique et ses rois.
Les dcouvertes du Sacromonte
Prs de vingt ans aprs lexpulsion des Morisques, entre 1588 et 1596, on dcouvre des reliques sur
une colline proche de la ville, rapidement nomme le Sacromonte (le mont saint). Des textes qui les
18
Antonio Luis Corts Pea, Bernard Vincent, Historia de Granada T.3, la poca moderna, Grenade, Don Quijote, 1986.
19
Il existe une importante bibliographie sur ce cas fascinant. Voir en particulier Manuel Barrios Aguilera, Mercedes
Garca-Arenal (ds.), Los plomos del Sacromonte. Invencin y tesoro, Valence, Grenade, Saragosse, Universits, 2006. Sur
les laborations historiques granadines, voir Kathie A. Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada:inventing a citys
past in early modern Spain, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press, 2007. Sur limportance des de reliques dans
diffrents contextes historiques et gographiques, voir Philippe Boutry, Pierre Antoine Fabre et Dominique Julia
(ds.), Reliques modernes. Cultes et usages chrtiens des corps saints des rformes aux rvolutions, 2 vols., Paris, ds.
de lEHESS, 2009. Et le numro spcial de la revue Past and Present, Relics and Remains, d. Alexandra Walsham,
Oxford University Press, 2010.
82 Ccile DAlbis
accompagnent rvlent opportunment quil sagit des restes dun arabe, Cecilio, converti au christianisme
par Jsus et envoy par Saint Paul avec ses compagnons pour vangliser lOccident. Ces faux, penss
et raliss en ralit par un groupe de morisques lettrs qui souhaitaient conserver la mmoire de la
communaut disparue, ont un succs inattendu et paradoxal. Au tournant du sicle, Cecilio tait en effet
un parfait candidat pour devenir un saint patron: venu dOrient pour devenir vque en Occident, il
runissait les canons de saintet anciens et nouveaux, le merveilleux et lautorit rationnelle conforte par
lglise. Ctait galement un saint syncrtique, colonial, qui rconciliait implicitement deux religions et
deux mondes antagonistes, sous le patronage de la Vierge et de Saint Jean.
En 1595, San Cecilio devient patron de la ville par consensus populaire. Et Grenade obtient
le titre de sige apostolique trois ans plus tard. La promotion du culte de San Cecilio et son
intgration rapide dans les chroniques locales qui se dveloppent au dbut du XVIIe sicle sous
lgide des autorits locales enthousiastes, tablirent la ralit des inventions de reliques comme
dune nouvelle version de lhistoire.
En effet, lclairage nouveau quoffraient les dcouvertes sur le pass permettait de reformuler
lhistoire de la ville, jusque-l obscure et principalement axe autour de la rupture engendre par la
conqute et la christianisation. Suivant la trame commune fournie par les chroniques mdivales,
cette correction faisait de Grenade une ville fondamentalement chrtienne, vanglise depuis
lantiquit, et non plus une ville dorigine musulmane, naturellement suspecte cause de sa
fondation rcente et de sa diversit ethnique. Cette poursuite collective dun pass glorieux est
la fois le reflet et le cadre de la recherche frntique danctres convenables qui touche
lensemble des Espagnols, confronts la diffusion rapide des statuts de puret de sang et, plus
largement, lassimilation de lappartenance idologique et de lidentit religieuse et ethnique.
Le mythe prend forme grce au tlescopage dvnements anciens et rcents, du martyr et de la
conqute, pris ensemble sous un halo de providence divine. Pour la population qui processionne
au mont saint, le rapprochement se fait en effet tout naturellement entre martyrs anciens et
modernes, entre leurs bourreaux romains et maures. La notion rnove de martyr runit les
thmes de la conqute, du conflit de la croisade et celle de lunit religieuse. La victimisation, qui
correspond galement aux thmes valoriss par la Contre-rforme, saccompagne de lhrosation

des anctres, ce qui permet en retour une perception glorieuse de la ville, fonde justement sur ce
qui tait auparavant considr comme dgradant. Par ce rcit, Grenade cesse dtre stigmatise et
fait voluer son image. Elle nest plus le reflet fig dune conqute passe et le rappel de lexistence
des Morisques rebelles. Elle devient la premire terre chrtienne dEurope et le modle de la
normalisation religieuse et politique du XVIIe sicle. La dcouverte des reliques dvoile ainsi
limaginaire urbain de la ville en transformation: la ville mdivale, avec ses btiments exotiques,
ses inscriptions tranges, est claircie, idalise, sanctifie20. Par ailleurs, les dcouvertes librent
Grenade de lattache exclusive ses rois en lui crant un pass. Grce elles, la ville apprend que
son histoire na pas commenc avec la conqute, mais bien avant, et que cette histoire est glorieuse.
Ainsi, bien que le phnomne du Sacromonte soit un phnomne phmre, largement remis en
cause pour son invraisemblance ds la fin du sicle et condamn comme hrtique par la papaut
la fin du sicle suivant, bien que le culte de San Cecilio nait jamais bnfici dune importante
ferveur populaire21, son incorporation au mythe de Grenade en fait la clef de la comprhension

de lidentification civique grenadine ultrieure. Cette incorporation se produit moins dans les
histoires officielles, qui retracent la gnalogie de Grenade en employant les dcouvertes comme
preuves scripturaires, suivant une conception moderne de linterprtation sacre (comme dans
luvre illustre du chanoine Francisco Bermdez de Pedraza, Historia eclesiastica, principios y
progressos de la ciudad, y religion catolica de Granada, 163722) qu travers la rptition et lamalgame
des thmes dans les clbrations et les trajets processionnels et le dveloppement des dvotions
20
Voir Fernndez Pablo Albaladejo, Materia de Espaa, cultura poltica e identidad en la Espaa Moderna, Madrid, Marcial
Pons, 2007. Pour un prcdent et un modle au cas de Grenade: Maria Catedra, Un santo para una ciudad. Ensayo de
antropologa urbana, Barcelone, Ariel, 1997.
21
Sur les stratgies dintgration de cultes officiels et la raison de leur chec fomenter la dvotion populaire, voir Ger-
vase Rosser, All for one. Constructing an identity for the Republic of Genoa in the XVIIth century: official memory
an its resistance, dans Hanno Brand et al., Memoria, communitas, civitas, op. cit., p. 33-38. Sur le culte de San Cecilio,
voir Francisco Martinez Medina, San Cecilio y San Gregorio: patronos de Granada, Grenade, Editorial Comares, 2001.
22
Voir Juan Calatrava Escobar, Granada en la historiografa religiosa seicentista: la Historia Eclesistica de Berm-
dez de Pedraza (1639), dans Manuel Barrios Aguilera, ngel Galn Snchez (coord.), La historia del reino de Granada
a debate : viejos y nuevos temas : perspectivas de estudio, Grenade, Editorial Actas, 2004, p. 705-726. Sur les reprsentations
chorgraphiques de la ville baroque, voir notamment Fernando Rodrguez de la Flor, La imagen corogrfica de la
ciudad penitencial contrarreformista: El Greco, Toledo (h. 1610), dans Victor Mnguez (d.), Del libro de emblemas a la
ciudad simblica: III Simposio Internacional de Emblemtica Hispnica, Castell de la Plana, Publicacions de la Universitat
Jaume I, 2000, vol. I, p. 59-93. Et pour une comparaison europenne, le dossier Ecrire lhistoire de la ville lpoque
moderne, dans Histoire urbaine n 28, 2010.
84 Ccile DAlbis
mariales, qui favorisent la transmission orale et les rapprochements sans cesse actualiss.
Les Vierges grenadines et ladaptation du mythe au XVIIe sicle
La Vierge et la croix, qui figurent sur les bannires des vainqueurs et reprsentent les Rois
Catholiques, mandataires de Dieu pour raliser cette conqute en son nom, occupent une place
fondamentale dans la Grenade daprs 1492. Aprs le dpart des Rois, une vritable manufacture
est mise en place pour fabriquer des statues mariales destines peupler les nouvelles glises du
royaume23. Cest lune de ces statues, place dans la premire cathdrale de Grenade, qui devient
dans les annes 1560 la premire patronne de la ville, sous le nom de Vierge de la Antigua.
Aprs le concile de Trente, les dvotions mariales deviennent la principale source la fois de
renouveau religieux et dhomognisation confessionnelle dans le monde hispanique. Les images se
multiplient et se renouvellent. Elles offrent des modles sociaux, imposent une hirarchie et un modle
religieux de dvotion, fond sur la valeur suprieure de la noblesse, o la monarchie et lglise se
renforcent mutuellement. Puis, lorsque lissue de la guerre de Trente ans semble marquer la dfaite
de lancien idal dempire universel de lEspagne, dans un contexte de rcession conomique et de
calamits publiques, les Vierges de douleur, qui expriment un tragique intrioris et contenu, servent
voquer un pouvoir royal sacrificiel pour un pays de plus en plus conscient de son dclin. Elles justifient
la survie de lidologie espagnole, mais donnent aussi un sens glorieux son destin dramatique24.
Grenade, une Vierge des douleurs devient la nouvelle patronne de la ville, officieusement ds le
dbut du XVIIe sicle, puis officiellement la fin du sicle, travers plusieurs clbrations spectaculaires
et des miracles qui imposent son pouvoir salvateur. Las Angustias bnficiait en effet de plusieurs
atouts: il ne sagissait pas, contrairement la premire patronne, la Antigua, dune reine aristocratique
majestueuse et neutre, qui incarne la civitas, la communaut civique. Ctait au contraire une figure
23
propos de cette tonnante pratique manufacturire, voir Felipe Pereda, La imgenes de la discordia. Poltica y potica
de la imagen sagrada en la Espaa del 400, Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2007.
24
John H. Elliott, Self-Perception and Decline in Early Seventeenth Century Spain dans Past and Present, 74, 1977, p. 41-
61. Et sur limportance des signes surnaturels et des prophties dans lEspagne du XVIIe sicle: Rafael Carrasco, Patrick
Bgrand (ds.), Signes et chtiments, monstres et merveilles: stratgies discursives dans les relaciones de milagros publies en
Espagne au XVIIe sicle, Clermont-Ferrand, Universit de Clermont-Ferrand, 2004. Juan Antonio Snchez Beln, El gusto
por lo sobrenatural en el reinado de Carlos II, dans Cuadernos de Historia Moderna y Contempornea, 3, 1982, p. 7-34.
exemplaire et hroque. Ce qui implique quelle ralise des exploits (des miracles), en particulier
loccasion des rogations, supplications collectives de plus en plus frquentes au XVIIe sicle et qui
mlent indistinctement causes patriotiques et locales. Enfin, limage tait apparue miraculeusement,
elle tait donc autochtone, tout en manifestant par sa lgende un lien originel aux rois et la conqute25.
Las Angustias triomphe donc en intgrant les principales composantes du mythe de Grenade : la
conqute, le martyr, lautochtonie (en dautres mots: victoire, anciennet et noblesse).
Paralllement, une Vierge souveraine vient la fois dominer et runir lensemble des dvotions mariales.
LImmacule Conception, Vierge triomphale et standardisante, dont le culte est soutenu par la monarchie,
offre un modle la fois patriotique et universel qui se diffuse avec un succs ingal au dbut du XVIIe
sicle . Tenant le rle de tmoin et de gage dorthodoxie dans les livres qui accompagnaient les reliques
dcouvertes Grenade, elle jouait dj un rle fondamental dans les dcouvertes du Sacromonte. Icne
royale et invincible, lImmacule Conception se tient depuis le dbut du XVIIe sicle sur une colonne
lentre de la ville, devant la porte o entrrent les Rois Catholiques dans la ville en 1492 et les autres
rois aprs eux. Cette Vierge manifeste la continuit de lidologie de la conqute universelle personnifie
par Grenade, en particulier dans les ftes clbres loccasion des victoires ou des dfaites de larme
royale. travers une srie de miracles, de sacrilges et de clbrations spectaculaires soutenues par les
autorits en conflit les unes contre les autres , elle devient une sorte de totem qui permet la ville de faire
perdurer le mythe dans un cadre hispanique par ailleurs dfaitiste.
Conclusion
Au XVIIIe sicle, le mythe achve de mettre en place une reconstruction du pass sous la forme dun
ensemble de rcits et dimages rcurrents. Cette laboration est bien mythique, car, en dpit des tentatives
des autorits dimposer leur interprtation, ce nest pas un rcit rationnel, que lon peut raconter de manire
linaire. Il se fonde dailleurs sur un triple paradoxe identitaire : tout en affirmant tre les descendants
des conqurants de Grenade, les Grenadins sont des autochtones. Ils descendent la fois des habitants
de la ville antique (Illibris) et des martyrs du Sacromonte, vritables anctres sacrs. Ils peuvent donc
25
Miguel Luis et Juan Jos Lpez-Guadalupe Muoz, Nuestra Seora de las Angustias y su hermandad en la poca mo-
derna, Grenade, d. Comares, 1996.
86 Ccile DAlbis
se proclamer la fois autochtones (ils taient l avant les Maures), purifis de lIslam par la mort des
martyrs-anctres et conqurants de lennemi Musulman.
Ce rcit mythique fait de multiples embranchements et de gnalogies entrecroises, parfois
avortes, reflte les grandes ruptures historiques que la ville a connues, en particulier dans le dernier
tiers du XVIe sicle. Aprs la guerre et lexpulsion traumatique de la population et de la culture des
Morisques ; aprs le dpart des corps royaux, qui force la redfinition de la raison dtre de la ville des
Rois Catholiques, symbole de lachvement de la conqute ; lorsque Grenade, appauvrie et diminue,
se trouve relgue aux frontires de lempire hispanique, la ville fait dtonnantes dcouvertes qui la
replacent au-devant de la scne et au cur des proccupations politiques et religieuses de son temps.
Cet vnement pousse les nouvelles gnrations de Grenadins combler le foss entre le pass et le
prsent, faisant ainsi voluer le rcit collectif.
Le mythe de Grenade ainsi dvelopp la singularise dans le paysage hispanique. Mais il sert surtout
insrer la ville dans un environnement hispanique fortement marqu par un idal dunicit et duniformit.
Dans son rcit communautaire, Grenade se veut la fois unique et ordinaire, la plus ancienne ville
chrtienne de lEurope occidentale et la dernire conquise. Par ailleurs, clbrations, miracles, dvotions
communes sont les lieux o ce rcit commun se met en scne et se diversifie progressivement avec le
temps. Les jeux de la propagande, la rception divergente de la population, la complexit esthtique
croissante des clbrations transforment aussi la perception et le sens du mythe urbain.
Entre particularit et effort incessant pour tendre vers une normalit idale, aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sicles
les grenadins ne cessent de rechercher un quilibre qui les prserve des difficults contemporaines et
conforte le rle que la ville ne cesse de vouloir assumer dans le concert des royaumes hispaniques. Le
mythe de Grenade est donc un outil pour comprendre lvolution des royaumes hispaniques dans leur
ensemble. Et le modle du mythe, ce rcit multiples voix, peut nous aider saisir les modalits de
lintgration des villes europennes dans leur cadre tatique et lvolution de la reprsentation de lidentit
urbaine en Europe au cours de lpoque moderne.

How Old Is the History of
Modernity?
Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici
Abstract Questions about origins, precedents, and precursors are fundamental in

historical research, yet modernity seems to represent an exceptional case in
that its history is presented in many works of recent scholarship as limited to the last two or three
centuries. Modernitys definition as radically different from what preceded it impinges on scholars
construction of their object of study, with the result that many histories of modernity do not admit
any relevant precedents or precursors before the eighteenth century. In contradistinction with this
almost exclusive emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which has been described as
the flattening of history or telescoping of historical time the paradigm of multiple modernities
(Pl.) as well as medievalists research on the modernity of the Middle Ages suggest that as a historical
process, modernity has a longer history. Periods of accelerated social change informed by new ideas
about human agency can be identified before the Enlightenment. This paper relates to theoretical work
on modernity and modernisation by bringing to the fore some medieval examples that prompt us to
question the myths of modernity.
Keywords multiple modernities, modernisation, agency, medieval humanism,

historical sociology.
In his study of agency, the hermeneutical philosopher Paul Ricouer discusses certain
aporias of ascription, of which a particularly intractable one can be stated in the
following, somewhat simplified, form. On the one hand, the search for the physical cause
of an event can stretch back in time indefinitely, potentially to an absolute beginning of
the causal series similar to Aristotles prime mover. On the other hand, the search for
88 Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici
a human agent to whom responsibility for setting in motion the same chain of events can
be assigned is invariably much shorter. In Ricouers words: the agent thereby proves
to be a strange cause indeed, since naming him or her puts an end to the search for the
cause.1 A human agent collective or individual can be blamed for the fall of Rome
(the Goths) or praised for bringing the Soviet empire of evil to its knees (Ronald Reagan).
The aporia might be explained or rather, explained away by arguing that the two
differing results are the product of two distinct paradigms: of (quasi-)physical causality
and human agency, respectively.
I am not, however, concerned here with a possible solution to this philosophical

aporia, but with a parallel in the study of history. Transposed to the historians field,
such questions have tended to revolve around the issue of origins and precedents or
precursors. The reference to the latter signals a weakening of the interest in the causal
link. It might not be possible to demonstrate that Charlemagnes empire was a distant
cause of the creation of todays united Europe, but, viewed as a precedent, this case
shows that somewhat similar ideas and practices could emerge in the widely different
historical conditions of the eight century. History is not only about continuities, but also
about discontinuities, hiatuses, falls, and re-inventions. The work of Michel Foucault
and his colleague, the historian Paul Veyne, has highlighted the perils of focusing on false
continuities over the longue dure. But the historical study of practices that at different
moments in time fulfil the same broad functions remains open and, I believe, sheltered
from Foucault and Veynes criticism, as long as it does not postulate that historical
practices from different contexts are essentially the same. The history of urbanisation
includes the early urban site of Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), from the third millennium
BC, even though the site was abandoned in the first half of the second millennium BC.
Continuity is not the main issue here, although questions of transmission and diffusion
remain important. Rather, our interest focuses on the different historical possibilities of a
shared human nature e.g., the third-millennium BC Indus-valley incarnation of urban
1
Ricouer (1992), p. 104. My research was funded through the University of Bucharests postdoctoral program in the
humanities and social sciences, which is co-financed by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial Operational
Program Human Resources Development 2007-2013 (POSDRU/89/1.5/S/62259).
How Old Is the History of Modernity? 89
life, which is instructive to compare with medieval and modern urbanism. Similarly,
philosophy as an academic discipline might be said to have emerged in Germany in the
eighteenth century, as Richard Rorty argues, but most histories of Western philosophical
thought take sixth century BC Greece as their point of departure.
Judging by a good deal of recent scholarship, modernity would seem to escape this
general rule. Its history seems remarkably short. Thus, the editor of a four-volume
compendium of scholarship on modernity, in the Critical Concepts series, rebukes in his
Introduction the call by cultural historians and students of the Middle Ages for a longer
history of modernity, going beyond the last two hundred years.2 The off-hand mention
of such heretical views there is not even the suggestion of a counter-argument based on
historical data might be interpreted as the anxiety of a scholar attempting to demarcate
a territory free of unwanted intrusions by other kinds of specialists. More fundamentally,
it reflects a lack of interest in deep history the longue dure. At least this multi-volume
anthology includes the nineteenth century and since Max Webers work is hard to
dismiss goes back on occasion to the sixteenth century. But much recent scholarship
that approaches the problematic of modernity from a sociological perspective equates
modernity with the post-war period or, at best, with the twentieth century. While Weber
and Norbert Elias practiced historical sociology, the historical is dropped from recent
sociologies of modernity.
And the phenomenon is not limited to sociology. In a recent forum in French Historical
Studies edited by Daniel Smail, four historians discuss the telescoping of history or
flattening of historical time.3 All history is becoming modern, that is, limited to the last
two hundred years or so, as if the period before the moment of origin of this or that idea
or institution was irrelevant. Volumes that trace the history of political ideas or of cultural
attitudes seem to reach back no further than the Enlightenment. Not that their authors
would necessary contend that, e.g., introspective writing does not have a history before the
eighteenth century. But nevertheless they feel entitled to leave that history out of the picture.
2
Waters (1999).
3
French Historical Studies 34.1 (2011), pp. 1-55.
Perhaps the term telescoping does not capture forcefully enough the effects of this
move towards locating origins in the last two hundred years: taken to the extreme, this
view amounts to the exclusion of most of human history from the dialogue through
which we form our historical understanding of culture and society. In this view, we can
adequately understand ourselves as a society without drawing on the experiences of
the centuries up to 1800 or 1700. Supposedly, there would be only one way in which the
before would remain useful, namely in drawing a sharp contrast with the advances
of the modern age. The medieval period, the immediate predecessor of European
modernity, is a good example. For the purposes of the sharp contrast that is drawn with
the modern period, one thousand years of medieval history are often presented as a static
age, displaying essentially the same cultural characteristics around the year 500 as it does
around 1500. Whatever change is acknowledged to have occurred during the medieval
period remains circumscribed by the thesis of radical cultural difference between the
world before and after the advent of modernity by which is generally meant the birth
of Enlightenment.
Now, studying the Middle Ages is important precisely because its otherness offers us
a term of comparison for understanding our modernity not unlike the way in which
anthropology proposes an understanding of the West through the comparison with
the other, i.e., non-Western cultures. But studying the otherness of medieval society is
also useful as a way of grasping its transformation into modernity and, implicitly, the
potential of medieval culture to engender historical change. It is this crucial aspect that
becomes overlooked if one starts from the premise of a modern society (post 1700 or
1800) radically different from what preceded it. Modernity has long been a value-laden
notion, but it seems to have also turned into a cherished possession, a unique object
whose aura would be somehow diminished if similar historical artefacts from previous
ages would be placed next to it.
I think this is the point where modernitys self-definition, which since 1,500 years
ago has involved a real contrast with the culture of the preceding period, begins to
overshadow the historians duty to examine critically their object of study. The researcher
is, after all, embedded in a modern culture that defines itself as unprecedented. A key
factor that perpetuates the myths of modernity, the academic division of labour between
medievalists and modernists each absorbed in the study of a precisely delineated field
is the product of broader cultural trends that have defined our modernity as unlike
anything that has taken place before. At times, our historical discourse reproduces quite
uncritically the agenda of enlightenment thinkers who were forging their modern identity
by rejecting the cultural heritage of the preceding medieval era. As Susan Reynolds has
shown in her pioneering work, Fiefs and Vassals, twentieth-century scholarly ideas about
feudalism perpetuate the cultural schemas contrived by early modern writers in order
to paint the disparaging picture of a tyrannical, feudal society quite unlike the modern
world they were building.4 Following Reynoldss book and other works inspired by it,
feudalism is now a discredited notion among many medievalists, but remains ingrained
in modernists perspective on medieval society.
More examples (and more apposite for the history of modernity) can be adduced. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries represented one of the greatest ages of reason (ratio), as
shown by Richard Southerns research on medieval humanism.5 This was an age in which
the individuals position in society was affirmed and an optimistic outlook about the future
of society spread through many urban centres. But outside medievalists circles this aspect is
rarely evoked today recall the example of the introduction to Modernity: Critical Concepts.
The Enlightenments status as the first age of reason in history can go unchallenged. Its
own version of modernity becomes normative as earlier modernisation efforts, great and
small, become victims of a paradigm built on the contrast between developments before
and after the eighteenth century. In this paradigm, late-medieval transformations in the
social imaginary, the spread of the vernacular and pragmatic literacy, the valorisation of
work, and laicisation, remain at best relevant for the pre-history of European modernity.
The history of modernity is allegedly only two or three centuries old; unlike the history of
4
Reynolds (1994), pp. 7-9.
5
Southern (1970).
urbanism or moral philosophy, mentioned above, it does not admit significant precedents.
But another view is possible, thanks to research over the last thirty years, and I
want to sketch its main parameters in the remainder of this paper. To understand this
perspective, we need to clarify our insights about what modernity is. It is immediately
noticeable that modernity is not just a historical age. That would be a simple, but only
partly satisfying answer, because in both scholarly and public opinion modernity stands
for more it stands for a cluster of societal changes. But here we encounter a difficulty.
Modernity is frequently characterised in all but its own terms. Often times when we say
modernity what we really mean what we are actually describing is something like
industrialisation plus mass culture plus secularism plus etc. (Would it not be simpler
to just say industrialisation if this is what we really mean?) Thus modernity is defined
by aggregating developments as diverse as the bureaucratic state, industrialisation,
demographic growth, print culture or recently TV and Internet culture and the list
can go on, e.g., with the risk society or the so-called abstract systems in which we
increasingly place our trust.6 Doubtlessly, these are all important phenomena, but they
do not tell us what modernity is about, in the specific sense in which this idea has been
in use for more than 1,500 years.
The history of the notions modern, modernitas, or modernit is not just a matter
of etymology. Rather, the concept associated with these terms has been deployed in
different historical contexts in similar ways. There is a salient meaning to it, ever since
its first recorded use around the year 500, by Pope Gelasius who contrasted older church
regulations with his own novel legislation and then by Cassiodorus who distinguished
between the Roman empire of the past and the saecula moderna in which he was living.7
The sense of cultural change, of moving beyond tradition and into new territory is evident in
later cases, when the concept was brought to the fore: during the Carolingian Renaissance
and, notably, in the twelfth-century humanist movement that began around the cathedral
schools (the future universities), a movement to which I alluded above. Modernity was
6
Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990).
7
Jauss (1978), pp. 163-64.
a fundamental idea in the twelfth-century renaissance, as humanists like Pierre Abelard
styled themselves moderni the men of now, from the Latin adverb modo: now,
presently, recently in contradistinction with the intellectuals of yesteryear. (They also
called themselves hodierni, the men of today).8 But their modernitas was not dismissive
of the past and did not reject tradition as a whole unlike the modernity of the twentieth
century. The characteristic twelfth-century confidence in human energies and in an open
future recognised an important debt to the cultural legacy of earlier generations. This
debt is epitomised in Bernard de Chartress metaphor, dwarfs standing on the shoulders
of giants. The attention to the individual, as the subject of an inner dialogue and as an
agent acting upon the world, is epitomised in the revival of autobiographical writing.9
From the handful of autobiographies of intellectuals in the twelfth century we move to a
diversity of private records and memoranda and even diaries, in the thirteenth to fifteenth
centuries (such as the Italian ricordi and ricordanze and some of the more elaborate livres
de raison from France).10
It is important to emphasise that having survived the demographic and social disasters
that cast a darker cultural mood over the fourteenth-century, the intellectual legacy of
medieval humanism proved influential in the genesis of Renaissance humanism.11 At
the end of the Middle Ages, the affirmation of the individual both as knowing subject
and as social agent was more significant than in the twelfth century, when it had been
8
Clanchy (1997), pp. 33, 39-40.
9
Gurevich (1995), pp. 110-55.
10
In his philosophical genealogy of modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie seems to me to misrepresent the role of
medieval humanism; (2008), pp. 3-4. He fails to grasp medieval humanists optimism and confidence in a better
future to be brought about through the systematic application of reason to societys problems (as discussed in
Southerns essay see in particular pp. 43-49 on the thirteenth-century overcoming of the impasse of the first
phase of humanism). Gillespie makes it seem as if the apocalyptic visions of Joachim of Fiore were shared broadly
including by the humanists. What is more, in his emphasis on the role of great intellectuals, Gillespie ignores
research on the affirmation of the individual in later medieval society a broad social trend that owed little to
fourteenth-century debates among philosophers about nominalism (the affirmation of the individual, quite
clear in medieval pragmatic literacy for example can be traced from at least two hundred years earlier). This
neglect is all the more startling since Gillespie sees the origins of modernity in the individualist stance of the early
Renaissance (and notably Petrarch; p. 46). While I cannot develop this topic here, I aim to argue in a later work that
the individualism of, e.g., Ockham seems less extraordinary if we understand it against the background of earlier
Franciscan practice, at variance with the Orders communitarian doctrine as attested by the autobiographical
writings of Salimbene de Adam (thirteenth-century), an ordinary friar who remained strongly attached to his roots
in the individualistic, competitive culture of the Italian urban laity.
11
Murray (1978), p. 21.
circumscribed largely by intellectuals reflections. The relation between late-medieval
social transformations and the emergence of the early modernity of the sixteenth
to eighteenth centuries is a fertile topic of research. Important suggestions about the
modernity of the Middle Ages have already been made by medievalists like Jean-Claude
Schmitt and Jacques Le Goff.12
In contrast with the vision which I have presented and criticised in the first part of
this paper, a different paradigm of modernity has been recently proposed by historians
and social scientists conducting research on multiple modernities (emphasis on the
plural).13 This perspective disputes the thesis of a single modernity that spread from
Western Europe to the rest of the world and draws attention to the local contributions
to modernisation across Eurasia, and therefore to the plurality of paths to modernity.
It also entails a view of early modernity that reflects social transformations since the
twelfth century thus meeting the recent work of medievalists. Importantly, its definition
of modernity focuses on the valorisation of human agency and the idea of the open
future. This is a historically-informed definition of the analytical construct modernity,
resonating with both Enlightenment and medieval notions.
Now the geographical plurality of paths to modernity opens up an intriguing possibility
on the chronological or temporal plane. It suggests that we can grasp the modernity of
the later Middle Ages as a movement with its own dynamic and cultural logic, one of
several periods of social innovation and modernisation in history. In this particular case,
there are both mutations and continuities between the modernity of the twelfth to fifteenth
centuries and the succeeding early modern period; as I have already mentioned, there is an
important, albeit complex, relation between late-medieval social changes and the emergence
of European modernity. But at other moments in history, we can identify modernisation
movements periods of accelerated social change informed by new ideas about human
agency whose legacy was not enduring. Yet they remain interesting for anyone who wants
to study modernity not simply as a time period but as a historical process, because they
12
Schmitt (2001), pp. 26-27; Le Goff (2004), p. 55.
13
Daedalus 129.1 (2000).
exemplify different ways of thinking about social change and imagining an open future to
be achieved through new forms of social mobilisation. They provide a genuine historical
term of comparison for Europes classic modernity rather than just material for a rough-
and-ready contrast that obfuscates more than it illuminates.
Whether the word modern and its derivates were used in the self-definition of such
cultural movements is ultimately less important, because similar attitudes and ideas can
be expressed by many different words. Thus the history of modernity can go beyond the
first recorded use of the term modern, circa 500 as long as the historian is attentive to
the substance of different visions and programmes of social change. It should be clear
by now that the modernity whose history can be thus traced is more than the set of
developments commonly associated with the eighteenth to the late twentieth century.
Rather, the history of modernity in the sense which I am defending here is the study of
modernisation efforts and movements throughout human history.
A few more remarks may be helpful here. The core belief that there is only one
modernity has been successfully challenged by the multiple modernities paradigm.
While the plurality envisioned in these studies is, to use this term, geographical while
certainly also social, cultural, etc. it makes it easier for us to accept the existence of
multiple modernities not just across continents but also across historical periods, as I
have suggested above. It is worth emphasising that one must not be deterred by the
unreflective usage of the term, equating modernity with the changes of the last two
hundred years. For the purposes of comparative history and all history is, to varying
degrees, comparative the definition of modernity predicated on the valorisation of
human agency and the open future is more flexible. It is apt to encourage cross-historical
reflection on social change while avoiding the pitfalls of false dichotomies (often of a
culturalist bent) between societies pre- and post- 1700 or 1800. At the same time, this
definition is not so broad as to dissolve the concept of modernity. Indeed, commentators
like Shmuel Eisenstadt insist on the distinctiveness of modernity. This is quite helpful
inasmuch as it is aimed at a clearer conceptual definition of modernity highlighting,

say, the distinction between social change brought about by new ideas and forms of
agency and incremental, cumulative economic growth caused by the continuation on a
larger scale of the same practices. But if the stress on the distinctiveness of modernity is
meant to revive the notion of modernity as unprecedented and the exclusive preserve of
the last several centuries,14 I feel compelled to part ways with an interpretation that seems
to me to depart from the idea of multiple modernities. The distinctiveness of modernity
as a category of historical research derives from its conceptual underpinnings (change,
agency, the open future), at once sufficiently general to make cross-historical study
meaningful and specific enough to keep the analysis focused. Urbanisation, capitalism,
and industrialisation are specific manifestations of the Western modernity of the last two
hundred years. They are not as useful for understanding modernity movements in other
historical contexts and, as we have seen, do not go to the core of what modernity is about.
On the one hand, the conventional, presentist meaning of the term, viewing modernity
as a period a shorthand for the last few hundred years of history during which our
current social and cultural outlook has taken shape. On the other hand, a substantive
definition of modernity as a historical process; this inclusive perspective reflects the salient
meaning of modern / modernitas and enables us to deploy the analytical apparatus
of the sociology of modernisation to the study of projects of social change throughout
human history. This approach in no way denies the importance of recent societal changes,
but challenges the privileged, exclusive status we accord to our modernity. If we define
modernity substantively and reflecting historical usage as accelerated or sustained
change informed by new forms of human agency, there is no good reason to limit it to
the last few hundred years.
Interestingly, in one particular case that I can think of, both perspectives seem legitimate.
I am thinking here of the social transformations of the later Middle Ages, the period
immediately preceding the so-called early modern period (with its seventeenth-century
scientific revolution and the birth of the Enlightenment). Now I argue that the modernity
14
In other words, my point is not simply to push back the beginnings of European modernity into the fifteenth or
fourteenth centuries, but to rethink modernity as an analytical category.
of the later Middle Ages however partial it may seem from our standpoint should
be grasped first of all in its own terms, as a one of historys modernisation projects. But
the continuities between the late-medieval achievement and subsequent modernisation
programmes suggest that it is also instructive to look at the modernity of the later
Middle Ages in relation with the modernity of the recent centuries. A homeopathic dose
of presentism is not devoid of heuristic value. Some of the traditional battle horses of the
history and sociology of modernisation remain useful vehicles with which to approach
the twelfth to fifteenth centuries: e.g., the affirmation of the individual as social agent,
the valorisation of work, urbanisation, institutional consolidation, laicisation, pragmatic
literacy and the spread of the vernacular. Even if their origin may be earlier that the
later Middle Ages and they are not exclusively Western inventions15 their historical
evolution during this period is highly significant. The student of the later medieval
period, it seems to me, must shift between the two perspectives I have discussed above.
Finally, it is worth recalling that historians have been using modern and modernity
in a broader sense, not restricted to the last two or three hundred years, although such
usage has not been systematic. For example, Paul Veyne writes in a recent book about the
modernity of Constantine the Greats adoption of Christianity in the fourth century.16 One
can encounter modernity movements even before the common era after all, we already
talk of the Neolithic revolution, even if revolution was until lately a term reserved,
like modernity itself, for the study of recent history. And this means that to the question
how old is the history of modernity?, any answer will have to be provisional. Yet my
first response is to say, older than the eighteenth century.
REFERENCES
Beck, Ulrich. The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Translated by Mark Ritter. London, 1992.
Clanchy, Michael. Abelard: A Medieval Life. Oxford, 1997.
15
Goody (1996).
16
Veyne (2007), pp. 47-49, 121.
Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, 1990.

Goody, Jack. The East in the West. Cambridge, 1996.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago, 2008.
Gurevich, Aaron. The Origins of European Individualism. Trans. Katharine Judelson. Oxford, 1995.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Pour une esthtique de la reception. Translated by Claude Maillard. Paris, 1978.
Le Goff, Jacques. Saint Francis of Assisi. Translated by Christine Rhone. London, 2004.
Murray, Alexander. Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1978.
Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford, 1994.
Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago, 1992.
Schmitt, Jean-Claude. Le corps, les rites, les rves, le temps: Essais danthropologie mdivale. Paris, 2001.
Southern, R. W. Medieval Humanism. In Medieval Humanism and Other Studies: 29-60. Oxford, 1970.
Veyne, Paul. Quand notre monde est devenu chrtien (312-394). Paris, 2007.
Waters, Malcolm. Ed. Modernity: Critical Concepts. Vol. 1. London, 1999.
An Obscure Object of Desire: The
Myth of Alba Iulia and Its Social
Functions, 1918-1940
Gbor Egry
Institute of Political History, Budapest
Abstract The memory of the Great Assembly of Alba Iulia (1 December 1918) an event
that was instrumental in the union of Transylvania with the Romanian kingdom
served during the interwar period as the basis for several legitimising and mobilising discourses. To this
end, a complete mythology of the event was developed by Romanian political leaders from Transylvania,
who gradually turned the event into the cornerstone of their own interpretation of national history, in an
effort to redefine the nation. In turn, their Old Kingdom rivals from the National Liberal Party developed a
counter-myth that highlighted their own role in the unification of the nation, implicitly serving the function
of legitimising their rule. The liberals approach was also grounded in a distinct reading of national history.
Meanwhile, splinter groups of Transylvanian Romanian politicians and the leadership of the Transylvanian
Hungarian minority advanced a different interpretation in order to substantiate their political demands.
The competing versions slowly became foci of the interwar politics of identity, in which a key issue was
the relationship between the recently annexed Transylvania and the rest of the country. In this context, it
was asserted that Romanians from the regions of the Old Kingdom had a substantially different identity
than Transylvanians. Conversely, the myth of Alba Iulia became the means for developing a new and
organic concept of the nation, aimed at transcending earlier constructs and centred on the figure of the
Transylvanian Iuliu Maniu, the hero of Alba Iulia and Romanias destined leader.
Keywords interwar Romania, Iuliu Maniu, regionalism, politics of identity, Alba

Iulia, organic nationalism.
An ordinary revolution
To see a huge crowd gathered to declare the independence of a nation and/or the establishment
of a new state was not uncommon in Eastern Europe in the fall of 1918. Revolutions swept all
over the region and brought about profound changes in the political map. Alba Iulia (Hungarian:
Gyulafehrvr; German: Karlsburg), a small city in Transylvania, was the stage of one such
100 Gbor Egry
occasion. The Kingdom of Hungary, part of the dualist monarchy of Austria-Hungary, collapsed
under the weight of the defeat in the First World War and of the incapacity of an already exhausted
administration. The army disintegrated, soldiers headed to their homes, albeit not without their
rifles, while the peasants expelled the local bureaucracy.1 They stormed local pubs and stores, burnt
tax registers, appropriated the village reserves, and redistributed the land, all the while remaining
ethnically indiscriminate.2 Order was gradually restored and National Councils established. These
served as more or less unrestricted authorities in the villages until the start of 1919.3 In many cases
ethnic differences were not obstacles for co-operation in managing local issues and retrospectively
the council members almost universally thought of themselves as the instruments of a revolution.4
The subsequent events transformed a social revolution into a national one. A mass assembly
(around one hundred thousand people) at Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918 declared that the Romanians
of Hungary will join Greater Romania. Beyond the declaration of popular sovereignty the resolution
spoke of the (temporary) right of the province to be governed according to its customs citing the
right of every nation to be governed by its own people and promised rights for minorities, including
the right to have their own schools, to be judged by their own judges, and to use their mother tongue
in the administration. Furthermore, it reasserted that the newly erected Ruling Council (Consiliul
Dirigent) will be the only legitimate representative forum of the Romanian nation.5
Consiliul Dirigent made an effort to stabilise the situation and reorganise the province. It
thus acted as the de facto government and even saw itself as a sovereign power.6 Furthermore,
it became the main political force of Greater Romania after the parliamentary elections and saw
one of its leaders, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, installed as prime-minister of Romania. The more
1
At the end of 1919, one year after the events, the prefect of Turda-Arie County reported that not one village hall
was spared from destruction and, out of the 68 village notaries, only two or three remained at their posts; Arhivele
Naionale Istorice Centrale (Romanian National Archives, henceforth ANIC), Bucharest, Fonds Consiliul Dirigent,
Section Siguran General, Poliie i Jandarmerie, dossier 3/1920, f. 250-52.
2
Lzar (2000).
3
Egry (2010), pp. 97-98.
4
Ibid.; Maria Bucur emphasises the ethnic conflict as the crucial element of the memory of this short period, but in
the light of frequent ethnic cooperation it seems more accurate to lay the emphasis on the revolutionary aspect; Bucur
(2001), pp. 292-93.
5
A gyulafehrvri hatrozatok (The decisions of Alba Iulia), Magyar Kisebbsg (The Hungarian Minority) 1.7 (1
December 1922): http://www.jakabffy.ro/magyarkisebbseg/index.php?action=cimek&lapid=2&cikk=m950206.html ;
accessed 19 September 2011.
6
Alexandru Vaida-Voevods communication to Iuliu Maniu, 28 April 28 1919, published in Leutean (2002), p. 189.
An Obscure Object of Desire: The Myth of Alba Iulia and Its Social Functions, 1918-1940 101
accustomed to this situation the Transylvanian politicians grew, the more deeply they felt the
shock of its abrupt end. When Vaida-Voevods successor as prime-minister, Marshal Alexandru
Averescu, dissolved the Ruling Council in March 1920, Transylvanian politicians felt they had
been deprived of their rightful administrative body and their share of power.
The year 1918, however, was never forgotten. It was seen by its main protagonists as a national
revolution with three main aspects. It was democratic as the masses expressed their will, national as it
brought about the realisation of the national demands, and unitary in the sense that no true Romanian
dissented. The Assembly consisted of everyone, peasants, the middle class, and workers. As a result,
the ensuing activity of the Consiliul Dirigent became just as important as the mass demonstration. It
was conceived as the realisation of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination and self-rule,7 and
Consiliul Dirigent was treated as the only legitimate government of the Transylvanian Romanians.
Alba Iulia evolved into a symbol beyond the confined locality and the singular event that took place
there, embodying the fundamental ideals of a specific value system. In the following two decades
the myth of Alba Iulia became a political instrument with far reaching consequences.8
The myth: the symbolic centre of all Romanians
The Great Assembly of Alba Iulia was part of living memory throughout the interwar period.
Most of its leading personalities were active and prominent figures of public life; many of the
ordinary peasant participants lived throughout the interwar years. The fact that so many people
would have had personal memories or at least would have heard about the events from participants
was probably a factor in the myth-making process, and it underlines how much this myth was a
social construct, developed through the interplay of conscious, purposeful interpretation and the
popular memories of the event.9
7
Bucur (2001), pp. 287-298.
8
For the purpose of this essay I will define myth as a strong concept of history. It refers to the past in order to deal
with the present; therefore its real object is the latter. Its aim is to legitimise (or, alternatively, de-legitimise) through
the construction of a destined community (i.e., through allegedly common history) and consequently it is often tele-
ological and uses a series of personalities as symbols and places as lieux de mmoire.
9
The interplay between the invented tradition and the popular memories and practices in remembering and hon-
ouring the wars victims is the focus of Bucur (2009).
102 Gbor Egry
1 December was duly commemorated every year,10 but still contested and reinterpreted.
Originally it was mainly the concern of Transylvanian Romanians, whose cultural organisations
played a pioneering role in setting up festive events. The initial neglect on the part of Old Kingdom
media and elites changed with time and the tenth anniversary was greeted with wide media
coverage while the first uniform commemorations were held in 1938, as a symbol of the unifying
strength of King Carol IIs recently established dictatorship.11
However, it was not this sometimes mechanical ritual that reinforced the myth, but politics,
specifically the attempt of mainly Transylvanian Romanian politicians to develop a political
discourse in which a mythologized version of Alba Iulia played the central role. These politicians
were affiliated with either the Romanian National Party of Transylvania (from 1926 the National
Peasants Party) or Averescus Peoples Party. Vehemently opposing the practices of the National
Liberal Party (which dominated Romanian politics up to 1926), they resorted to the memory of
Alba Iulia as a core symbol of their legitimacy and capacity to govern Transylvania, developing a
very complex symbolism that encompassed the entire Romanian history of Transylvania.
Its historic references included the late-sixteenth-century prince of Wallachia, Mihai Viteazul
(Michael the Brave), who for a short period also ruled over Transylvania and Moldova. As the
traditional seat of Transylvanian princes, Alba Iulia thus became the capital of the first union of
the Romanian provinces.12 Furthermore, Alba Iulia was the place of the ancient city of Apulum
of the Roman province of Dacia, a fact that invoked the concept of the Dacian-Roman descent of
Romanians. These were important links to an already canonised national history; however, the
main tenets of the newly developed mythology were consciously different, referring to the Great
Assembly as a mass demonstration, to its social composition, and regional scope.
These elements were bound together in the concepts of freedom and revolution and situated
in an unbroken chain of freedom fights. As the bulk of Transylvanian Romanians were peasants
10
Silviu Dragomir, Informaiuni (News) Romnul (The Romanian), 12.51 (11 December 1927).
11
Bucur (2001), pp. 29294, 297, 299300.
12
Additionally, Michael was well established in the historical canon of pre-1918 Romania: his statue served as the
permanent destination of Heroes Day commemorative marches; Bucur (2009), p. 106. Since 1928, laying wreath on
the statue also became part of official commemorations of 1 December; Bucur (2001), pp. 299-300. Thus, his figure of-
fered the opportunity both for linking Transylvanias history to a common Romanian past and, from Transylvanians
perspective, for appropriating the national history.
and prior to 1848 had been serfs while the majority of their lords were Hungarians liberation
from serfdom and national rights were merged (and obfuscated). Revolts and demonstrations
were portrayed as eruptions of a millenary vision of a free and united Romanian nation.13 This
discursive strategy was deployed with references to Horeas revolt (1784), to the 1848 revolution
in Transylvania and the leader of its Romanian participants, Avram Iancu, to the electoral clashes
of the dualist era,14 and to the Great Assembly of Alba Iulia.15 In this sense 1 December 1918 was
put forth as the logical conclusion of a linear story of national emancipation.16
Emancipation also meant elevating the peasants and breaking the power of their oppressors.
As interwar Romania was an agrarian state, the social composition of the historical liberation
movement gained particular importance. The fight for both types of liberation, social and national,
was translated into a value system, seen as inherently Transylvanian Romanian, and dubbed as
democratic. Being a Transylvanian peasant imposed the moral obligation to fight for freedom. A
striking example is found in a letter written by Iuliu Maniu, the National Peasants Party leader, to
Miron Cristea, the Patriarch of Romanias Orthodox Church and prime-minister during King Carol
IIs dictatorship. Maniu accused the prelate of complicity in Carols coup dtat, whose consequence
was the destruction of spiritual values, and expressed his grief that it is a Transylvanian, a former
political friend and a son of a Romanian serf who will dismantle democracy.17
From this angle the unity of the country looked different too. The Assembly was a manifestation
of self-determination and the founding moment of Greater Romania. It toppled the barrier of
the Carpathians, but did not mean subordination and the surrender of Transylvanians right to
self-determination.18 According to Manius letter, Cristea took an oath at Alba Iulia to defend
Transylvanias rights and thus his collaboration with the dictatorship was in effect a betrayal of
the oath and of the rights affirmed two decades earlier.
13
See as an example: 1 Decembrie, Chemarea Tinerimei Romne (The Call of the Romanian Youth) 6.34 (6 December 1931).
14
See Mihai Popovicis speech at the demonstration of the Fgra County organisation of the National Peasants
Party, 6 October 1935.
15
See for example Valer Moldovans speech at the congress of the Bihor County organisation of the National Peasants
Party, 6 October 1935; ANIC, Fonds Direcia General a Poliiei (henceforth DGP), dossier 104/1935, f. 11-12.
16
Teodor Roxins speech at the congress of the Bihor County organisation of the National Peasant Party, 6 October
1935; ANIC, DGP, dossier 104/1935, f. 13.
17
Iuliu Manius alleged letter to Miron Cristea of 16 February 1938; ANIC, DGP, dossier 67/1926, f. 74-77, here 75.
18
1 Decembrie (as in note 13 above). See also Bucur (2001), pp. 296298.
104 Gbor Egry
While the myth initially absorbed the past but was closed towards the future the nations aims
having been achieved subsequently, in the context of the desperate political struggle between
liberals and their opponents,19 the myth was extended beyond 1918. As Maniu put it in 1928, the
Romanians of 1918 thought that their unity will be enough to elevate them and thus the National
Peasants Partys reason for existence has ceased. But it was in vain.20
Furthermore, the myth was suitable for re-enactment, and this enabled a reinterpretation of its content
without affecting its core concepts. The new National Peasants Party established through the merger of
the National Party and the Peasants Party held its assembly at Alba Iulia on 6 May 1928. Contemporaries
pondered its significance beyond the current political context,21 while National Peasants Party leaders
emphasised its epochal importance. They insisted that at Alba Iulia they can overthrow the government and
install a National Peasants Party cabinet.22 The Alba Iulia assembly of 1928 was intentionally a re-enactment
of the Great Assembly of 1918, organised as an imitation in order to finish what had been left unfinished.
Politicians toured the countryside urging the peasants to attend.23 Some of them took the burden of making
a proper pilgrimage, like Professor Emil Haieganu of the University of Cluj, who travelled by foot.24
The demonstration was only a shadow of the original intention. Although the peasants and workers
attending were passionate, the political change failed to take place. Despite the heated speeches, the
declaration that the liberal government is illegal and against the will of the people, and the oath
taken to fight the government with every means, the party remained in opposition until November.
Some nearby villages saw scenes similar to the ones in 1918, but order was soon restored.25
Nevertheless, 1928 occupied a very important place in the developing mythology. Besides the
re-enactment, it represented a new substance, a logical conclusion of the partial success of 1918.26
19
For a detailed account of the political struggle between the National Party and the National Liberal Party, see
Ciuperc (2010).
20
Maniu beszl (Manius speech), Ellenzk (The Opposition), 49.104 (May 1928).
21
Buruian (2007), p. 204.
22
Lupta de rsturnare a guvernului liberal (The fight for overthrowing the liberal government), Romnul 12.50 (4
December 1927); Mi lesz Gyulafehrvron? (What will happen at Alba Iulia?), Ellenzk 49.99 (4 May 1928).
23
Adunarea de la Alba Iulia (The Alba Iulia assembly), Clujul Romnesc (The Romanian Cluj) 6.15-16 (29 April 1928).
24
Ellenzk 49.101-102 (6-7 May 1928).
25
ANIC, DGP, dossier 3/1928, f. 16, 21.
26
Teodor Roxins speech (as in note 16 above).
Unity was redefined as the unity of the Romanian people and their representative the recently
merged National and Peasants parties and the liberation of Old Kingdom peasants.27 Thus, the
1928 assembly was more than imitation: it consecrated the unity of the nations core, the peasantry.
Retrospectively it might look even more important than the assembly of 1918, as during the 1930s
the National Peasants Party discourse conceived of it as one of the most important events of
Romanian history.28 For the new generation the 1928 assembly was the Alba Iulia assembly. As a
newspaper supportive of the Peasants Party puts it: We, the young generation of the National
Peasants Party, took the oath at Alba Iulia together with everyone. This oath was solemn and
sacred. We swore to fight for the good of the nation.29 The 1918 oath, binding its subjects eternally,
was complemented by a new one that brought more people into the community of a solemn oath.
The Alba Iulia of the myth was the symbolic centre of the nation. It was connected to the history
of the nation, a symbol of all the peasants major attempts at liberation, while also serving the same
aim of liberation in the present time. The masses present were revolutionary both in 1918 and in
1928,30 making Alba Iulia the true expression of popular will. The myth slowly transformed into a
circular teleology. Unity was a recurring event from the Romans to 1928 and Alba Iulia the place of
its manifestation, while its social content was nevertheless very different. Michael the Brave was a
late-sixteenth-century military ruler. The masses of 1918 were Transylvanian, with every social group
represented to liberate itself. The crowd of 1928 was seen as representing both every Transylvanian
Romanian and every peasant from the Old Kingdom. It marked an evolution in the scope of the
nation through the emancipation of earlier disenfranchised groups.31 This notwithstanding, Alba Iulia
mainly served a regionalist political agenda. It was a Transylvanian event, the result of Transylvanian
ethics. It proved the Transylvanians central role in the nations liberation, the importance of their
democratic sentiment and morality, and served as the basis of regionalist political claims.
27
Aurel Dobrescus speech at the Dacia Traiana Hall, Bucharest, 3 November 1935, ANIC, DGP, dossier 104/1935, f.
152-59.
28
Valer Moldovans speech at the congress of the National Peasants Partys Bihor County organisation, 6 October
1935; ANIC, DGP, dossier 104/1935, f. 11-12.
29
Noi... (We), Chemarea Tinerimei Romne 6.1 (3 March 1929).
30
A report of the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) of 17 July 1928 characterised the situation in the country as
revolutionary; Napi hrek / Napi tudstsok (Daily News / Daily Reports).
31
Although not in an identical sense, the issue of wholeness of the nation became central for all of the interpretations
of 1 December during the 1930s. Bucur (2001), pp. 298, 301-02.
106 Gbor Egry
The counter-myth: Transylvania liberated
The Old Kingdom liberals were unhappy with this myth of Alba Iulia and of Greater Romania.
As a result, they became eager to suppress it and replace it with a different mythology. The process
started in 1922, when the liberals organised at Alba Iulia the coronation of King Ferdinand as king
of Greater Romania. A far-reaching campaign all around Transylvania preceded the ceremony,
with liberal Prime-Minister Ionel Brtianu and his cabinet members holding rallies in the cities
and organising festivities to celebrate the agrarian reform.
These actions were aimed at the foundations of the original myth. The coronation symbolised
that Greater Romania was born out of the liberals policies, while the coronation ritual overwrote
the revolutionary symbolism of the city. It was a typical symbolic occupation, all the more successful
as the National Party announced its withdrawal from the festivities. The festive distribution of
land similarly attacked the legitimacy of the National Party, associating the liberal government
with the liberation from Hungarian estate owners.32
The National Party justified its absence by denouncing the liberal government as illegitimate,
originating from fraud and violence.33 To counterbalance the government they too organized mass
rallies, usually on the heels of the liberals. The heated verbal clashes that started in the autumn
of 1922 lasted for almost two decades. While the liberals spoke of a bright future and a new
era, the National Party listed the grievances of Transylvanians and soon resorted to stigmatising
the liberals as aliens to Transylvania and the nation, oligarchs, Byzantine in character, and even
dictators.34 Vaida-Voevod asserted that had they known in 1918 the liberals true nature they
would not have offered an unconditional unification.35
As the Transylvanians had their own national history, the liberals deployed a competing
version, based mainly on the events of the Old Kingdom; in this they were helped by the fact that
32
Kiskkll (25 September 1922); the newspapers title, Kiskkll, was the Hungarian name of Trnava Mic (Ro-
manian), a county in Transylvania.
33
See Ellenzk 43.230 (12 October 1922): 1.
34
A Romnia magyar kisebbsg srelmei 1922/10 (The grievances of the Hungarian minority of Romania), Magyar
Orszgos Levltr (Hungarian National Archives; henceforth MOL), Budapest, Fonds K28, vol. 4, item 10 1923-T-85,
f. 30. Mihai Groporean characterized the liberals as those who learned from the Russians how to demoralise, from
the Bulgarians how to take revenge, from the Greeks how to lie, and from the Poles how to sneak.
35
Ibid.
1 December did not resonate with the Old Kingdom population. Their cities had other traditions
of commemorating the nations history and another narrative of national unity, culminating in
the unification of Moldova and Wallachia on 24 January 1859. The Old Kingdom press scarcely
mentioned 1 December while at the same time providing detailed coverage of 24 January annual
festivities.36 From this point of view, the prelude to the second Alba Iulia was a repetition of 1922,
the roles reversed. The liberals followed National Peasants Party rallies in the main cities of the
country, presenting their history with Iai where the first step had been made in the union of
Moldova and Wallachia and 1859 at its centre.37 This alternative narrative of national unification
portrayed the liberals whose founding figures had been instrumental in the union of 1859 as
the only representatives of all Romanians.38
The main point of contention was who liberated Transylvania. While Transylvanians insisted
that it was the result of their own efforts and a logical conclusion of history, the liberals emphasised
the role of the Old Kingdom.39 A May 1928 editorial of the Transylvanian-based newspaper Clujul
Romnesc summed up the debate succinctly: the peasants who rallied at Alba Iulia in 1928 came
not because of the National Peasants Party leaders but because of the symbolism of the place.
Alba Iulia was a symbol of the unification, something not achieved by Maniu or National Peasants
Party leaders but by every Romanian soul. Furthermore, Alba Iulia was a symbol of the crown,
yet the party that insisted in was the sole representative of the nation had not been present at the
1922 coronation.40 The interpretation of Alba Iulia centred on the issue of legitimacy and as such
it was hard to find a compromise interpretation.41
Competing versions: Transylvanian dissidents and Hungarians
Minor groups also developed somewhat different interpretations of Alba Iulia, while sharing the
conviction that it was a unique event, an expression of popular will and Transylvanian specificity.
36
Bucur (2001), pp. 293-94; Bucur (2009), p. 110.
37
Buruiana (2007), pp. 214-15.
38
Ibid., pp. 217-18.
39
Bucur (2001), pp. 296-97.
40
Dup Alba Iulia (After Alba Iulia), Clujul Romnesc 6.17-18 (13 May 1928).
41
For a thorough analysis of the regionalist tendencies of the 1920s see Lengyel (2007) and Livezeanu (1995).
108 Gbor Egry
The first such group consisted of National Party dissidents. They were unhappy with the National
Liberal Party and looked to the Old Kingdom for allies that might help them oust the liberals. The
first of them was Octavian Goga, a well-known poet and journalist of Transylvanian extraction, who
joined Take Ionescus conservative faction in 1919 and later followed him when he entered Averescus
Party. The party was in government in 1920-1921 and 1926-1927. During its second tenure, it gained
the support of other prominent Transylvanian Romanian politicians, like Vasile Goldi (the author
of the historical Alba Iulia address of 1 December 1918) or Ioan Lupa, a National Party leader who
rejected the fusion with the Peasants Party and claimed that Goldi was the rightful party chairman.
Averescu refused the regionalist demands but was still inclined to provide Transylvania with
some administrative autonomy. The Transylvanians in his party offered another vision of national
unity, with the war-hero marshal at its head and the Transylvanians as its backbone. Averescu
suppressed the 1907 peasant revolt but his wartime record was enough to portray him as the
strong man who will lead the country out of chaos.42
The discontent with the liberal rule and the regionalist undertones of the grievances inflicted upon
Transylvania by the Old Kingdom enabled them to step up as saviours of Transylvania, while taking
some distance from the National Peasants Party intransigence. Lupa pointed to the nine Transylvanian
cabinet members as a way of rehabilitating Transylvania and condemned Maniu and Vaida-Voevod for
absenting themselves from the 1922 coronation, thus seconding the liberals accusation.43 Nevertheless,
the main tone of the ex-National Party politicians was that of Transylvanian self-government in the spirit
of Alba Iulia: in this sense, it came down to the re-conquest of the province.44 Goldi swore that he, the
man who drafted and delivered the Alba Iulia proclamation of 1 December 1918, would remain faithful
to this declaration to his death. His new party claimed that Maniu consciously abandoned the National
Partys true i.e., Romanian nature, implying that the new party was the true heir of Alba Iulia.45
Although dubious, the claim was accepted by Hungarians engaged in developing their own interpretation
42
He was even called the Hindenburg of Romania; Clujul Romnesc 6.14 (4 April 1926).
43
Reabilitarea Ardealului (The rehabilitation of Transylvania), Clujul Romnesc 6.17 (25 April 1926): 2.
44
Ardelenii recuceresc Ardealul (Transylvanians re-conquer Transylvania), Clujul Romnesc 6.19 (9 May 1926): 1.
45
A Goldi-csoport a nagyszebeni piacon tartotta meg kongresszust (Goldis goup held its congress at the
marketplace in Sibiu), Ellenzk 47.99 (5 May 1926).
of history. While the dissidents focused on Romanian self-government, the Hungarians pointed to the
passages about minority rights in the 1918 declaration of Alba Iulia. As the liberal rule did not bring about
the implementation of these measures, they saw in the Alba Iulia proclamation a chance to assert these rights.
In order to do so, however, they had to accept the proclamation as a legitimate act of popular sovereignty.
It is telling that their journal reproduced the declaration in one of its first issues. Many
Hungarians sought to forge an alliance with the National Party on the basis of Transylvanian self-
government.46 In this context the declaration was the foundation of autonomous Transylvania,
where every nationality rules itself. However, the first political alliance was concluded with
Averescu in 1923 using Goga as an intermediary.47
The Hungarian Party renewed the pact in 1926 and greeted the dissidents with enthusiasm.
The visit of ministers to Cluj Transylvanias largest city and its capital during the modern period
was seen as the start of a new era, one which would work for the good of every Transylvanian
nationality.48 During the electoral campaign the party chairman referred to Goldi as the author
of the Alba Iulia declaration, who is bound to its generous and righteous spirit,49 and insisted that
the Transylvanian members of the cabinet offered the guarantee of a better future.
This sentiment was later transferred to National Peasants Party governments. Maniu was
similarly greeted in Transylvanias historical capital. One Hungarian newspaper even speculated
that Maniu ordered the postponement of 1 December festivities because he wanted to realise the
promises of Alba Iulia 1918 before celebrating its memory.50
A series of setbacks and the overall disappointment with the Peasants Party could not easily
eliminate the hope of a common cause of Transylvanians against outsiders. As late as 1932
Hungarian newspapers claimed that Vaida-Voevod should be proud of having been accused
by liberals of chairing a Magyarised (or Hungarianised) cabinet something the Hungarian
46
Lengyel (2007).
47
For the political strategy of the Hungarian Party see Brdi (1999).
48
Miniszterek Kolozsvron (Ministers in Cluj), Ellenzk 47.112 (22 May 1926).
49
Bethlen Gyrgy programbeszde (Bethlen Gyrgys inaugural address of 15 May 1926), Ellenzk 47.108 (17 May 1926).
50
Gyulafehrvr, Ellenzk 49.279 (3 December 1928).
110 Gbor Egry
newspapers saw as the natural outcome of common Transylvanian traditions.51 Nevertheless, the
spell of Alba Iulia did not last much longer. In December 1933, the party chairman Gyrgy Bethlen
asserted that the National Peasants Party governments were the most horrific for Hungarians.
After claiming that Maniu, at the anniversary of Alba Iulia, ripped open the wounds of the
minorities, Bethlen read the passages on minority rights in the Alba Iulia declaration, seeking
redress for the unfulfilled promises.
Legitimacy, identity, group construction, social mobilization
The myth of Alba Iulia had several social functions. The differing interpretations were aimed
at creating legitimacy for certain institutions, policies, and groups, strengthening individual
identification and hence aiding the construction of the group itself. Although teleological in its
form, it was the foundation myth of Greater Romania, of the National (later National Peasants)
Party, and of an imagined Transylvania, with its inhabitants defined as a specific group. Given the
numerous competing group-construction and state-building projects in interwar Romania,52 the

contested nature of this myth was not unique. Those able to demonstrate their knowledge of the
true meaning of the Alba Iulia Great Assembly, thus proving themselves true heirs to 1 December
1918, could have hoped for the legitimacy it conveyed as source of sovereignty.53
The different and changing positions of parties and politicians also determined their
relationship with the unfolding myth. The dissident group of Transylvanian politicians started
a struggle for the heritage of Alba Iulia. Liberals attempted to construct a new myth of the locus
that might deprive the original of its legitimising force.54 The main aim of minorities was to gain
concessions regarding minority rights. Alba Iulia offered several lines of argumentation, all of
them implying the acceptance of the core of the myth: the assembly was a legitimate expression
51
A vlasztsi harc (The electoral battle), Ellenzk, 53.154 (9 July 1932).
52
Livezeanu (1995).
53
This was well understood by contemporaries. A police report from 1935 registered that Old Kindgom Peasants
Party politicians were well aware of this de-legitimising effect: n jurul ntrunirei naional rnitilor ardeleni: surs
serioas (Regarding the meeting of the Transylvanian members of the National Peasants Party: from a reliable
source), 4 November 1935, ANIC, DGP, dossier 104/1935, f. 160-161.
54
This process is detailed in Bucur (2001), but interpreted as two different ways of remembering the war.
of popular will. First, the minorities could claim their own form of national self-determination.
Second, the declaration promised minority rights in Greater Romania. Third, the Transylvanian
nature of Alba Iulia offered the minorities the chance of aligning with regionalist programmes.
Given the nature of political conflict and the involvement of the masses, it is not surprising that
issues of identity gained significance. Parties relying on mass support sought to stabilise their
voter base and strengthen group consciousness by offering a solution that played on the different
personal experiences of Romanians from Transylvania and the Old Kingdom. Peasants identified
themselves with the National Party more easily when they had personal experiences of Alba Iulia. To
Transylvanian eyes Old Kingdom Romanians seemed peculiar and hopelessly alien to this province.
But they held the power in the Romanian nation state, and the state Greater Romania was an
important factor of identification. Thus the rivals constructed their own group identities in order
to de-legitimise and exclude their opponents, while asserting their legitimacy as representatives of
the common group: the nation. Thus, Transylvanians were defined and delimited, while the region
itself was assigned different places in the symbolic geography of the nation.
The relationship between Transylvania and the Old Kingdom was essential to the myth of Alba Iulia.
The event and its re-enactment became foci of legitimising discourses, absorbing issues like Transylvanias
liberation and its claim to self-governance. Two distinct Romanian nations emerged from the respective
own-groups with different qualities ascribed to Old Kingdom and Transylvanian Romanians. The
recurring demonstration of popular will at Alba Iulia underlined Romanians democratic nature,
incorporated into the National Peasants Party version of the myth. Transylvanians claimed they were
free, unlike the oppressed Old Kingdom Romanians.55 Freedom was not simply a legal fact, but the
defining trait of a particular kind of people: brave, self-conscious, aware of their duties, fighting for their
rights the exact opposite of the subservient Byzantine oligarchy of the Old Kingdom.56
While the Old Kingdom liberal oligarchy was symbolically excluded from the body politic,
peasants were incorporated in a different kind of nation.57 They represented the constituency
55 MOL, P 1077, vol. 3, p. 282.

56
Caius Brediceanu to Iuliu Maniu, 7 April 1919; ANIC, Fonds Vaida-Voevod, dossier 47, f. 1-2; Alexandru Vaida-
Voevod to Iuliu Maniu, 22 April 1919; ANIC, Vaida-Voevod, dossier 45, f. 114.
57
For example Ion Michalache asserted that the National Peasants Party brought to light the true Old Kingdom
Romanians, with whom they will build a new Romania; A kormnyelnk kolozsvri tartzkodsa (The prime-
112 Gbor Egry
that the National and Peasants parties sought to mobilise (not without success). Transylvanians
negative everyday experiences with Old Kingdom Romanians led to generalisations,58 the general
discontent to eruptions of violence, especially in 1928. Deep hostility was felt by the chief of the
State Security in Lugoj after the investiture of Manius government. He reported insults to Old
Kingdom officials in the streets, someone even storming into his office and shouting: mmlig-
eater, go back to your Old Kingdom mmliga.59
The events of 1928 show that it was the revolutionary aspects of 1918, and not the memories
of national conflict between Romanians and Hungarian, that had real mobilising power.60 The
plan to overturn state authorities represented the proper repetition of what had happened at
the end of 1918. Although the memory of 1918 had been nationalised, the experience that the
dissenting groups tried to resurrect was itself not laden with national overtones. One remark of
the arrested insurgents from Mogo exemplifies this very well. They explained that at Alba Iulia
on 6 May 1928 they proclaimed the autonomy of Transylvania and this meant that no one ruled
them Transylvanians anymore.61
The formation of a new nation did not stop at the re-definition of its scope. The myths core
concepts national, democratic, and unitary pointed to a different concept of the nation, an
integral, organic one that was represented by the destined leader whose legitimacy depended on
Alba Iulia: Iuliu Maniu. Democracy was understood as the liberation of peasants from economic
and political oppression.62 Economic emancipation was meant to enable peasants to express
their will free of the liberals meddling. If successful, the peasants would certainly back their
true representatives, the National Peasants Party leaders.63 This notion helps us in decoding the
contemporaneous meaning of unity. Peasants were united with their true representatives; any
ministers visit to Cluj), Ellenzk 49.281 (7 December 1928).

58
The local peasants even wrote songs about the miseries brought about by Old Kingdom officials; see for example
ANIC, DGP, dossier 56/1921, f. 5759.
59
Hungarians frequently insulted Romanians as mmlig eaters (puliszka zabl, in reference to a traditional Ro-
manian dish based on maize), which made this specific insult even more grievous. ANIC, DGP, dossier 56/1921, f. 173.
60
Bucur (2001), pp. 292-93.
61
ANIC, DGP, dossier 3/1928, f 21.
62
Marea manifestaie popular din 22 Decembrie (The great popular manifestation of 22 December) Romnul 12.2
(1 January 1927).
63
Maniu beszl (cited at note 20).
attempt to sow the seeds of discord in Transylvania was anomalous.64 The party grown out of Alba
Iulia an eternal expression of the singular national will was the only legitimate representative
of the people and the region.65 The aim of politics was the realisation of the authentic existence of
the nation, in which the political state is identical with the nation-state and the interests of those
governing are identical with the interests of those governed.66
With the failure of dissidents to appropriate Alba Iulia for their ends, Maniu was left the sole
guardian of Transylvania. Signs of a cult around his person were visible already in 1919 and it
strengthened until the partys ascent to power. When in 1930 he had to relinquish his position
of prime-minister, he was treated by his followers as a saint-like figure and he also earned the
veneration of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the emerging leader of the Romanian far-right.67 Party
organs characterised him as the priest of the civic religion of the harmony of state and nation
in a Transylvania that live[d] in the religion of Iuliu Maniu, with Alba Iulia the place where in
1928 he rocked the ancestral land.68 As the legitimate representative of Transylvania and Banat
capitalising on his role at Alba Iulia in 1918 and subsequently in Consiliul Dirigent he rebuked in
Parliament Hungarys revisionist claims.69 Beyond Manius prominent position, these manifestations
highlighted an organic, essentialist concept of the nation and of national democracy. At Alba
Iulia Maniu released the popular energies and proved that he was forever the nations destined
leader. Every re-enactment served as the confirmation of this eternal fact through ritual, but what
mattered was more subtle than a simple ritual: it was almost transcendent. The sacred place where
Maniu and the nation recognised in each other their common destiny was the symbolic centre of
the nation, the place where the nations destiny was realised, both literally and figuratively.
During the 1930s the myth of Alba Iulia and the cult of Maniu became fused; Maniu embodied
both history and the nation. In political speeches it was intimated that Maniu alone went to Bucharest
64
Marea manifestaie popular (cited at note 62).
65
As Chemarea formulated it, in the eyes of the peasants the National Peasants Party government was the only
national government since the unification; De ce trebuie s revin Iuliu Maniu? (Why does Iuliu Maniu need to
return), Chemarea Tinerimei Romne 6.35 (15 December 1931).
66
Ibid.
67
Haynes (2007).
68
De ce trebuie s revin Iuliu Maniu? (cited at note 65).
69
Romnia i revizuirea tratatelor (Romania and the Revision of the Treaties) (1934).
114 Gbor Egry
to bring about the liberation of the Romanian peasants.70 The transcendental aspect of his idea of the
nation was revealed in 1938, when he asserted that Transylvanians were bound together by a kind
of essence.71 His followers celebrated his birthday in 1939 with speeches mentioning him as the
saviour of the nation. Maniu did not shy away from the task and replied: What do I represent in
this moment? Gentlemen, I represent my Romanian nation, and I represent specifically Transylvania,
in whose name no one else is entitled to speak, except me, for no one else has the right to do it.72
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den Weltkriegen. Sdostforschungen 58 (1999): 267-312.
Bucur, Maria. Birth of a Nation: Commemorations of December 1, 1918 and National Identity in Twentieth
Century Romania. In Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to
the Present: 286-328, ed. Maria Bucur and N. M. Wingfield. West Lafayette, 2001.
____. Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth Century Romania. Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2009.
Buruian, Ovidiu. The National Liberal Party and the National Peasant Assembly of Alba Iulia (May 1928) (I).
Revista Arhivelor 84.3-4 (2007): 203-23.
Ciuperc, Ioan. Opoziie i putere n Romnia anilor 1922-1928 (Opposition and State Power in Romania in 1922-
1928). Iai, 2010.
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Erdlyben, 19181919 (Direct Democracy, National Revolution: Change of Sovereignty, Transition, and
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Haynes, Rebecca. Reluctant allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of
Romania. Slavonic and East European Review 85.1 (2007): 10534. Electronic version: http://discovery.ucl.
ac.uk/2247/1/2247.pdf ; accessed on 31 July 2011.
Lazr, Ilie. Amintiri (Memories). Bucharest, 2000.
Lengyel, Zsolt K. A kompromisszum keresse (Searching for a Compromise). Miercurea Ciuc, 2007.
Leutean, Lucian. Romnia, Ungaria i Tratatul de la Trianon (Romania, Hungary, and the Trianon Treaty). Iai, 2002.
Livezeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Ithaca and London, 1995.
Romnia i revizuirea tratatelor (Romania and the Revision of the Treatises). Bucharest, 1934.
70
Aurel Dobrescus speech in the Dacia Traiana Hall, 3 November 1935; ANIC, DGP, dossier 104/1935, f. 152-59.
71
ANIC, DGP, dossier 67/1926, f. 75.
72
Discursul dlui Maniu rostit la 24 Ianuarie 1939 la Vinu de Jos cu ocazia srbtoririi D-sale (Mr Manius speech of
24 January 1939, delivered at Vinu de Jos on the occasion of his celebration), ANIC, DGP, dossier 67/1926, f. 87-88.
The Turkish Army: Myth-Breaking
Function of Political Cartoons
Valentina Marcella
European University Institute, Florence
Abstract This paper examines one of the most durable myths of modern Turkey, that
is to say the militarist myth, and the first successful attempt to challenge it
in Turkish mainstream culture. It does so by first following the evolution of this myth from its origins
up to the present and then focussing on a set of satirical cartoons that were produced and circulated
throughout the country during the military rule from 1980 to 1983. These cartoons mirrored the
multifaceted crisis that the country was experiencing as a result of the military having assumed political
power, and portrayed the army as inexperienced and made up of lazy soldiers. The content of these
cartoons is analysed and the reasons for their success are identified. Finally, their merit in breaking the
myth of the hero-soldier and of the army as a positive political actor is discussed.
Keywords Turkey; army; 1980 Coup; military rule; political cartoons; militarist
myth.
Introduction
The militarist myth is one of the most persistent myths of modern Turkey. The Republic of Turkey was
founded from what was left of the once glorious Ottoman Empire, after a series of disastrous wars which
had limited its borders to the Anatolian peninsula and Eastern Thrace. In the transition from old-fashioned
empire to modern nation-state, the army became a pillar of the new country: military strength represented
116 Valentina Marcella
the only means to defend Turkish borders in the first years after the foundation of the Republic, and the hero-
soldier who had sacrificed his life for the motherland and whose blood had fed the Turkish soil became the
icon of the national imagery. As the proverb her Trk asker doar (every Turk is born a soldier) suggests, the
militarist myth has endured ever since. This paper discusses the first successful attempt to challenge this
myth in Turkish mainstream culture, namely the comic representation of the army in the satirical cartoons
produced and circulated during the military rule of the years 1980 to 1983.
In the following pages, the discussion will focus on several key aspects: the origins of the militarist
myth in Turkey, the development of this myth throughout the last century, and the political and cultural
landscape of the early 1980s. After this presentation of the general context, the cartoons that target the
army will be analysed, concluding with a discussion about the myth-breaking function of these cartoons.
Birth of the militarist myth
The origins of the militarist myth in Turkey date back to the late Ottoman era, when, in the
aftermath of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire came dangerously close to annihilation.1 In
fact, by the early twentieth century Ottoman power had long faded. What had once been terror of
the world had become by that time the sick man of Europe. In spite of the loss of power both at
international level and in several Ottoman regions, and ignoring the inadequate military strength
of the Ottoman army, in 1914 Sultan Mehmet V decided to join the war on the side of the Central
Powers. Within four years, the empire was defeated and forced to sign an armistice that granted
the Allied Powers the right to control Ottoman straits2 and occupy its lands. In 1920, the peace
treaty of Svres sanctioned the partitioning of a large part of Ottoman territories between France,
Britain, Italy, Greece and Armenia.
The previous decade had seen the rise of several revolutionary groups that advocated the creation
1
Indeed, the army had been a crucial institution throughout the whole history of the Ottoman Empire. This was
especially true of the infantry units known as the Janissaries: these had spearheaded the expansion in the age of Ot-
toman conquests (15th and 16th centuries) and had been the bulwark of the Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries.
They had also played an important part in the decline of the Empire in the late Ottoman era. However, it would not
be correct to attribute to the Ottoman Empire the creation of the militarist myth, which was cultivated from the birth
of the republic onwards and is a peculiarity of modern Turkey.
2
The straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.
The Turkish Army: Myth-Breaking Function of Political Cartoons 117
of an independent nation, as opposed to maintaining a weak sultanate. Following the armistice of 1918
and faced with the consequences that this was going to have for the autonomy of the Empire, these
revolutionary factions worked together to organise a national movement with a Turkish parliament3 that,
parallel to the sultanate, would take over the reins of the empire both at the political and military level.
Had it not been for the new Turkish parliament, in all probability the empire would have
completely surrendered to foreign powers and would have disappeared as a consequence. Instead,
the nationalist forces reacted against foreign occupation, initiating what came to be known as the
Turkish War of Independence. With the final victory of the National Army in 1922, the national
movement managed to defend Ottoman borders against the invasion mounted by the Allies, thus
invalidating the Svres agreements. In the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence, the
new Turkish state was established and the sultanate abolished. In 1923, a new peace treaty was
signed in Lausanne, which recognised the Anatolian peninsula and Eastern Thrace as part of
the Turkish state, paving the way for the proclamation and international recognition of the
Republic of Turkey, that occurred later that year.4
The leader of the national movement, Mustafa Kemal (later Atatrk),5 became the first
president of the republic and the undisputed spiritual leader of the nation. Himself a military
chief and statesman, Atatrk (d. 1938) promoted throughout his fifteen year-long leadership a set
of policies and reforms aimed at building a modern, secular and Western-oriented power, which
would totally break with the Ottoman past.
The army played a core role in the formation of modern Turkey in two ways. First, a powerful
military force was a strategic imperative. The post-war effects, as well as the precarious geo-political
context had clearly revealed that a strong military force was necessary for the very survival of the
newly born state. Accordingly, reforms were enacted in order to bring the strength of the Turkish army
on a par with that of other European powers; in this way, the army became the foremost guardian
3 The new Turkish parliament, named Grand National Assembly, was established in Ankara in 1920, after a series of
congresses and agreements which had traced the lines of the new sovereign nation.
4
The republic was proclaimed on 29 October 1923.
5
Family names were made compulsory for Turkish citizens in 1934, while up until then society had been based on
appellations. The surname Atatrk, meaning father of all Turks, was adopted by Mustafa Kemal and became a pre-
rogative limited to him and his descendants.
of national security and contributed to overcoming the so-called Svres syndrome.6 Second, the
army became crucial also at the ideological level. In fact, in the 1920s and 1930s a rich corpus of songs,
posters, poems, and novels referred to the soil that had been fed by the blood of Turkish soldiers and
paid homage to the thousands of heroes who had sacrificed their life to defend the motherland in the
War of Independence. In line with the official vision of the nation, these works supplied an image
of the military, that of the hero-soldier, that became an icon of the new collective belonging. Overall,
the militarist myth was cultivated as a pillar of the new nation-state both at the strategic and at the
ideological level and became a strong cohesive factor in the elaboration of a unified national identity.
The militarist myth after Atatrk
In the post-Atatrk era, the evolution of the militarist myth followed a two-fold path that led
to the recognition and acceptance of the army not only as a military power but also as an active
protagonist in the political arena.
The reforms that were enacted in the political, legal, religious, educational and social domains
under Atatrks leadership had reshaped the identity of the country dramatically and had proved
successful in the short term. Nevertheless, the weaknesses and ambiguities of this rapid, top-down
revolution started emerging in the following decades. Among them, a lack of clarity regarding the
balance between civil and military power soon became one of the most crucial issues. Actually, the
fact that Atatrk had never addressed the question of the boundaries restricting Armys sphere
of action within the organisation of the country allowed the military class to perceive itself as the
guardian of the official state ideology after Atatrks death,7 and to claim its right to intervene in the
course of politics to guarantee the observance of the founding principles of the republic. Predictably,
6
With this expression scholars refer to the fear that was perceived by the Turkish people since the end of the Great
War that Turkish borders were continuously in danger and the national territory ran the risk of dismemberment at
the hands of foreign powers. A modernised and strong Turkish army would have warded off at least in theory
the risk of further invasions. The expression is used today also in relation to the attitude shown in certain circles
regarding the European Union membership.
7
While in power, Atatrk elaborated a doctrine that came to be known as Kemalism that defined the basic
characteristics of the Republic of Turkey and carefully explained the six principles along which this was to be ruled,
namely republicanism, populism, secularism, nationalism, revolutionarism, and etatism. The position of the military
was not clarified, neither in this doctrine nor elsewhere.
the years that followed were characterised by repeated and controversial military interventions.
The Turkish armed forces staged three coups dtat in twenty years. In May 1960, high-rank
officials overthrew the government in reaction to the growing authoritarianism of the party in
power and formed a junta which ruled the country for one year. The army intervened again in
March 1971, this time in order to stop the increasing polarisation of society; the country was then
ruled by a military-backed government for two years, until the elections of 1973. In September
1980, the military intervened for the third time. This time, all political parties were banned and
the military took direct control of the state for three years, after which free elections were held
and the country returned to parliamentary democracy.
In addition to these coups, in the last fifteen years the military intervened in politics on two
occasions. In 1997, increasingly frequent and harsh public warnings by the armed forces against
the ruling party due to the promotion of political Islam prompted the government to resign.
As the government was removed by pressure, but without the parliament being dissolved or
the constitution being withdrawn, the event was labelled as postmodern coup. In 2007, the
military leadership issued an online statement expressing concern for the increasing religious
manifestations throughout the country and confirmed its commitment to defend secularism. This
time, the government underwent a period of crisis, but did not resign.
On each occasion, the military claimed that they had interfered in politics due to the fact that
specific political circumstances were threatening unity and order within the country. Accordingly,
since they never established a long-term dictatorship, it is generally believed that they were never
interested in retaining power and that, on the contrary, they stepped in the political arena in the light
of the emergence of a threat to the integrity of the state, ruling only until they deemed order restored.8
These dynamics strengthened their image of guardians of the republic, leading people to identify
them as a super partes political institution. It is no coincidence that each intervention met the approval
sometimes even active support of a portion of the population and public opinion.
8
Obviously, this version has been criticised, both by scholars and by segments of the population. See, for instance, the
work of international relations expert hsan Da, who, by investigating the reactions of Western institutions toward
the military rule of the early 1980s, claims that the transition to parliamentary democracy in that case was planned to
be achieved in a period longer than a three-year time and it was the commitment to the West that ultimately acceler-
ated this process; cf. Da (1996).
The 1980 coup and its aftermath
Since the early 1970s, a series of factors had been increasingly paralysing the country, namely
the persistent economic crisis, the escalating violence and terrorism of ethnic, religious and
political nature, and the polarisation of society and institutions. Facing the overall inefficiency
of the political class, on the 12 September 1980 the generals dissolved the parliament, suspended
the constitution and took control of the country for three years, their primary aims being the fight
against terrorism, the restoration of law and order, the economic liberalisation and the redefinition
of the political system so as to prevent the country to be ruled by chaos again.9
On the day of the coup dtat, when state radio and televisions broadcast the generals message
acknowledging that they had taken control of the country, the military intervention was welcomed
with enthusiasm by a specific wing of the media, as well as by a large part of the population.
Conceivably, given that in the late 1970s people were killed in the streets for reading the wrong
newspaper,10 this gesture was perceived as the ultimate solution to cease violence.
The three-year military government was manifestly successful in restoring civil order; nevertheless,
this goal was achieved at high costs in terms of human rights. The junta did not seek to maintain the
support of the population and established a highly repressive regime, becoming itself the first agent of
violence. Actually, the period was characterised by an extremely high number of arrests which, in some
case, were turned into death sentences; cases of torture occurred as well.11 Significantly, when elections
were held in November 1983, the party supported by the junta obtained the lowest number of votes,
suggesting that the electorate was not willing to keep any legacy with that military establishment.12
9
The coup was staged by the military institution in its entirety; the military hierarchy was therefore maintained.
Parliament was replaced by the newly formed National Security Assembly, which included the chief of the General
Staff and the commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and gendarmerie. The chief of the General Staff, General
Kenan Evren, became head of state, while a retired commander of the Navy, Admiral Blent Ulusu, was appointed
prime minister. The government that was formed was predominantly composed of civilians; nine out of twenty-
seven new ministers had already been part of the technocratic cabinet of the 1971-1973 interregnum, while the
remaining eighteen were retired bureaucrats and generals. Civil ministers were entrusted with the economy and the
others managed all other state affairs. In any case, the National Security Assembly retained legislative power and
the right to veto government decisions. Notwithstanding the fact that both civilians and military formed part of this
government, the expression military government is used in this text to refer to the government (as a whole) that
administered the country during the 1980-1983 regime.
10
Mango (2004), p. 77.
11
Dodd (1990), pp. 52-55.
12
On many later occasions, up to the constitutional referendum of September 2010, the people manifested the
Dramatic measures were taken also in the cultural sphere in order to depoliticise society and
daily life. The regime hampered the circulation of works that could discuss political and social
matters in a critical way and influence peoples perception of the military experience; hence, all
cultural vehicles became a target of rigid control, especially the most popular ones. As a result, a
large number of books, movies, songs, and newspapers were subjected to censorship and, in many
cases, their authors were imprisoned or forced into self-exile.13 Against this gloomy background,
the satirical magazine Grgr (Tease) emerged as an astonishing exception.
The army in the Grgr cartoons
Grgr was founded in 1972 by cartoonist Ouz Aral out of the satirical corner, then page, that
he used to run in a newspaper under the same title. In its early years, Grgr was an apolitical
magazine mainly based on sexual sketches; its satire became increasingly political in the second
half of the 1970s, while definitely becoming a voice of opposition in the aftermath of the 1980
coup. The magazine did not promote any specific ideology; it became political, though, as it began
to portray current affairs, targeting the protagonists of the political landscape and mirroring the
society of that period. Every Sunday, a new issue would cover the major events of the week and
its mainly graphic satire would also appeal the public who was not used to read the print media.
Between 1980 and 1983, Grgr developed two main strategies to satirise the army; one was the
representation of the military as rulers, the other was the portrayal of soldiers on the battlefield.
In the first case, the military were targeted as people in charge of the country and cartoons
focussed on their ruling performance, just as it had done in the past, when politicians had been
in power. As before, the most prominent issues discussed by cartoons were the economic crisis,
willingness to turn the page on the regime; nonetheless, it would be misleading to state that the 1980-1983 experience
significantly undermined the peoples perception of the militarist myth. On the contrary, a significant portion of the
population did not cease to regard the army as the ultimate institution in charge of the stability of the country, as the
circumstances of the 1997 and 2007 post-modern coups have shown.
13
Between 1980 and 1983, censorship was the most effective tool by which the regime imposed control over intellectual
life: an endless list of books and movies were withdrawn from circulation; the state radio and television authority
was purged by moving over a hundred of employees to various other ministries; all broadcasting material was
meticulously prevented from conveying a negative image of the military rule; the press was even scrutinised by the
generals in person. Cf. Kabacal (1990), p. 210 and Kololu (2006), pp. 149-150.
the security in the streets, corruption and organised crime. Unlike under other governments,
though, new themes emerged as a result of the darkest sides of the military rule, insisting on mass
imprisonments, torture and their side effects.
In the second case, cartoons began to portray different aspects and moments of life in the barracks
and on the battlefield, including the controversial relationship between officers and low-ranking
soldiers, training with weapons, learning to drive military vehicles, and the moment of fighting the
enemy face to face. Here, the military emerged as violent and having an immoderate ego, but also
frightened, childish and even silly. It is no coincidence that this cartoon genre did not exist before
1980 and was created in the immediate aftermath of the coup.14
Generally speaking, a certain degree of self-censorship may be detected in both groups of
cartoons. For instance, those of the first group never satirise the generals and those of the second
group do not represent the actual military personnel, but rather prototypical soldiers. The absence of
straightforward criticism is not surprising, given the fact that under the regime censorship became
extremely rigid, forcing cartoonists to adapt their work to the circumstances in order to survive.
What is astonishing, however, is that these cartoons still manage to target the military, and they do
it in two peculiar ways. Firstly, the cartoons of the first group satirise their ruling performance by
representing the problems caused by the military government and their consequences on ordinary
people and daily life. In this way, they shed light on the inadequacy of the military as rulers and on
the unpopularity of their policies. Secondly, the cartoons of the second group make fun of the armed
forces on the battlefield by depicting soldiers as vulnerable and far from perfect, thus conveying a
portrait that largely dissents with the perfect image offered by militarist myth. In addition, the fact
that these cartoons refer to soldiers in general, rather than specific real military figures in particular
makes them even more powerful, for in this way they ridicule and criticise the entire military
institution. Indeed, these features make of the saga of the military on the battlefield the first successful
case of open criticism of the armed forces in Turkey at the level of mainstream culture, a unique case
insofar as the saga specifically hit the militarist myth while also surviving on the market.15
14
While my space here is limited, I aim to develop my analysis of this topic in a subsequent work.
15
Open criticism and ridicule of the military had always been a taboo in Turkish mainstream media. In this case,
the success is determined by the fact that, notwithstanding the mockery of the armed forces in such a precarious
situation, neither these cartoons were subject to censorship not their cartoonist to prosecution.
Myth-breaking function
A distinguishing feature of Grgr was its popularity. In fact, in the early 1980s Grgr was the most
famous magazine in terms of satire, and even the best-selling among all the weekly magazines of
the country.16 The fact that Grgr became extremely popular and widely read during the military
rule17 may be ascribed to the fact that the people were willing to share their discontent with the
regime and found such opportunity in the pages of the magazine.
One could go as far as saying that a mutual understanding existed between the cartoonists
of Grgr and the public. That is to say, these cartoonists made use of simple pictures, few words
and sometimes even no word in order to conceal criticism from the scrutiny of censors; a result of
this stylistic choice was that the witticism was not immediately recognisable. Yet, the readership
proved able to unveil the message and showed appreciation for these cartoons, as the high sales
of the magazine suggest. Witticism was therefore built around cryptic messages that the readers
were able to understand, since they experienced in real life the problems, feelings and frustration
that the cartoons portrayed. This mutual understanding allowed Grgr to strengthen ties with the
readership and, at the same time, it saved the magazine from censorship.18
In the light of the above considerations, it is possible to argue that, during the regime, Grgr
performed a social and political function, as it allowed cartoonists and the readership to virtually
meet in the pages of the magazine, share their discontent with the military rule and work together
at the breaking of three myths: the myth of the military as positive actors in the political arena,
the myth of the military as a good institution, and finally, the myth of the soldier as a perfect hero.
Hence, Grgr came to constitute a platform of opposition against the military and the militarist
myth, becoming the exception that was able to negotiate the boundaries between what could or
16
It is often claimed that during the years of military rule Grgr was even the third most read satirical magazine in the
world after the American Mad and the Russian Crocodile; this record earned it international reputation thanks to the
foreign press, especially British and German, which dedicated articles to the Grgr phenomenon and its sales record.
17
Doubtlessly Grgr was also popular before the military takeover, but it is in the early 1980s that it became the top-
selling magazine.
18
As a matter of fact, Grgr was subject to censorship and closed down once during the regime, due to a cover
page that displayed the caricature of a woman (who was a popular singer at that time) wearing the Turkish flag
as a dress, thus not for a caricature that targeted the military. The cover in question was put on trial for insulting
Turkishness; the magazine was regularly resumed four weeks later, after which it carried on the same political
and social satire as before.
could not be said and survive in the mainstream market without renouncing its critical view.
Concluding remarks
The fact that cartoons that ridiculed and criticised the army were published in Turkey is doubtlessly
astonishing. It is even more so given that such cartoons were produced and circulated under a military
rule. When it comes to the reasons for such freedom, it is hard to explain why Grgrs political cartoons
were allowed in the post-1980 repressive environment. Several tentative hypotheses can be made; for
instance, it could be argued that the regime did not censor these cartoons in order to prove its respect
for democracy and tolerance, or to let the people have a safety valve where to get rid of resentment
about the military rule, or simply that these cartoons were not taken into serious consideration because
of their comic look. However, as convincing as some of them might seem, these hypotheses are far
from exhaustive, as they fail to explain the sharp contrast between this case of tolerance and the severe
censorship that was applied in the media and in the cultural sphere in general. Therefore, a realistic
explanation is still to be found and this is certainly incentive for further research.
In conclusion, whatever the reasons that made their realisation and circulation possible, there
is little doubt that these cartoons should be attributed the merit of offering a unique perspective
on the popular perception of the military and of the not-so-heroic soldier c. 1980-1983. They
constitute the first significant attempt to deconstruct the undisputed Turkish militarist myth.
REFERENCES
Da, hsan. Democratic Transition in Turkey, 1980-1983: The Impact of European Diplomacy. In Turkey:
Identity, Democracy, Politics: 124-41, ed. Sylvia Kedourie. London and Portland, 1996.
Dodd, Clement Henry. The Crisis of Turkish Democracy. Huntingdon, 1990.
Kabacal, Alpay. Balangtan Gnmze Trkiyede Basn Sansr (Press censorship in Turkey from the
beginning to the present day). Istanbul, 1990.
Kololu, Orhan. Osmanldan 21. Yzyla Basn Tarihi (History of the Press from the Ottoman Empire to the
twenty-first century). Istanbul, 2006.
Mango, Andrew. The Turks Today. London, 2004.

Deconstructing the Authenticity:
Who, When, and How Created the
Bulgarian Yoghurt
Elitsa Stoilova
Technical University Eindhoven
Abstract My research takes as a case study a product that claims to be typically

Bulgarian, with its unique characteristics that make it different from other
yoghurt types. Since the yoghurt-making technology does not differ much in the various countries in
which the product is common, the question what makes the Bulgarian product different? comes up.
Why is its technology exported and considered unique, and what are the politics and methods of its
process of authentication? Such questions might be asked of any national food product and answering
them is a challenging project, particularly nowadays when the politics of authentication have become
very important in the globalised market, largely as a European reaction against standardisation and
Americanisation of mass-consumption and production.
Keywords yoghurt, Bulgarian yoghurt, Bulgarian sour milk, authenticity, Cold

War, traditional food, mythmaking, deconstruction.
This paper will trace the process of authentication of Bulgarian yoghurt and its
elevation to the rank of a national symbol. The process began with its transformation
from a home-made to a mass product between the 1920s and 1940s. It was
followed by a forced industrial development inspired by communist ideology,
which raised Bulgarian yoghurt to a national icon. Bulgarian yoghurt embodied

126 Elitsa Stoilova
claims for long traditions in yoghurt production and scientific achievements in
the invention of unique starter cultures and production technology.
My research traces the processes of authentication and self-stereotypisation that Bulgarian
producers, consumers, politicians, and citizens have created. These stereotypes present the
yoghurt made in Bulgaria as something unique, and thus distinguish between Bulgarian and
other products. Furthermore, the technology of yoghurt making is presented as traditionally
Bulgarian and the micro-organisms Lactobacillus Bulgaricus are said to live only under the climatic
conditions of Bulgaria. When the Bulgarian producers exported starter cultures and technology
for yoghurt manufacturing in the late 1960s and 1970s, they exported also stereotypes and myths
about the Bulgarian yoghurt. This represented a way of strengthening Bulgarian national identity
at a time when the Soviet Union repressed the nationalistic feeling of its satellites. In the context
of the Cold War, it was a way for socialist Bulgaria to demonstrate the superiority of its science,
industry, and way of life, both within the Soviet Block and over Western Capitalism. Through the
yoghurt, politicians and scientists buttressed Bulgarian identity.
Europeans as Bulgarian yoghurt myth-makers
Peculiarly, the mythologizing and Bulgarisation of yoghurt began outside Bulgaria. These
processes had roots in the early twentieth century when yoghurt was introduced by scientists
and nutritionists in Central and Western Europe; previously, the product was uncommon in
those regions. Here a crucial role was played by the French-Russian scientist Elie Metchnikoff.
Metchnikoffs position as a distinguished French bacteriologist, affiliated with the Pasteur Institute
in Paris one of the most important scientific centres in Europe was a contributing factor
in the acceptance of yoghurt as part of European diet. After systematic research, Metchnikoff
offered the hypothesis that during decomposition in the gastro-intestinal tract, a secretion of
some toxic components occurred. Metchnikoff believed that the intestinal lumen absorbed these
components and thus caused deep changes in the organism, such as aging alterations and early
Deconstructing the Authenticity: Who, When, and How Created the Bulgarian Yoghurt 127
human death.1 His later research was dedicated to the search for the agents that might arrest
the intestinal putrefaction and thus postpone the aging of the organism. In the late 1910s, the
scientist argued that lactic acid bacteria introduced in human intestines produced a lactic acid that
stopped the growth of putrefactive micro-organisms. He developed the hypothesis that regular
consumption of yoghurt and other types of fermented milks had anti-putrescent and antiseptic
effects because of the lactic fermentation.2 In his Prolongations of Life, Metchnikoff stated that the
regular consumption of fermented milk would affect the intestinal micro flora and prevent the
organism from autointoxication by reducing or abolishing the putrefaction. He stated:
[c]urdled milk and the other products of milk to which I have referred are the work of the lactic microbes
which produce lactic acid at the expense of milk sugar. As many different kinds of soured milk have
been consumed on a vast scale and have proved to be useful, it might be supposed that any of them is
suitable for regular consumption with the object of preventing intestinal putrefaction.3
Metchnikoff argued that the consumption of any kind of fermented milk was desirable but
gave his preference to the consumption of soured milk. Metchnikoff as well the other researchers
of fermented milk referred to the product as sour milk or yoghurt.4 Both appellations used
synonymously were a calque of Turkish yourt (also used in Bulgarian). Sour milk was a
literary translation of kiselo mleko, as Bulgarian publication from 1938 refers to the product.5
The adoption of the Bulgarian and Turkish names of the fermented product shows that the
Balkan countries were the channel through which the product reached the Central and Western
parts of Europe. In a publication on food-borne diseases from 1911 the French scientist Adolphe-
Auguste Lesagereffer presents different fermented milk product common to the French market.
He presents the products lebeu raib dEgypte, lebeu dAlgrie, prostokwacha, and soured
1
Metchnikoff (1908), pp. 182-83.
2
Ibid., pp. 161-83.
3
Ibid., p. 176.
4
Later, yoghurt in all its orthographic variations was predominantly established as product appellation. The
pronunciation of the word yoghurt varies and has numerous spelling variants. It can be yogurt, yoghurt, yoghourt,
yaourt, yourt, yaourti, yoghurt, yahourth, yoghurt, yaghourt and others (y is replaced by j in some cases). See A. Y.
Tamime and R. K. Robinson (2000), p. 2.
5
See Kvatchkoff (1937), Grigoroff (1905), Popdimitrov (1938).
128 Elitsa Stoilova
milk, to which he refers as yahourth des Balkans, thus stressing the origin of the product.6
Another aspect of the sour milk treatment was the claim that the consumption of products
based on milk fermentation might increase life expectancy. Metchnikoff believed that soured
milk introduced to the intestines beneficial micro-organisms as Lactobacillus bulgaricus. In 1907 he
concluded:
it is clear that agents which arrest intestinal putrefaction must at the same time postpone and
ameliorate old age. This theoretical view was confirmed by the collection of facts regarding races
which live chiefly on soured milk, and amongst which great ages are common.7
He related the longevity to specific geographical areas, noting that there are some countries in
which very many of the natives reach old age. It appears that Eastern Europe (the Balkan States
and Russia), although its civilization is not high, contains many more centenarians than Western
Europe.8 Metchnikoff used the data from an unpublished work of a scientist named Ornstein.
The data he had collected showed the existence of many extremely old people in Greece, Serbia,
Bulgaria, and Romania. According to the numbers presented by Metchnikoff, there were more than
5,000 centenarians (5,545) living in 1896.9 Metchnikoff believed that the numbers were probably
exaggerated. Nevertheless, he concluded that it is undoubtedly the case that the pure and keen air
of the Balkans, and the pastoral or agricultural life of the natives, predisposes to old age.10
Metchnikoffs work, The Prolongation of Life, revealed yet another interesting detail about sour
milk. The scientist associated longevity with Bulgarian peasants. Metchnikoff claimed that the
Bulgarian scientist Stamen Grigorov introduced him to the phenomenon of Bulgarian centenarians.
He stated that Mr Grigoroff, a Bulgarian student at Geneva, has been surprised by the number
of centenarians to be found in Bulgaria, a region in which yahourth, a soured milk, is the staple
6
Lesage (1911), p. 720.
7
Metchnikoff (1908), p. 182.
8
Ibid., p. 90.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
food.11 Since Metchnikoffs research traced the relations between nourishment and overall health,
it is understandable that this piece of information directed the attention of the prominent scientist
from the Institute Pasteur to the way of living of Bulgarian population. Following Grigorovs
suggestion, Metchnikoff published concrete data about the number of centenarians in Bulgaria and
promoted their simple lifestyle and the consumption of large amounts of yoghurt on a daily basis.12
In 1905, Stamen Grigorov, a twenty-nine year old Bulgarian scientist, carried out experiments at
the Medical University of Geneva. The research of the Bulgarian physician was crowned by the very
important discovery of a new micro-organism. Grigorov discovered the micro-organism a lactic
acid bacillus that was the necessary element for transforming milk into yoghurt. Isolated from
yoghurt originating from Bulgarian, the micro-organism was consequently named Lactobacillus
Bulgaricus. This solidified the association between yoghurt and Bulgaria. The newly discovered
micro-organism enabled further research but also made possible the industrial production of
yoghurt. Thus Grigorov lays the foundations but the person who turned yoghurt from a little
known product into a fashionable food was Elie Metchnikoff. His research into the connection
between yoghurt consumption and longevity sparked many discussions and transformed yoghurt
into a vogue. The discovery of the exact agent of milk fermentation made Metchnikoffs theory
about putrefaction and longevity more reliable and enabled further research on the topic.
As a new and uncommon foodstuff, yoghurt became accepted through the agency of
individuals who promoted its image. Medical doctors were active in convincing consumers
to purchase yoghurt. Since they were experts, their recommendation of yoghurt consumption
made it possible to introduce new products with less reluctance.13 Thus, doctors authorised the
consumption of exotic food. The channels of its valorisation predefined the image of yoghurt in
Western Europe as mixture of nutrition and medicine.
The nutritionists and physicians were the significant mediating actors, whose knowledge and
expertise were recognised and accepted by the lay public. They recommended the sour milk
treatment or the Bacillus Bulgaricus therapy against widespread intestinal diseases. The physicians
11
Metchnikoff (1908), p. 175.
12
Ibid., p. 90.
13
Rgnier (2007), p. 139.
130 Elitsa Stoilova
and the pharmacists became part of the yoghurt distribution chain. Benefiting from the approval
of these respected public-sphere actors, this uncommon and exotic product did not risk appearing
as something dangerous. The medical properties of yoghurt were sufficient reason for consumers
to buy it. Thanks to doctors recommendations consumers resistance was easier to overcome.
Dairy producers also became involved in that new fashionable food, embracing the idea of
exotic curative food. Many of them promoted yoghurt, directly relating it to Bulgaria. Producers
used the idea of authentic and traditional food as a useful marketing strategy. Capitalising on
the popularity of Bacillus Bulgaricus, more products directly linked to Bulgaria appeared on the
market. Among the large variety of fermented products in the 1920s and 1930s, some producers
borrowed the names of their goods from Bulgarian geography, e.g., Vardar, Rila, Balkan, and Sofia.
The French microbiologist Corminboeuf offered an interesting interpretation of the Bulgarian yoghurt.
He stressed two characteristics: its health benefits and its traditional character. He pointed out that
le nome bulgare Yoghourt veut dire lactic acide de digestion facile. Ce dernier produit tait, selon la
tradition ancienne, utilis couramment comme prventif de nombreuses maladies...14
Corminboeuf approached Bulgarian yoghurt as a unifying notion for other fermented milk
products. In 1909, Adolphe Combe stressed the superiority of this product over similar ones.
He argued that [t]he best known of the Oriental kinds of milk is the Bulgarian curdled milk or
Yoghourt. The coagulation in this preparation is due to a special ferment called Maya.15 Similar
statements were made by Albert Fournier and William Gaynor States, who presented the product
as Balkanic and Turkish. They almost repeated Combes argument, supplementing his definition
with some more details. Fournier noted that
[t]he best known and most studied of all the oriental curdled milks is the Bulgarian curdled milk or yoghourt.
This is especially used throughout European and Asiatic Turkey, in Greece, Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria.16
14
Corminboeuf (1903), p. 3.
15
See Combe (1925), p. 48.
16
Fournier, Combe, and States (1908), p. 338.
These texts from the 1910s did not make a very clear distinction between Bulgarian soured milk and the
other yoghurt-like products from the region. Nevertheless, there was a closer association with Bulgaria
even as Bulgarian yoghurt was often used as a synonym for an entire range of yoghurt-like products.
In 1910, the New York Daily Tribune published a short notice about the oldest woman in the
world. The newspaper announced that she was a Bulgarian. According to the article,
[t]he claim of Frau Dutkiewitz, of Posen, born on February 21st 1785, to be the oldest woman in the
world is now contested by Mrs Baba Vasilka who was born in May, 1784, in the little Bulgarian village
of Pavelsko, where she has lived ever since. The record of her birth is preserved in a neighbouring
monastery of the Orthodox Greek faith. Baba Vasilka is the daughter of a peasant, and worked as a
peasant up to a comparatively recent date. For more than a hundred years she regularly worked in the
fields17
A year later, the English dairy and nutrition specialist Loudon M Douglas published a picture
of Baba Vasilka in his book The Bacillus of Long Life. The author presented the 126 year-old Baba
Vasilka as the oldest woman in the world. Her son Tudor was also pictured; he was described
by the author as a youth of 101 years, active and vigorous.18 Douglas used the image of the
centenarian Bulgarian woman and her son as an introduction to his book promoting fermented
milk consumption. Thus he directly associated Bulgarian yoghurt with healthful nutrition and
long life, giving Baba Vasilka and her son as typical examples of people who live to a great age
by the use of soured milk, as it has been their principal food all their lives.19 Douglas noted:
in Bulgaria... the majority of the natives live to an age considerably in excess of what is recognised as
the term of life amongst Western nations, and inquiry has disclosed that in the Eastern part of Southern
Europe, amongst a population of about three millions, there were more than three thousand centenarians
found performing duties which would not be assigned to a man of sixty-five years of age elsewhere.20
17
See Oldest Woman in the World. Bulgarian Peasant Said to Have Been Born in 1784, New York Daily Tribune (1910),
p. 4. The same information appeared in The Oldest Woman, Popular Mechanics (1911), p. 123. Authors commenting
on the longevity of the oldest woman in the world did not provide her surname. What they used as a first name,
Baba, is Bulgarian for old woman or grand mother. Vasilka was actually her given name.
18
Douglas (1911), p. i.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., p. 12.
132 Elitsa Stoilova
As an article from 1921 illustrates, longevity remained one of the constant characteristics of
Bulgarian yoghurt. The authors, Leo Rettger and Harry Cheplin, stressed that
[n]umerous instances are on record where persons lived and retained much of their early vigour to a
very old age particularly in Bulgaria, and where from all appearances they owed their long life to sour
milk which was their staple, and in many cases the only diet.21
The authors re-created the already popular vision of Bulgarians as healthy and long-living
people, a vision which was disseminated by the scientific and popular press since the late 1910s.
The association with Bulgaria became a clear characteristic of yoghurt, as shown by the 1923
edition of the prominent French dictionary Larousse. In it, one may read that yoghurt was a
lait caill, qui constitue lun des principaux aliments des montagnards bulgares. Utilis en mdecine
dans la rgime alimentaire des sujets atteints de problmes gastro-intestinaux, ou digrant mal le lait.
On dit aussi yaourt yahourt.22
The recognition of Bulgaria as the land from where yoghurt originated was exploited by the
producers of dairy. In the 1930s, the Dutch dairy producer HET used in their advertisements the
image of a healthy-looking old man with long beard, supposedly looking like a Bulgarian. He
was playful and drank yoghurt. The message was clearly underlined by the commercials caption,
Doet als de Bulgaren, drinkt yoghurt om uw jeugd te bewaren, encouraging consumers to
follow the example of the Bulgarians and preserve their adolescence. In another poster, the same
character promoted the accessibility of the product, stressing the affordable price of the product
and thus encouraging its daily consumption. A short text accompanied the second version of
the advertisement. It stressed that one out of 650 Bulgarians was a centenarian and according to
scholars the reason was the yoghurt consumed by Bulgarians on a daily basis.
The image of Bulgarian yoghurt was created entirely by the countries that appropriated this
21
Rettger and Cheplin (1921), p. 5.
22
Larousse (1923), p. 1272.
product. What one cannot miss here is the absence of the Bulgarian state from the creation of the
myth of the Bulgarian-origin yoghurt. Nevertheless, Bulgarian scientists had some influence
on the popularisation of yoghurt abroad. Stamen Grigorov directed Metchnikoff attention to
the longevity of the Bulgarian peasants, but he himself did not actually become one of the
promoters of yoghurt consumption. The image of the product Bulgarian yoghurt was created
by the Western European market and Western scientists. Bulgarian personalities, political or
scientific figures, did not influence the popularisation of Bulgarian yoghurt abroad. During
the 1910s and 1920s, when yoghurt became a fashion in Europe, Bulgaria passed through
two Balkan Wars and the First World War, whose results are commonly seen as national
catastrophes. Furthermore, Bulgaria confronted the post-war economic and political crisis.
Therefore, the Bulgarian state did not become an active actor in the process of popularising
yoghurt. Besides, Bulgaria had to catch up with a European dairy industry which had already
begun the process of industrialisation.
From home-made to mass-product (Good-quality real Bulgarian sour milk)
In the 1870s, when the overall European dairy industrialization started, Bulgaria was coping
with the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. While Central and Western Europe celebrated the rise
of their industrial production, Bulgaria was struggling to gain its political independence, a task
finally achieved in 1878. After five centuries of Ottoman rule, Bulgaria needed time to re-establish
its structures and catch up with the rest of the continent.
From 1878 until the Second World War the changes in Bulgarian yoghurt production were
related to the transformation of dairy manufacturing. The production process became scientific
and new technologies were introduced. The early industrialization of yoghurt production took
place together with the reorganisation of the milk industry, as part of the overall transformation
of the European dairy industry. Within Bulgaria, the modernisation of the dairy industry affected
the status of yoghurt as a traditional, rustic Bulgarian product. The standardization of the raw
material changed the product itself.

134 Elitsa Stoilova
The transformation of yoghurt from homemade product to mass-produced foodstuff was a
long process. Yoghurt mass production had its roots in the last decades of the Ottoman rule of
Bulgaria. According to the Bulgarian historians Georgy Atanasov and Ivan Masharov, the first
Bulgarian dairies appeared several decades before Bulgaria gained its independence in 1878.
Initially more significant in the large cities in the Ottoman Empire, after 1878 the trend spread
also to the smaller towns of the new Bulgarian state.23 The transformation of the Bulgarian dairy
market was not an intensive process at first, but took off in the late 1920s and depended on the
processes of urbanization and agrarian modernization. The Balkan Wars (1908-1912) and the First
World War delayed the large-scale commercialisation of yoghurt on the Bulgarian market.
A scientific article by the dairy specialist and veterinarian Kosta Katrandzhiev, a contemporary
witness of the beginnings of mass-scale production of yoghurt, provides a nice inside view.24 His
work shows the contradictions and difficulties of replacing traditional production practices with
new, modern techniques. Having studied veterinary medicine in Italy and France, Katrandzhiev
became a manager at the Capital Station for Milk Control in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. His
education in European universities nurtured a pro-modern predilection and a resolve to transform
the Bulgarian dairy industry according to the examples of the best European models. He actively
advocated the modernization of dairy production, promoting his ideas by publishing articles on
milk control and dairy manufacturing. Katrandzhievs vision of a modern dairy industry combined
new practices and institutional forms facilitated by the insights of science and technology.
Katrandzhiev advocated new technological regimes as a rupture with traditional models of
production. He became one of the most active spokespersons for the reorganization of the dairy
sector on scientific bases. What his article indicates is that the mass production of yoghurt in
Bulgaria faced many hurdles. The transformation of the dairy sector did not take place swiftly.
After an examination in 1937, Katrandzhiev and his colleagues concluded that the yoghurt
manufactured in the dairies of Sofia was often substandard. The micro-organisms introduced into
the milk were problematic. After an analysis of the collected samples, the scientists concluded that
Lactobacillus Bulgaricus was not developed in the proper quantities for sour milk. Some samples
23
Atanasov and Masharov (1981), pp. 15-18.
24
Katrandzhiev (1940), pp. 43-56.
showed mutations, while in others the micro-organisms had been suppressed by competing
bacteria. According to the scientists, these processes were caused by the use of unclear, dirty,
or old leaven.25 Most interestingly, Katradzhiev was alarmed by how various dairies produced
yoghurt with different taste and consistency.26 The scientist expected that the sanitary control and
the introduction of clear cultures in yoghurt manufacturing instead of the traditional Maya
would eliminate such problems.27 When advocating, did not stress the European experience on the
use of clear cultures in dairy manufacturing. While Katrandzhiev actually relied on his European
studies and scientific know-how, he chose not to stress these in his writings advocating the use of
laboratory-selected and controlled micro-organisms. As a manager of the Capital Station for Milk
Control in Sofia, he administered the delivery to the dairies of starter cultures from specialized
laboratories, in order to increase yoghurt quality. The laboratory at the Veterinary Station selected
and filtered the micro-organisms in order to turn them into clear cultures for the production of
yoghurt. To overcome the dairymens resistance, the selected micro-organisms were distributed
for free. Kosta Katrandzhiev argued that improvement of the quality of sour milk does not cost
almost anything to the Municipality. What one needs is entrepreneurship and persistence.28
The cultivation of the clear cultures raised several questions: What was the typical Bulgarian
product? Which were the micro-organisms for its production? What was the correlation between
them, and what characteristics should they have? To answer those questions scientists based
their explanations on scientific rationality. In 1938, the technology for yoghurt production was
introduced in specialised volume by K Popdimitrov, Bulgarian Sour Milk: Origin, Manufacturing,
Nutritiousness, and Control. The scientific-based definition offered by Popdimitrov excluded all
micro-organisms, with the exception of Lactobacillus Bulgaricus and Streptococcus Thermophilus,
as improper for production. The ration of micro-organisms was also considered an important
characteristic of the real Bulgarian yoghurt. Popdimitrov believed the proportion of Lactobacillus
bulgaricus to Streptococcus thermophilus should be 3:1.29 The Capital Veterinary Station, which
25
Ibid., p. 50.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid., pp. 43-56
28
Katrandzhiev (1940), p. 53.
29
Popdimitrov (1938), pp. 50-53.
136 Elitsa Stoilova
controlled milk and dairy products, was tasked with setting strict criteria for the technology of
mass-scale yoghurt production.
Scientists introduced clear cultures in order to produce a standardised product. The
standardisation of yoghurt production sought to avoid any declines in product taste and quality.
The microbiological composition of the product was also controlled to ensure uniformity.
The micro-organisms considered as not typical of Bulgarian sour milk were eliminated in the
laboratory. The standardisation marked a further step in establishing yoghurt as a typical national
product.30 The process of the standardisation resulted in the definition of Bulgarian yoghurt and
its production. By defining the common characteristic of the product, yoghurt became Bulgarian
yoghurt, a product with its own specifications and technology.
The scientific discourse reduced regional variations into an ideal type yoghurt, a model for
all producers. The control of variations was meant to guarantee a nice-tasting, quality product
for the mass consumer. Thus standardisation was brought about by commercialisation. The
standardised product also embodied nationalistic claims of Bulgarian authenticity. The product
that followed the strict scientific guidelines was named good-quality real Bulgarian sour milk.31
Manufacturing Authenticity
A new stage in the authentication of Bulgarian yoghurt was set after 1944, when the Bulgarian
Communist Party promoted a new socio-political order for the development of the country. In
the logic of this development, based on central planning and the mechanisation of the entire
industry, dairy production was re-directed to large, technologically-advanced dairy plants.
Their establishment started in the early 1960s. Dairy and yoghurt production turned from home
craftsmanship into a large-scale, highly mechanised production chain aimed for the global market.32
This affected yoghurt production and consumption. The ministries and local authorities were the
30
It is worth pointing out that the yoghurt produced at home for centuries was never made with clear cultures. Many
additional micro-organisms were part of the yoghurts microflora. The unconscious selection of each housewife
favoured leaven with two dominant bacteria: Lactobacillus Bulgaricus and Streptococcus Thermophilus.
31
Katrandzhiev (1940), p. 53.
32
For an overview of the agrarian transformations in Bulgaria after the Second World War, see Meurs (1999).
main actors in this process. From more than 3,000 small dairies before the Second World War, by the
1970s the dairy industry became deliberately concentrated in dairy plants in the 28 regional centres.
The building and organisation of industrialised production centres took some time. Several
years after the new communist government came to power, in 1953, the management at all
levels and sectors of the dairy industry was re-organised in a single enterprise, The Dairy
Industry, with its head office in Sofia, where the main managerial and research potential was
concentrated. The concentration of the dairy industry in several big dairy plants, with the Labour
Cooperative Farms as milk suppliers, enabled the efficient control of the entire production
structure and led to the introduction of standardised quality and safety benchmarks for milk
processing and yoghurt manufacturing.
During the period of forced industrialisation yoghurt production became an all-year round
activity. This, however, contradicted the traditional agrarian cycle and required a permanent milk
supply. This was one of the reasons for the introduction of cows milk rather than sheeps milk
into the production of yoghurt. Another reason was the introduction of mechanic milking, which
was much easier and better suited for milking cows. The industrialisation of yoghurt production
permanently changed one of the basic characteristics of Bulgarian yoghurt, which had previously
strongly favoured sheeps milk. This was now substituted by cows milk.
The communist government emphasised science and technology and the rationalisation and
modernisation of production as essential for the industrial development of the country. The
annual and five-year plans of the dairy industry included benchmarks for the development of
rational production. Certainly, the mechanisation of production was not simply a reflection of
ideology but also and foremost a practical demand. Without a technology adapted to the
mass-processing of yoghurt, production problems such as low-quality would have stepped in
and made the consumers unhappy.
The production problems required technological solutions in order to guarantee the high
quality of the end product. The solution came from the Higher Institute for Food and Flavour
Industries in Plovdiv. In the research laboratory of the Institute, in 1964 and 1965, the Bulgarian
microbiologist Tanyu Girginov worked on an experimental technology for industrial yoghurt

138 Elitsa Stoilova
production. His research resulted in a proposal for the introduction of a new technology for
producing Bulgarianyoghurt.33 According to the Bulgarian microbiologist Mihail Angelov, the
advantages of the newly discovered technology had to do with enabling thecontrol of the process
of milk fermentation, reducingcosts, enabling thestandardisationof the product, and opening
up new possibilities for the automatization of the production process. All this resulted in the
production of yoghurt of better quality.
In 1963, The Central Experimental and Production Laboratory for Pure Cultures (CEPLPC)
was established in Sofia. The purpose of the laboratory was to produce suitable starter cultures
for the production of traditional dairy produces in plants throughout the country.
From 1965 two research teams carried out a large number of experiments on the cultivation and
selection of starter culturesofS.thermophilus (ST)andLb.Bulgaricus (LB) the main components
of the Bulgarian yoghurt. In 1970 an ambitious project was aimed at the collection, selection,
and cultivation of strains for the production of typical Bulgarian yoghurt. The employees of the
Production Laboratory isolated a large number of lactic acid bacteria by collecting samples of home-
made yoghurt and natural plants from different regions of Bulgaria.34 They defined as the main
characteristic of Bulgarian yoghurt the mutual interaction between S.thermophilusandLb.Bulgaricus

(known in the scientific literature as a symbiotic relationship).35 The result of three years of researche
and thousand of experiments were seven symbiotic blends of these two micro-organisms. As the
diversity of combinations between different LB and ST strains leads to differences in yoghurt
flavour, aroma, and texture, the selection of symbiotic starters with typical characteristics reduced
the differences and created the typical yoghurt. These seven symbiotic starters developed in
CEPLPC since 1972 ensured the production of standardised, original Bulgarian yoghurt. Several
years later, the method used for the production of the starters was patented. 36
33
Later on some of the outstanding dairy researchers abroad recognised the merits of Girginovs technology. See
Tamime and Robinson (2003), p. 661; Driessen (1988), pp. 129-137; Loones (1992), p. 28-40.
34
Interview with Mariya Kondratenko (September 2008). See also Kondratenko and Simov (2003), p. 42.
35
The Bulgarian microbiologists Kondratenko and Nikolov elucidated the nature of the symbiotic relationship
between LB and ST, emphasising that this was not the strictly biological symbiosis where the existence of one
species determines the existence of another species, but rather corresponds to terms such as synergism or proto-
cooperation, when the two organisms have mutual benefits, but the association is not obligatory and the two
populations can grow separately. Nikolov and Kondratenko (2005).
36
Ibid.
In 1972, researchers from the Central Laboratory together with paediatricians and
nutritionists started joint research on the beneficial health effect of the fermented products
produced with the original Bulgarian strains of LB.37 Research on the health benefits of
Bulgarian yoghurt and its micro-organisms was another way of defining and branding the
product. The researchers aimed to prove the advantages of Bulgarian yoghurt over other
similar products. Science became an instrument for the authentication of Bulgarian yoghurt
while the scientists acted as promoters of its uniqueness. The Bulgarian dairy specialist B.
Gyosheva proves that the selected strains of the Bulgarian yoghurt prevent cardiovascular
disease and improve the lipid metabolism. Furthermore, they have immune-stimulating and
immune-modulating effects, inhibit the genesis of cancer, and have an overall positive influence
on metabolism.38 The experiments offered a scientific basis for the promotion of national pride
and the creation of an image of superiority of the Bulgarian yoghurt. That image grew into
a national mythology, as it was denied that good yoghurt might be produced elsewhere. A
product with the characteristics of Bulgarian yoghurt, it was claimed, could only be produced
in Bulgaria. Such popular beliefs downplayed the reality of the export of bacterial cultures and
know-how for yoghurt production. If anything, this was transformed into another national
myth. The export of yoghurt cultures and technology was presented as another proof of the
supremacy of Bulgarian-made yoghurt.
The liberalisation of international relations in the 1960s and 1970s and the need for reforms
in the countries of the Communist bloc was beneficial for the export of yoghurt technology
and cultures. As overall trade across the Iron Curtain grew, so did the export of patents, know-
how, and starter cultures for the production of Bulgarian yoghurt. However, according to the
memoirs of Mariya Kondrtaenko and Todor Minkov, the end product, Bulgarian yoghurt, was
not itself exported in any significant way. This was caused by the very nature of yoghurt. Because
of difficulties in the transportation of yoghurt (the consistence of yoghurt changed owing to
the vibrations of trucks), yoghurt exports turned out to be very difficult. As such, until 1989 the
Bulgarian dairy industry exported only starter cultures and technologies for the production of
37
See http://www.lbbulgaricum.bg/eng/science.php?m=3&s=34. Accessed 12 September 2011.
38
Gyosheva (2005).
140 Elitsa Stoilova
yoghurt under Bulgarian license, in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Cyprus,
Finland, France, Austria, and the United States.
Under such licenses Bulgarian specialists offered technological assistance in order to guarantee
productivity. Although significant, such technological competence was not, from a Bulgarian
perspective, the key aspect. The uniqueness of Bulgarian yoghurt, the Bulgarian specialists
believed, went beyond the visible. It was hidden in the invisible world of micro-organisms. The
Bulgarian microbiologists Mariya Kondratenko and Zdravko Nikolov assert that
One major distinction between the Bulgarian yoghurt starters and the starters with the same species
content used in other countries is the continuous symbiotic relation between the two species.39
Here national mythology intermingled with scientific achievements. When scientists selected
the symbiotic combination they used samples from the Bulgarian homeland, turning to yoghurt
produced according to tradition. The micro-organisms were perceived as a combination between
the nature, culture, and traditions of Bulgaria. The exported starters encompassed the best of all
these elements. Thus science e.g., Girginovs technology became a tool for the production of
the myth of the superiority of Bulgarian yoghurt. Scientific data buttressed the national myth of
Bulgaria as the fatherland of yoghurt. The geographical and climatic conditions, together with
the long Bulgarian tradition of dairy production became key arguments for Bulgarians claim
that real yoghurt can only be produced in Bulgaria and at any rate Bulgarian yoghurt was the
best yoghurt in the world. Such mythologems were well developed in Bulgaria and were later
circulated abroad as well.
Conclusion
At a time when the Cold War drastically limited the flow of people, knowledge and artefacts
across Europe, socialist Bulgaria accomplished a technological and production transfer to various
39
Nikolov and Kondratenko (2005).
countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The promotion of Bulgarian yoghurt abroad was
achieved through the export of patented technology and the know-how need for mass production.
Science became an instrument for advancing the thesis of the superiority of Bulgarian yoghurt.
Scientific facts were used to support the national myth of Bulgaria as the fatherland of yoghurt.
The geographical conditions, together with technologies stemming from century-long traditions,
became key arguments for Bulgarians claim that they produced the best yoghurt in the world.
These motifs or mythologems, developed in Bulgaria, were later exported as part of a discourse
oriented at the outside world. When Bulgarian producers exported yoghurt and its technology,
they also exported Bulgarian stereotypes, myths, and symbols about the Bulgarian yoghurt.
When yoghurt started travelling, the ideas and aspirations that Bulgarians had initially tied
to this product turned out different. By appropriating a product largely viewed as traditionally
Bulgarian, Europe changed the context of Bulgarian-yoghurt consumption and adapted it to the
specificity of its markets. Therefore, the yoghurt that for Bulgarians had been a channel for the
affirmation of national pride, in time became part of the common European taste.
REFERENCES
Atanasov Georgy and Ivan Masharov. (Bulgarian
Dairy Industry: Past and Present). Sofia, 1981.
Combe, Adolphe. Curdled Milk and Intestinal Decomposition. The British Medical Journal 3378 (1925): 47-48.
Corminboeuf, F. Recherches biochimiques sur le yoghourt et le lait acidopile. Institute Agricole dOika, 1933.
Douglas, Loudon M. The Bacillus of Long Life. London. New York, 1911.
Driessen, F.M. New Developments in the Manufacture of Fermented Milk Products. Bulletin of the International
Dairy Federation 227 (1988): 129-137.
Driessen, F.M. and A.Loones. Developments in the Fermentation Process (Liquid, Stirred and Set Fermented
Milks). Bulletin of the International Dairy Federation 228 (1992): 28-40.
For Honour of Being Oldest Woman in the World. Hopkinsville Kentuckian (1910): 1.
Larousse Universel en 2 Volumes: Nouveau Dictionnaire Encyclopdique. Ed. Claude Aug. Paris, 1923.
Fournier, Albert, Adolphe Combe, and William Gaynor States. Intestinal Auto-intoxication. New York, 1908.
Grigoroff, Stamen. Etude Sur un Lait Ferment Comestible: Le Kisslo-Mlko de Bulgarie. Revue mdical de
la Suisse Romande 25.10 (1905): 714-20.

142 Elitsa Stoilova
Gyosheva, B. Health Beneficial Properties of Selected Original Bulgarian Yoghurt Bacteria as Monocultures
and in Combinations. International Symposium on Original Bulgarian Yoghurt. Sofia, 25-27 May 2005.
Katrandzhiev, Kosta. (The Yoghurt
(Sour milk) as Nutrition and the Measures in the Capital for its Quality Improvement).
(Veterinary Collection) (1940): 43-56.
Kondratenko, Maria and Zh. Simov. Bulgarian Sour Milk. Sofia, 2003.
Kvatchkoff, I. Considrations sur le Lait Caill Bulgare de Brebis (Kisselo Mleko ou Kvasseno Mleko). Le Lait
17 (1937): 472-488.
Lesage, Adolphe-Auguste. Trait des maladies du nourrisson. Paris, 1911.
Metchnikoff, lie. The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies. Translated by Peter Chalmers Mitchell. New York
and London, 1908.
Meurs, Mieke. Many Shades of Red: State Policy and Collective Agriculture. Lanham, 1999.
Nikolov, Zdravko and Mariya Kondratenko. The Bulgarian Starters for Yogurt. International Symposium on
Original Bulgarian Yoghurt. Sofia, 25-27 May 2005.
Oldest Woman in the World: Bulgarian Peasant Said to Have Been Born in 1784. New York Daily Tribune
(1910): 4.
The Oldest Woman. Popular Mechanics (1911): 123.
Popdimitrov, K. e. , , (Bulgarian Sour
Milk: Origin, Manufacturing, Nutritiousness, and Control). Sofia, 1938.
Rgnier, Faustine. Comment la cuisine franaise sapproprie ltranger: discours sur lexotisme dans la presse
fminine (1930-2000). Colloque international: Gastronomie et identit culturelle franaise, discours et
reprsentations (XIXe-XXIe sicles).Paris, 17-19 March 2005.
Rettger, Leo F. and Harry A. Cheplin. A Treatise on the Transformation of the Intestinal Flora with Special Reference
to the Implantation of Bacillus Acidophilus. London, 1921.
Tamime, A. Y. and R. K. Robinson. Yoghurt: Science and Technology. Cambridge, 2000.

Number of Civil Servants and
Historiographical Myths in France
Emilien Ruiz
cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences sociales, Paris
Abstract The last twenty years have witnessed a revival in the study of the history of
the contemporary French state. Questions surrounding the number of civil
servants at any given time remain, however, still very much in a blind spot in social science research.
The present essay reflects on this historiographical blind spot by focusing on the succession of myths
that surrounded quantitative approaches in history from the 1960s to the 1990s ranging from fetishism
to total rejection. In order to avoid the creation of a new scientific mythology that would advocate
abandoning for good the use of quantitative data in historical research, we must now focus on the work
of reconstruction. The historians interest concerning the number of civil servants must therefore take
into consideration the deconstruction which took place during the 1990s, while also taking the actual
figures seriously. Thus, the statistical material will resume its status as a historical source, no more, but
equally no less important than other kinds of documents.
Keywords history of the state, historiography, history of statistics, civil

servants.
En France, ces deux dernires dcennies ont t le thtre dun incontestable renouveau
de lhistoire de ltat contemporain, de telle sorte quil nest certainement plus possible de le
qualifier de non-objet historique1. Le nombre des fonctionnaires constitue toutefois un angle
1
Selon lexpression de Pierre Rosanvallon, Ltat en France de 1789 nos jours, Paris, Seuil, 1990 (cit dornavant
comme, Rosanvallon, Ltat en France), p.9.
144 Emilien Ruiz
mort des recherches en sciences sociales. Ainsi, le constat que Pierre Rosanvallon dressait pour
ltat il y a plus de vingt ans sapplique trs bien aujourdhui la question de ses effectifs: le
trs petit nombre des travaux consacrs lhistoire [du nombre des fonctionnaires] contraste
singulirement avec la vigueur des jugements qui sexpriment son propos. () Il est peu de
domaines dans lesquels le dsquilibre entre la masse des prises de position et la minceur des
travaux rudits soit aussi frappant2. Une telle situation a permis ldification dun double mythe
politique concernant le volume des effectifs de ltat: de tout temps la France compterait trop de
fonctionnairestandis que ltat lui-mme serait bien incapable de compter ses effectifs.
Dconstruire ce mythe est un travail de longue haleine que jai entrepris dans le cadre
dune thse de doctorat en histoire et dont je ne saurais traiter ici de faon satisfaisante
dans les limites imparties cette contribution. Je me propose, en revanche, dinterprter
le vide historiographique concernant le nombre des fonctionnaires laune des mythes
historiographiques qui ont successivement gouvern lusage du chiffre en histoire des annes
1960 aux annes 1990.
En effet, les relations entre les historiens et les mthodes quantitatives ont t pour le moins
fluctuantes au cours du XXe sicle. Depuis la lune de miel qui suivit les tudes fondatrices dErnest
Labrousse dans les annes 1930 et 19403, de ruptures en rconciliations, il na jamais vritablement
t de soi que lhistoire et la statistique aient t faites lune pour lautre. En 2001, ric Brian notait
ainsi que les chiffres tirs des documents anciens ont suscit deux grands types de lectures, lune
2
Voir, notamment, Maria Novella Borghetti, Lhistoire lpreuve de lexprience statistique: lhistoire conomique
et le tournant des annes 1930, dans Revue dhistoire des sciences humaines, n 6, 2002 (cit dornavant comme Bor-
ghetti, Lhistoire lpreuve de lexprience statistique). Elle explique ainsi (p. 16) que si, de la part des historiens
franais, le recours aux statistiques ou sur un plan plus gnral, la promotion dune approche quantitative dans
ltude des faits conomiques et sociaux sont antrieurs aux annes 1930, [lEsquisse du mouvement des prix et des
revenus en France au XVIIIe sicle, publi par E. Labrousse en 1933] est le premier exemple dune vritable appli-
cation de la mthode statistique: cette dernire a en effet une incidence directe sur la mise en uvre et la rsolution
dune problmatique historique (les origines de la Rvolution franaise) tudie dans le cadre dune dure sculaire
et, pour la premire fois, de lespace national dans son entier.; De la mme faon, quand deux chercheurs amri-
cains tudient le tournant statistique dans les sciences sociales aux tats-Unis, sils le font remonter aux annes
qui prcdent la Grande Guerre, ils nabordent pas la discipline historique. Charles Camic et Yu Xie, The Statistical
Turn in American Social Science: Columbia University, 1890 to 1915, dans American Sociological Review, vol. 59,
no. 5, octobre 1994, p.773805.
3
Ce qui, lorsquils sinscrivent dans une vritable dmarche dhistoire et de sciences sociales, peut produire des ou-
vrages tels que celui de Pierre Legendre, Trsor historique de ltat en France: ladministration classique, Paris, Fayard,
1992. Rfrence incontournable aujourdhui encore, cette dition revue et augmente dun manuel publi en 1968
aux Presses universitaires de France est longtemps reste la seule rfrence valable sur la question.
Number of Civil Servants and Historiographical Myths in France 145
dite positiviste a tenu pour acquise leur lisibilit numrique (parfois au prix de correctifs),
lautre dite reprsentationiste a privilgi la critique des catgories qui leur donnaient sens.4
Pousses leurs extrmits, ces deux lectures ont conduit ldification de mythes qui semblent
avoir gouvern successivement le recours aux donnes statistiques en histoire. Jusquaux annes 1990,
un engouement quantitativiste pouvait conduire une utilisation peu prcautionneuse des sources
statistiques. Le chiffre tait parfois considr comme le seul vritable instrument de comprhension
des ralits sociales tandis que, dans le mme temps, ltat demeurait un non-objet historique.
partir de la fin des annes 1980, alors que les historiens contemporanistes commenaient
redcouvrir ltat, un enthousiasme dconstructiviste (pour reprendre lexpression de lappel
communications) entrana une remise en cause globale de lusage des statistiques administratives
comme source pertinente. Cette dernire approche, en substituant le rejet au ftichisme du chiffre,
risque toutefois de conduire ldification dune nouvelle mythologie scientifique selon laquelle
lhistorien naurait rien tirer des donnes quantitatives produites par la statistique administrative.
Il est donc dsormais plus que ncessaire de sinscrire dans une dmarche de reconstruction.
En ce dbut de dcennie 2010, sintresser, en historien, la question du nombre des
fonctionnaires suppose de tenir compte des acquis du travail de dconstruction accompli dans
les annes 1990, tout en prenant le chiffre au srieux. Cest cette condition que la documentation
statistique pourra reprendre son statut de source parmi dautres.
Le nombre des fonctionnaires et le mythe quantitativiste
Jusquaux annes 1990, labsence de travaux sur le nombre des fonctionnaires procdait en
partie du fait que ltat contemporain lui-mme restait un non-objet historique ; tandis
que lhistoire de ladministration a longtemps t une sorte de domaine rserv d tudes
4
Dont la dmarche ne relve pas toujours de lanalyse scientifique, comme en tmoignent Fauroux et Spitz; Roger
Fauroux et Bernard Spitz, Notre Etat: le livre vrit sur la fonction publique, 2e d., Paris, Hachette, 2002. Lorsque celle-ci
se veut historique, certains considrent que seul un fonctionnaire peut parler de la fonction publique, comme le
sous-entendent (notamment propos de la priode pratiquement non traite du rgime de Vichy). Guy Thuillier et
Jean Tulard, Histoire de ladministration franaise, 2e d., Paris, PUF, 1994.
146 Emilien Ruiz
administratives monopolises, notamment, par les juristes de droit public5 ou les hauts
fonctionnaires en exercice6.
titre dexemple, lanalyse de lensemble des articles et recensions publis entre 1969 et 1988
dans les Annales est trs parlante: 86 des 4 217 publications relvent dune thmatique concernant
ladministration, ltat, les finances publiques ou les fonctionnaires. Parmi elles, seules 34 traitent
rellement de ltat (que ce soit du point de vue de son fonctionnement, de ses finances, ou
dune catgorie spcifique de son personnel toutes priodes historiques et zones gographiques
confondues): soit 0,8%7. En 1990, Pierre Rosanvallon pouvait ainsi affirmer que ltat comme
problme politique, ou comme phnomne bureaucratique est au cur des passions partisanes et
des dbats philosophiques tout en restant une sorte de non-objet historique.8
Cela sexplique en partie par le succs de lhistoire conomique et sociale au cours de la
mme priode. En effet, au cours des annes 1930 1970, la dmarche labroussienne, grce
son efficacit analytique et sa force logique, [stait affirme] comme le modle suivre9,
constituant peu peu le socle dune rencontre novatrice entre histoire et conomie. En parallle10,
lhistoire conomique et sociale affirmait son caractre dominant, notamment au sein de lcole des
Annales et de lhistoriographie marxiste. En 1971, Franois Furet pouvait ainsi crire: Lhistoire
quantitative est aujourdhui la mode, la fois en Europe et aux tats-Unis: on assiste, en effet,
5
Calculs raliss daprs Martine Grinberg et Yvette Trabut, Vingt annes dhistoire et de sciences humaines: table analytique
des Annales 1969-1988, Paris, Armand Colin, 1991.
6
Rosanvallon, Ltat en France, p.9.
7
En parallle, car, comme les recherches de Maria Novella Borghetti lont tabli, les relations entre Ernest Labrousse,
les Annales et le marxisme ont t beaucoup plus conflictuelles que ne le veut la lgende: Maria Novella Borghetti,
Loeuvre dErnest Labrousse. Gense dun modle dhistoire conomique, Paris, Ed. de lEHESS, coll. Recherches dhistoire
et de sciences sociales, 2005.
8
Jean Bouvier, Histoire financire et problmes danalyse des dpenses publiques , dans Annales. conomies,
Socits, Civilisations, vol. 33, n 2, avril 1978, p.207215. Ce numro des Annales comporte plusieurs communications
intressantes sur le sujet. Il sagit de la publication dune partie des rapports de la 3e journe de lAssociation franaise
des historiens conomistes tenue Paris en janvier 1977.
9
Jean Bouvier et Jaques Wolff, Deux sicles de fiscalit franaise, XIXe-XXe sicle. Histoire, conomie, politique, Paris,
Mouton, 1973 ; Jean Bouvier et Jean-Claude Perrot (dir.), tats, fiscalits, conomies: Actes du cinquime congrs de
lassociation franaise des historiens conomistes, 16-18 juin 1983, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, coll. La France aux
XIXe-XXe sicles, 1985.
10
Andre Tiano, Le traitement des fonctionnaires et leur dtermination (1930-1957), Paris, M.-Th. Gnin, 1957; Louis
Fontvieille, volution et croissance de ltat franais (1815-1969), dans conomies et Socits, Cahiers de lIsmea
srie AF, no. 13, 1976, p.16862144; Christine Andr et Robert Delorme, Ltat et lconomie, un essai dexplication de
lvolution des dpenses publiques en France 1870-1980, Paris, Seuil, 1983; Jean Meyer, Le poids de ltat, Paris, PUF, 1983;
Bruno Thret, Croissance et crises de ltat: essai sur lconomie de ltat franais depuis lancien rgime jusqu la crise des
annes 1930, Paris, Iris, 1990.
depuis prs dun demi-sicle, au dveloppement rapide de lutilisation des sources quantitatives
et des procdures de comptage et de quantification dans la recherche historique.11
Dans une telle perspective, lorsque les historiens se sont saisis de ltat contemporain, leurs
travaux se sont, le plus souvent, focaliss sur des questions conomiques et financires. Larticle
fondateur de Jean Bouvier sur lhistoire des dpenses publiques12 et les ouvrages quil a codirigs avec
Jacques Wolff ou Jean-Claude Perrot en sont,13 aujourdhui encore, les rfrences incontournables.
Les histoires quantitatives de ltat se sont aussi longtemps concentres sur lvolution des dpenses
publiques. Il en est ainsi des principaux travaux publis jusqu laube des annes 1990. Andr Tiano le premier,
mais aussi Louis Fontvieille, Christine Andr et Robert Delorme, Jean Meyer et Bruno Thret, ont ainsi produit
des rfrences importantes tant par leur qualit que par leur nombre limit , dont lobjet principal est la
croissance de ltat14. Cette tendance tient beaucoup la qualit dconomistes de la quasi-totalit des auteurs
en question (Jean Meyer est le seul historien de la liste). Nanmoins, sans prsumer de leur adhsion des
prsupposs de ce type, il faut noter quils voluaient dans une priode o toute analyse de ltat se rsumait
la question du trop ou pas assez dtat (cest encore souvent le cas aujourdhui15). Comme lexpliquait Pierre
Rosanvallon en 1990, le prsuppos dune histoire simple et vidente gouverne trop souvent notre approche
du phnomne tatique. Cette situation est aussi, paradoxalement, le fruit dune mconnaissance partielle
de lhistoire quantitative de ltat et en particulier de la question du nombre des fonctionnaires ou dune
histoire quantitative ne sachant pas saffranchir des prjugs communs : Les faits seraient l, massifs et
vidents: ltat naurait cess dtendre son domaine dintervention, envahissant toujours davantage la socit,
et ladministration se serait inexorablement enfle, exerant un pouvoir de plus en plus tendu. Lhistoire de
ltat se confondrait avec celle dune croissance, ralise au dtriment de la socit.16
11
Le 16 juillet 2010, Philippe Minard dclarait ainsi sur la chane de radio France Culture: Pourtant, dans les journaux
et ailleurs, ce genre de clichs sur le poids de ltat est rpt tous les jours, comme si ltat ntait quun boulet, et
comme sil navait jamais eu quune action ngative!. Voir Philippe Minard dans Emmanuel Laurentin,(dir.), A quoi
sert lhistoire aujourdhui?, Paris, Belin, 2010, p.168171.
12
Bernard Lepetit, Lhistoire quantitative: deux ou trois choses que je sais delle, dans Histoire & Mesure, vol. 4, n
3-4, 1989, p.191199.
13
Ren Rmond, (dir.), Pour une histoire politique, Paris, Seuil, 1988.
14
Vincent Duclert, Lavenir de lhistoire, Paris, Armand Colin, 2010. Voir en particulier le chapitre 5 lhistoire politique
en question, p. 103-117.
15
Pierre Rosanvallon, La croissance de ltat comme problme, dans Jacques Le Goff(dir.), Ltat et les pouvoirs,
Paris, Seuil, 1989, p.491512; Prfiguration Rosanvallon, Ltat en France.
16
Jacques Le Goff,(dir.), Ltat et les pouvoirs, Paris, Seuil, 1989.
148 Emilien Ruiz
Le fait est que, ds les annes 1960, pour certains historiens le chiffre semblait constituer
lalpha et lomga de lhistoire quantitative. Pour certains, comme Jean Marczewski par exemple,
lhistoire quantitative ntait pas autre chose quunemthode dhistoire conomique qui intgre
tous les faits tudis dans un systme de comptes interdpendants et qui en tire des conclusions
sous la forme dagrgats quantitatifs dtermins, entirement et uniquement, par les donnes du
systme17. Dautres firent du quantitatif le critre partir duquel pourrait stablir la scientificit
de la discipline historique. Ainsi, tandis quAdeline Daumard et Franois Furet voquaient, ds
1959, un accord quasi unanime autour de laffirmation selon laquelle scientifiquement parlant,
il nest dhistoire sociale que quantitative18, moins de dix ans plus tard, en 1968, Emmanuel Le
Roy Ladurie crivait que la limite il nest histoire scientifique que du quantifiable.19
Le nombre des fonctionnaires et le mythe anti-quantitativiste
Cette rification du quantitatif allant trop loin, lusage du chiffre en histoire, sen trouva peu
peu disqualifie. laube de la dcennie 1970, Franois Furet notait dj que comme tous les
mots la mode, celui dhistoire quantitative a fini par avoir une acception tellement large quil
recouvre peu prs nimporte quoi20. Au crpuscule des annes 1980, Bernard Lepetit constatait
quant lui, comme en rponse Franois Furet: lhistoire quantitative aujourdhui nest plus
17
Voir notamment Michel Margairaz, Ltat, les finances et lconomie: histoire dune conversion, 1932-1952, Paris,
Comit dhistoire conomique et financire de la France, coll.tudes gnrales, 1991; ainsi que Marc Olivier
Baruch, Servir ltat franais. Ladministration en France de 1940 1944, Paris, Fayard, 1997; Carr de Malberg parle
de tournant baruchien dans les annes 1995-1997; Nathalie Carr de Malberg, Les fonctionnaires (civils) sous
Vichy: essai historiographique, dans Histoire@Politique, n 2, octobre 2007. en ligne: http://www.histoire-politique.
fr/index.php?numero=02&rub=pistes&item=6 [lien valide le 15 novembre 2011]
18
Marc Olivier Baruch et Vincent Duclert (dir.), Serviteurs de ltat. Une histoire politique de ladministration. 1875-1945,
Paris, La Dcouverte, 2000; Voir aussi Alain Chatriot et Dieter Gosewinkel (dir.), Figurationen des staates in Deutschland
und Frankreich, 1870 1945. Les figures de lEtat en Allemagne et en France, Paris, Pariser Historische Studien des Deutschen
Historischen Institut, 2006 en particulier lintroduction dAlain Chatriot, Ltat un objet paradoxalement neuf
pour lhistoire politique contemporaine franaise, p. 7-17, qui propose un bilan historiographique trs complet.
19
Voir notamment, Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: une archologie des sciences humaines, Paris, Gallimard, 1966;
Michel Foucault, Larchologie du savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1969. On pourra aussi consulter les ditions rcentes des
cours au Collge de France de 1975 1979: Michel Foucault, Il faut dfendre la socit: cours au Collge de France (1975-
1976), Paris, Gallimard & Seuil, 1997; Michel Foucault, Scurit, territoire, population: cours au Collge de France (1977-
1978), Paris, Gallimard & Seuil, 2004; Michel Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique: cours au Collge de France, 1978-1979,
Paris, Gallimard & Seuil, 2004.
20
Pour un exemple trs parlant, on pourra se reporter aux rflexions proposes par des historiens et des sociologues,
autour dun dbat entre statisticiens de lINSEE: Florence Weber, (dir.), Histoire et statistiques. Questions sur
lanachronisme des sries longues, dans Genses, n 9, 1/1992, p.90119.
la mode. Surtout, il ajoutait: le doute sest rpandu quant la capacit du chiffre rendre
compte des comportements les plus fondamentaux21. Cest que les annes 1990 connurent de
multiples transformations historiographiques qui toutes convergrent vers une remise en cause
de lusage du quantitatif en histoire; alors que ltat revenait sur le devant de la scne, le nombre
de ses agents restait en coulisse.
La fin des annes 1980 fut ainsi le thtre dun retour, grands coups de trompe 22, de
lhistoire politique. Ce nouvel intrt sinscrivait pour partie, et sans ambigut, dans une logique
de confrontation avec lhistoire conomique et sociale23 mais aussi dans une volont des
historiens issus de lcole des Annales dintgrer le politique leur grille de lecture24. La parution
dun deuxime tome de lHistoire de la France dirige par Andr Burguire et Jacques Revel
intitul ltat et les pouvoirs en tmoigne25. Jacques Le Goff, directeur du volume, introduisait
louvrageen annonant: lhistoire politique de la France est dabord celle de la gense de deux
entits, ltat et la nation.26
Cette mutation historiographique nest probablement pas trangre au profond renouvellement qua
connu lhistoire contemporaine de ltat partir des annes 1990 avec, notamment, la publication des
21
Alain Desrosires et Laurent Thvenot, Les catgories socioprofessionnelles, 5e d., Paris, La Decouverte, 2002. Alain
Desrosires, La politique des grands nombres. Histoire de la raison statistique, 2e d., Paris, La Decouverte, 2000.
22
En particulier avec la rencontre entre historiens et statisticiens aux journes dtude sur lhistoire de la statistique
Vaucresson en juin 1976 et qui donna lieu la publication de deux volumes qui font encore rfrence: Pour une histoire
de la statistique. Tome 1, Contributions, Paris, Insee, 1977; Jolle Affichard,(dir.), Pour une histoire de la statistique. Tome
2,Matriaux, Paris, Economica & Insee, 1987.
23
Paul-Andr Rosental, Pour une histoire politique des populations, dans Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol.
61, n 1, 2006, p.729 (cit dornavant comme, Rosental, Pour une histoire politique des populations).
24
Paul-Andr Rosental et Jean-Claude Devinck, Statistique et mort industrielle. La fabrication du nombre de
victimes de la silicose dans les houillres en France de 1946 nos jours, dans Vingtime sicle. Revue dhistoire, n 95,
2007, p.7591 (cit dornavant comme, Rosental et Devinck, Statistique et mort industrielle).
25
Au sujet du droit, Baudouin Dupret dans Droit et sciences sociales, Paris, Armand Colin, 2006, signale ainsi que
certaines traditions sociojuridiques ont manifest une tendance aux gnralisations thoriques et abstraites, la
dissolution du droit dans la notion de contrle social et loubli du fait que le droit est, avant tout, un phnomne
qui se saisit dans ses pratiques (en action) et dans ses diffrents environnements (en contexte)., p. 11. On pourrait
dresser un constat similaire en ce qui concerne la statistique administrative.
26
Des travaux rcents ont montr que, bien au contraire, les populations ne font pas que subir une catgorisation
par la mesure, mais quelles interviennent diverses tapes des enqutes et recensements statistiques, de llaboration
des conventions lexploitation des rsultats en passant par leur mise en uvre. Voir, par exemple, Raymond R.
Gervais et Issiaka Mand, Comment compter les sujets de lempire? Les tapes dune dmographie impriale en
AOF avant 1946, dans Vingtime sicle. Revue dhistoire, n 95, 3/2007, p.6374; Rosental et Devinck, Statistique et
mort industrielle; ainsi que Paul Schor, Compter et classer. Histoire des recensements amricains, Paris, Ed. de lEHESS,
coll. En temps & lieux, 2009.
150 Emilien Ruiz
thses de Michel Margairaz (1991) et de Marc Olivier Baruch (1997)27 et dont tmoigna la publication
dun volume collectif dhistoire politique de ladministration sous la IIIe Rpublique sous la direction de
Marc Olivier Baruch et Vincent Duclert en 200028. Le nombre des fonctionnaires nen resta pas moins un
non-objet historique, du fait dune autre mutation historiographique, concomitante de la redcouverte
du politique et de ltat: la remise en cause de lusage du chiffre en histoire.
Le constat que faisait Bernard Lepetit en 1989 ne relevait pas dune seule question de mode
historiographique mais bien dune remise en cause pistmologique de lhistoire quantitative.
Lenthousiasme dconstructiviste des annes 1980-1990, en partie hrit des travaux mens par
Michel Foucault dans les annes 1960 et 197029, conduisit lhistoriographie franaise une remise
en cause de lexploitation des matriaux quantitatifs par les historiens et, surtout, une certaine
mfiance envers toute rtrospective de longue dure. Ce travail de dconstruction a dabord t
salutaire,car il a permis le dveloppement, dans les annes 1980-1990, dune histoire de la statistique
administrative et de ses catgories qui avait commenc merger dans les annes 1970. Mais
lanalyse des catgories, promue par ce que Paul-Andr Rosental appelle un foucaldisme plus
ou moins bien digr a pu conduire une double impasse. Celle qui consiste considrer que
la statistique administrative nest quun instrument de contrle social de la population par ltat.
Ce sens commun postfoucaldien du contrle social par le chiffre, posture thorique, qui ne
prend pas expressment le contexte et les pratiques en considration (et que lon retrouve dans
certaines approches critiques du droit), peut pousser considrer que les phnomnes mesurs
ne sont que le produit dune construction tatique travers la statistique administrative. Celle
qui, postulant que les conventions statistiques faonnent le monde social, ne voit dobjet
digne dintrt que dans lanalyse des tensions conceptuelles intrinsques la statistique, vue
comme une connaissance revendiquant la fois le statut dune science et celui dun outil pour
laction. De ce point de vue, les chiffres produits par les statistiques administratives ne sont pas
utilisables, et seules leurs conditions de production doivent intresser les historiens.
27
ric Brian et Marie Jaisson, Le sexisme de la premire heure: hasard et sociologie, Paris, Raisons dagir, coll.Cours et
travaux, 2007 (cit dornavant comme, Brian et Jaisson, Le sexisme de la premire heure), p.21.
28
Brain, Nouvel essai, p. 207208.
29
Paul-Andr Rosental, Largument dmographique. Population et histoire politique au 20e sicle, dans Vingtime
sicle. Revue dhistoire, n 95, 2007, p.314 (cit dornavant comme, Rosental, Largument dmographique).
Selon ric Brian et Marie Jaisson, il est banal dentendre dire aujourdhui quune enqute
historique ou sociologique sur un procd de calcul devrait prsupposer ou conduire un
vanouissement du produit de ce calcul . Ainsi, l enthousiasme dconstructiviste des
dernires dcennies du XXe sicle pourrait conduire une nouvelle mythologie scientifique,
selon laquelle les chiffres passs au crible de la critique seraient disqualifis, seule compterait
donc lhistoire des modes de calcul, et toute vellit dexploitation du produit de ce calcul serait
vaine. Cette situation, malgr la concomitance dune redcouverte de ltat contemporain par
lhistoriographie franaise, figure probablement parmi les facteurs explicatifs de labsence
dune prise en considration du nombre des fonctionnaires comme objet dhistoire. Se saisir de
la question des effectifs suppose donc de sen dtacher. Il ne sagit pas de nier les apports des
oprations de dconstruction mens dans les annes 1980 et 1990, mais de considrer que le
temps de la reconstruction est venu.
Pour une approche reconstructionniste (en guise de conclusion)
Tandis que lhistoriographie redcouvrait ltat, deux approches du chiffre se sont donc
succdes en histoire. Sans quelle en soit seule responsable, cette alternance de mythes
historiographiques a contribu au maintien de la question des effectifs de ltat dans un angle
mort des recherches historiques.
Se saisir de cette question implique aujourdhui de sengager dans une dmarche de
reconstruction. La mise en perspective de ce que nous sommes capables de dire aujourdhui de la
question des effectifs de ltat au XXe sicle, partir des donnes que nous pouvons identifier et
mettre en srie, avec ce que les contemporains en disaient au cours de la mme priode sur la base
de leurs propres donnes, me semble la seule dmarche mme de faire merger un savoir neuf
sur la question. En ce sens, une histoire de ltat faisant appel du matriau quantitatif gagnerait
sinspirer des acquis de lhistoire des populations. Ainsi, en 2001, ric Brian expliquait que
la substitution dune lecture reprsentationniste une lecture positiviste des chiffres en
histoire avait conduit ce que dune mme source, un tableau de dnombrement par exemple,
les historiens ont longtemps tir des chiffres, alors que, depuis plus dune vingtaine dannes, ils
152 Emilien Ruiz
scrutent de prfrence les rubriques des classifications. Afin dchapper de tels dilemmes, il
est ncessaire de rintroduire lutilisation des chiffres au sein des sources possibles de lhistorien,
condition dintgrer, comme il le soulignait, les acquis de lhistoire des savoirs dmographiques
et les questions de lhistoire des populations une telle dmarche.
Il sagit finalement, selon les orientations formules par Paul-Andr Rosental, de prendre au
srieux la faon dont le chiffre est effectivement promu, mis en scne et utilis dans le dbat, plutt
que de le traiter comme un facteur de lgitimit intrinsque des politiques publiques. Une telle
dmarche revient refuser tout la fois le ftichisme et la fascination du nombre et sa mise
lcart historiographique, pour le traiter comme un lment part entire de lhistoire culturelle
et politique. Cest dans une telle perspective que jai entrepris dtudier la question des effectifs
de ltat dans la France du XXe sicle, pour tenter de dconstruire le double mythe politique selon
lequel il y aurait trop de fonctionnaires sans que lon sache vraiment combien ils sont.
Myth or Reality? Women in the
Romanian Communist Party or
the Image of Evil
Luciana-Marioara Jinga
Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, Bucharest
Abstract The Romanian Communist Party (PCR) introduced so-called egalitarian

legislation, striving to meet the demands of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine
and taking the Soviet Union as a model. In order to apply these principles to Romanian society, the
communist propaganda encouraged women to join the paid working force. The presence of women
within the PCR was, for the first three decades of communism, one of the lowest of all the communist
countries of Central and Eastern Europe, comparable perhaps with that in Yugoslavia. In the mid-
1970s, Nicolae Ceauescus regime introduced the principle of quotas for the participation of women, as
members and candidates, in all party structures. The fact that the women who joined the party and were
catapulted into positions of leadership often lacked merits and professionalism was completely ignored.
Many considered these nominations to be simply a mechanism to tick the boxes in party statistics. In
fact, this programme had little success: the rate of women joining the party did not differ at all from
the previous period, remaining close to one percent every two years. The net result of all the egalitarian
measures was an increase in the percentage of women in the party of no more than thirty-six percent at
the time of the communist regimes demise in 1989. With regard to positions of authority, except for the
small group surrounding Elena Ceauescu, female participation remained modest.
Keywords Romanian Communist Party, women, promotion, legislation, Central

Committee, quotas, superposition, political representation.
Introduction
Aprs Dcembre 1989, la situation des femmes pendant le communisme a t dcrite en

termes totalement opposs : elles taient vues soient comme des victimes, soient comme des
bourreaux. La posture de victimes a t assigne la plupart des femmes, en tant que sujet de
la politique dmographique du rgime. Les femmes qui occupaient des postes dautorit dans le
154 Luciana-Marioara Jinga
parti sont sans exception reprsentes comme tant des bourreaux, lincarnation du mal absolu.
Dans leur description, seulement le manque dducation dpassait comme gravit leur caractre
immonde. Mme les politiques galitaires introduites par le rgime Ceauescu ont t expliques
par la proccupation des autorits pour la promotion dElena Ceauescu, en rduisant ainsi toutes
les femmes en position dautorit au fameux culte de la femme du dictateur.
Aprs 1989, dans une socit qui dcourageait traditionnellement la participation politique
des femmes, certains chercheurs, volontairement ou non, ont contribu discrditer lide de la
femme comme acteur politique. La diabolisation dElena Ceauescu et du groupe de femmes
qui occupaient des postes dautorit dans les annes 1970 et 1980 a renforc les prjugs sur
les capacits rduites de la population fminine gouverner. Toute ascension politique tait
ainsi considre comme ntant due qu toutes sortes de critres, mais en aucun cas un mrite
personnel. Afin de prsenter de manire cohrente, dtaille et comparative la relation entre le
rgime communiste et la participation politique de la population fminine gouverne, notre tude
entreprend une analyse la fois qualitative et quantitative.
Lanalyse qualitative implique une dconstruction institutionnelle et lgislative, base sur les
sources secondaires, mais surtout primaires, dont beaucoup nont jamais t tudies par les
chercheurs. Ltude de lvolution du nombre de femmes, membres du parti communiste, se fonde
mthodologiquement sur une analyse quantitative, structure par des concepts et des principes
statistiques. Notre recherche est organise autour de trois axes principaux : reprsentation
lintrieur du Parti Communiste Roumain (PCR), reprsentation dans la direction du PCR et la
superposition des fonctions.
lintrieur du parti
En traant lvolution numrique des femmes, membres du parti, on distingue deux segments
temporels. Le premier commence dans la priode dillgalit du mouvement et va jusqu la fin des
annes 50. Il est caractris par linconstance et la prcarit des sources la disposition des historiens.
partir du troisime Congrs du Parti Ouvrier Roumain (POR) et jusqu la chute du rgime communiste,
Myth or Reality? Women in the Romanian Communist Party or the Image of Evil 155
les proccupations galitaristes du gouvernement Nicolae Ceauescu ont fait que les chiffres concernant
la structure du parti, et implicitement, ceux concernant la prsence fminine furent publis plus souvent
et plus explicitement. Ils faisaient partie intgrante de la propagande officielle.
tablir les chiffres exacts des membres du PCR, ds sa naissance et jusquen 1945, est une
dmarche particulirement difficile mettre en uvre, engendrant de nombreuses disputes entre
les historiens1. Ioan Chiper, dans son tude concernant lvolution numrique et la structure
ethnique du PCR pour lintervalle 1921-1952, mentionne un document dans lequel le nombre des
membres du parti la fin des annes 30 tait estim environ 2500, dont 300 femmes2.
Dautres chiffres concernant le nombre des femmes, membres du parti, avant le 23 aot 1944
sont avancs par les statistiques labores par le PCR loccasion de lattribution des mdailles
aux militants de la priode de lillgalit du parti. Le chiffre de ceux auxquels on a reconnu
officiellement le stage dans le PCR pendant sa priode dillgalit sest lev approximativement
5000 membres, dont 25-30% taient des femmes3.
En fvrier 1948, suite lunification du Parti Social Dmocrate et du Parti Communiste, la
nouvelle formation politique, le (POR), comptait 1 057 428 membres. Dans les mois suivants,
le corps du parti diminue substantiellement, ainsi quen novembre 1948, le POR ne dpassait
1
Conformment aux documents gards aux archives du PCR, en juin 1940, il y avait 4210 membres inscrits dans le
mouvement. Dans le rapport prsent par Iosif Ranghe lors de la sance de lactif central de 25-27 avril 1945, il est
montr quavant le 23 aot 1944, le parti comptait dans tout le pays moins de 1000 membres. En octobre 1944, le parti
avait environ 5000 membres et en fvrier 1945, peu prs 15 000 membres. En avril 1945 le nombre des membres arrive
55 000. Lors de la Confrence nationale doctobre 1945, le parti comptait plus de 200 000 membres. Pendant le mois de
novembre, cet effectif a augment de 50%, arrivant 300 000 membres. Une situation statistique ralise par la section
organisationnelle en 1974 mentionnait la reconnaissance du stage davant le 23 aot 1944 un nombre de 5237 membres,
ce nombre nincluant pas les membres dcds ou bien ceux qui avaient quitt dfinitivement le pays jusquau moment
de la rdaction du rapport respectif. La diffrence entre le chiffre avanc par Iosif Ranghe en 1944 et les donnes
ultrieures dtenues par le PCR est explique par certains historiens par labsence de statistiques claires pendant les
annes de guerre. Eugen Cristescu, ancien directeur du SSI, pendant sa priode de dtention, a donn le chiffre de 1150
membres du Parti Communiste avant le 23 aot 1944. Le chiffre de 1000 membres fut vhicul par dautres membres
importants du PCR, tels Ana Pauker. La dispute historiographique autour de lapproximation la plus raliste du chiffre
des membres du mouvement communiste avant et pendant la Deuxime Guerre Mondiale est devenue plus actuelle
que toujours une fois les fonds archivistiques ouverts aux chercheurs, ces fonds comprenant les dossiers de suivi
rdigs par les employs du Ministre de lIntrieur pour les membres et les sympathisants communistes.
2
Ioan Chiper, Consideraii privind evoluia numeric i compoziia etnic a PCR (Considrations sur lvolution
numrique et le composition ethnique du PCR) dans Arhivele Totalitarismului, 4/1998, anne VI, n 21 (cit dornavant
comme, Chiper, Consideraii), p. 25-41.
3
Archives Nationales Historiques Centrales (cit dornavant comme, ANHC), fonds du Comit Central (cit
dornavant comme, CC) du Parti Communiste Roumain (cit dornavant comme, PCR) - section Chancellerie,
dossier 8/1979, dossier 5/1981, dossier 10/1988.
pas 900 000 membres. Entre novembre 1948 et mai 1950, les autorits communistes ont procd
des vrifications des membres du parti, et suite cette procdure, 192 000 personnes ont
t exclues du parti, en juillet 1950. Ainsi, ce moment prcis, la structure officielle du parti
dnombre 709 476 membres.
Durant les annes suivantes, la dcroissance se maintient, mme si les exclusions du parti
nont pas atteint lampleur de celles des annes 1948-1950. Ioan Chiper explique cette baisse par
le passage un systme de contrle plus rigoureux des membres du parti, ce qui signifierait que
les chiffres antrieurs ntaient pas corrects4. Au 1er juillet 1953, le POR enregistrait officiellement
585 087 membres et 577 480 deux annes plus tard, en mars 1955. Le nombre des membres a
augment constamment les mois prcdant le IIe Congrs du POR, arrivant 834 600 en 1960 et
1 518 000 la fin de lanne 1963.
Jusquau IIIe Congrs du POR, les statistiques se sont concentres sur lvolution strictement
numrique et sur la structure en fonction des critres sociaux, ethniques, dge, ainsi que
danciennet au sein du mouvement. La rpartition des membres du parti en fonction du sexe ne
fut pas considre comme suffisamment probante pour tre incluse dans les diffrents rapports
sur la structure du parti. Ce silence pourrait tre interprt comme un signe de la prsence moins
significative des femmes au sein du Parti. Cette hypothse est soutenue par lvolution lente de
lUnion des Femmes Antifascistes de Roumanie, qui, tandis que le Parti mre russissait doubler
le nombre des adhrents, na coopt que 200 activistes.
Labsence dune culture politique (y compris dun opportunisme politique), lesprit conservateur,
ou tout simplement lindiffrence pour le phnomne politique expliquent sans doute la non-
croissance du pourcentage des femmes en rapport direct avec le nombre total des membres du
parti. Lors du Ier Congrs du POR, sur le nombre total de participants, les femmes ont reprsent
13,5%5. Ce chiffre regroupe les femmes actives au sein du mouvement communiste ainsi que les
femmes membres du Parti Social Dmocrate.
4
Chiper, Consideraii, p. 25-41.
5
Congresul Partidului Muncitoresc Romn (Le Congrs du Parti Ouvrier Roumain), 1948, Editura Partidului Muncitoresc
Romn, p. 52.
En 1949, traitant le problme de lorganisation des femmes, Ana Pauker et Constana Crciun se
dclaraient totalement insatisfaites de la proportion de femmes au niveau des structures du parti;
elles ne dpassaient pas 8%6. Six annes plus tard, lors du IIe Congrs du POR, Aritina Momule,
la dlgue de lorganisation du parti de Craiova, montrait que les femmes reprsentaient 9%
du total des membres des organisations de base. La situation tait meilleure pour les dlgus
prsents au Congrs, dont les femmes reprsentaient 19,9% des participants7.
La premire information officielle concernant la proportion de femmes au sein du parti est celle
prsente lors du IIIe Congrs du POR, lorsque, part les autres variables concernant la structure du parti
(classe sociale, ge, exprience au sein du mouvement), la rpartition en fonction du sexe est mentionne
dans les statistiques. Le nombre des membres et des femmes candidates de parti arrive 17% du total.
La direction du parti lanait en permanence des encouragements pour laugmentation du
nombre des femmes et pour la promotion plus soutenue de celles-ci dans des fonctions de
direction. La ralit montrait pourtant que la Roumanie se plaait de ce point de vue, dau moins
5 points de pourcentage au-dessous de la moyenne des autres tats communistes de lEurope
Centrale et de lEst8.
Lors de son arrive au pouvoir, Nicolae Ceauescu a trouv une situation pas du tout satisfaisante
concernant lactivit du parti envers les femmes. Mme si en 1950, les rapports donnaient un chiffre
de 1 500 000 membres femmes dans lorganisation de masse, llimination dAna Pauker et la
dissolution de lUnion des Femmes Dmocrates de Roumanie produite par la suite ont reprsent
un important pas en arrire en matire dimplication politique de la part de la population fminine.
Bien avant 1965, en tant que responsable de lactivit de lorganisation fminine, Nicolae
Ceauescu connaissait, et encore plus, ordonnait et coordonnait directement beaucoup de
principaux projets du Conseil National des Femmes, dont ceux concernant la promotion de ces
dernires. Ses discours, commencer par le XIe Congrs du PCR, sur la ncessit de faire une
plus grande confiance aux femmes et de leur dlguer des fonctions de direction semblent tre
6
ANHC, fonds CC du PCR - section Chancellerie, dossier 47/1950, f. 19.
7
Congresul al II-lea al Partidului Muncitoresc Romn (Le IIme Congrs du POR ), Bucarest, Editura de Stat pentru
Literatur Politic, 1956, p. 292-294.
8
Barbara Wolfe Jancar, Women under communism, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore et Londres, 1978.
la prolongation naturelle de ses proccupations antrieures. ce moment-l, la prsence des
femmes dans le parti tait de 21%, alors que le travail salari fminin tait de 27,8%; des taux qui
se situent parmi les plus bas dans lespace communiste, proche de ceux de la Yougoslavie9.
Nicolae Ceauescu voyait une relation directe entre limplication politique des femmes et
lactivit professionnelle de celles-ci. Il faisait appel aux organisations du parti: quon se proccupe
davantage de la promotion des femmes dans des travaux de responsabilit du parti, de ltat, dans tous les
domaines dactivit, quon amliore la direction des comits et des conseils des femmes afin dassurer la
participation de plus en plus active des femmes dans le travail ducatif, culturel et social-communautaire,
le travail du peuple entier pour la ralisation de la politique du parti10.
Pendant les dix annes suivantes du rgime Ceauescu, on a enregistr de nombreuses prises de
position pour la promotion plus soutenue des femmes dans le parti ainsi que dans des fonctions
dautorit, le point culminant tant atteint par la dcision de la Runion Plnire du Comit
Central (CC) du PCR des 18 et 19 juin 1973.
Nanmoins, sur le terrain, les rsultats concrets tardaient se voir. Entre le IXe et le XIe Congrs,
la prsence fminine dans le parti augmenta de 4 points, pour atteindre 25%. Si du point de
vue proportionnel, laugmentation ntait pas spectaculaire, les chiffres ont enregistr un saut
important, le nombre total des membres du parti augmentant dun million dans lintervalle de
dix ans: de 1 450 000 2 480 000, en 197411.
Lintroduction du principe de la reprsentation par quotas proportionnels en 1976 fut le signal
le plus clair donn en faveur de la croissance plus soutenue du nombre des femmes membres
du parti, et implicitement, pour leur promotion dans des fonctions dautorit. Aprs la chute du
rgime communiste, lune des innombrables critiques quon a profres ladresse de ce rgime
fut ce principe de reprsentation proportionnelle, car, les femmes qui sont entres dans le parti
et ont occup des positions dautorit taient lues non pas sur des critres mritoires, mais
seulement pour complter les statistiques du parti. En ralit, la progression ntait pas du tout
9
Vida Tomsic, Women in the Development of Socialist Self-Managing Yugoslavia, Belgrad, 1980, p. 36-47.
10
Congresul al XI-lea al Partidului Comunist Romn, 25-28 noiembrie 1974 (Le XIme Congrs du PCR, 25-28 novembre
1974), Bucarest, Editura Politic, 1975, p. 69.
11
ANHC, fonds du CC du PCR - section Chancellerie, dossier 17/1987, f. 11.
diffrente de celle de la priode prcdente, laugmentation tant approximativement dun point
de pourcentage toutes les deux annes.
Afin dexercer un contrle plus prononc sur ce processus, par la dcision de la Session plnire
du PCR du mars 1983, ctait tabli quil tait obligatoire que 50% des candidates du parti soient
des femmes12. Cette mesure peut tre regarde comme une promesse datteindre dans un avenir
plutt loign, la parit au sein du parti. Les dtracteurs du principe des quotas ont vu dans ce
pourcentage un nouveau coup qualitatif port lensemble du parti. Cette opinion va dans le sens
du modle patriarcal, selon lequel limplication des femmes dans la vie politique doit tre limite.
Au milieu des annes 80, la population fminine tait scolarise environ 99,9%, et mme
si elles sont sous-reprsentes dans les spcialisations techniques, les filles taient majoritaires
dans les filires qui menaient vers des tudes bac + 1 ou bac + 2 et universitaires. Les comptes
rendus de lAcadmie tefan Gheorghiu montrent que les promotions au sein du parti se
faisaient prfrentiellement dans la catgorie des femmes ayant un niveau dtudes atteignant
au moins le bac + 2, beaucoup dentre elles tant des diplmes avec des tudes suprieures,
ultrieurement diriges vers les sections organisationnelles, dassistance mdicale, de culture et
vers les organisations de masse13.
Loin de combler de simples statistiques, les femmes, surtout celles dotes dune formation
suprieure, taient dsavantages en ce qui concerne lentre dans le parti. Celles-ci taient places
dans la catgorie des intellectuels, dont la prsence au sein du PCR tait relativement rduite.
La situation ne change pas dune manire significative mme aprs lintroduction des premiers
quotas de reprsentativit, en 1976.
Un rapport portant sur lanne 1977 visant lvolution de la politique des cadres dans le
dpartement de Iai ce moment montrait le fait que les rsultats insatisfaisants enregistrs
avaient comme cause les limitations imposes par le parti en ce qui concerne lorigine sociale
des candidats, laccent tant mis sur les femmes et sur les agriculteurs. Suite aux enqutes
ralises dans ce dpartement, on a constat que pour la catgorie des candidats du milieu rural,
12
ANHC, fonds du CC du PCR - section Chancellerie, dossier 87/1988, ff. 1-16.
13
les femmes en constituaient la majorit, mais que le niveau bas de scolarisation, en moyenne 4
classes lmentaires, ne les rendaient pas ligibles pour lentre dans le parti. Afin daugmenter
le nombre des femmes membres du parti, celles-ci auraient d provenir plutt du groupe des
tudiantes, tant donne la qualit du centre universitaire du dpartement de Iai.
Les normes imposes par le parti concernant le recrutement sopposaient la slection
des candidats ayant fait des tudes universitaires, en prfrant ceux issus du milieu rural. La
consquence fut le nombre gnralement bas de nouveaux membres du parti au niveau du
dpartement de Iai, le parti ratant ainsi la cible de lencadrement dun plus grand nombre de
femmes ainsi que de paysans en tant que membres du parti14.
Lentre dans le parti dun nombre gal de femmes et dhommes na pas men une croissance
spectaculaire du chiffre total de la population fminine membre du parti. En 1986, le taux tait de
34,06%, (la moyenne se maintient 0.7 point par an), pour arriver en 1989 36%. Le cas roumain est
singulier dans le contexte du bloc communiste du fait que, en moins de deux dcennies, on est pass
de la dernire position dans le classement en ce qui concerne la prsence des femmes dans le parti,
la meilleure reprsentation en 1989. la diffrence des pays voisins et de lURSS, lentre dun plus
grand nombre de femmes au sein du parti sest ralise progressivement et de manire constante.
Le principe de la reprsentativit fonde sur des quotas fut galement appliqu dans les autres pays
communistes, mais leffet de cette mesure a t diffrent dun cas lautre. La principale cause de cette
diffrence tient au degr dimplication du politique et notamment labsence dune politique soutenue
dans ce sens. La particularit du rgime Ceauescu consiste dans le fait davoir assur une cohrence
dans la promotion et dans lapplication des mesures dgalit entre les hommes et les femmes.
Les femmes dirigeantes du parti
Dans lintervalle octobre 1945 dcembre 1989, 283 femmes ont t lues dans le CC du PCR, la
rpartition tant ingale pour les membres de plein droit et les supplants, ainsi que pendant les
diffrentes priodes dvolution du Parti.
14
Aprs le 23 aot 1944, la seule figure politique fminine qui sest impose la direction du Parti
Communiste Roumain fut Ana Pauker, de retour dURSS. Les femmes membres du parti libres
des prisons ainsi que celles qui, tant libres, ont particip aux diffrentes organisations-cran (La
Dfense Patriotique, LUnion Patriotique, LAide Rouge), nont pas t cooptes dans le groupe
dirigeant form par Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe Apostol, Chivu Stoica, Nicolae Ceauescu,
Miron Constantinescu, Iosif Chiinevschi, Teohari Georgescu, Ion Gheorghe Maurer et Vasile Vaida.
Tableau n 1: Les femmes dans le CC du PCR (1945-1989)15
Membres de plein droit Membres supplants

Annes Nombre de Dont Nombre de Dont
% %
siges femmes siges femmes
1945 27 3 11,1 8 1 12,5
1948 41 5 12,1 16 2 12,5
1955 61 3 4,9 35 4 11,4
1960 79 5 6,3 31 2 6,4
1965 121 5 4,1 75 5 6,6
1969 165 6 3,6 120 5 4,1
1974 205 10 5 156 26 16.6
1979 245 48 19,5 163 50 30,6
1985 265 54 20,3 181 73 40,3
1989 287 66 23,0 192 79 41,1
La constitution dune organisation fminine sous la tutelle du Parti Communiste fut un facteur
de coagulation pour les femmes membres de parti. Ainsi, la confrence nationale du parti du
21 octobre 1945, dans le Comit Central du Parti, ct dAna Pauker, et en tant que membres
15
Tableau bas sur: ANHC, le fonds du CC du PCR section organisationnelle, dossier 166/1944; Congresul Partidului
Muncitoresc Romn (PMR) (Le Congrs du Parti Ouvrier Roumain (POR), 1948, Bucarest, Editura PRM, p. 235-236 ;
Congresul al II-lea al PMR (Le IIme Congrs du POR), 1956, Bucarest, Editura de stat pentru Literatur Politic, p. 887-
890; Congresul al III-lea al PMR (Le IIIme Congrs du POR), 1961, Bucarest, Editura Politic, p. 725-728; Congresul al IX-
lea al Partidului Comunist Romn (PCR) (Le IXme Congrs du Parti Communiste Roumain (PCR), 1965, Bucarest, Editura
Politic, p. 735-739; Congresul al XI-lea al PCR (Le XIme Congrs du PCR, 1975, Bucarest, Editura Politic, p. 69; Congresul
al XII-lea al PCR (Le XIIme Congrs du PCR), 1981, Bucarest, Editura Politic, p. 892-898; Congresul al XIII-lea al PCR (Le
XIIIme Congrs du PCR), 1985, Bucarest, Editura Politic, p. 734-739; Scnteia, le 24 novembre 1989, anne LIX, nr. 14702.
jouissant de plein droit, ont t cooptes Constana Crciun et Elena Tudorache16, anciennes
militantes communistes durant la priode dillgalit du parti. Liuba Chiinevschi, condamne
elle-aussi dans le procs de Craiova (avec Ana Pauker) 9 ans et 9 mois de prison, fut lue en tant
que membre supplante, vu son pass militant, aussi important que celui des trois autres femmes.
En 1948, suite la fusion du PCR avec le Parti Social Dmocrate, Eugenia Rdceanu rejoint
le groupe initial des militantes communistes. Elle est linitiatrice en 1930 de lUnion des Femmes
Ouvrires. La place dElena Tudorache est prise par une autre femme qui avait travaill pour
le PCR pendant sa priode dillgalit, Olimpia enescu17. La proportion des femmes dans le
Comit Central, mme si elle na pas trs importante, correspondait au pourcentage des femmes
dans le parti. La mise en place dune organisation fminine unique et la nomination des membres
du CC dans des positions ministrielles constituaient autant de prmisses en vue de lvolution
de la prsence des femmes dans des fonctions dautorit politique.
Llimination dAna Pauker et la dissolution de lorganisation fminine de masse ont eu
un impact ngatif sur la prsence fminine la direction du parti. Ds lors, on constate leur
disparition au sein du CC. En outre, en 1954, Olimpia enescu est son tour carte. Voil
les circonstances qui ont men lenregistrement dun taux de reprsentativit au sein de
CC du PCR duniquement 5%, avec 3 reprsentantes sur un total de 61 membres. Seule
Constana Crciun a gard son mandat, les deux autres siges tant occups par Ghizela
Vass18 et Elena Lascu Iordchescu19.
16
Elena Tudorache a adhr au PCR en 1927. Ancienne Secrtaire du Dpartement du parti en Bucovine en 1935.
Pendant la Deuxime Guerre Mondiale, elle tait en URSS, tant instruite pour accomplir des missions despionnage
sur le territoire de la Roumanie. Sa tche tait dtablir, une fois arrive en Roumanie, le contact entre le groupe
et le parti. Elle est reste membre du Comit Central dans lintervalle 1945-1948, devenant ultrieurement la
chef de la Direction Organisationnelle du CC en 1949 ainsi que de la section de lIndustrie Lgre jusquen 1952.
Corneliu Crciun, Dicionarul Comunizanilor din noaptea de 23 spre 24 august 1944 (Le dictionnaire des sympathisants
communistes dans la nuit de 23 vers 24 aot 1944), Oradea, Editura Primus, 2009, p. 508.
17
la diffrence des autres femmes prsentes dans le CC, Olimpia enescu, mme si elle tait connue parmi les
communistes cheminots, ne sest jamais faite remarquer par ses actions militantes. Elle commence tre vraiment
active aprs 23 aot, lorsquelle sinscrit dans le mouvement syndical ainsi que dans celui des femmes, tant lue
secrtaire du Comit Central de lUDFR.
18
Ne au 22 avril 1912 Iai. Avant dentrer dans le mouvement communiste, elle a fait partie du syndicat textile, son
mtier de base tant celui de couturire. En 1933, elle devient membre de lAide Rouge, la mme anne elle adhre
officiellement au PCR. Aprsle 23 aot 1944, elle a occup dimportantes fonctions dans le parti, notamment au niveau
du municipe de Bucarest. En1948, elle est nomme adjoint de la Section Organisationnelle et prsident de la Commission
de vrification des membres de parti Reia, chef de la section pour le travail pour les femmes du CC du POR.
19
Elena Lascu Iordchescu se trouvait au dbut des annes 1950 la direction de la rgionale Bucarest du POR,
Ces lections prouvent la rticence pour la promotion dans le forum de direction du parti des
femmes entres dans le mouvement ultrieurement au 23 aot et la prfrence pour les combattantes
de la priode dillgalit. Les bnficiaires de ces postes avaient occup antrieurement aux
lections dans le Comit Central des fonctions importantes dans le cadre de lorganisation
rgionale de Bucarest du POR. Jusqu la fin des annes 60, le nombre de femmes dans le Comit
Central est rest constant (5), mme si le nombre des membres a augment graduellement.
Larrive au pouvoir de Nicolae Ceauescu et ses discours en faveur de la promotion des
femmes dans des fonctions dautorit se sont avres tre, au moins pour la premire dcennie,
une simple mesure de propagande, ayant comme seul but dencourager lentre de la population
fminine dans le monde du travail salari. Il leur a fait miroiter des mesures dgalit, y compris
pour les fonctions de direction.
La premire mesure importante pour augmenter limplication des femmes est prise en
1973, lorsquau niveau du Comit Politique sont nommes Elena Ceauescu et Lina Ciobanu.
Ces nominations ont t accompagnes par laugmentation du nombre de membres femmes
dans le Comit Central. Nanmoins, avec seulement 10 femmes, le taux reste 5%. On
observe une amlioration des statistiques pour les membres supplantes, dont le taux est
mont 16,6 % (26 femmes).
Le moment de rupture est reprsent par le XIIe Congrs. Les femmes obtiennent alors 36 siges.
La structure du Comit Central fut largie, passant 245 membres, mais mme dans ces conditions,
la proportion de femmes ne dpassait pas 20%. Les diffrences qui sont apparues entre le XIe et le
XIIe Congrs concernant la participation fminine dans le cadre du plus large organe de direction du
parti viennent renforcer lhypothse quon a formule concernant les motivations et les effets rels de
la dcision de la Plnire du CC de 18/19 juin 197320. La priorit du moment tait laugmentation de la
force de travail fminine, et dans une moindre mesure laugmentation dela participation politique,
occupant la fonction de secrtaire du comit rgional (1953) et ultrieurement celle de secrtaire du comit urbain
(1957) et rgional (1960).
20
Plenara Comitetului Central al Partidului Comunist Romn din 18-19 iunie 1973 cu privire la creterea rolului
femeii n viaa economic, politic i social a rii (La sance plnire du Comit Central du Parti Communiste
Roumain du 18 et 19 juin 1973 sur laugmentation du rle de la femme dans la vie conomique, politique et sociale
du pays), dans Buletinul Oficial al Republicii Socialiste Romnia, 4 juillet 1973 n. 96.
cette dernire mesure ntant quun simple alignement la lgislation des pays communistes autour
de la Roumanie en matire de politiques galitaristes. Llection des membres du CC de 1979 venait
trois annes aprs la dcision de la Plnire du CC de dcembre 197621, lorsquil a t institu un
taux minimum de 25% de femmes dans le cadre des organisations de base du parti. Mme si dans
les organes de direction ce taux na pas t atteint, laugmentation fut spectaculaire.
Dans la mmoire collective, ce moment marque un tournant, il correspond lapplication
du principe des quotas en faveur des femmes. Jusquau XVIe Congrs, en novembre 1989, la
tendance de la prsence fminine dans le cadre du Comit Central, - similaire celle de la
prsence des femmes dans le cadre du parti - se maintient la hausse, nanmoins, sans atteindre
les 25%, quota tabli en ce qui concerne le taux de femmes dans les organes de direction au
niveau local et central.
En ce qui concerne les membres supplants, les femmes sont plus nombreuses. On ressent
une amlioration dans ce sens ds le XIe Congrs, lorsque le pourcentage est mont 16,6%.
Pareillement au cas des membres de plein droit, le XIIe Congrs a permis une nouvelle hausse,
jusqu 30% de points de pourcentage en plus, avec 50 reprsentantes dans le groupe des
membres supplants. En 1989, la prsence fminine dans le cadre du groupe atteignait 41%,
ceci reprsentant la plus importante prsence de tous les organes de direction du parti. Mme
si la qualit de membre supplant ntait pas totalement dpourvue dimportance, elle ntait
pas accompagne du mme prestige que dans le cas des membres de plein droit, leur seule
responsabilit tant de remplacer ceux-ci pendant leur absence.
Le Bureau Politique / Le Comit Politique / Le Comit Politique Excutif et Le Secrtariat
Le Comit Central lisait deux forums de direction, chacun tant compos dun
nombre restreint de membres. Le premier tait le Comit Politique, qui, depuis
1976 change sa dnomination en Comit Politique Excutif. Cet organe assurait la
direction de lactivit du parti lors des sessions plnires. Lors du XIIe Congrs, dans
21
ANHC, fond CC al PCR - section Chancellerie, dossier 121/1976, f. 6.
le statut du parti ont t introduites des prcisions supplmentaires concernant
la comptence du Comit Politique Excutif, qui devait comprendre, en tant que
membres de plein droit ou membres supplants, les premiers secrtaires des comits
dpartementaux du parti, pour la dure du mandat entier. Le prsident du Conseil
Central de lUnion Gnrale des Syndicats, le premier secrtaire de lUnion de la
Jeunesse Communiste et la prsidente du Conseil National des Femmes taient eux
aussi membres du Comit Politique Excutif, soit en tant que membres de plein droit,
soit en qualit de supplants22.
Tableau n 2 : Les femmes dans le Bureau Politique/Comit politique excutif et dans le
Secrtariat du PCR (1945-1989) (H+F=Hommes et Femmes
Le Comit politique excutif

Secrtariat
Membres de plein droit Membres supplants
Annes
Dont Dont Dont
H+F % H+F % H+F %
femmes femmes femmes
1945 7 1 14,1 8 1 12,5 4 1 25
1948 13 1 12,1 5 0 0 5 1 20
1955 11 0 0 4 0 0 5 0 0
1960 9 0 0 4 0 0 4 0 0
1965 15 0 0 10 0 0 9 0 0
1969 21 0 0 11 0 0 7 0 0
1974 23 2 8,6 13 0 0 7 0 0
1979 28 5 17,8 18 4 22,2 9 0 0
1985 23 3 13 26 4 15,3 10 0 0
1989 21 2 9,5 26 4 15,3 11 0 0
Comme latteste le tableau ci-dessous, dans le cadre de cet organe de direction, la prsence fminine
na pas t constante ou substantielle. Pendant huit ans, entre 1945-1953, Ana Pauker fut la seule femme
prsente dans la structure du Bureau Politique. Lors de la session plnire du 20 aot 1953, Ana Pauker
a t carte du Comit Central, quittant ainsi la position dtenue au sein du Bureau Politique.
22
Congresul al XIII-lea al Partidului Comunist Romn, 19-11 noiembrie 1984 (Le XIIIme Congrs du PCR, 19-11 novembre
1984), Bucarest, Editura Politic, 1985, p. 630.
Le Bureau Politique et ultrieurement le Comit Politique restent des bastions masculins durant
les vingt annes qui suivent. En 1973, loccasion de la session plnire du 19 juin, deux femmes
en taient lues membres : Elena Ceauescu et Lina Ciobanu. Ces lections concident avec la
Dcision concernant laugmentation du rle des femmes dans la socit, fait qui a dtermin
beaucoup dhistoriens apprcier cette mesure comme ayant t prise pour justifier lascension
politique de lpouse du Secrtaire Gnral du Parti. Sans doute, la carrire extrmement rapide
de cette dernire ne peut tre explique que par la relation de parent quelle entretient avec le
chef de ltat. Toutefois, il ne faut pas rduire les mesures visant lgalit homme femme au seul
cas dElena Ceauescu23. On dit galement que Lina Ciobanu a t lue non pas sur des critres
de mrite, mais pour justifier la position dElena Ceauescu24. Nanmoins, contrairement la
dernire, Lina Ciobanu25 avait construit graduellement une carrire politique, tant membre du
Comit Central ds 1965, premier secrtaire du comit rgional ds le dbut des annes 1960 et
ultrieurement premier secrtaire de secteur Bucarest. Eu gard son parcours politique, elle
ressemble aux autres membres du Comit Central, fait qui peut justifier son lection dans les
organes de direction du Comit Central. En ce qui concerne le Bureau Permanent, depuis sa
cration en 1974, cest seulement une seule femme qui a t lue ds 1977: Elena Ceauescu.
En tte du parti, part le Comit Politique Excutif et le Bureau Permanent de celui-ci,
il y avait galement le Secrtariat qui organisait et contrlait la mise en place des dcisions
du parti, assurant en mme temps la ralisation de la politique des cadres, la slection,
la formation et la rpartition de ceux-ci. Aprs la Confrence Nationale du PCR, du 21
octobre 1945 jusquau 27 mai 1952, Ana Pauker fut la seule femme membre du Secrtariat
tant responsable des problmes agraires26. Jusquen dcembre 1989, aucune autre femme
na t membre de plein droit au sein du Secrtariat. Seulement Lina Ciobanu a fait partie
23
Thomas Kunze, Nicolae Ceauescu - o biografie (Nicolae Ceaucescu - une biographie), Bucarest, Editura Vremea, 2002.
24
Mary Ellen Fisher, Women in Romanian Politics: Elena Ceausescu, Pronatalism, and the Promotion of women
dans Sharon L. Wolchik, Alfred G. Meyer (eds.), Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe, Durham, Duke University
Press, 1985, p. 125-127. Cette ide a t reprise par Liana Olteanu dans son article Strategii de integrare a femeilor n
spaiul public romnesc al anilor 70 (Stratgies dintgration des femmes dans lespace public roumain des annes
70), dans Cristina Liana Olteanu (ed.), Elena-Simona Gheonea, Valentin Gheonea, Femeile n Romnia Comunist
Studii de istorie social (Les femmes dans la Roumanie communiste tudes dhistoire sociale), Bucarest, Editura
Universitar Politeia-SNSPA, 2003, p. 32.
25
ANHC, fonds du CC du PCR - Section Cadres, dossier C/2080.
26
Robert Levy, Gloria si decderea Anei Pauker (La gloire et la dcadence dAna Pauker), Iai, Polirom, 2002, p. 43.
du secrtariat pour six mois, entre le 22 mars et le 26 septembre 1984.
Mme si les femmes sont plus nombreuses que dans dautres pays communistes, la
prsence fminine dans des fonctions dautorit au niveau des organes de direction du
Parti Communiste Roumain ne sest jamais leve la hauteur des quotas tablis. Plus
on monte dans la hirarchie, plus le nombre de femmes diminue.
Durant les premires annes du gouvernement communiste, limage dAna Pauker est
singulire en tant que principale reprsentante fminine de la politique roumaine. Un
tel niveau dautorit ne fut plus atteint que par le couple Elena Ceauescu-Lina Ciobanu.
Lopinion gnrale selon laquelle une masse de femmes aurait occup des fonctions de
direction aprs larrive de Nicolae Ceauescu au pouvoir nest pas confirme par les
statistiques. Au contraire, pendant les 15 premires annes du rgime Ceauescu, jusquau
XIIe Congrs, malgr les discours livrs aux Confrences de lorganisation des femmes et
les Dcisions du Comit Central concernantlintention dassurer la population fminine
la place quelle mrite dans la socit, la situation est reste identique celle que lon
connaissait pour le rgime Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej: les femmes sont peu nombreuses
dans le parti ainsi qu la direction de celui-ci.
Aprs linstitution du principe des quotas, qui tablissait une prsence fminine de
minimum 25% dans les organes de parti, au niveau central et local, la proportion des
femmes au total des membres du parti et dans la direction de celui-ci a augment. Cette
tendance est reflte aussi au niveau des positions dautorit. La meilleure reprsentation
fut atteinte lors du XIIe Congrs, lorsque les femmes reprsentaient 23% du total des
membres du Comit Central. Ultrieurement le taux a baiss graduellement, pour
arriver, avant les vnements de dcembre 1989, 9,5%. Les seules femmes membres du
Comit Politique Excutif taient encore une fois Elena Ceauescu et Lina Ciobanu. Pour
les membres supplants, la situation fut sensiblement meilleure, la proportion arrivant
41%, en novembre 1989.
Si pour le Comit Politique Excutif, pendant le rgime Nicolae Ceauescu on a pu
constater un revirement, avec un point culminant de 20% atteint en 1979, le Bureau

Permanent a connu un seul membre femme, Elena Ceauescu. La situation fut beaucoup
plus mauvaise pour le Secrtariat, vu quaprs lcartement dAna Pauker, aucune femme
na plus fait partie de cette structure.
Double rle La Superposition des fonctions
Les chiffres atteints par les femmes dtenant des positions dautorit partir du milieu
des annes 70 ne doivent pas tre interprts comme reprsentant tout autant dindividus
singuliers prsents effectivement dans les fonctions respectives. La rgle respecte dans
la distribution des postes fut celle du doublement des fonctions du parti par rapport
ltat, au mme niveau dautorit.
Le comit du parti au niveau local tait en correspondance directe avec le Conseil
Populaire et le Comit Central du Parti tait en relation directe avec la Grande Assemble
Nationale, la prsence dans le Comit Politique Excutif tant accompagne dhabitude
dun portefeuille ministriel (poste de premier ministre ou de vicepremier ministre).
Cest la raison pour laquelle la participation politique des femmes est prsente de faon
compltement biaise par la propagande communiste qui doublait pratiquement de
manire artificielle la prsence relle des femmes dans des fonctions de dcision.
Au niveau de la Grande Assemble Nationale, parmi les candidates sigeant entre
1985- dcembre 1989, 40% taient aussi membres de plein droit ou supplantes du Comit
Central du Parti Communiste Roumain27. Toutes les femmes membres du gouvernement

taient aussi lues au Comit Politique Excutif du PCR.
Dans le cabinet form en 1985, on observe qu la direction de certains ministres,
on trouve certains personnages qui ne figurent pas dans des positions de direction au
niveau du Comit Central, comme cest le cas de Maria Flucs et de Maria Bobu. Cette
situation exceptionnelle ne veut pas dire que les deux femmes politiciennes montraient
27
Lista deputailor n Marea Adunare Naional a Republicii Socialiste Romnia (La liste des dputs dans la
Grande Assemble Nationale de la Rpublique Socialiste Roumanie), dans Romnia Liber, 19 mars 1985, anne XLIII,
n 12558.
un degr dindpendance par rapport au parti. Les deux femmes taient membres de
plein droit au Comit Central et bnficiaient du mme cumul de fonctions que le reste
des membres du gouvernement.
Maria Flucs continuait la ligne ouverte par Lina Ciobanu la direction du ministre de
lIndustrie Lgre. Sa promotion sest produite aprs une carrire de 30 ans la direction
des diffrentes entreprises industrielles textiles et une exprience de 10 ans dans des
fonctions ministrielles, en tant quadjointe du ministre du Commerce Intrieur (1977-
1984) et comme premire adjointe de la ministre de lIndustrie Lgre. On la retrouve en
mme temps dans les comits de parti au niveau du municipe de Bucarest et partir du
1984, comme membre dans le CC28. La carrire dans des fonctionsdtat et du parti tait
double par une prsence beaucoup plus active dans le cadre des diffrentes Conseils
dadministration et dans les organisations de masse: membre dans le Conseil National
des Gens du Travail, membre du bureau du Conseil National des Femmes, membre dans
le Conseil Suprme du Dveloppement Economique et Social, membre dans le Comit
pour les Problmes des Conseils Populaires, membre du Conseil Central des Travailleurs
pour le Contrle des Activits Economiques et Sociales. partir de 1980, elle fut aussi
lue dpute la Grande Assemble Nationale29.
Conclusions
Au terme de cette tude, nous nous interrogeons sur la postrit de la politique
communiste. Autrement dit, comment la vision promue par le PCR concernant la participation
des femmes en tant quacteur politique a influenc les ralits roumaines durant la priode
postcommuniste? Est-ce que les politiques galitaires ont eu un impact rel, profond et durable,
dans la socit roumaine? Si nous prenons en compte seulement la prsence des femmes
dans la politique, sans tomber dans le pige des cas exceptionnels, nous constatons que
la prsence fminine au Parlement est de 8% pour la lgislature 2008-2012. Nous sommes
28
ANHC, fonds du CC du PCR - Section Cadres, dossier F/139.
29
Ibidem.
donc trs loin de tout idal de parit.
Les partis politiques se montrent rticents lide de crer dans leurs rangs des
organisations fminines, car celles-ci sont compares lorganisation fminine de masse
du PCR. Cela nous semble dmontrer que, une fois que le systme politique qui avait
impos les politiques galitaires ait disparu, personne na voulu continuer dfendre
les mesures galitaires introduites par ce systme. De nombreuses voix politiques ont
instrumentalis lexprience communiste, en diabolisant limage dElena Ceauescu
et du Conseil National des Femmes pour justifier une prsence quasi ngligeable de
femmes dans la politique roumaine contemporaine. Plus de vingt ans aprs la chute du
rgime communiste, les politiques galitaires concernant la participation politique des
femmes semblent compltement oublies.

The Biographies of Romanian
Underground Communists
between Myth and Reality
tefan Bosomitu
Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, Bucharest
Abstract In spite of abundant research on the communist regime in Romania, little is

known about communism during the interwar period, when the Communist
Party was declared illegal hence the name, underground communism. The overall image that
emerges from the literature is on the one hand negative (unpatriotic, corrupt, and subordinated to
the Soviet Union and the Comintern) and on the other hand, owing to mystification by communist
propaganda, biased and unnuanced. My paper is an analysis of the sources and methods through which
we can reconstruct the biography of underground communist militants. The study will examine each
type of source (biography, autobiography, memoirs, and Secret Police files), attempting to outline a
method by which we can reconstruct the elements of a militants biography. The concept of myth-
biography refers to the discourse of communist propaganda, which transformed the biographies of
the underground militants into standardised history loaded with common places such as a healthy
social origin, revolutionary precocity, early adhesion to the workers movement, and imprisonment
by the Secret Police. From the files of the Secret Police we can recover a different perspective on the
subject, which brings to the foreground underground activism and conspiracy, replete with secret
passwords, codenames, and clandestine lives. Finally, autobiographies and memoirs add new nuances
to our understanding of the personal trajectories and identities of Romanian interwar communists. To
illustrate my approach, I focus on the case of Miron Constantinescu, an underground communist who
after the war rose to pre-eminence as a key figure of the communist regime in Romania.
Keywords underground communism in Romania, biography, myth-biography,

autobiography, Romanian Secret Police interwar archives
Although the historiography on the communist regime in Romania has covered a lot of
ground, the subject of underground communism in interwar Romania (in which communist
movements were made illegal) has not been thoroughly investigated by historians. The
scholarly literature gives on the whole a negative image of the subject, depicting Romanian
interwar communism as a clandestine movement veiled in obscurity, lacking visibility on the

172 tefan Bosomitu
political stage, unpatriotic, corrupt, and subordinated to the Soviet Union and the Comintern
(Stalins Communist International). There are numerous causes for this. First, the history of
interwar Romanian communism was continuously rewritten in accordance with the needs
of legitimation of different generations of communist rulers. Intense communist propaganda
is accountable for the additions, distortions, and fabrications that have plagued the history
of this subject. Second, the quantity of sources is dissatisfactory and the sources are subject
to bias. To reach an impartial account, one has to submit the narrative sources to attentive
verification and corroborate them with archival material. But the effort is worthwhile, because
our overall understanding of Romanian communism must begin with the study of its interwar
underground activities.
This paper explores the sources and methods through which we can reconstruct the biography
of underground communist militants. To this end, I will examine each type of source, aiming to
outline an approach for reading these sources correctly. Specifically, my mission is to substantiate
the grounds for reading each type of source in a particular way, so as to go beyond the myths of
underground communists biographies.
There are three types of source which should be given consideration: the myth-biography,
the autobiography, and the personal files put together by the Secret Police (Sigurana).1
The concept of myth-biography refers to the type of discourse practised by the communist
propaganda, usually fitting the underground militants biographies into a specific pattern. This
type of biographic account was coded through a grid that will be referred to as the communist
identity discourse, which consisted of a stock of crucial elements for the construction of the
model communist biography. The myths interwoven in these biographies should not be
approached strictly from a positivist perspective. Rather, the myth-biography served the
function of self-representation, operating as a document through which the present could
be legitimised with the aid of the past. Autobiography, on the other hand, represents the
individuals personal retrospective glance. Here, one can distinguish between institutional
1
Sigurana or the Security Police Department (Direcia Poliiei de Siguran) was a police service subordinated to
the Police and General Security Departament (Direcia Poliiei i Siguranei Generale or DPSG) of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs.
The Biographies of Romanian Underground Communists between Myth and Reality 173
and literary autobiography. The former can be defined as the text written by a party member
while undergoing vetting for promotion within the party ranks. As such, the text was subject
to constant updating and rewriting. Literary autobiography, on the other hand, is exemplified
by short texts about ones personal past, memoirs, and interviews. Finally, the Sigurana files
document the evolution of underground communist activists. These files allow us to recover
a completely different perspective on the subject. They paint the picture of a clandestine
movement shrouded in obscurity, all with false identities, conspiracy houses, and codenames.
To illustrate my approach, I will focus on the biography of Miron Constantinescu, a Marxist
sociologist, underground communist activist, and after the war an important character of the
communist regime. Born in 1917, he joined the Communist movement in 1935 as a member of the
Communist Youth Union. A year later he became member of the Communist Party of Romania.
In 1941 he was arrested on grounds of communist conspiracy and spent the war years in prison.
The aim of the paper is not to give a full account of Constantinescus time as an underground
communist activist. Rather, his case illustrates the larger issues which I have outlined above.
The myth-biography
The myth-biography of communist propaganda has as its primary purpose the transformation
of the underground militants past into a personal history that meets communist standards.
The model was the history of the so-called experienced leaders, of those who have sacrificed
their youth in the name of the people, of the communist intransigent militants who were
struggling for the creation of an egalitarian and fair society, for the idea communism.2 From
this perspective, the propagandistic biography became a discourse replete with symbols and
stock motifs and aimed at creating a standardised history. The stories interwoven in the myth-
biography are stereotyped accounts, best defined as narrative themes.3 These narratives had the
role of fleshing out and enlarging on the basic themes that underlay the so-called communist
identity discourse.
2
Betea (2001), pp. 149-150.
3
Costea (2008), p. 17.
174 tefan Bosomitu
Miron Constantinescus myth-biography rests on several sources: a 1946 propagandistic
biography, in French, commissioned by the Direction of Foreign Cultural Relations of the Ministry
of Public Information,4 and the two obituaries published in Scnteia the official party newspaper5
and in the Annals of the Institute for the History of the Communist Party.6 I will try in the next pages
to isolate the element of fabrication entailed by Constantinescus official biography and discuss
the plausibility of the various episodes. But first let me briefly explore the influence of Soviet
biographical models on Romanian communist identities.
In Soviet ideology the biography appears as cardinal point of reference. In the communist
society, economic capital ceased to be regarded as the main source of social ranking, while
academic capital was strongly marginalized. In these circumstances, emerged the need to craft
a new principle of social distinction. The new criteria were predicated on political capital
which now became the fundamental element of social identity.7 The end-result was the birth
of a new communist biographical identity,8 with powerful accents on the revolutionary class,
the proletariat and its avant-garde, the Party. The social and ideological biography of each
person provided the reference point for all societal hierarchies. A proletarian genealogy became
highly desirable; a collective obsession, in fact.9 The genealogical dimension of social identity
was doubled by the political trajectory of each individual, these two itineraries determining the
structure and intensity of every individuals political capital.
Romanian communist discourse built on these essential elements, adding local specificity
through the emphasis on the underground struggle of Romanias interwar communists. In
addition to proletarian social origin and adherence to the communist movement,10 revolutionary
precocity, clandestine militancy, and imprisonment were highly valued. The texts that we may
4
Arhivele Naionale Istorice Centrale (Romanian National Archives; hereafter ANIC), Dosare personale ale lupttorilor
antifasciti ntocmite de Ministerul de Interne n perioada 1917-1944 (Personal Files of Anti-Fascist Militants Elaborated by the
Ministry of Interior between 1917-1944; hereafter Militants files), file Boris Beazi Mavro, microfilm 1235, slides 190-194.
5
Scnteia 9924, 19 July 1974.
6
Vol. 20.4 (1974), pp. 184-185
7
Bourdieu (1994), p. 32.
8
Pennetier and Pudal (2002), p. 17.
9
Fitzpatrick (2000), pp. 11-13.
10
Fitzpatrick (1989), pp. 251-271; Fitzpatrick (1990), pp. 70-80.
include in the myth-biography category revolve around these main narrative themes. Skimming
through these texts, one may conclude that only the details can individualise them.
Social origin represented an essential element of everyones identity under communism.
Communist propaganda used the collocation healthy social origin to refer both to the working
class (the proletariat) and the poor peasantry. In practice, the social stratification of the population
rarely matched Marxist theoretical schemes. Social boundaries were fluctuating. The working
class was a heterogeneous group composed of individuals with different social trajectories that
could not be easily assimilated within the model of the proper Communist genealogy.
Miron Constantinescus case is highly illustrative. Since he did not have proletarian roots his
father was a university professor, his mother a teacher communist propaganda was forced to adjust
and approximate, referring instead to his earlier family line and focussing on his grandparents.
His paternal grandfather was claimed to have been a shepherd and his maternal grandfather a
miner. The validity of such information cannot be proved. But the truth of this genealogy is less
important if we consider the ways in which the other elements of Constantinescus biography
were reworked.
Revolutionary precocity was also considered an important constituent of communist biographical
identity. The idea that stands at the basis of this concept was that of an unequal society, which made
clear distinctions between the rich and the poor and between the oppressors and the oppressed.
The true communist militant would have taken notice of such social injustices from his or her youth
(sometimes even from childhood), developing a tendency to struggle against social inequality.
Revolutionary precocity resonates with the theme of the chosen one the idea of predestination
and revolutionary destiny, dovetailing with the historical determinism so dear to Marxism.
Miron Constantinescus real childhood hardships facilitated his biographers task. An orphan
since the age of fourteen (his father died when he was only seven years old and his mother seven
years later), Constantinescu clearly did not have a normal adolescence. This unfortunate aspect
of his past was used as a pretext to develop the image of the teenager who was forced to face
the difficulties of life since his youth, struggling with deprivation and earning his living from an
early age (he tutored other students). Thus, these real biographical elements smoothed the path
176 tefan Bosomitu
towards the creation of a model image of Miron Constantinescu, highlighting his credentials as
young revolutionary well-aware of the injustices of Romanian capitalist society and determined
to fight them vigorously.
Another important feature of the model communist biography was the episode of ones
entrance into the structures coordinated by the Party. It was essential to emphasise ones early
adherence to the communist cause as well as ones total and unconditional commitment to the
Party. Three aspects were emphasised in respect to ones motivation for joining the Romanian
Communist movement in the 1930s: political reasoning, existential motives, and intellectual or
ideological commitment.11
After graduating from high school in the Transylvanian town of Arad, in 1934 Miron
Constantinescu was admitted as student at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University
of Bucharest. It was most likely in these circumstances that Miron Constantinescu had his first
contacts with the Communist movement, strengthened a year later by his membership in the
Communist Youth Union.12 Communist propaganda later suggested Constantinescus earlier
affiliation to the Communist movement, namely since 1930. This information is highly suspicious,
since in 1930 Constantinescu was twelve years old.
The propagandistic biography of each of the sons of the people also served the purpose
of outlining the image of a heroic activist, a fearless and relentless combatant capable of the
supreme sacrifice. It was emphasised that such militants had sacrificed their youth for the
people. Communist activism had some defining characteristics during the interwar period when
communist movements had been banned in Romania. Thus careerism was out of the question, the
tasks assigned to activists exposed them to the risk of prosecution for illegal activities, and in fact
mere membership in a communist organisation was criminalised. These aspects were invariably
stressed and not infrequently blown out of proportion in communist model biographies.
Constantinescus underground activity was depicted in such a way so as to fit the image of
the model militant. According to official propaganda, his actions encompassed both ideological
11
Vigreux (1994), pp. 98-99.
12
Tismneanu and Vasile (2008), p. 94.
work through his publishing activity and the very important field or operative activity.
Miron Constantinescu was presented as one of the main organisers of the student uprisings
of the time, as a mobilizing factor of the masses. He was portrayed as an important member
of the Students Democratic Front (a student association with no clear political affiliation but
committed to containing the proliferation of fascism among students),13 and as the main artisan
of the reorganisation of the Communist Youth Union in 1939.14 Neither claim can be regarded
as true. Miron Constantinescu was a constant collaborator of the leftist movement, but his work
in this area was insignificant compared with the input of the leaders of interwar communism.
His field activity, on the other hand, was not, in any case, as complex as it was presented by the
communist propaganda. This last issue will become clearer once we will turn to the evidence of
the Secret Police files.
Lastly, with over two decades of underground, illegal history, Romanian communists
looked back to their prison experiences as an important element in every militants biography.
Imprisonment was, undoubtedly, the most visible and severe form of political repression. Thus,
evoking the period of imprisonment became a fertile and recurrent theme for the communist
propaganda discourse.15 The political repression of communists took place during two stages:
the first period, until the outbreak of the Second World War, when the communists were charged
and convicted under the law of 1924 that outlawed the Communist Party; and the second
period, during the war, when the repression had intensified owing to the characterisation of
communists as Russophiles, at a time when Romania was at war with the Soviet Union.
Almost all the communists who post-1945 held positions of leadership in the party and
state apparatus had experienced before the war the rigors of imprisonment and particularly
internment during the war. Consequently, the prisons where the underground communist
activists were imprisoned (Doftana, Caransebe, Trgu Jiu) became places of memory frequently
referenced by the Partys propaganda. The details that were highlighted in regard to the
militants past focused on the brutal and arbitrary nature of their arrest and detention, and the
13
Frunz (1999), p. 108.
14
Tismneanu (1996), p. 199.
15
Wolikow (1996), p. 109.
178 tefan Bosomitu
inhumane living conditions in prisons. In this respect Constantinescu rather fits the general
picture. Arrested, somewhat accidentally, in 1941, he spent the war years in the prisons of
Caransebe and Lugoj.
Autobiography
The communist obsession with biographical knowledge can be related to the eagerness of the
triumphant Party to stay informed about and control individuals lives, including their personal
opinions.16 The biographical control policy represented the core of personnel selection: before
being admitted into the Party, each postulant was required to write an autobiography in which
he would develop a range of topics, using a questionnaire as starting point.17 This impressive
biographical culture, typical of communist regimes, had at least two purposes: on the one hand,
it proposed a detailed portrait of the individual as a describable and analysable object. On the
other hand, it amounted to the establishment of a comparative system for measuring whole
social phenomena, describing social groups, characterising collective actions, and inscribing
individuals within them.18 This type of autobiography, which Bernard Pudal calls institutional
autobiography,19 became ones personal history in relation to the Party. It represented a powerful
way of articulating the difference between the activist integrated within the Partys structures and
the others (e.g., the bourgeoisie, etc.).
The stock motifs and themes of the institutional autobiography facilitated the individuals task
of reassessing and rewriting his or her activist past.20 Within these texts, the cleavage between
public and private disappeared, and the most intimate personal secrets became party secrets.
Personal retrospection was modelled according to the landmarks of an ideal communist history.
Social origin, seniority within the Party, and communist activity were the crucial themes, but all
issues were developed in intimate detail, as each individual was asked to provide information
16
Pennetier and Pudal (2002), p. 16.
17
Werth (1981), p. 16.
18
Foucault (1993), p. 224.
19
Pudal and Pennetier, (1996), pp. 53-75.
20
Pennef (1979), pp. 53-82
even about distant relatives (for example). This symbolic gesture had the purpose of highlighting,
once again, the difference between communists and their antagonists.21
A key aspect for the researcher is that these institutional autobiographies were subject to close
verification by the department that carefully supervised the Partys cadres The Personnel Office
of the Communist Party.22 As such, blatantly untrue or grossly fabricated biographical information
is rarely to be found in these sources.
Alongside institutional autobiography one encounters what might be called literary
autobiography: short retrospective texts, memoirs, testimonies, and interviews. The usefulness
of such sources lies in their less rigid nature. They were not subject to the constraints of the
questionnaire on which institutional autobiographies were based. On the other hand, the degree
of subjectivity of such a discourse cannot be easily verified through other sources. As such, literary
autobiography can become an important historical source inasmuch as it sheds new light on the
militants past, but the validity of its information must be carefully checked, whenever different
sources offer useful clues. For instance, the memoirs and interviews of friends and colleagues
should be read in conjunction with the literary autobiography of key communist figures like
Miron Constantinescu.
For our case study, the literary autobiography is particularly important, inasmuch as
Constantinescus institutional autobiography is nowhere to be found in the archives. His literary
autobiography, titled The Path of a Generation, was published in 1970 in the literary magazine
The Twentieth Century.23
Autobiography is more than just the record of the authors past. It represents also the quest
for the meaning of his or her life.24 The autobiographical discourse is always informed by the
concern for retrospectively discovering a unifying thread through ones life, suggesting thus
more coherence and constancy than was the case. Autobiography seeks to establish a coherent
relation between successive states, which are thus constituted as stages of an ideal and necessary
21
Pennef (1979), p. 59.
22
See Chelcea (2000), Oprea (ed.) (2002), Muraru (2005).
23
Constantinescu (1970), pp. 14-18.
24
Bourdieu (1986), p. 69.
180 tefan Bosomitu
development of the self. The author tells his or her story from the present perspective, trying to
reconstruct the past in terms that could substantiate and validate his becoming.25
These were also the goals of Constantinescus 1970 autobiography, The Road of a Generation. Its
very title, an allusion to the authors revolutionary youth, is suggestive, inasmuch as it is not about
the individual but the collective self; not I but we, the predestined generation. This emphasises
the idea of becoming as part of a group that had been given a crucial historical mission.
We learn from this autobiography about Miron Constantinescus childhood, adolescence, and
youth: the image of 1930s Arad, an industrial and multi-ethnic city; revealing details about his
high school years; accurate information about his first texts, published in high school journals;
his formative readings; the departure to Bucharest and enrolment as a student at the Faculty of
Letters and Philosophy; and the details on his first collaboration with various magazines and
journals from Bucharest.
Beyond these details, which we have no reason to doubt, the text offers a stock of images
and themes that are at the very least questionable. First of all, Constantinescus autobiography
suggests the existence of an important labour/communist movement in 1930s Romania. Moreover,
Constantinescu tries to put forth the idea of a strong left-leaning current in Romanian society.
To create this illusion, Constantinescu deceitfully speculates Romanians aversion towards the
interwar far-right/fascist organisation, the Iron Guard. But while Romanian society certainly
rejected the extremist actions of the far right, this cannot be counted as a sign of sympathy for
the political left. On the contrary, both the fascist right (the Iron Guard) and the extreme left (the
communists) were movements without wide popular support in Romania. To advance his claims,
Constantinescu embellished and distorted the facts. For example, the major 1936 strike of law
students who were not affiliated with the communist movement is presented as a great protest
rally co-ordinated by the Communist Youth Union. Even the number of demonstrators given by
Constantinescu, more than 5,000 people, is hardly credible.
These additions and distortions must be understood as an effort to prepare ones future career
25
Bonvalot (2004), pp. 86-87.
and, at the same time, search for the meaning of ones activist life. Consequently, the individual
self is often substituted by the collective we. The goal is to emphasise ones membership in a
group that was endowed by Providence with a historical mission, following the model of the
October (i.e., 1917) Revolution generation.
The Secret Police files
Founded in 1921 as a branch of the Third Communist International, the Communist Party of
Romania (PCdR) was outlawed in 1924, following the involvement of some communist militants
in the disorders from southern Bessarabia.26 For the following two decades Romanian communism
was a clandestine movement, functioning under the strict rules of political conspiracy. The life of
each communist militant took on the dimension of a secret existence, with codenames, false IDs,
and an almost impenetrable web of personal and professional relationships.
Anyone who joined the movement and became a militant activist ran the risk of criminal
prosecution. The adherence to the movement was thus an existential conversion a radical
transformation of public and private life, of ones worldview and personal relationships.27 The
total and long-term commitment to the cause had severe consequences at the individual level,
completely changing ones daily routine and earlier lifestyle.28
In spite of Romanian communists continuous efforts to ensure the secrecy of their conspiratorial
activities, few of their actions remained unknown to the state security police. Founded in 1919,
the Security Police Department (Sigurana) was a law-enforcement structure that always kept an
eye on the activities of the Communist Party particularly after 1924. Individual police files were
put together for every underground militant whose doings could be documented. Furthermore,
a significant amount of data was recorded in the so-called target objective files, which traced the
activity of the organisations considered as camouflaged communist associations: newspapers,
magazines, trade unions, and student associations.
26
Tismneanu (2003), pp. 53-54.
27
McAdam (1989), p. 745.
28
Hirsch, (1990), p. 244.
182 tefan Bosomitu
In the Security Police records, Miron Constantinescu had several personal files. One
of them (in several volumes, but not too sizeable) was completed in 1941, following his
arrest.29 There is another personal file, drafted after his release from prison (25 August
1944), which includes surveillance reports.30 Furthermore, Constantinescus first extant file
(1941), includes a statement to the effect that his case had already been on record in the
archives of the Sigurana. Finally, his name inevitably appears in other files, such as those
of N. D. Cocea, Adrian Schiler, Ion Stancu, and Mihail Dragomirescu.31 Besides the first
two files, the others are quite difficult to identify, since their shelfmarks refer to the archive
of an institution that ceased to exist in 1948. But the information provided by the first file
allows us to reconstruct at least some parts of Miron Constantinescus illegal activity.
The overall image that these files offer is utterly incongruous with what is suggested
by the myth-biography and the autobiographical texts. It is the history of a sect with
few adherents, most of them socially marginalised, intellectually mediocre, and prone to
betray their comrades. These files record the preposterous portraits of petty characters
who often play a double role, at once communist activists and police informants who sell
their comrades down the river (as the saying went).32 The discovery and annihilation
of an entire regional communist structure the Lower Danube network is linked to
the arrest of Miron Constantinescu. Having been monitored for some time by the police
and the Sigurana, this regional communist network was annihilated in less than two
days. The first arrests occurred on the night of 9-10 January 1941, and by 11 January
all the members of the network were detained and interrogated. Once detained, the
underground activists apparently did not even try to protect their comrades and maintain
the secrecy they had been sworn into. Family relations (there were siblings active in this
organisation), friendships, or companionships seemed to have lost all value. The groups
collapse was total.
29
ANIC, Militants files, file Miron Gh. Constantinescu, microfilm 1208, 1212.
30
Ibid., microfilm 1208.
31
Ibid., microfilm 1208, slide 502.
32
Tnase (2005).
These files can help us revise some important aspects of Miron Constantinescus biography.
They shed new light on Constantinescus clandestine activities post 1935, when he joined the
Communist Youth Union. Thus, we learn that almost nothing of the activities that the communist
propaganda attributed to Miron Constantinescu can be confirmed independently. He was, indeed,
in the attention of the Sigurana and did have a personal file in the archives of the secret police.
His publishing work in leftist journals and magazines had been noted, as well as his involvement
in different organisations known as camouflaged communist movements (the Students
Democratic Front and the Romanian-French Association). But, importantly, there is no mention
of his alleged participation in strikes and students riots. Since these files are official documents
issued by a state institution, their objectivity should not be doubted. But one must acknowledge
that the sources of the data compiled by the secret police often remain unknown. Moreover, there
are no other sources that could confirm or refute these data.
A key element of Miron Constantinescus biography was his arrest in January 1941. Following
this arrest, Constantinescu spent the war years in the prisons of Caransebe and Lugoj, together
with the greatest communist leaders.33 These years witnessed an exponential increase of
Constantinescus role and position in the Party. On the other hand, as I have already suggested,
the prison experience later served as the mechanism of legitimation, once the communists were
in power after the war. It was part of the propaganda image of a worthy past. In light of this, it is
not surprising that the events leading to Constantinescus arrest in 1941 have been reworked and
flagrantly distorted by the communist propaganda.
The propaganda presented Constantinescu as the principal artisan of the reorganisation of
the Lower Danube regional network (which encompassed the counties from south-eastern
Moldova and southern Bessarabia) following its first demise in 1939 under a co-ordinated
police and Sigurana action. Most of its members were arrested or fled to the Soviet Union, the
network ceasing, in effect, to exist. It is against this background that Constantinescus arrival
in the autumn of 1940 is depicted. His mission, it was claimed, was to reorganise the regional
communist structures.
33
Cmpeanu (2002), p. 54.
184 tefan Bosomitu
But what the police files show flagrantly contradicts the communist propaganda story. Miron
Constantinescus role in the reorganisation of the regional network was insignificant. His only
assignment was to co-ordinate, in an unspecified future, the youth branch of the organisation.
Even the real story of his arrest is hardly heroic, as Constantinescu was taken into custody by
hazard, following a police search of his hosts house in Galai. And here we run into a problem.
The police and Sigurana reports indicate in no uncertain terms that Constantinescus role and
underground activities in Galai were insignificant. However, six months later, the Third Army
Military Court condemned him to ten years of hard labour and another ten years of social
degradation one of the harshest sentences of the Lower Danube communist organisation trial.
How can this be explained? There are two possibilities: either a new investigation conducted
by the district attorneys office reconsidered Constantinescus role in the reorganisation of
the regional communist structure; or, the sentence reflected Constantinescus status as the
only activist of the group to have been sent to Galai from the capital city, Bucharest, by the
Communist Central Committee.
Conclusions
The idea that seems to persist in reading all these sources is the permanent need to question the
accuracy and subjectivity of the documents. The militants past seems to be narrated from three
different perspectives myth-biography, autobiography, and police files and the impression
remains that, if a fourth type of source existed, we would have to deal with yet another version
of the past. There remain many open questions as well as episodes about which we have no
information at all.
My paper shows that communist propaganda was more than able to create heroes, through
the embellishment of facts, clever distortion, gross additions, and deliberate omissions. The
Party manufactured the history that it did not possess. Everything that might be seen as heroic
was rewritten as the reconstructed past was invoked to give meaning to the present. I want to
acknowledge that not only the activists biographies, on which this paper has focused, but the
entire interwar history of Romanian communism have been profoundly distorted by myth-
making and ideology. The careful analysis of the sources will allow us to rewrite a history that, in
fact, was never truly written.
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186 tefan Bosomitu
Tismneanu, Vladimir and Cristian Vasile. Perfectul acrobat: Leonte Rutu, mtile rului. Bucureti, 2008.
Werth, Nicolas. tre communiste en URSS sous Staline. Paris, 1981.
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Memories of Communism: Myths,
Representations, Discourses
Claudia-Florentina Dobre
Abstract After 1989 Romania faced the challenge of dealing with its Communist past.
The responses to this civic pressure varied and have been directly influenced
by a number of factors: the nature of the Communist regime, the degree of attachment of the population
to the former regime, the emergence of civil society, the way the regime collapsed, as well as contextual
factors like the privatization of nomenklatura (Helga Welsh), the presence in the new state structure
of what Thomas Baylis called the lower nobility of the communist era (the neo-communists as I call
them), and the specific economic and social issues of the transitional period. Amnesia, active oblivion,
the privatization of memory, the hypertrophy of memory, and lustration laws are just a few of the
strategies for dealing with the Communist past that have emerged. Creating new mythologies and
promoting an official public memory of Communism as an invasion or as an illegitimate and criminal
regime are some of the other, more concrete, reactions which could be observed within the context of
the struggle over the memory of Communism.
Keywords memory of Communism,

postcommunism
memorial discourses, myths of
En Roumanie, en dcembre 1989, lhistoire sacclre.1 Le coup denvoi est donn le 16 dcembre,
Timioara. Les vnements se prcipitent galement Bucarest. Le meeting du 21 dcembre
1
Cette tude a t finance par le contrat POSDRU/89/1.5/S/62259, projet stratgique, Sciences socio-humaines et
politiques appliques, programme de travail postdoctoral et bourses postdoctorales de recherche dans le domaine
des sciences humaines et politiques co-financ par le Fonds Social Europen, par le biais du Programme oprationnel
sectoriel le dveloppement des ressources humaines 2007-2013.
188 Claudia-Florentina Dobre
tourne la rvolte! Le 22 dcembre, le couple Ceauescu est oblig de senfuir. Arrts, jugs
htivement et condamns mort, les poux Ceauescu sont excuts le jour de Nol 1989.
La chute du communisme entrane un changement du rgime politique, social, conomique et
idologique. Dans la mme foule, le centralisme mmoriel2 promu par les communistes prend
fin. Le nouvel ordre politique, pour mieux instituer la rupture avec lancien pouvoir ainsi que
pour se lgitimer et promouvoir sa propre idologie, prne lexaltation dune nouvelle mmoire
collective3, le choix de nouveaux mythes et la clbration de nouvelles figures totmiques4.
Aprs la rupture, un renouvellement de la socit est entam! Ainsi, les derniers jours de
dcembre 1989 enregistre lapparition dune nouvelle institution de gouvernement, appele le

Front du salut national (FSN), les premires manifestations de groupes mmoriels rprims et la
naissance dun nouveau mythe de fondation.
Cette tude porte sur les reprsentations du communisme dans lespace public dans la
Roumanie postcommuniste. Je me penche notamment sur la mmoire publique officielle5 et sur

la concurrence mmorielle qui habite lespace public depuis la chute du rgime jusqu prsent. Je
minterroge galement sur la manire dont on emploie des instruments mmoriels6 afin de faire
prvaloir un certain discours sur le communisme dans lespace public post-dcembriste.
Entre loubli intentionnel, la victimisation et la culpabilisation collective, et lanticommunisme
Ds le renversement de Ceauescu, le nouveau pouvoir form pour la plupart des lites de
2
Je comprends par mmoire collective, selon Roger Bastide, un systme dinterrelations de mmoires individuelles,
mmoires individuelles qui sont faonnes par les cadres sociaux de la mmoire (Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux
de la mmoire) ou par les sociotransmetteurs (Joel Candau, Anthropologie de la mmoire). Roger Bastide, Mmoire
collective et sociologie du bricolage, Lanne sociologique, Paris, PUF, 1970, p. 94.
3
JohannMichel, Gouverner les mmoires. Les politiques mmorielles en France, PUF, Paris, 2010 (cit dornavant comme
Johann Michel, Gouverner les mmoires), p. 29.
4
Je dfinis la mmoire publique officielle comme tant les reprsentations et les normes mmorielles produites par
les acteurs publics. Johann Michel, Gouverner les mmoires, p. 16.
5
Les instruments mmoriels: iconographiques images, films, monuments, peintures, emblmes, effigies;
scniques - clbrations, commmoratives, mises en scne mdiatiques: les dbats; narratifs - mmoires, journaux,
historiographie, presse.
6
lower nobility of the communist era comme les appelle Thomas Baylis. Thomas Baylis, Plus a change?
Transformation and continuity Among East European Elites, Communist and Post-communist Studies 3, vol. 27
(1994), p. 317.
Memories of Romanian Communism: Myths, Representations, Discourses 189
deuxime rang du parti communiste avance lide que le rgime dchu a t condamn par
lHistoire.7 Ion Iliescu, figure totmique des no-communistes, avait dclar maintes reprises
que le rgime communiste ne mritait pas quon parlt publiquement de lui. Dailleurs, la
proposition qua faite Octavian Paler, un crivain dissident des annes Ceauescu, qui invitait
tous les Roumains questionner leur propre position pendant le communisme na trouv quun
faible auditoire. Seuls les membres du Groupe pour le Dialogue social (GDS) ont appuy ses
dmarches.8 La grande majorit des intellectuels ont ignor son appel. Eugen Simion, lpoque
prsident de lAcadmie roumaine et un proche dIon Iliescu, a affirm publiquement quil ne se
sentait pas concern par les abus et les crimes communistes.
Loubli intentionnel du communisme se reflte dans lespace public commun par le dboulonnage
des statues de Lnine et Petru Groza (le 3 mars 1990), vite relgues en dehors de Bucarest,
Mogooaia,9 mais galement des statues dautres personnages de limaginaire communiste, par le
changement des noms de rues et par le dmantlement des plaques commmoratives et des toiles
rouges qui ornaient les faades des usines et des btiments publics. Un autre symbole du rgime
rouge, lancien Monument des hros qui ont lutt pour la libert du peuple et de la patrie et
pour le socialisme (mieux connu comme le Mausole) a t rappropri et rinterprt. Destin
accueillir les corps et les urnes funraires des dirigeants communistes, le Mausole abrite
prsent les restes des soldats morts pendant la Premire Guerre mondiale, restes quàvaient
auparavant repos au Mausole de Mreti10.
Le non-lieu des no-communistes concernant le rgime qui les a crs reste dactualit
mme dans les annes 2000. loccasion des dbats sur les manuels alternatifs dhistoire
7
Le GDS a t form le 31 dcembre 1989 comme un groupe de rflexion sociale critique constitu par des
intellectuels soucieux de mettre en place une socit dmocratique. Les membres du groupe militent pour les
droits de lhomme, pour ltat de droit et pour les liberts fondamentales du citoyen. Le GDS est une organisation
non-profit et non-patrimoniale.
8
Mogooaia se trouve 12 km de Bucarest.
9
En 2004, le terrain sur lequel se trouvait le monument a t offert par le gouvernement lglise orthodoxe pour
y construire la Cathdrale de la nation. Le refus du maire de Bucarest de lpoque, Traian Bsescu, et les actions
juridiques menes par celui-ci et par quelques organisations civiques ont empch sa destruction la destruction du
Mausole. Il est intressant de souligner le fait que le prsident de la Roumanie lpoque tait Ion Iliescu, un ancien
membre de la nomenklatura. De son gouvernement faisaient galement partie danciens privilgis du communisme.
10
Pour les dbats sur les manuels dhistoire, voir Gabriel Marin, Comment construire en Roumanie une identit
nationale et europenne? Les nouveaux manuels dhistoire des Roumains , dans Revue dtudes comparatives est-
ouest, 2004, vol. 35, n 3, p. 5-38.
qui ont eu lieu dans le Parlement11, un snateur no-communiste avait manifest son
inquitude quant lampleur que prenait la description du communisme dans le manuel
qui avait veill une controverse nationale. Il se demandait comment les auteurs ont pu
consacrer trois pages Michel le Brave, dans la mythologie nationaliste, lunificateur
mdival des pays roumains, et 12 pages au communisme, qui tait, son avis, prsent
de manire trop dtaille12.
Pendant la premire dcennie postcommuniste, loubli intentionnel du communisme sest
conjugu avec le mythe de la victimisation et de la culpabilit collective. Promue par les no-
communistes, avec le soutien des lites dmocrates , la victimisation collective pse encore
lourdement sur limaginaire collectif des Roumains.
Avance ds le 26 dcembre 1989, par le philosophe Gabriel Liiceanu, dans son essai,
Appel aux fripouilles13, lide du communisme comme une maladie venue de lextrieur,
limage dune invasion, a conquis lespace public. Cette position, qui entrane la
dculpabilisation du peuple, vu comme une victime de lhistoire,14 arrangeait tout le
monde. En outre, elle sinscrit dans une logique victimaire ayant fait une longue carrire
en Roumanie. Sorin Alexandrescu y voit un complexe de la victimisation spcifique des

lites politiques roumaines15.
La culpabilit revient lOccident qui a vendu le pays aux Sovitiques. La trahison de Yalta
est devenue un mythe de la Roumanie postcommuniste16. Les tentatives de d-mystification nont
pas joui du mme succs, en dpit de la clbrit de leurs auteurs17.
11
Intervention de Sergiu Nicolaescu, un ralisateur roumain trs connu, cite par Mirela Luminia Murgescu, Istoria
din ghiozdan. Memorie i manuale colare n Romnia anilor 1990 (Lhistoire dans le cartable. Mmoire et manuels scolaires
dans la Roumanie des annes 1990), Domino, 2004, p. 145.
12
Gabriel Liiceanu, Appel ctre lichele (Appel aux fripouilles), Bucarest, Humanitas, 2005 (cit dornavant comme,
Liiceanu, Apel).
13
Katherine Verdery, Socialismul, ce a fost i ce urmeaz (Le Socialisme. Ce qui sest pass et ce qui sensuit?), Iai,
Institutul European, 2003 (cit dornavant comme, Verdery, Socialismul), p. 136.
14
Sorin Alexandrescu, Paradoxul romn (Le paradoxe roumain), Bucarest, Univers, 1998, p. 65.
15
George Voicu, Limaginaire du complot dans la Roumanie postcommuniste, dans Les temps modernes, mars -avril-
mai 2001, n 613, p. 174-175.
16
Lucian Boia, Istorie i mit n contiina romneasc (Histoire et mythe dans la conscience roumaine), Bucarest,
Humanitas, 1997, p. 208.
17
Claude Karnoouh, Consensus et dissensions en Roumanie: un pays en qute dune socit civile, dans Les Cahiers
dIztok, Acratie, 1991, p. 7.
Un autre mythe, celui du souverain mchant, contribue aussi lide de victimisation
du peuple roumain, qui nest pas seulement une victime de lhistoire, mais galement de
ses dirigeants. Ceauescu considrait que lidal communiste avait t dtourn par les
camarades malveillants. Ce sont eux qui sont responsables des perscutions politiques!
son tour, Ceauescu est transform aprs la chute du communisme en un chef
machiavlique ensorcel par une Lady Macbeth danubienne.18
Lide de la victimisation est largement diffuse par une srie tlvise intitule, Le Mmorial
de la douleur19. La Roumanie y est dcrite comme la victime du communisme, qui a t impos
par lURSS coups de canon et de mitraillette, alors que la socit roumaine de lpoque apparat
comme tant en proie la guerre civile entre les bons, cest--dire les rsistants, et les mchants,
savoir les autorits20. Ce discours manichen, quaffectionnaient les communistes et que
soutenaient galement les lites de droite,21 rend limage dun pays pris en otage par le rgime.
La mme vision victimaire et anticommuniste caractrise aussi le centre mmoriel cr
par Ana Blandiana22, en 1993. La clbre potesse propose aux autorits post-dcembristes la
cration dun Mmorial des victimes du communisme et de la rsistance anticommuniste.
Le projet est rejet par les no-communistes au pouvoir, mais Ana Blandiana ne se laisse pas
dcourage. Elle cre une fondation prive, appele lAcadmie civique, qui prend en charge
le projet, quelle soumet au Conseil de lEurope. Ce dernier lavise favorablement en le prenant
sous son gide en 199523.
18
Vladimir Pasti, Romania n tranziie. Cderea n viitor (La Roumanie en transition. La chute dans lavenir), Nemira,
1995 (cit dornavant comme, Pasti, Romania n tranziie), p. 241.
19
Le communisme a divis les gens en deuxclasses/catgories : les bons, cest--dire eux-mmes, et les mchants,
les ennemis de ltranger et les ennemis de classe. Ses opposants ont adopt la mme approche manichenne que
promeuvent aussi les lites postcommunistes. Verdery, Socialismul, p. 171.
20
Ana Blandiana, fille dun ancien perscut politique, est la potesse roumaine la plus connue ltranger et une
sorte dinstitution culturelle en Roumanie. Mise lcart pendant les dernires annes du rgime Ceauescu, Ana
Blandiana devient clbre pendant la rvolution de dcembre 1989 et surtout aprs cet vnement, quand elle assume
la difficile la position de pote engag.
21
Le Mmorial a deux composantes: le Centre international des tudes sur le communisme, qui archive des donnes
relatives au communisme et la rpression et dont le sige se trouve depuis 1993 Bucarest, et le muse mmoriel
de Sighet ouvert en 1997. La fondation publie galement les Annales de Sighet et organise des coles de mmoire,
autrement dit, des ateliers mmoriels sadressant aux jeunes.
22
Daniel Barbu, Politica pentru barbari (La politique pour les barbares), Nemira, Bucarest, 2005, p. 141.
23
Pasti, Romania n tranziie, p. 242.
Les activits de la fondation Acadmie civique promeuvent un discours qui cherche
dgager lunicit du calvaire roumain pendant le communisme. Les Roumains sont dcrits comme
tant les victimes de lhistoire, des grands pouvoirs et de leurs voisins. Malgr cela, ils ont eu la
force de sopposer au rgime dictatorial, tel que le prouve la rsistance arme dans les montagnes.
Cette logique victimaire qui hante limaginaire dune grande partie des Roumains exonre tout
le monde des crimes communistes et rend difficile la qute des coupables. Dailleurs, la tche de
rgler les comptes avec le rgime dchu a incomb, dune part, aux procs intents aux membres
du Comit politique du parti communiste et, dautre part, la mmoire des victimes24.
Rechercher ceux qui se faisaient coupables des vrais crimes (les tortionnaires, les officiers de
la Securitate et de la milice, les juges, etc.) ne reprsentait pas une option pour le gouvernement
no-communiste. Lance lors dun meeting tenu la veille du Nol 1989, lide damener devant la
justice les responsables des crimes communistes na trouv dcho que parmi les anciens dtenus
politiques et parmi les dissidents . Un rquisitoire labor par lAssociation des anciens
dtenus politiques de Roumanie (AFDPR), qui venait dtre cre, a t prsent auprs de juges
pour entamer un procs pnal intitul le procs du communisme. Le pouvoir no-communiste
a rejet cette proposition, avanant comme justification le fait quil existait plus de 3 millions
danciens membres du parti communiste roumain25.
Qui plus est, les no-communistes ont accus les anciens dtenus politiques davoir un
esprit vindicatif, de vouloir mettre en scne un Nuremberg roumain. Ils ont lanc lide
dune culpabilit diffuse qui aurait atteint toute la socit, comme en tmoigne lancien
prsident de lAFDPR, Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu: Ils ont fait circuler le mythe du
dalmatien comme symbole du pch global et de la culpabilit gnrale, cest--dire, tout
le monde est coupable dans la mme mesure. Les crimes communistes taient prsents
comme fortuits et anonymes.26
24
Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, Procesul communismului - ultima ans a revoluiei (Le procs du communisme-
la dernire chance de la Rvolution), dans Rezistena, n 4, p. 3-5.
25
Cristina Petrescu, Drago Petrescu, The Nomenklatura Talks: Former Romanian Party Dignitaries on Gheorghiu-
Dej and Ceausescu, dans East European Politics and Societies, vol. 16, no.3, p. 958-970.
26
Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, Conspiration et dsenchantement: les conditions dune nouvelle production idologique
en Roumanie, dans Les temps modernes, mars -avril- mai 2001, n 613, p. 169-169.
En Roumanie, loubli intentionnel, la victimisation et la culpabilit collective se sont galement
conjugus avec lanticommunisme rel ou fictif des acteurs publics. Lanticommunisme
postcommuniste a connu deux formes: lanti-Ceauescu, prsent mme chez les anciens communistes,
qui ont mme rcrit leurs biographies pour se prsenter en tant que dissidents du tyran ,
transform en bouc missaire du systme27, et lanticommunisme des lites dmocrates et des anciens
perscuts politiques. Dailleurs, tous ceux qui se sont opposs dune manire ou dune autre au
rgime communiste ont t prsents dans lespace public comme tant des anticommunistes.
la fin des annes 1940 et au dbut des annes 1950, un bon nombre des officiers de
larme, des intellectuals et des paysans se sont opposs au rgime communiste en train de se
mettre en place. Plusieurs dentre eux ont mme choisi de se cacher dans les montagnes dans
lespoir que ce rgime ne perdurerait pas. Initialement encourags par les Amricains, ils
ont rsist aux assauts communistes jusqu la fin des annes 1950. Au bout dune dcennie,
les combattants contre le systme communiste ont t annihils ou obligs se taire et se
cacher afin de survivre.
Aprs leffondrement du systme, cette rsistance anticommuniste a commenc tre
transforme en un mythe. La clbration des groupes de rsistants cachs dans les montagnes
a t une rponse laccusation de passivit qui pesait sur les Roumains avant dcembre 1989,
par linvention mythologique dune continuit dans la rsistance anticommuniste28. Elle est lie
la mythologie nationaliste mise en place par les communistes, notamment dans les annes
Ceauescu29. Plusieurs mythes y apportent leurs contributions: le mythe de lunion entre les
Roumains et la nature (un proverbe roumain dit que le bois est le frre du Roumain), les paysans
comme les vrais reprsentants de la nation et les hadouks30, les protecteurs des opprims.
27
Claudia-Florentina Dobre, Elisabeta Rizea de Nucoara: un lieu de mmoire pour les Roumains? dans
Conserveries mmorielles, revue lectronique de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en histoire compare de la mmoire.
Sur le site: http://cm.revues.org/57
28 Les hadouks, les hors-la-loi, ont t prsents par les communistes comme des combattants contre loppression
des boyards et comme un symbole de la lutte de classe.
29 Liiceanu, Apel, p. 11-12.
30 La dlation a t encourage par les lois communistes mmes. Larticle 228 du Code pnal de 1958 prcisait
que les personnes qui, avant le dbut de toute poursuite, auront port linfraction la connaissance des autorits
comptentes ne seront pas punies. Romulus Rusan, Dennis Deletant, tefan Mariiu, Gheorghe Onioru, Marius
Oprea, Stelian Tnase, Le systme rpressif communiste en Roumanie, dans Stphane Courtois, ed., Du pass
faisons table rase! Histoire et mmoire du communisme en Europe, Robert Laffont, Paris, 2002, p. 386.
Au bout de la premire dcennie postcommuniste, un symbole anticommunisme se dtache
parmi les autres: Elisabeta Rizea, de Nucoara. Paysanne dune rgion montagnarde, ancienne
dtenue politique, condamne 25 ans de prison pour avoir aid les rsistants anticommunistes
qui se cachaient dans les montagnes de Fgra, gracie en 1964, elle a eu la chance de survivre
au communisme et de raconter son histoire parseme de tortures, de sacrifices et despoir dans la
fin du rgime qui làvait opprime.
Dans les annes 90, lanticommunisme a jou un rle important dans la lutte pour
le pouvoir et pour laccs aux ressources politiques, conomiques et culturelles. Les
dmocrates ont sollicit aux no-communistes de se retirer pour quelque temps de
lespace public? Gabriel Liiceanu, dans son dj mentionn Appel aux fripouilles, crivait
le 30 dcembre 1989: Laissez une respiration plus longue entre le dernier hommage
que vous avez crit, entre la dernire sance o vous avez exprim votre enthousiasme
pour la rlection de Ceauescu au XIVe Congrs et ladhsion presse que vous avez
manifeste tout de suite aprs, alors que les habitants de Timioara navaient pas encore
achev denterrer leurs morts et que sur le boulevard Magheru et la Place du Palais le
sang navait pas encore sch.31 Son appel a t ignor. Les no-communistes restent au
pouvoir et renforcent par leurs politiques une mmoire officielle dinspiration nationale-
communiste, tout en crant de nouveaux mythes.
En 1996, le changement du pouvoir a entran un changement dattitude. La coalition dmocrate,
dont plusieurs membres marquants ont t renferms dans les prisons communistes, tente une
timide dcommunisation de la socit roumaine. Ainsi, en 1999, le Parlement a vot la loi
Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, du nom de son initiateur, qui visait la dnonciation des collaborateurs
de lancienne police politique, la Securitate. La loi prvoyait la cration dun service public ayant
le rle darchiver et de prsenter sur demande des documents relatifs la rpression communiste.
Intitule Consiliul naional pentru studierea arhivelor Securitii (Le Conseil national pour
ltude des archives de la Securitate), CNSAS, linstitution a connu des grandes difficults dans ses
dmarches de dvoiler les activits et les personnes lies lancienne police politique communiste.
31
Czeslaw Milosz, La pense captive, Paris, Gallimard, 1953, p. 108-109.
Le texte de la loi, que les politiciens dtournent de son sens initial, permet aux services
dinformation postcommunistes de dclarer certains dossiers dintrt national. En outre, la
loi a t vote trop tard, les officiers de la Securitate ayant eu le temps de falsifier ou /et de
faire disparatre des documents importants qui auraient pu incriminer les officiers de lancienne
Securitate, toujours actifs, ou bien leurs hritiers, devenus des figures importantes de la vie
conomique et politique postcommuniste.
Bien que les documents issus de lancienne police secrte demeurent toujours sous le signe
de la falsification et de la mise en scne typique des communistes, les informations archives
branlent la vision monolithique du communisme en tant que malheur venu de lextrieur et qui
serait tranger au peuple roumain. Les donnes statistiques rvlent une ampleur inattendue
de la dlation32. Dailleurs, selon Czeslaw Milosz, pendant le communisme la dlation tait

considre comme la vertu fondamentale du bon citoyen (bien que le mot tait vit, lui
substituant des priphrases)33.
Un ancien chef de la police politique affirme quen 1967, la Securitate comptait 118 576
informateurs34. Les chercheurs qui ont tudi la question de la collaboration avec le rgime
estiment quil y avait entre 400 000 et un million dinformateurs35. Les chiffres ne confirment
pas lide gnralement rpandue dune omniprsence de la Securitate. En 1950, cette dernire
comptait 5000 personnes engages temps plein, tandis quen 1989 dans ses fiches de travail ne
figuraient que 38 682 personnes36.
Prognitures du rgime dchu, les no-communistes ont manifest un intrt particulier
pour leffacement des traces du communisme. Qui plus est, ils ont invent un nouveau
32
Liviu Turcu dans lmission Marius Tuc Show, affirmation reprise par le journal Ziua, mercredi, le 8 novembre
2006, p. 4.
33
Lavinia Stan, Lucian Turcescu, The Devils confessors: Priests, communists, spies and informers, dans East
European Politics and Societies, vol. 19, no. 4, p. 656.
34
Dennis Deletant, Ceauescu i Securitatea. Constrngere i diziden n Romnia anilor 1965-1989 (Ceausescu et la
Securitate. Coercition et dissidence dans la Roumanie des annes 1965-1989), Humanitas, Bucarest, 1998, p. 11.
35
eapa final cu care Ion Iliescu i-a ncheiat biografia de preedinte. Source: Hotnews.ro., 7 octobre 2006. N.
C. Munteanu utilise ici un jeu de mots, le mot eapa, pal en franais, a une double signification en roumain:
pieu aiguis son extrmit, mais galement canular, blague, farce.
36
Bien que le ministre de la Culture ait fait un appel doffres public, Ion Iliescu avait apparemment choisi tout seul
le projet dAlexandru Ghildu.
mythe dorigine destin lgitimer leur prise du pouvoir. Dans une annonce faite le 29
dcembre 1989, les idologues du Front du salut national ont dclar, dans la foule
dune tradition communiste, que les vnements ayant entran la chute du rgime
avaient reprsent une Rvolution de la rconciliation37. Ils ont fait appel lunit et la
fraternit, tout en mettant en avant lide que la reconstruction du pays devait concerner
tous les Roumains.
La Rvolution de dcembre 1989 devient une rfrence de la nouvelle culture politique
postcommuniste. Les politiques mmorielles visent la reconnaissance du sacrifice des
combattants, la consolidation de la mmoire de la Rvolution par le biais de monuments et
par ltablissement des jours commmoratifs. Ainsi, la loi 48 du 18 dcembre 1990 reconnaissait
deux catgories dervolutionnaires: les hros-martyrs et les combattants. Pour ces
derniers, la loi prvoyait des privilges importants: indemnits, maisons, terrains, permis
gratuits pour le transport public, accs aux tudes, aux emplois dans la fonction publique,
etc. En avril 2002, la loi 258 institue le jour de 22 dcembre comme journe commmorative
de la libert de la Roumanie . Le gouvernement et les autorits publiques sont censs
organiser des festivits solennelles supposant le dpt de gerbes, la minute de silence,
labaissement des drapeaux, etc.
Tandis que les combattants ont reu des privilges chers aux mortels, les martyrs de la
Rvolution ont eu droit un complexe mmoriel. Lide dun monument lhonneur des
personnes mortes entre 22 et 26 dcembre 1989 appartient lancien prsident de la Roumanie
postcommuniste, Ion Iliescu. Inaugur en 2005, le Mmorial de la Renaissance a fait lobjet
de plusieurs controverses. Trait de brochette olives ou encore du pal de Ghildus ,
le monument rig devant lancien sige du comit central du parti communiste romain et
prsent sige de plusieurs ministres a scandalis lopinion publique par son esthtique. Financ
entirement par ltat, prix dor, il reprsente selon le journaliste N. C. Munteanu le coup final
par lequel Ion Iliescu a fini son mandat de prsident.38 Aux critiques esthtiques sajoutent les
37
Je dfinis le rgime mmoriel , dans le sillage de Johann Michel comme une matrice de perceptions et de
reprsentations de souvenirs publics officiels une poque donne. Les acteurs publics et sociaux sont la fois les
producteurs et le produit de rgimes mmoriels. Johann Michel, Gouverner la mmoire, p. 50.
38
La concurrence concerne mme la Rvolution de dcembre 1989. Un projet de loi de 2010 propose le jour de
accusations de fraude, la fois en ce qui concerne le choix du sculpteur (Alexandru Ghildu) et
le montant englouti par sa construction (56 milliards lei).
En 2004, le pouvoir no-communiste ddie La Rvolution aussi un Institut de recherche,
Institutul revolutiei romane din decembrie 1989 (Linstitut de la Rvolution roumaine de dcembre
1989), cr dans le but dtudier lhistoire de la Rvolution roumaine de 1989 et den
garder la mmoire. LInstitut est dirig par un Collge national nomm par le prsident de la
Roumanie. Au moment de sa cration, le prsident de la Roumanie tait Ion Iliescu, qui a nomm
plusieurs de ses collaborateurs fidles comme membres du collge. Par la suite, il a t lu par
les membres du dit collge la tte de lInstitut. Financ par ltat, lInstitut a t le sujet de
plusieurs controverses dont la plus rcente est reprsent par la dcision du ministre des Affaires
trangres de lintgrer dans un futur centre mmoriel intitul le Muse du communisme.
Cette dcision consacre un nouveau rgime mmoriel : celui de la patrimonialisation de la
souffrance redevable au rgime communiste.
Le rgime mmoriel patrimonial
La premire dcennie postcommuniste a t marque par la concurrence politique et mmorielle
entre les combattants anticommunistes et les combattants de la Rvolution. Lalternance au
pouvoir des no-communistes et des dmocrates sest joue aussi sur le plan mmoriel. Les no-
communistes qui ont gr la Roumanie entre 1990 et 1996 et entre 2000 et 2004 ont privilgi
la Rvolution . leur tour, les dmocrates ont prn lanticommunisme, privilgiant dans
lespace public la mmoire des anciens perscuts politiques.
Arrive au pouvoir en 1996, la coalition des anciens partis historiques na pas russi
mener terme un programme dassainissement de la socit. Le prsident de lpoque, Emil
Constantinescu, a condamn le communisme titre personnel, le Parlement a vot la loi Ticu-
Dumitrescu concernant la collaboration avec les autorits communistes, les symboles de la royaut
21 dcembre comme journe commmorative des victimes du communisme en Roumanie. Dans lexpos du projet,
le 21 dcembre est considr comme le jour de la rvolte contre le communisme, eclatee Timisoara mais aussi
Bucarest. Lanticommunisme sempare de la Rvolution de la rconciliation proclame par Ion Iliescu et ses
fidles! En outre, en novembre 2011, une loi vise la suppression des privilges des rvolutionnaires.
sont redevenus visibles dans lespace public, plusieurs anciens perscuts ont recommenc jouer
un rle dans la vie politique.
Pourtant, toutes les dmarches faites par les anciens dtenus politiques et par leurs
partisans pour obtenir une condamnation officielle du communisme roumain ont t voues
lchec. Les recommandations des institutions europennes ainsi que larrive au pouvoir
dune coalition de droite ont jou un rle important dans les politiques mmorielles visant le
rgime communiste.
En 2005, linitiative du premier ministre libral de lpoque, Clin Popescu Triceanu, a t cr
lInstitut pour linvestigation des crimes du communisme en Roumanie. Sa mission, mise en
vidence par le premier rapport publi en novembre 2006, intitul Pourquoi doit-on condamner
le communisme,39 vise tant: Linvestigation scientifique et lidentification des crimes, des abus,
des violations des droits de lhomme durant la priode communiste en Roumanie, que porter la
connaissance des institutions en droit des cas de violation de la loi40.
La rsolution 1481 du Conseil de lEurope,41 la concurrence politique avec le premier ministre

libral, mais galement le dsir dune lgitimit anticommuniste ancre dans lpoque
dmocratique de lentre-deux-guerres ont donn au prsident de la Roumanie, Traian
Bsescu42 limpulsion ncessaire pour la creation, le 5 avril 2006, dune commission
prsidentielle danalyse de la dictature communiste en Roumanie. Prside par Vladimir
Tismneanu, un politologue chevronn du communisme de lEurope Centrale et de
lEst, la commission a prsent au bout de 6 mois de travail un rapport de 663 pages qui
mettait en vidence les crimes et les abus du rgime communiste, montrait les coupables
et faisait plusieurs propositions pour la construction dune mmoire publique officielle
anticommuniste43. Le rapport sinspire du modle reprsent par la commission lie
39
LAnnuaire de lInstitut dinvestigation des crimes du communisme en Roumanie, vol. 1, Iai, Polirom, 2006, 310 p.
et annexes (cit dornavant comme, LAnnuaire).
40
LAnnuaire, p. 10.
41
La rsolution 1481 adopte par lAssemble parlementaire du Conseil de lEurope le 25 janvier 2006 condamne les
crimes et les abus des rgimes communistes sans pour autant condamner le communisme.
42
Traian Bsescu est le troisime prsident de la Roumanie postcommuniste, install au pouvoir en dcembre 2004
comme reprsentant dune coalition de droite qui a eu comme slogan Justice et Vrit (Dreptate i adevr, D.A.).
43
Le rapport final de la commission prsidentielle pour lanalyse de la dictature communiste en Roumanie, Bucarest,
Wiesel, qui a tudi et condamn lHolocauste en Roumanie, et il est le rsultat dune
dette assume par les membres de la commission envers les victimes du communisme. Il
officialise la vision des lites de droite et des anciens perscuts politiques sur la rpression
et la rsistance anticommuniste44.
Utilisant les conclusions du rapport, le prsident Traian Bsescu a dnonc le 18
dcembre 2006 devant le Parlement de la Roumanie le rgime communiste roumain
comme tant criminel et illgitime. Bien que lintention initiale du prsident ait t de
condamner seulement les crimes et les abus du rgime et non pas le rgime entirement45,
la dclaration finale a t fort diffrente et a dclench des ractions violentes de la part des
nostalgiques du communisme: En condamnant le systme communiste de Roumanie, je
tmoigne de mon admiration pour lhrosme de ceux qui se sont opposs la dictature,
et ce, des combattants de la rsistance et des fidles des partis politiques annihils par les
communistes jusquaux dissidents et aux opposants de la priode Ceauescu. Je rends ici,
dans la session solennelle des chambres runies du Parlement roumain, un hommage aux
grands hommes dtat Iuliu Maniu46, Ion Mihalache47, Dinu Brtianu48 et Ion Fluera49, aux
martyrs des glises, Iuliu Hossu50, Sandu Tudor51, Vladimir Ghika52, Richard Wurmbrand53,
2006, p. 626-643.
44
La partie du rapport qui traite de la violence politique est reprise des tudes publies par le Mmorial des victimes
du communisme et de la rsistance anticommuniste, le Centre international pour ltude du communisme.
45
Dclaration du prsident Traian Bsescu dans une mission de tlvision, le 5 avril 2006: Marius Tuc Show sur la
chane de tlvision Antena 1, min. 45.
46 Iuliu Maniu, homme politique ayant particip lUnion de dcembre 1918, prsident du Parti national paysan,
incarcr par les communistes, mort dans la prison de Sighet.
47 Ion Mihalache, fondateur dun Parti paysan de Transylvanie, politicien apprci dans lentre-deux-guerres, mort
dans les prisons communistes.
48
Constantin (Dinu) Brtianu, chef du Parti national libral, mort Sighet.
49 Ion Fluera, membre du Parti socialiste, ancien membre du Conseil dirigant qui a dcid de lUnion de la
Transylvanie avec le royaume de la Roumanie, mort dans la prison communiste de Gherla en 1953.
50
Iuliu Hossu, vque grco-catholique, devenu cardinale in pectore en 1969, dtenu politique ds 1948 jusqu sa
mort en 1973. Il a t renferm dans la prison de Sighet de 1950 1955.
51
Sandu Tudor, pote devenu moine en 1948, cofondateur du mouvement orthodoxe Rugul apris, dtenu politique
entre 1949-1952 et 1958-1962. Il meurt dans la prison dAiud en 1962.
52
Vladimir Ghica, petit-fils dun prince rgnant de la famille Ghica, diplomate, prtre catholique, emprisonn en
1952, il meurt en 1954 dans la prison de Jilava.
53
Richard Wurmbrand, communiste converti au luthranisme, emprisonn par les communistes entre 1948-1956
et 1959-1964. Il quitte la Roumanie communiste en 1965 et il stablit aux tats-Unis. Il meurt en 2001 en Californie.
Marton Aron54, aux membres des partis politiques dmocratiques de Roumanie, et toutes
les victimes du rgime totalitaire communiste, aux opposants et aux dissidents. Je tiens
exprimer mon apprciation pour le courage patriotique et pour la dignit de tous les
survivants des prisons communistes, qui sont les derniers tmoins directs de notre tragdie
en tant que nation55.
Approprie par linstitution prsidentielle, la victimisation du peuple roumain est avance
comme position publique de ltat. La mmoire de la rpression sintgre la mmoire nationale.
Les figures historiques mentionnes par le prsident deviennent les nouveaux hros de la patrie.
Les recommandations du prsident concernant la construction Bucarest dun monument des
victimes du communisme, la fondation dun muse de la dictature et dun centre de recherches
fonctionnant auprs de celui-ci, llaboration dune encyclopdie et dun manuel dhistoire du
communisme, lorganisation de confrences permettant la prsentation du contenu du rapport de
la commission, lorganisation dune exposition permanente au Palais du Parlement ouvrent la voie
un processus de patrimonialisation de la mmoire de la rpression. Qui plus est, les propositions
du prsident refltent une perspective occidentale de la mise en patrimoine, les lments quil
nonce composant aujourdhui tout centre de la mmoire56. Entre 2006 et 2011, plusieurs de ses
propositions ont t mises en uvre: le manuel sur le communisme, les nombreuses confrences
organises par diverses institutions patronnes par ltat. On envisage galement la cration dun
muse du communisme auquel sera rattach un centre de recherche.
En dpit de sa valeur symbolique, la condamnation officielle du rgime rouge a mis un terme au
procs du communisme qui ne savre plus ncessaire une fois le rgime condamn dans sa totalit.
Dailleurs, les difficults dinstrumentalisation dun tel procs sont bien relles. La longue dure du
rgime a min la rputation des personnes et des institutions qui auraient pu juger cette priode.
54
Mrton ron, vque grco-catholique de Transylvanie emprisonn entre 1949-1955. Il a survcu la prison et aux
attentats sa vie, il na jamais renonc la lutte pour la chrtient et pour la survivance de la foi catholique. Il meurt
en 1980. Il est en train dtre batifi par le Pape.
55
Discours du prsident devant les deux chambres runies du Parlement roumain, le 18 dcembre 2006, reproduit
sur le site HotNews.ro.
56
Annette Wieviorka, Commmorer la violence du sicle. Le cas du gnocide des Juifs, dans Actes des Entretiens du
Patrimoine, Le Regard de lHistoire. Lmergence et lvolution de la notion de patrimoine au cours du XXe sicle en France sous
la prsidence de Henry Rousso, Fayard, ditions du Patrimoine, 2003, p. 123.
Lambigut plane sur cette poque de la Roumanie, comme la justement remarqu Adrian Marino:
toute lpoque a t ambigu. Une ambigut qui nous a marqus dune certaine manire57
La rsolution du Conseil de lEurope, la Dclaration de Prague du 3 juin 2008, la Rsolution
du Parlement europen du 2 avril 2009 sur la conscience europenne et le totalitarisme, la
condamnation du rgime communiste par le prsident ont acclr ladoption dune loi de
lustration. Le projet de loi, labor et propos au Snat par quatre snateurs libraux, avait
t adopt avec des amendements par la chambre suprieure du Parlement, le 10 avril 2006.
LAssemble des dputs ne ladopte quen mai 2010. Envoye pour promulgation au prsident,
la loi est dclare en contradiction avec la Constitution par la Cour constitutionnelle, le 7 juin
2010. Le 26 avril 2011, le Snat se saisit et rejette la loi. En fvrier 2012, la coalition des partis
politiques au pouvoir remet en discussion la loi. Les chapitres rejets par la Cour constitutionnelle
en juin 2010 sont modifis ou mme abrogs. Par la suite, la loi est adopte par la Chambre des
dputs. En mars 2012, la Cour constitutionnelle la dclare encore une fois contraire lesprit de
la Constitution. Lhistoire de la lustration en Roumanie ne semble pas sarreter ici...
Les politiques visant la reconnaissance de la souffrance des anciens perscuts sont renforces
par la loi 221 de 2009 qui permet aux victimes du rgime communiste de rclamer des
ddommagements pour les annes de prison. La justice roumaine, toujours aveugle, dcide dune
manire alatoire daccorder des indemnisations faramineuses certains anciens perscuts
politiques58. Dautres rclamations des anciens dtenus sont rejetes sous prtexte de manque des
preuves juridiques.
Conclusions
Au dbut des annes 1990, les no-communistes, qui portaient le fardeau de leur cration
par le systme dchu, ont promu loubli intentionnel, la victimisation et la culpabilit collective.
De leur ct, les lites de droite (dmocratique), comptant toujours sur la victimisation, ont
57
Adrian Marino, cit par Dan Petrescu, Deconstrucii populare (Dconstructions populaires), Iai, Polirom, 2002, p.
123-124.
58
En juin 2010, le gouvernement a adopt une ordonance durgence (OUG) qui limite la somme dargent quun
ancien dtenu pourra recevoir 10 000 euros.
nanmoins milit pour la culpabilit de la Securitate et de ses collaborateurs, et pour lexaltation
de lanticommunisme incarn par les anciens dtenus politiques et par les dissidents.
la fin des annes 2000, sous lìmpulsion des institutions europennes et la suite de la
condamnation officielle du communisme par le prsident, un processus de cration dune
mmoire officielle du communisme comme rgime illgitime et criminel est entam. Un
rgime mmoriel patrimonial commence se mettre en place: des institutions, des muses, des
lois, des rcompenses matrielles pour les anciens dtenus politiques, etc. Dailleurs, ces derniers
commencent tre assimils dans la rhtorique publique aux hros de la patrie, en tant que
combattants enflamms par le patriotisme dans leur lutte contre le rgime communiste quavaient
impos les Sovitiques.
Nanmoins, au sein de la socit la mmoire du communisme reste contradictoire. Il semble
que les individus patrimonialisent leur manire lexprience communiste. Quelques-uns font de
cette priode un paradis perdu. Les nostalgiques ne voient pas le mal qua fait le communisme,
mais les bnfices dune vie aise, scurise par ltat patriarche. Dautres, comme les anciens
dtenus politiques, tout en dnonant le rgime dchu, ne se reconnaissent pas dans la vision
victimaire officielle. Pour ceux qui taient des adolescents dans les annes Ceauescu, lironie et
lauto-ironie deviennent des moyens pour gurir du syndrome traumatique communiste. Quant
aux trs jeunes, ils voient ce rgime comme une farce tragi-comique, comme une poque aussi
lointaine que le Moyen ge.

The New Politics of Memory and
the New Regime of Historiography
Liliana Deyanova
St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia
Abstract This text starts from a mytheme, Bulgaria under the yoke, recently brought
into the spotlight of public opinion on the occasion of two events, in 2006 and
2007. Both cases are about historical memory and illustrate the issue of lois mmorielles legislation of
the type that targets Holocaust denial. The first case concerns the memory of the five-century Ottoman
rule in Bulgaria and the second the forty-five-year communist yoke. This mytheme, however, is just an
occasion for raising larger questions about the autonomy of historical research today. How can historians
facing the imperative of de-nationalising history in the wake of the collapse of the official mythology
of the Party-state resist political pressures by different groups, each advocating their own sectarian
version of the past? A crucial aspect is the extent to which researchers enjoy sufficient autonomy and
public influence to oppose the older and more recent nationalisms and the so-called normalisation of
communism, as well as political formulations of historical facts. The lack of communication between
various social groups and historians is increasingly visible in scientific bodies and cultural projects.
Researchers activity is becoming fragmented while they lack the political channels and positions that
could make it possible to effectively oppose the new canonical narrative of communism and resist
political pressures on the writing of scientific history.
Keywords denationalisation of history, lieux de mmoire, Bulgaria under the yoke,

lois mmorielles, European unification of the memory of communism, .
This text starts from a mytheme,1 Bulgaria under the yoke, recently brought into the spotlight
of public opinion on the occasion of two events, in 2006 and 2007. Both cases are about historical
1
The under the yoke mytheme has a stable place in Bulgarians worldview. In the communist textbooks the yokes
were Turkish and fascist. Ivan Vazovs historical novel of 1894 was similarly titled Under the Yoke with the subtitle
reading, The life of Bulgarians in the eve of the Liberation. In 2009, this novel ranked first in the list of the most widely
read and loved books in Bulgaria.
204 Liliana Deyanova
memory and can introduce us to the debate surrounding lois mmorielles (legislation about the
memory of historic events), similar to the laws against Holocaust denial. The first case concerns
the memory of the five-century Ottoman rule in Bulgaria and the second the forty-five-year
communist yoke. This mytheme, however, is just an occasion for raising larger questions about
the autonomy of historical research today. How can historians facing the imperative of de-
nationalising history in the wake of the collapse of the official mythology of the Party-state resist
political pressures by different groups, each advocating their own sectarian version of the past? 2
I realise that the topic is too vast for a conference paper, but I aim at nothing more than the
description of two cases into which I read the symptoms of a new regime governing both historical
writing and the status of the historian as a specialist. The fashionable concept of politics of
memory is another symptom of this regime.
The first case is about the scandal surrounding a sacred place of memory, Batak, the site of the
massacre perpetrated by Ottoman irregular troops in April 1876, during the Bulgarian uprising. This
was a highly consequential event, as the international response was enormous and contributed to
the outbreak of another war between Russia (aided by its allies) and the Ottoman Empire, leading
to the liberation of Bulgaria from the five-century Turkish yoke. In 2007, the Batak massacre, which
claimed several thousand lives, has been dubbed the Bulgarian Holocaust. The controversy in 2007
was provoked by the project The Memory of Batak, initiated by two German historians.3 The project
aimed at generating reflection on the ways in which the collective memory of the Batak massacre is
constructed: e.g., to discuss the role of the visualization of the event (such as the famous painting by
the Polish artist Piotrowski) and of the poetry dedicated to Batak by the canonical author, Ivan Vazov
(known as the ideologue of the nation). One of the versions of the projects title, containing the phrase
the myth of Batak, stirred the violent reaction of both nationalist factions and influential historians.
What followed was a ban on the project-related exhibition and conference scheduled to take place in
an institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. There were petitions pro and contra (one of the
pro petitions was initiated by historians close to the Centre for Advanced Study). The thesis shared by
a large part of the participants in the debate, including historians, was that a few foreigners and venal
2
Beck (2005).
3
Baleva and Brunbauer (2008); also see Wezenkov (2008).
The New Politics of Memory and the New Regime of Historiography 205
Bulgarians paid by foreign foundations want to desacralise Batak. The ultra-nationalists insisted on
the immediate passing of a memory law on the Bulgarian Holocaust.4 The President of the Republic, a
historian by education, visited Batak and held an open lesson in history in order to defend our Batak,
the one belonging to Bulgarians who have been citizens of Europe ever since the ninth century AD. I
view the 2007 debate on Batak as a symptom of a new process of defining the nation in a post-national
situation. It is a symptom of the growing incapacity of the state to preserve its symbolic monopoly over
national places of memory and over the production of historical knowledge.
The second case concerns the adoption of a resolution about the memory of communism, the
Bulgarian lobby in support of it, as well as the resistance to it. In January 2006, the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) discussed and adopted Resolution 1481 on the
Need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes, regarded as the
culmination of different local and international efforts to officially condemn communism. I have
described elsewhere the events leading up to this.5 Certainly in Bulgaria attempts have been made
for twenty years now to draft legislation about the communist regime that ended in 1989. On 30
March 2000, the Bulgarian Parliament debated and then passed the Act Declaring the Criminal
Nature of the Communist Regime in Bulgaria. I want to focus now on the Bulgarian debate about this
type of officialisation of the memory of communism.
Bulgarian anticommunist groups had been crucial advocates for the adoption of Resolution 1481. In
2006, Lachezar Toshev, a Bulgarian MP of the Union of Democratic Forces and at the time deputy president
of PACE, organised a conference in Paris with Stephane Courtois, the internationally acclaimed historian
of communism, as the guest of honour. Courtois also took part in a conference in Brussels later in the year,
at which it was discussed the creation of an institute for the unification of the memory of communism
on a scientific basis. There was no doubt that the framework for interpreting communism will be the
so-called totalitarian paradigm. According to Courtois, the recently opened archives of the communist
regimes prove that this paradigm is correct and invalidate the theses of historians of the revisionist school.6
4
A little later, the Church canonised the martyrs more than 2000 of Batak, whose numbers differ according to
various sources and estimates: 1,800, 4,000, or 5,000 (including many women, children, and old people).
5
Deyanova (2008).
6
For a critique of the totalitarian paradigm influential during the Cold War, see Fitzpatrick (2007). The totalitarian telos
of the new Slovene historiography is analysed in Monik (2008). See also the special issue, Expertises historiennes,
There, in a nutshell, we have the idea of Bulgaria under the communist yoke. The expression was
actually used as the title of the section on Bulgaria in The Black Book of Communism, the well-known
collective work edited by Courtois.7 In an interview that I conducted with one of the three authors
of the Black Books chapter on Bulgaria, Professor Lioubomir Ognyanov, he expressed his surprise
at the way the text he had sent for the volume was modified and, unbeknownst to him, merged
indiscriminately with two other texts, by Diniou Sharlanov and Plamen Tzvetkov. The co-authored
text that emerged contained generalisations and additions with which Professor Ognianov cannot
identify. And he certainly rejects the title given to his article, Bulgaria under the communist yoke.
The problem here is once again the officialisation of memory, specifically what version of the
history of communism should become dominant through its dissemination through history textbooks,
museums, and scientific studies. Consider that in January 2006, the assertion that communism is a
regime more perverse than nazism was not supported by the necessary majority of two-thirds of the
Council of Ministers and thus failed to become mandatory in all European history textbooks.
The Memory of Batak
The project The Memory of Batak is another stage in the struggle for national places of
memory, unfolding in the context of the opening of post-communist society and of critiques
of the traditional grand narrative of the nation which have caused visible tensions within the
historians community, implicating both Bulgarian and European scholars.8 There is increasingly
of Socits contemporaines 39 (2000).

7
See Courtois (2002).
8
I have developed elsewhere a thesis which I find useful to summarise here, namely that communist (i.e., pre-1989)
history textbooks were much indebted to the historiographical mood of the period before 1944. The transformation
of history textbooks in the years after 1944 i.e., with the advent of communist regimes to Eastern Europe was not
radical; the internationalist meta-narrative and the spirit of internationalism are not dominant themes in the textbooks.
Of course, the textbooks are permeated by the glorification of the masses and by descriptions of the treasons of the
national chauvinist bourgeoisie and of the forces of imperialism; the entire course of human history is interpreted
in the new historical-materialist key and is marked by Marxist teleology, e.g., the theme of the liberation of the working
people. But this does not yet mean the triumph of internationalism. The historiographical production post-1944 (as well
as post-1989) is part of the more general paradigm and wider national historical culture (or, more precisely, national
mentality) of the pre-ideological longue dure perspective on the development of the nation. In this respect if in no other
historiographical productions post-1944 are not so far removed from the emphasis on Bulgarian national history that
defined interwar, bourgeois historiography. This is evident in the pride of place given to the nineteenth-century revival of
Bulgarias glorious past, and the emphasis on such topics as the tearing apart of the nations body by the Berlin Peace
Treaty of 1878, the abduction of its children, and the Great Powers self-interested disrespect for Bulgarias natural
more talk of the denationalisation of history and there are various projects about how to achieve
it. Significantly, during the Batak controversy, in the spring of 2007, a conference was scheduled,
under the patronage of the President of Bulgaria, to discuss the first joint French-German history
textbook and its larger implications for writing European history. The textbook marked the
repudiation of the rigid convictions of national pedagogues such as Ernest Lavisse (1842-1922; the
author of one of the first history textbooks, which Pierre Nora has called the Gospel of the little
French citizens), and particularly of the thesis that our ancestors are ourselves in the past and
our heirs are ourselves in the future. The time had come for the end of this traditional paradigm
and its emphasis on the monolithic national-state history and its heroes. (In its most perfect form,
this paradigm represents the people, the state, and their heroes as a trinity, the contact with the
other as a military clash, and neighbouring peoples as wrongdoers.9)
Among the many statements made during the Batak debate, I found two that illustrate, in a
logically pure form, the two extreme types of response to the transformations in our historical
knowledge. On the one hand, you have the idea that
History must be denationalised like the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company and the Sodi plants in
Devnya, possibly with the participation of international strategic partners.
On the other hand, authoritative historians like the director of the Institute of History, Georgi
Markov, argued during the debate on Batak that globalisation thinks that history stands in its
way and that globalisation will prohibit history because everything is for sale.
The problem that interests me is how to explain the diverse reactions to the project The Myth
of Batak and how to answer a series of related questions: How are national places of memory
conceived of in the new, post-national age? What does the denationalisation of history actually
means? Where exactly are the cultural fault-lines are the differences in attitudes towards history
borders. The themes of national territory and land, Bulgarian belonging and blood sacrifice, Bulgarian nativism, and
Bulgarian endangered heritage define this historiographical discourse. National identity, including the modern civic
identity, is reduced to ethnicity; people of non-Bulgarian origin are excluded from the body of the nation: e.g., in Bulgaria
citizens of Turkish origin are not Bulgarians. This stirs strong feelings that later can be easily put to political uses.
9
See Panayotova (2005).
generational? Or are they determined by political and institutional affiliation, social capital,
education, or other social factors?
The question is not only local; it is not merely the symptom of the Balkans post-communist
deficiencies with respect to educated nationalism and normal historiographical practices; nor is
it simply an episode in national politics in which the fears of the anti-European or superficially
Europeanised elites were speculated. The case of Batak shows the transformation of the role of
national symbols and the growing inability of national educators to propose national and state
representations that are more than mere myths. The logic of a new type of state nationalism can
also be discerned here, with populist but efficient messages.
This is a European and global phenomenon: France recently created its Ministry of
Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Co-development, and the defenders of Quebecs
sovereignty, worried by the declining interest in national history (for which they blamed the
foreign intoxication), proposed a new curriculum of national history. Everywhere there is talk
of open borders, de-territorialisation, separation of citizenship and nationality, the paralysis of
representative democracy, and the vacuum of meaning and collective identities during times of
insecurity and media-driven populism. It is clear that the old nation-state and its institutions are
in crisis. It is therefore understandable that there should also be a crisis in the science of history
and its national institutions, for its emancipation as an autonomous field was connected precisely
to the birth of the nation and to the grand narrative of its progress.
But the political and scientific elites that were formed within the container of the nation-
state are only dimly aware of the current post-national cultural changes.10 Nationalism has
ceased to be the second nature of citizenship, as Habermas puts it. The national perspective
no longer provides an adequate framework for grasping the new forms of living together.
It cannot explain why the populist language is the logical response to the crisis of meaning
in todays global, risk modernity and why nowadays this language seems the only possible
course for the symbolic representation of the national political community. The neo-populist
reactions in different countries are the reaction to the radical absence of perspectives in a
10
Beck (2005).
world whose limits and fundaments have been shaken.11 According Ulrich Beck, populism
may turn out to be a real challenge and even a shock therapy for democracy. Populism is not
the symptom of absent statehood but, rather, of impossible statehood, of a statehood that faced
with the crisis of peoples sovereignty can no longer exist in the old way. The populist language is
one of the few possible languages during a time of severe shortage of adequate symbolisations
of the common civic project. During such a time, the past becomes the chief resource for
the self-definition of the community. But globalisation as a process where the national is no
longer national and the international is no longer international presupposes a new type of
politics and a new way of thinking about the common weal. Therefore, one must redefine the
communitarian we. It cannot be otherwise when financial flows, deregulations, migrations,
risks, climatic changes, and the new technological revolution have all become key parts of
our everyday life. Thus the nation-state ceases to be that maximally encompassing frame,
the container wherein the different institutions, groups, and professional guilds reside.
Moreover, we are so much more independent nationally as the more we participate in a
dense network of trans-national dependencies.12
The problem is: how is public action possible today, and what are the symbols that mobilise it? Beck
argues for a new cosmopolitan memory that would emerge following the liberation of memory
and therefore of history from the national container. And this also means the liberation
of the narrative from the emphasis on the glorious past. Cosmopolitan memory presupposes the
recognition and interpenetration of different histories and it entails a focus on the common
memory of a shared history, in contradistinction with the separate, monological histories of
culprits and victims, winners and losers.13 National modernity, in its strife for homogeneity,
seldom makes recourse to this type of dialogue. Trans-national mechanisms of conflict resolution
are a step towards overcoming both the extreme technocratic position (Batak like the Bulgarian
Telecommunication Company) and the re-emergence of national mythologies (the bones of
Batak are our last stronghold against the threat of globalisation).
11
Ibid., p. 7.
12
Ibid.
13
Beck, (2005), p. 104.
However, in the debate on Batak, national identity comes out again as inexorably tied to the
Bulgarian land and nature, i.e., as an ahistorical presence or, put simply, a myth.14 According to
the Presidents open lesson in history, Bulgarians have been European citizens as early as the
ninth century, when King Boris introduced Christianity. It was not possible to discern from the
Presidents lesson that Bulgarian national history is history, in the sense that Bulgarian identity is
not a heritage but an ongoing project, and its places of memory are at the same time places of hope.
The audience had no means of understanding that the Turkish version of the Batak massacre or the
stories told by the Muslims from the neighbouring villages are also part of our, Bulgarian, history;
that these stories are not things that necessarily weaken our identity; and that accordingly they
must not be excised from the national record. The question is not what you are but who you are;
not whose bones you have inherited but what you make of them through your own actions. In
this sense, Bulgarian identity must not be preserved but rediscovered, again and again.15
It seems to me that commentators of both camps did not understand the deep connection
between places of memory and places of hope, the fact that these two types of places constantly
refer to one another. This has always been so because they are two sides of one and the same reality:
the sacred dead heroes of the nation are connected to the meta-narrative of the progress of the nation
that has inspired the nations builders with the advent of modernity. Otherwise, it must be strange
to have a new institutional design while our nation stands intact.
In the debate on Batak we can also read a growing tension between, on the one hand, historians, non-
governmental organisations, and the new types of internationally-recognised academic institutions
such as the Centre for Advanced Study (defined as a centre of academic excellence), and on the
other hand, traditional historians and bureaucrats from the Ministry of Education and other national
institutions. The latter still possess the means to control the teaching of history, notwithstanding that
there are now projects for writing history textbooks in the spirit of multiculturalism and tolerance
(such projects, however, remain marginal). I will return to this tension in the second part of the paper.
Here I want to discuss another kind of symptom that, in my view, can be read into the Batak
14
Myth is precisely what turns history into nature; Barthes (1957).
15
Ditchev (2000).
2007 controversy, and that testifies to a more global crisis of civil society. With the transition
from totalitarianism to democracy, a shift has taken place in the national meta-narrative away
from its fixation on national grandeur and heroism and towards an emphasis on national suffering
and sacrifice. In the whole media thriller about Batak, the emphasis has been not so much on the
heroism of the rebels than on the slaughtered people, the victims of the massacre. Not only for
the nationalist leaders, Batak turned out to be a real Bulgarian Holocaust. I think there is an
explanation for this emphasis on the victims and their testimonies and memories,16 and it has to do
with the new memory politics. The victims and the excluded do not have the possibility of forceful
action. They occupy a marginal position with regard to the flows of information and the social
exchanges that underlie the basic institutions of the changing world. The marginialised, however,
do have one resource but it is a restricted one (from our point of view, at least): they are the ones
who have suffered. Their moral discourse is not that of agents but of passive, suffering victims. And
since they cannot be efficient and successful in the major transactions, they hope for access in the
global circulation of moral goods by appealing to the so-called retroactive justice theorised by
John Rawls. Thus politics turns into a representation of victims or, more precisely, a competition
of victims. This has been analysed by Jean-Michel Chaumont in his studies of the memory of
the Holocaust. And it is Holocaust that now informs the paradigm of the victim. Forgotten in
all this is the fact that memory is not religion and it is not communication with the dead. It is a
project. As I have already intimated, the places of memory are necessarily also places of hope. It is
therefore important to question the many moral lobbies that present memory as a religion (they
are efficient because, in Chaumonts words, it is better to be a victim than a failure).
Condemning communism
I have already mentioned that the unification of the memory of communism on a scientific
basis was the ambition of a group of historians participating in a conference in Brussels in the
aftermath of the adoption of Resolution 1481/2006 by the Council of Europe Parliamentary
Assembly. (No Bulgarian historian took part in this conference.) I would like now to draw
16
See Chaumont (2000).
attention to the growing difference between remembrances of socialism and the more general,
more stable memory of communism; in other words, between the memory of communism and
the historiography of the communist regime.
I cannot trace here the different phases of the interpretations of the communist past post-1989
and the difficulties that historians still face in trying to give a scholarly and objective structure to
the testimonies about communism that have flooded the public sphere, ensuring thereby that all
the various narratives would be heard. The general point is that there ought to be an ideal type
of historical public space in modern society, in other words, that the modern places of memory
deserve the status of common places of memory even if they are not places of common memory. The risk
remains, of course, that states, the Europe Union, or particular interest groups might impose their
own symbolic monopoly over the writing of history. As part of my research project, conducted in
the frame of Maria Todorova and Stefan Troebsts international project Remembering communism,
I have interviewed twenty-six sociologists, anthropologists, cultural theorists, and historians, about
their memories of Bulgarian communism.17 One of the first claims to a monopoly over historical
knowledge was laid, one interviewee remembers, through pressure from Moscow. The first
academic history of Bulgaria was made in the form of a scale model in order to be easily transportable
and re-created.18 An interesting connection was made by another interviewee, who asked whether
The Black Book of Communism chapter on Bulgaria assembled in Paris by Stephane Courtoiss team
should not also be seen as a similar effort to ground a monopoly over historical memory?
To return to the attempts to create laws on memory: on 30 March 2000 the Bulgarian Parliament
debated, and one month later finally passed with the large support of the Union of Democratic
Forces (UDF) and despite the socialists opposition, the Act Declaring the Criminal Nature of the
Communist Regime in Bulgaria. Parliamentary commissions also discussed different proposals for
the creation of an Institute of National Memory. In the project of the historians related to UDF, the
creation of the institute is defended as a democratic, anticommunist initiative (after the model
of the similar Polish institute that was reportedly created to implement the decisions of the
17
See http://www.rememberingcommunism.com. I have also used in my analysis the interviews published in
Mutafchieva et al. (2005-2006) and Zapryanova and Vecheva (1994).
18
Mutafchieva et al. (1995).
European Parliament). In some projects the proposed institute was designated as the Institute for
the Study of the Crimes of Communism. Thus UDF proposed that half of the institutes members
should be nominated by the national association of the victims of communism and the other
half by the High Judicial Council and the National Assembly. A basic task was the formation of
proposals for history curricula that will be submitted to the Ministry of Education.
Before this law on communism, there had also been a series of attempts to pass de-
communisation and lustration laws. A model lustration law was the Act of Provisionally Introducing
Certain Additional Qualifications for Senior Members of Scientific Institutions and the Higher Certifying
Commission of 9 December 1992, known as the Panev Law, after the name of the UDF MP who
initiated it. An Anti-Panev Law was submitted a year later, blocking the effects of the Act.
On 21 October 1998, Parliament passed a State Administration Act that contained lustration
clauses. The then President Petar Stoyanov used his right to veto it and returned the legislative
project to Parliament for further discussion. On 30 July 1997, the National Assembly, again with large
UDF support, passed a law on the declassification of the files of the communist-era State Security. But
this law was abrogated by the new centrist formation, the coalition The National Movement Simeon
the Second (named after Bulgarias last monarch). Finally, as of 6 December 2006, Bulgaria has a law
about access to the State Security files. The fixation on files, on conspiracy theories, and on the clean
past turned out to be one of the central problems in the debates on the memory of communism.
While Resolution 1481 was not approved by the Bulgarian Parliament in 2006, the year of its
promulgation by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, it was in the end adopted in
2009. A little later, on 19 November 2009, Parliament also approved the European Parliament
Resolution of 2 April 2009 regarding European Conscience and Totalitarianism, which
proclaimed 23 August as a Europe-wide Remembrance Day for the victims of all totalitarian and
authoritarian regimes.
Answering my questions about de-communisation and memory laws, some interviewees
have expressed optimism about the new concentrated efforts of talented people [i.e., researchers]
in various large-scale projects. One interviewee indicated that it is too early now to speak of a
[new] historiographical canon and it is perhaps not necessary to create one. Others challenged the
very idea of any unified history of Europe on a scientific basis, particularly if, e.g., the common
antifascist experience would be excluded from it and antifascist resistance would be ostracised
(as Habermas also points out, the anti-totalitarian consensus necessarily presupposes an a priori
anti-antifascism). Another interviewee argued that the past must be continuously re-written and
denounced any canon as
a foolish idea, because it assumes that there exists only one reading on the contrary, the facts may
be the same but the perspectives change. This whole effort to codify into one single reading that has
not even been done, i.e., to codify it in advance before even finding those people who will write it, is
wrong, disturbing... I am not worried that we cannot boast of a textbook that would offer [a normative
reading of] the memory of this period It is hard to point to an era on which there exists a consensus
of opinions, and I am not sure that this is necessarily a bad thing. It isnt clear to me why it should be
precisely communism that we must read in this way, normatively...
The political underpinnings of Resolution 1481, i.e., the agenda of the European Peoples Party,
were also discussed.
Many historians do not accept the specific steps of the de-communisation process in Bulgaria
and question the support behind the legislation passed to this end. It is often felt, however, that
the restrictions imposed on the activity of former communist scientists are justified: according to
one interviewee, it is right that there should be restrictions on their professional interference, on
their impact on the current professional circles; just as there are sanctions against Nazism, there
should also be sanctions against communism in its most criminal dimensions.
But among the historians circles the substantial debates on the memory laws and the
unification of the memory of communism are rare. Historians have not commented extensively
on the Bulgarian chapter of The Black Book of Communism. The historical community has allowed
a researcher such as Plamen Tzvetkov, one of the Bulgarian contributors to The Black Book of
Communism, to assert his voice authoritatively in the public sphere, even if his arguments are
often of the following form: from a mystical point of view, it can be said that the adepts of 9
September [the communist coup of 1944] are an emanation of the forces of Darkness, but from
the perspective of the twenty-first century we can simply give them a diagnosis and say that these
people suffer from a grave psychological disease. The serious historians have preferred to stay
apart from the historians associated with the political parties, and, besides, they lack the freedom
to publicly defend academic research.19 According to some of my interviewees, there is no open
debate because it is considered inconvenient since this means to open a war within the guild
itself. And due to the dim consensus, there is somehow no debate, that is, this is considered a
sensitive and human question that must have its solution outside these circles themselves. But
there also is a fragmentation of research, an increasing dependence on political and ideological
symbolic violence and on the economic market, and a dependence on the scale model that trims
and homogenises the ever dimmer and more distant memories of communism.
In my analysis, one of the central questions was to what extent do researchers post-1989 have
the autonomy and public influence needed to oppose the old and new state nationalisms and
the so-called normalisation of communism,20 as well as the political formulation of historical

truths. An increasingly visible lack of communication between researchers from different groups
and generations has contributed to the fragmentation of research, evident in numerous historical
and cultural projects. Historians 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 scientific history. We run the risk of a return to a narrative of the past
that edits out the diversity of individual memories and homogenises in an almost mythological
manner the collective memory.
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Sofia, 2008.
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris,1957.
Beck, Ulrich. Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir lre de la mondialisation. Paris, 2005.
Chaumont, Jean-Michel. Du culte des hros la concurrence des victimes. Criminologie, 33.1 (2000): 167-83.
Courtois, Stephane. Du pass faisons table rase: Histoire et mmoire du communisme en Europe. Paris, 2002.
19
Nyagulov (2010).
20
See Moeller (2002), p. 229.
Damamme Daniel and Marie-Claire Lavabre. Expertises historiennes. Socits contemporaines, 39 (2000).
Deyanova, Liliana. Des condamnations locales du communisme la Condamnation internationale de janvier
2006 (les guerres des lites bulgares pour le monopole de la mmoire du communisme). In Exprience et
mmoire: 193-213, ed. Bogumil Jewciewicki and Erika Nimis. Paris, 2008.
Ditchev, Ivaylo. Ot prinadlejnost kam identichnost. Sofia, 2002.
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funktsii (The Science of History in Bulgaria in the Epoch of Communism: Institutional Organization
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Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Revisionism in Soviet History. History and Theory 46.4 (2007): 77-91.
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et Socits 22.2 (2003): 3-15.
Hartog, Francois. Rgimes dhistoricit. Paris, 2003.
Monik, Rastko. Zgodovi nopi sj e kot i denti tetna vednost: Trije slovenski zgodovinarji o razbitju
Jugoslovanske federacije (Historiography as identitary knowledge: Three Slovene historians on the
destruction of Yugoslav federation). Borec, revija za zgodovino, antropologijo in knjievnost 60 (2008).
Moeller, Robert G. What has coming to terms with the past meant in post-world War II Germany. Central
European History 35.2 (2002): 223-56.
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Mutafchieva, Veraet al. Sdt nad istorizite: Documeni i diskusii 1944-1950. Sofia, 1995.
Nyagulov, Blagovest. Kak da pichem istoria na blizkoto minalo. Kultura 19 February 2010, Sofia edition.
Panayotova, Boriana. Limage de soi et de lautre: Les Bulgares et leurs voisins dans les manuels dhistoire nationale
(1878-1944). Qubec, 2005.
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Levski and the making of Bulgarias national hero). Sofia, 2009.
Wezenkov, Alexander.Proektat i scandalat Batak. Anamnesa 1 (2009).
Zapryanova, Antoaneta and Ekaterina Vecheva. Istoritsite: za istinata, nasiliata, za sebe si. (Historians: On the
Truth, on Violence, on Themselves). Sofia, 1994.

The Modern Person and the
Myth of Chance: Shapings and
Reshapings of Bulgarian Post-
Socialist Narrative Identities
Nadezhda Galabova
The Institute for Studies of the Recent Past, Sofia
Abstract Although in recent years historians and social scientists have gained a greater
appreciation for the importance of studying the role of myth in historiography,
little attention has been paid to the way myths function in oral histories and personal biographical
narratives. These are often envisioned as unreliable and unauthentic depictions of the past and are rarely
given careful consideration. If we are, however, to examine myth seriously, we should study not only the
ways in which it succeeds to forge collective bonds and initiate unified actions towards a common goal,
but also the ways in which it functions on a daily basis how it is incorporated within the everyday actions
of individuals, how it directs their mundane choices and forms their agency. That is what this paper aims
to do: by interpreting oral narratives recorded in the village of Iskar, Bulgaria in 1997, this essay sets as its
task to trace how the grand narrative of the socialist state and the myth of the modern (i.e. rational) socialist
person influence these individual biographical narratives. The paper examines to what extent this myth is
incorporated in ones system of beliefs and how it is remade, re-fabricated by adding other elements. By
drawing on Austins findings about performative utterances and Butlers observations on performativity,
the paper aims to demonstrate how the myth of the modern socialist person a master of his own destiny
and taking control of his life is interspersed with another myth, the myth of chance or luck. The narrators
perform their past both as a process of rational accomplishments and as a series of unpredictable twists of
fortune. The main argument developed here is that in life narratives chance and rational agency are not
contradictory, but complementary. The myth of chance enables the respondents to save face when telling
their life stories today. The inexplicable, the irrational provides them with the opportunity to show their life
as a meaningful, socially acceptable entity, as an achievement of a modern person.
Keywords everyday life under socialism, oral history, performativity, agency
It has been a while since social researchers and students of history started examining the function
of myth in historiography.1 The main focus of their efforts has been to deconstruct political and
cultural myths dissolved in historiographical writings, to show that far from being objective
1
An earlier version of this paper was presented in 2010 at the seminar Patterns of anxiety at the Southeast Academic
League, Sofia. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the participants for their comments and criticisms.
218 Nadezhda Galabova
and unbiased descriptions of the past, these writings actually aim at forging bonds, prescribing
collective identities, and uniting human actions towards a common goal. Historiographies of
nation states and modern state building do not simply describe the past, they create reality and
provide the members of a group with a sense of belonging and continuity.2
It seems to me, however, that little attention has been paid to the way myths work in oral histories
and biographical narratives. These utterances appear to so unquestioningly fall under the realm
of fiction, that they are hardly ever given proper consideration. Oral narratives are regarded as
epistemologically unreliable. And yet, it is precisely their dubious truth-value that relates them to
myths, and as such, they are susceptible to the same influences that shape myths. And if we want
to investigate how myths function on a daily basis, how they shape identities, direct individual
choices and construct the world of the mundane, it is exactly life stories that we need to study.
This is what I am going to do in this paper: first, I am going to discuss the concept of performativity
as a methodological tool that can help us examine the relation between biographical narratives
and myth, as well as re-establish narratives as meaningful, reliable accounts of the past; then, I am
going to explain my choice as a researcher to go back and read anew the life narratives recorded
in 1997; finally, by analysing these narratives, I am going to show how the myth of the socialist
state (and its citizens as rational and independent builders of the states future) is interspersed
with another myth the myth of chance, and how in their interaction and correlation they shape
and reshape the narrative identities of Bulgarian (post)socialist persons.
Performativity and myth
Just like myth, oral life stories are narratives; just like myth, they are deemed to be unauthentic,
false narratives; they are too prone to exaggeration and subjectivity. Thus, they cannot be regarded as
realistic and correct depictions of the past. My task, however, is to approach oral life stories seriously
and to make sense of them, to interpret them as conceptions conveying important information.
In order to do so, I draw on Austins observations on performative utterances. In his studies
2
This is my broad definition of myth, and here I follow mainly Bottici (2007).
The Modern Person and the Myth of Chance 219
of philosophy of language,3 he directs his criticism at traditional logic, which claims that the
main task of statements (human exchanges) is to describe reality. Contrary to this widely spread
misconception, Austin contests, language is more often used to create, rather than to describe
reality. Only a small number of our exchanges can be considered purely descriptive. The vast
majority of human utterances do not describe but create, influence, change and contest reality
(and the interlocutor). Therefore, such utterances should be defined as performative they have a
dramaturgical, active dimension. They are not merely a grammatically correct string of words, they
are speech acts; they do things. Thats why performative utterances cannot be evaluated as true/
false but as felicitous/infelicitous corresponding or not corresponding to a context or situation.
Judith Butler develops this idea further by pointing out that (gender) identities are in fact
performative identities. They are confirmed on a daily basis through the act of repetition and
reiteration of a constructed reality that the performers themselves take for granted:
In this sense, gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed;
rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in timean identity, instituted through a stylised
repetition of acts. Further, gender is instituted through the stylisation of the body and, hence, must be
understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds
constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off
the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of a constituted social
temporality. Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then
the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment
which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in
the mode of belief. If the ground of gender identity is the stylised repetition of acts through time, and
not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the
arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or
subversive repetition of that style.4
This is, as a matter of fact, the starting point of my argument: when we analyse life stories, rather
than listening to the clear cut, unambiguous representations and repetitions of past reality, we should
focus on the moments when the stories are interrupted, shattered and then glued together again; the
3
Austin (1979). See especially the chapter Performative utterances, pp. 233-53.
4
Butler (2003), pp. 97-98
moments when, as Butler says, there is a possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking
or subversive repetition of that style. These interruptions, these not yet rationalised instances
demonstrate that the past is felt as a myth, its reality is contested. Although the narrators might not
(or cannot) clearly articulate it, they put into question the taken-for-grantedness of the past.
The presence of the past: the inhibited narration
This was my motivation to read anew, and in a new key, the collection of life stories recorded
in 1997 and published in a book in 2004.5 The book contains 19 of the most interesting narratives
of the inhabitants of the village of Iskar. These stories were recorded as part of a project of the
Department of Theory and History, Sofia University. The main objective of that project was to
study the changes in family structures, the transformations in the notion of family and family
relationships under the pressure of the on-going modernisation imposed by the state. A small
number of these stories strictly follow the researchers questions and rarely discuss anything
other than the number and names of siblings and children, the frequency of family reunions and
the migration of cousins and other relatives. Quite a few of the respondents, however, go beyond
this narrative trajectory. They need to relate something else. The problem is that, at times, this
something else is discarded as irrelevant to the interest of the particular researcher; at times it is
ignored as vague or even meaningless.
Therefore, my aim is to concentrate on those blurred and elusive moments in the stories that
are simultaneously a symptom of a kind of break and, at the same time, a link enabling the
continuation of the narrative. They are the discontinuous cuts of a seemingly substantial and total
identity. These are the instances when subjectivity, ritualised and sedimented through numerous
repetitions, cannot be presented in the same way, but there are no routine strategies that would
help the narrator perform his/her past in a new fashion.
Thus, biographical story-telling entails numerous contradictions, whose mutual exclusiveness
sometimes makes it hard to produce a cohesive narrative. On the one hand, the narrative has to
5
Koleva and Gavrilova (2004).
present the respondent as a decision-maker, one who controls his choices and gives a direction to
his life: life cannot be a simple sequence of events, inflicted on the individual. Life is supposed to
be a logical sequence of actions that form a rational totality. This, as a matter of fact, is the myth
of modernity the individual is liberated from oppression and dependence, he acts according to
the laws of reason. To the extent to which the Bulgarian socialist state regarded itself as the perfect
fulfiller the modernity project it provides the ideal social conditions for an individual to unfold
his potential this is also the myth of the socialist citizen. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult
to narrate your past (as embedded in the socialist state) in a situation when the symbolic world of
socialism has collapsed and its ruins still try to find their problematic integration in the landscape
of the present. The past recurrently comes to the present but only as a symptom, a trauma. It
presents itself in un-rationalised flashes. The glue that puts the narrative together and actually
makes the story-telling possible is the myth of chance. It is the technique through which the past
invades the present of the story-telling, breaks it, confuses it but also soothes and smoothes it.
The problematic past is felt in the present of the narrative without being articulated, chance shows
the dependence of the narrator on structures and circumstances beyond his reach; along with this,
however, chance provides the respondent with the opportunity to narrate his life as his own life.
Therefore, my argument is that the inhabitants of the village of Iskar rely on the myth of chance
to step back from responsibility for their past. The conception of chance renders credible and
socially acceptable today the changes in their biographies. It becomes an instrument that helps
the narrator (where and when necessary) to voluntarily deny himself control of the events in his
life. Chance gives an explanation without explaining; it presents the narrator as an agent who
unfolds his life without holding him responsible for his deeds.
The question is whether this myth of chance (the fortune/the inexplicable) is a kind of pre-modern
remnant, or if we should interpret it as a complex amalgamation of traditional attitudes towards the
role of chance, official socialist conceptions of the individual as a rational agent and builder of his
life and, last but not least, the impact of the informal socialist culture of connections and networking.
A number of the narratives from the book follow the pre-modern pattern of explanation and
interpretation of chance. The inexplicable cuts through peoples lives in order to balance them,
to sort out the good and evil. This interference might seem incomprehensible, but one tries to
come to terms with it by holding the belief that losses and failures will always be compensated
for. As one of the respondents puts it: Weve had both joys and anxieties.6
Nevertheless, the stories provide us with a lot of other examples where fortune/ chance loses its
transcendental substance. The myth of chance undergoes its modernisation processes (just like
the Bulgarian village does). If we lend an attentive ear to the life stories, we notice how everyday
socialist culture manages to incorporate this traditional remnant and to turn it into a functional
element of socialist everyday living. Here, we can see how the myth of chance surreptitiously
intermingles with the myth of the liberated individual and plays an essential part in shaping the
identities of Bulgarian socialist citizens.
Of course, this interaction can only be noticed on the level of the mundane, because as far
as official socialist culture is concerned, chance can hardly be upheld as a socially acceptable
strategy for public representation.
Socialist citizens do not take or seize chances; they confront them and remain loyal to the state-
prescribed rational identity. What follows below is a telling example of this type of self-presentation:
I was never afraid in those days, when I was a young state official, I was never afraid of the upcoming
events, nobody could influence me, I was very independent, I was upfront, I was very direct. Perhaps,
to tell you the truth, this is the reason why I used to suffer so much. But Ive never regretted my
relentlessness and my beliefs. Ive never had two or three faces Ive never regretted, I told you, my
convictions. The only problem is that they caused damage to my nervous system.7
This type of hard-line self-description, however, is not common to the other respondents. In
their narratives, daily living in Iskar is shown as a process of constant adaptation to the reality
of socialism. Chance is not transcendental anymore; it illegally enters the everyday rhythm of
living. It is not an event inflicted by Fate on the individual, who should to put up with it and
hope for a later compensation. Chance loses its firmness and irreversibility. It becomes flexible
6
Ibid., p. 42.
7
Ibid., p. 205.
and manageable. It can easily become mischance. Hence, it is up to each individual to carefully
manipulate it, to take the best advantage of the limited availability of the system and materialise
it as if it were his own choice. None of the respondents tells his story as a sequence of chances,
but none of them underestimates its impact either. The constraints of the system might lead to
misfortune and unhappiness, but at times they can also work in ones favour, giving an unexpected
push of ones biographical trajectory. That is how even the above-mentioned hardliner remembers
the start of his career path: due to unforeseen circumstances, I became an army officer.8
There is no doubt that the professional development of individuals is of great importance for
the Bulgarian socialist state. We should not forget that the main social distinctions of the time are
based on professional terms: socialist society consists of workers, peasants and state functionaries.
Therefore, in this essay I will focus primarily on the way the myth of chance is deployed when the
respondents talk about their career path.
As we know, labour is highly esteemed in the value system of socialism. It is labour that allows
individuals to develop their potential as subjects of history. Labour accelerates the course of
history and contributes to the rapid fulfilment of the socialist states utopian future. Thus, high
professional achievements become a token of model/normative identity. In this work-centred

culture, where people have very limited opportunities for self-expression and advancement,
career development concentrates immense social capital. Finding a good job becomes one of the
few options for an upward social mobility. Therefore, it is no wonder that the power games within
society evolve around the search for and securing of a proper job.
This observation applies with greater force when we consider peasants in socialist Bulgaria. As Gerald
Creed comments in his detailed study of everyday life in one Bulgarian village in the 1980s, peasants
become the step children of the socialist state.9 The constructive energies of the state are directed to
the workers it is the workers who can be moulded into new people; they can become the authentic
holders of the communist ideal. The peasants are always underestimated and left behind. Even after
the collectivisation and the consolidation,10 the village is still associated with tradition, backwardness,
8
Ibid., p. 184.
9
Creed (1997).
10
Collectivisation took place in Bulgaria between 1952 and 1958. This controversial process was not implemented
and old-fashioned modes. These tendencies intensify in the 1960s, when the gap between urban and
rural lifestyle widens. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that large groups of peasants migrate to towns
in search for a better life and opportunities to acquire more prestigious jobs. Initially, this is a process
initiated and guided by the state migration is part and parcel of the state-imposed industrialization of
the country. Later on, however, the state tries to stop these developments, as mass migration threatens
to lead to the depopulation of villages and the rapid ageing of the work force. The higher and more
specialised education thus gains enormous value and becomes one of the few opportunities to escape
from rural life. The process of migration does not bypass the village of Iskar. The narratives can give us
a clear account how this widely spread development has its impact on the individual experiences, life
courses and biographical trajectories of the villagers.
Valko A. casts his life story as a class struggle. In spite of the unforeseen circumstances and
limitations he has faced throughout his life, he has managed to make the best of the existing
possibilities, while remaining (as he himself claims) loyal to his authentic, unchangeable identity.
His migration is undesired, and comes as a result of external forces and influences: a denunciation
about his purported wrongdoings written by a local party member deprives him of his nice job in
the village and he is compelled to move to a neighbouring one. There, his impeccable reputation
makes it possible for him to pursue a successful career development:
After the foundation of the APK,11 I was offered the possibility to become an accountant. Those gentlemen
jumped, No, he is a son-in-law of a kulak.12 So I was accused of financial fraud. When they understood
without the use of physical force. Adopting the Soviet model of kolkhozy, the Bulgarian state initiated a country-
wide collectivisation of land and property. The idea promoted through these measures was that common ownership
of land and resources would boost agricultural production; the organisation of land and labour into large-scale
collective farms would intensify agricultural work and accelerate the modernisation of Bulgarian villages. The efforts
of the state led to the establishment of the so-called TKZS (collective farms Trudovo-kooperativni zemedelski
stopanstva: Labour Co-operative Land Farms). In a further attempt to improve agricultural production at the
beginning of the 1970s, the state consolidated the TKZSs in even larger-scale formations APK (Agrarno-promishlen
kompleks Agrarian Productive Complex). Collectivisation in Iskar took place between 1952 and 1958.
11
See above, note 10.
12
Kulaks (Russian: , kulak, fist, by extension tight-fisted) were a category of relatively affluent peasants in Russia.
According to the Soviet state, however, they were class enemies and exploiters of poorer farmers. They were also the
main reactionary force resisting collectivisation. Therefore, they had to be exterminated as a class. Peasants classified as
kulaks were persecuted. Bulgarian communist authorities adopted the same attitude to affluent peasants. As we can see
from Valkos account, people identified as kulaks had no legal resources to prove this identification wrong. Although in
most cases the label kulak was barely based on any facts, it became a powerful tool for political and social stigmatisation.
It played an important part in power games at local level and was often deployed to cast a shadow on the biographies
there was no evidence for fraud, that I had grown up with decent people, that I had been a secretary
of the Youth League13 but finally I turned out to be an enemy, the son-in-law of a kulak. I read the
evaluation theyd given me and it said see this and that page of the book History of the Bulgarian
Communist Party in the county of Provadia. Can you imagine how ignorant they were? In the book it
was written that Georgi Atanasov had killed participants in the September uprising,14 but they ascribed
this to my father Georgi Anastasov, who had nothing to do with this. So, it was necessary for me to my
wife found the author of the book, Tsvetan Tsyankov Ninov he is the godfather of my father. And she
told him, Godfather, how can you write that my father-in-law killed members of the September uprising
from 1923? And he said, Goddaughter, this is nonsense, this refers to Georgi Atanasov, not to Georgi
Anastasov. So he opens his book, he reads, he goes to a notary and he writes a declaration then I sorted
it out but I didnt want to get back here. This was in 1960-61, I turned my back on this village, I went to
Valchidol.15 There I was in charge of a department. The whole region respected me I was one of the
model employees. Then we went to Devnya.16 They promoted me to head of brigade; they appreciated
my work, they offered me to continue studying I became a mechanic in the machine shop; I became
deputy chief mechanic. Then I was deputy chief of the repair machine shop and after that I got retired.
I carried on working three years after retirement and they begged me to stay but I wouldnt. I got my
recognition there. They even gave me a flat in Varna Theres nothing to complain about17
This is how the misfortunate beginning of his professional development eventually obtains a
positive evaluation. By chance, the mistake made by the local denunciator gives him the opportunity
to change his life and, instead of remaining a victim of the circumstances, to gain control of his life.
It is curious to consider the part that denunciations play in peoples life trajectories. The
denunciation reifies the biography of the individual. The person is alienated from his actions; he
gets stuck in a particular form that signifies the degree to which he complies with/deviates from
the norms of public living. It seems that the individual loses control of his life and becomes a
product of the circumstances. The state structures, the rules and norms of the party apparatus are
regarded as destiny, something beyond the reach of the individual.
In fact, this mechanism of life story presentation is deployed not only when talking about
of people who, for one reason or another, were deemed as diverting from model socialist identity.
13
The youth organisation of the Bulgarian Communist Party.
14
The September Uprising was staged in 1923 by the Bulgarian Communist party. Before 1989, Bulgarian historiography
termed it as the first anti-fascist uprising. Therefore, it had a sacred place in the history of the Partys class struggle.
15
The neighbouring village.
16
A nearby town, at the time an important centre of chemical industry.
17
Koleva and Gavrilova (2004), p. 96-107.
denunciations. Even if the respondents talk about a performance appraisal,18 it is still perceived
within the same terms. All the stories about distribution19 use the same strategy: the respondents
say, they noticed me, they heard about me, they made a decision about me. You do not apply
for a job, but rather accept it as a kind of chance, a gift from the state:
As regards work, on the one hand it was very easy, on the other hand without any freedom of choice. The
central distribution made me start work in the county of Rousse.20 And then, the decision nobody asks you
I was preparing a conference and the day before it, T. Stoychev calls me in his office and says, You will come
to work with us. And I stare at him what can I say! In those days as soon as you answered back, you were
done. And I ask, But why, comrade Stoychev? There is a resolution of the Bureau of the County Committee
of the Party, you will come to work with the organs of the Ministry of Interior.21 We, he says, have set our
minds on you, youll be in charge of the quality control of the institute for research and development I was
dumbstruck. He asked me to sit down, I couldnt I gave him my answer on the following day if there was
nobody else, I was obliged, as much as I could, to come up to the expectations of your resolution.22
And yet, the positive career development is not regarded only as a gift from above, an
inexplicable stroke of luck that the respondent does not deserve. The narrators save face and
reclaim their lives when they show that they have performed well in the job that they obtained
and that their work has contributed to the well-being of the whole community. Luck or chance is
justified or rendered publicly acceptable when it is shared with the others. It obtains interpersonal
dimensions and is parcelled out within the whole group.
Let us see how Valko A. narrates about the chance purchase of his Moskvich car:23
18
In fact, the concepts performance appraisal or evaluation do not adequately capture the idea of the socialist
trudova charakteristika since both performance appraisal and evaluation suppose that the two parties concerned
manager and employee are involved in a discussion about how well the employee is doing his job. The trudova
charakteristika totally excludes the employee from this process. He is only supervised and screened, but has no say in
the final conclusions. Rarely can he even read them.
19
The main legitimating argument of the socialist state is that not only does it provide equal political rights for
all citizens, but also rationally distributes social goods among them. As a further perfection of this argument, the
state decides to rationally distribute knowledge throughout the country: after graduation from university, young
specialists are ordered which region of the country to start work in. Seen in more pragmatic terms, these measures
can be interpreted as renewed efforts of the state to fight migration and depopulation.
20
Koleva and Gavrilova (2004), p. 271.
21
Ibid., p. 246.
22
Ibid., p. 134.
23
Moskvich was an automobile brand produced in the USSR between 1945 and 1991. Although these cars were
notorious for their poor quality and high fuel consumption, just like many other products in Bulgarian planned
Id never planned to buy it. But I went to the warehouse in Varna, the people who sold the cars there knew
me and I told them: So and so, I want a Moskvich! And the guy from the warehouse says: If you are so
pigheaded, go to the train station; there are cars there, they are in big boxes and are supposed to be exported
to the West, but those people send them back because the cars have a red star at the front. So the cars are
unloaded from the ship, they are over there at the train station, waiting. So I go to the train station, two
gypsies are waiting; we opened the box, you see, there was a little petrol in the tank and I was lucky the
car happened to be with four-gear transmission This Moskvich was the ambulance of Povelyanovo.24
Whenever there was a woman in labour, Id drive her to the hospital. Theyd say, Valkov, start the car!25
Kiril P.s story about his chance appointment as first secretary of the city committee follows
the same pattern. The main focus here is, again, on how this job position contributed to the higher
standard of living of the local people:
You see, the party secretary uncle Dobry goes back home from Tulovo and on passing by the cemetery
drops dead. So, at the following November meeting I was appointed first secretary I am glad to say
that at that time in Maglizh26 there was so much construction going on, as there had never been before.
We built the town hall, the kindergarten, the boarding house of the agricultural school, we asphalted
all the streets, we founded the local DAP,27 we tried to open a machine shop, a subsidiary of the Burya
Factory in Gabrovo, a factory for underwear. Unfortunately, it didnt last long. The head teacher of
the school and I went to Sofia to ask the Minister to save the school from closing. What we managed
to do gives me a sense of satisfaction and I think that the people appreciated it. These things are still
remembered and now, after so many years, when I go there, I receive more than a warm welcome.28
This sequence of good deeds, however, is followed by a new, unexpected (and unasked for)
twist of his life trajectory:
There was a resolution of the County Committee of the party in Stara Zagora. It ordered that a job
economy, Moskvich cars were hard to buy. The acquisition of a Moskvich required the mobilisation of a lot of social
capital. Respectively, the possession of such a car added a lot to the social capital and status of the owner. The
Moskvich was not simply a car it was a symbol of a social distinction.
24
A small town near the village of Iskar.
25
26
A nearby village.
27
The abbreviation stands for State Automobile Production.
28
position had to be found for a certain guy. So they gave him my post. Although they promised theyd
find me another job, they forgot all about me. I dont know, something else might have happened but
they left me high and dry.29
That is how he ends up working as a chief of the agricultural section of the Fridrich Engels
military plants:
There was enough work force and whenever I felt any shortage, theyd give me as much as I asked
for. There was a 70,000 square metres vegetable garden, 2,000,000 square metres of crops, 20,000
square metres conservatories these eight years I spent there till my retirement relieved me of all the
worries and anxieties I had gone through in the APCs. They were due to work force shortages and
misunderstandings about how certain activities had to be carried out. In Arsenal, you see, we took
from the state as much as we needed (even one to two percent more), but our results were more than
excellent. I didnt feel how these years passed, it was so nice. You see, I didnt know that Saturday and
Sunday were days for rest. When I started work there, it was Saturday and I went to work but those
people at the gate wouldnt let me in It was for the first time that I had a rest on Saturday and Sunday.30
This excerpt can nicely lead to the final part of my paper. It adequately presents the general
atmosphere in the narratives from Iskar: they are reminiscences full of nostalgia and longing for
the unfulfilled promises of the socialist past.
What can be said as a kind of conclusion is that in these stories chance loses its transcendental
dimensions. It is no longer an inevitable constraint. The dependency of the agent lies in the
flexible relationships of everyday life. Chance can be tamed and manipulated because it
assumes a human face. Even though the stories use a lot of passive structures, a lot of they to
indicate (without naming it) Chance, Chance nevertheless obtains a face and name. They, the
force of circumstances, it happened so transform into my friend from the Human Resources,
comrade Stoychev from the County Committee of the party, or auntie Nadka from the
Ministry of Defence.
29
Ibid., p.130.
30
Ibid., p.133.
An (un)expected conclusion on the (post)socialist agency
The aim of this paper was to reread the memories about socialist life in the village of Iskar and
to trace the degrees to which this past is problematically and painfully inscribed in the present.
The idea was to study those narrative extracts where the past is not sedimented, but blurred and
somehow silenced. The narrators cannot present the past as it was then-and-there, but they
lack the pre-determined techniques about how to perform it here-and-now. The myth of chance
provides a kind of glue that could sustain the entity of the narrative (and of the narrative identity)
and suppress the painful moments.
The unexpected conclusion is that Bulgarian post-socialist people have a very ambivalent
attitude to their own agency their capacity to overtly and responsibly act in public space.
The narrators easily deny themselves agency and assign their biographical trajectories
to outside circumstances. Thus, we see that the modern idea of the person as a self-made,
self-sufficient actor and master of his own destiny is considerably dented. In spite of this,
the (narrative) act of agency denial is not a pre-modern remnant. As I said, chance is not
considered a supernatural power. Rather, it is embodied in a particular person, and in synergy
with this person, the narrator achieves a happy outcome. As it happens, chance becomes an
accomplishment of solidarity it is not a proud individual act; chance is the other name of
everyday solidarity. Only after the narrators respond to the good turn, only after they justify
the good luck by working hard for the communitys good, can they gain control of their life.
Luck or chance obtains meaning after being shared with the others. This is actually what
gives significance to a life well lived.
Against this background, the nostalgic reminiscences of the narrators become more
comprehensible; the respondents are aware that the promises of the past will never manage to
reach the pace of present living. The present perceived as the ruined project of the past, it is
alienated and individualistic:
It saddens me a lot! Honestly, I feel that day after day the village gets more and more deserted! Now
everybody wants to, to clam up in his shell, as they say, to think about his problems only You see,
people have changed, their personalities have changed too somehow, you cant find those people who
had high self-esteem, such high self-esteem. Now their self-esteem is zero, a total zero. They think about
how they are going to survive, what they should do, where theyll get to, if theyll get there thats it
everybody with their own problems, they show little care for the people around them... Thats it!31
REFERENCES
Austin, John Langshaw. Philosophical papers. Ed. J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock. Oxford, 1979.
Bottici, Chiara. A philosophy of political myth. Cambridge, 2007.
Butler, Judith. Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory.
In Performance: Critical concepts in literary and cultural studies: 97-111. Ed. Philip Auslender. London and
New York, 2003.
Creed, Gerald. Domesticating revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village.
Pennsylvania, 1998.
Koleva, Daniela and Raina Gavrilova. Eds. Na megdana, na dvete cheshmi: zhiteyski razkazi ot s. Iskar. (In the
village square, near the two fountains: life stories from the village of Iskar). Sofia, 2004.
31
Ibid., p. 196.
Scriptural Myths in Two
Contemporary British Novels
Ewa Rychter
Angelus Silesius State College, Wabrzych
Abstract The present article focuses on the ways the biblical myth of the Promised
Land and the scriptural myth of the divinely inspired Holy Writ figure in two
contemporary British novels: Jim Craces The Pesthouse (2007) and Will Selfs The Book of Dave (2006).
Drawing on Gianni Vattimos concept of debolezza, the author of the article argues that both Crace and
Self create weak versions of those myths, characterised both by a lucid grasp of the disintegration of
the traditional forms of the myths and by the resigned but charitable preservation of its bits. Shaped
by the multi-faceted transformations the biblical myths have been undergoing, weak biblical/scriptural
myths function as textual sites where the limits and potential of contemporary biblical/scriptural myths
are probed.
Keywords the Bible, contemporary British novel, weakness, myth, dystopia, Jim
Crace, Will Self.
In 1976 Northrop Frye argued that the social function of biblical narratives was undergoing
an important change. Having lost the status of myth, and no longer aiming at the consent
of silence, based on a certain quality of importance or authority for the community1, the
Bible now seen as man-made fiction entertains or enthrals rather than commands. This
1
Frye (1976), p. 16.
232 Ewa Rychter
transformation, however, does not mean biblical myths have disappeared. As Frye contends,
genuine social mythology [...] is [...] to be transcended, but transcendence here does not mean
repudiating or getting rid of it [...]. It means rather an individual recreation of the mythology,
a transformation of it from accepted social values into axioms of ones own activity2. Thus,
recreated and incorporated into the secular scripture (mans own creation), biblical myths
persists in our culture, albeit in altered and displaced forms. Though the degree of its importance
and the range of its authority are smaller, the biblical/scriptural myth can still be described as
to evoke one of the least rigid definitions of myth a story about something significant, (where
something foregrounds a certain vagueness or openness), a story which accomplishes something
significant for adherents.3
Admittedly, Frye is not the only scholar to advocate the persistence-cum-transformation
model describing the status of the biblical myth in the West. In much the same vein (though
from a different perspective, in a different vocabulary, and with an earlier historical period
in mind), Jonathan Sheehan, for one, argues that while in the eighteenth century the Bible
finally lost its theological authority as a divinely inspired, unified and unifying text, it
started to gain importance elsewhere: it became a culturally indispensable text. The Bibles
significance has been recreated, redefined, and relocated; its authority had no essential
centre, but instead coalesced around four fundamental nuclei. Philology, pedagogy, poetry,
and history: each offered its own answer to the question of biblical authority4. To return
to Segals phrase, the biblical text still accomplished something significant for Western
communities: it acted as a singular philological document, offered moral lessons, provided
the model for unique poetic quality and national feelings, and hosted an archive of human
customs. Although the Bible as the source of the sacred, revealed order lost its significance
(and its mythical status in that respect), its mythical potential has not been exhausted.
Liberated from theology, the Bible could become one of the sturdiest pillars of Western
culture,5 a truly culture-supporting myth.
2
Frye (1976), p. 170.
3
Segal (2004), p. 7-8, my emphases.
4
Sheehan (2005), p. 91.
5
Sheehan (2005), p. ix.
Scriptural Myths in Two Contemporary British Novels 233
Fryes secular scripture and Sheehans cultural Bible bring into focus three interesting
problems concerning biblical myths. First, they bear witness to the admirable resilience and
malleability of the Bible-based myth, measured on the one hand by the myths longevity, and
on the other hand by the subversiveness of some of its transformations, as well as by the gap
separating the once theologically-grounded myth from todays dispersed cultural myths.
Second, Fryes and Sheehans arguments seem to indicate that [m]an cannot live without myth,
and in the West at least he cannot live with it.6 The biblical myth is both necessary and
superfluous, both desired and loathed. The importance of the Bible is on the one hand seriously
undermined we observe the shrinking of grandeur of the biblical text,7 which is today as
puzzled and alienated by us as we are by it.8 On the other hand, however, that importance is
recreated insofar as the Bible proves the very model of alienation, the source of the mythoclastic
mechanism.9 As Herbert Schneidau wrote in 1976, what the Bible singularly accomplishes for
Western culture is that it offers a model of incessant self-critique and instils the West with the
desire to dissociate itself from myth, to erode all comfortable assumptions likely to turn into
stable mental patterns. Of course, the Bible can be used as a culture-supporting myth, but
whenever it is, the insidious [mythoclastic] effect [...] makes the support problematic at best.10
Thus, in a twist of the transcending motion, the Bible no longer a lofty cultural icon11 can
trade its changed status as a new badge of cultural importance. Indeed, myth cannot be kept
out; driven away, it returns from every side.12
The third issue Frye and Sheehan help to bring into view is the problem of diminishing returns
which seem to regulate the transformations of biblical myth, but which do not bring about its
ultimate disintegration. For Frye, the myths of the Bible are displaced from their central mythical
area, their vast mythological universe,13 to the less consolidated world of nomadic narratives,14
6
Schneidau (1976), p. 28.
7
Sherwood (2000), p. 207.
8
Ibid., p. 205.
9
10
Ibid., p. 11.
11
Sherwood (2000), p. 200.
12
13
Frye (1976), p. 7, 15.
14
Ibid., p. 9.
234 Ewa Rychter
where they interact at random with various other stories. Absorbed into secular mythology,
biblical tales return to the state of (relative) stability, but their mythological imperialism,15
displayed up to the Middle Ages, is lost. Put another way, the biblical myth returns as a choice,
not the chooser as one element of culture, not its elemental constitution. The normal human
reaction to a great cultural achievement like the Bible is to do with it what the Philistines
did to Samson: reduce it to impotence, then lock it in a mill to grind our aggressions and
prejudices16. The centripetal pull biblical myths retain and exert in the Renaissance mill of
secular-sacred correlative circulation,17 the pull which provides emergent secular disciplines
with the otherwise unavailable means for negotiating their new speculations, now belongs to
biblical myths transformed into disintegrating myths, or end myths. These no longer operate
as coherence-providers, but expose the failure of the dominant myth. The end myth does
not validate traditional symbols but discloses their inadequacy to provide moral coherence,
stable boundaries between right and wrong, strategies for escaping dread18. Concerned with
the crumbling of cultural values, it articulates rather than resolves paradoxes, re-lives rather
than relieves anxieties. It is a wobbly myth, whose overdetermined meaning invites conflicting
readings, but whose disintegration quite symptomatically starts to function as the basis of
the myths sustained currency.
Later on that currency comes to depend on the idea of culture, deemed the new rock atop
which legitimacy of the Bible was built.19 Predictably, the authority of the seemingly rock-
stable biblical myth is soon compromised. Today, when we notice how incessantly the claim
about the Bibles cultural centrality is repeated, we may wonder if such emphasis should not
be read as a symptom of anxiety about the truthfulness of this claim rather than the sign of
the claims self-evidence. If biblical stories do energise contemporary life, they do it in far
less obvious ways than ever before. Seen from the wider perspective of secularisation,20 the
15
Ibid., p. 13.
16
Ibid., p. 233.
17
Shuger (1994), p. 3.
18
Ibid., p. 90.
19
Sheehan (2005), p. xiv.
20
The changing status of the Bible is deeply intertwined with the problem of secularisation. Not to complicate my
argument, I have decided, however, to leave that relationship in the background, hoping that an attentive reader
Bible is legitimised by contemporary culture largely because culture plays out its concerns
and disaffections within the forum of the biblical text.21 Biblical myth seems to mediate the
process of coming to terms with the world in which the Bible lives on by an increasingly
slim metonymic margin.22 The fact that the Bible rather than anything else is chosen for the
narrative interrogation of biblical myth, shows that biblical stories continue to be seen as viable
explorers of some of our problems. To borrow from Laurence Coupes terminology, biblical
narratives may no longer explain the world, but they do help to explore23 the world which
is repelled and attracted by biblical-mythic explanations. Biblical myths are interrogated and
found wanting, but the instrument chosen for probing its shortcomings is the Bible itself.
Because they explore the decay of biblical myths, scriptural narratives today resemble the
end myth described by Shuger. Unlike the end myth, however, they do not merely offer their
internal divisions for the articulation of cultural border-problems and diffusions, but function
as frameworks within which cultures disappointment with, and detachment from, the biblical
myth itself is expressed.
The emergence of such paradoxical frameworks raises the question of the contemporary
status of biblical myth. Apparently, biblical myth has metamorphosed into myth, the
quotation indicating the alienation of the term from its usual meaning, and signalling the
suspension but not cancellation of the established sense. Such biblical myths seem,
on the one hand, to embody the antinomy occurring, as Leszek Koakowski describes,
between the participation in myth and its interpretation, and on the other hand, to mark the
embarrassing illness24 constituted in contemporary culture by the clash between the need
for myth and the defence against the threat of myth. Myth is the site where the process of
going through this embarrassing illness can be observed, where the despotism25 of myth
and its violence are suspended thanks to the permanent possibility of myth accomplishing
will recognise its presence, e.g., in the Vattimian elements of my paper. For similarly inspiring problematisations
of secularisation, see e.g., Pecora 2006 or Gauchet 1999.
21
Sherwood (2000), p. 203.
22
Ibid., p. 198.
23
Coupe (2009), pp. 87-88.
24
Koakowski (2001), p. 104.
25
Ibid., p. 104.
236 Ewa Rychter
something important for us. Moreover, while for psychological reasons we normally do
not tolerate simultaneous awareness of myths mechanisms and adherence to myth, biblical
myth acts out this conflict, abandoning the futile search for the points from which the sides
of conflict could be judged.
Thus, the status of myth allows for an abrasive but not destructive relationship between the
tendency to adhere to and reject myth. In their attachments to, in detachment from, the biblical
text,26 those biblical myths display a quality of Vattimian debolezza a certain weakness, an
incurable frailty, which neither allows them to return to the position of strength nor leads to
their final demise. Biblical myth practises a weak overcoming (Verwindung) described by Gianni
Vattimo, insofar as it neither surpasses nor accepts biblical myth in its previous forms. The weak
biblical myth is characterised both by a lucid grasp of the disintegration of myth, and by the
resigned preservation of its bits. Biblical myth retains traces of myth, treating them as the
possibility for a change, the chance that it might twist in a direction that is not foreseen in its
own nature27. Always convalescing from the potential violence of dominant myth, yet lacking
the poignancy of the disintegrating myth, the weak biblical myth seems to make a lot of sense
today. Adapting Fryes shaven-Samson metaphor to our purposes, we can say that the biblical
myth, unlikely to grow its power-giving hair back but resigned to that loss, displays the iron
constitution of the chronic invalid. It enjoys poor health.28
In the rest of this paper, I will attend to the ways end myth and weak myth are enacted
in two contemporary British novels: in Jim Craces The Pesthouse (2007) and Will Selfs
The Book of Dave (2006). Both novels build a dystopia within which various versions
of biblical (or in wider sense, scriptural) myths are operating. Since these dystopian
worlds, like all utopias and dystopias, are histories of the present,29 the novels can be
read as articulations of the complex character of contemporary scriptural myths, and as
textual sites where the limits and potential of scriptural myth is probed. If utopia, as Paul
26
Sherwood (2000), p. 201.
27
Vattimo (1987), pp. 12-13.
28
29
Grondin (2010), p. 1.
Ricoeur maintains, is the reinvigorating element of myth (and something that undoes the
stagnation induced by myths other (ideological) element), dystopia represents that which
went wrong within that flexibility-boosting impulse in myth. Thus, Craces and Selfs
dystopias offer a glimpse not so much onto the ossification of biblical/scriptural myths,
but onto their change-gone-wrong character, i.e., their disintegration. Having said this,
since dystopia indicates the possibility of a solution, a glimmer of hope, we should not
be surprised to find in the distopic worlds constructed by Self and Crace an alternative
project for biblical/scriptural myth. As some inhabitants of the dystopic worlds try to
carve up a space for themselves, they not only expose the disintegrating myths abiding
in their worlds, but also work out their own Bible-related myths, which weak as they
are endow their lives with meaning and offer hope.
Jim Craces The Pesthouse
Taking place in a hardly recognisable America of an unspecified future, The Pesthouse
features two main characters, Margaret and Franklin, who like hundreds of other Americans
travel through the uniformly rural territories of the once heavily industrialised country in
order to reach the fabled east coast and catch the ships that would take them to the Europe-
based Promised Land, the place of safety, prosperity and opportunity.30 More of a nightmare
than the land of abundance, America in Craces novel is afflicted with poverty, murder,
rape, slavery, theft and widespread hostility. Although America itself the Promised Land
of Puritan mythopoeia, a re-imagined biblical Canaan is no longer the blessed divine gift,
the biblical myth survives, if only in a resorted or diluted form. The myth has its central
figure Abraham, featured on an old coin Margaret treasures as a talisman. Interestingly,
he is a conflation of (1) the biblical patriarch (the original addressee of the promise), (2)
Abraham Lincoln (the author of the famous Second Presidential Address) and (3) a hero
who would come back to help America one day with his enormous promises31. Detached
30
Crace (2007), p. 52. Hereafter cited as TP.
31
TP, p. 27.
238 Ewa Rychter
from any distinct paradigm but preserving their traces, Craces Abraham is the epitome
of the subversiveness and ambivalence of contemporary biblical myths. Overdetermined
by its divergent hypotexts, the tiny [...] floating man [...], the floating man who [...] was
Abraham32 is both the deliverer America is waiting for, and somebody to be delivered. A
floating figure, Abraham brings together opposites and opens up the space where myth
cannot help disintegrating.
Relocated to Europe the one-time departure-point for people driven by the myth, the
Promised Land ironizes the idea of restoration and return. To reach the Promised Land, American
travellers unwittingly retrace the steps of the past travellers and repeat their journey backwards,
rewinding it, as it were, in space. Yet, the future does not lie in the past because what was lost on
the way cannot be found and enjoyed in its untainted, unmodified shape. Nothing including
the myth of the Promised Land is untouched by time. If one wants to find the Promised Land,
one has to brace oneself for a transformed promise. Like Margaret and Franklin, who had to part
with many people during the journey, and who lost, left or had to give away various objects,
one has to come to terms with the loss of part of ones past. But like Margaret and Franklin, one
will come across new elements, which similarly to Baby Belle, spying glass, and a horse will
provide a different perspective on both the past and the future. On the way to the east coast, the
myth of the Promised Land loses its apparently definitive elements and is remade with the help
of some new ones.
Displaying remarkable malleability and resilience, Craces myth of the Promised Land proves
capable of energising the people who populate the world of his novel. The energy, however, is
that of a fever, burning them up, driving them on,33 a fever which simultaneously emboldens
and incapacitates them, a disease shared in its disintegrating power. Admittedly, to write about
the myth of the Promised Land in terms of an illness, is to identify something unhealthy about
it, to spot some degeneration in its mechanisms. The illness, diagnosed by Crace as being myth-
related and myth-spread, shows in violence towards the other, in greed and in craving for power.
It has incubated in the biblical myth, legitimising the violent conquest of Canaan; its germs have
32
Ibid., p. 27, my emphases.
33
Ibid., p. 83.
been reinvigorated in the American myth of the Wild West, which drove the settlers to conquer
the land they believed to be theirs. The Pesthouse interrogates both the biblical myth and its later
variant by pointing out to their less dignified but unavoidable aspects. To reach the Promised
Land, the people who believe the promise, be they Israelites or Americans, have to be violent,
suspicious, self-centred, even ruthless.
The nightmarish quality of America is not merely aggravated but produced by the myth of the
Promised Land. Ferrytown people prosper, first, because they charge a lot for a passage across
a dangerous river on the way to the Promised Land, and second, because they never allow the
wounded and the disillusioned who return from the east to cross their place in the opposite,
non-mythical direction, preventing in this way the spread of discouraging, profit-wrecking
stories. Their greed energises the myth, which, in turn, brings more suffering. Also, the myth
forces people to join those already energised by the myth. Acton Bose, for example, leaves his
depopulated village when there is hardly anybody left to buy the fish he caught. Preferring the
Deliverance34 promised by the myth to the life in his ill fated,35 myth-shaped village, he starts
his unfortunate journey east.
It can be said that Craces novel discloses the myth of the Promised Land to be functioning as
a vicious circle rather than a breakthrough narrative. Instead of gesturing towards the possibility
of release, the myth turns out to perpetrate fears, feed inter-human tensions, and, most ironically,
disintegrate families. In a climactic moment in the novel, when the pilgrims finally reach the
anchorage and try to get aboard the ships heading for the Promised Land, they learn that only
men strong ones or those with a skill, or young and marriageable girls, or the rich, are eligible
for the ocean passage. The salt air seemed to have robbed the world of value,36 not only because
on the coast the would-be emigrants sell their horses for a sack of flour or their furniture for a
reed hat, but also because the pursuit of the myth reduces the value of people and relationships.
Mothers and wives marked with a red cross on their sleeves, a sign ominously reminiscent of
World War Two ghetto badges are deemed worthless. Rejected by the shipmen, abandoned by
34
Ibid., p. 243.
35
Ibid., p. 121.
36
Ibid., p. 265.
240 Ewa Rychter
their families, they epitomise the failure of the myth of the Promised Land to relieve suffering.
Apart from offering insight into the disintegrating effects of the (biblical) myth, Craces novel
also delineates an alternative to the end-myth form of the Promised Land story. This alternative
is the myth worked out by Margaret and Franklin and based on the belief that the ocean is an
obstacle and not the route to liberty37, that [t]here had to be another dream38, another
Promised Land where they could find their own happiness. The new myth does not look
for the recuperation of the past, yet neither does it deny its power. The myths complex
negotiations with the past can be traced in the role metal the icon of the past plays in
the life of Margaret and Franklin. Unlike the religious community of Helpless Gentlemen,
who set their minds and bodies against the countrys ferrous history39, and unlike
rustlers who actualise the history by putting metal weapon to its deadly work, Margaret
and Franklin recognise both metals potential and its limitations. While the Gentlemen
(also called the Finger Baptists) do not tolerate metal, calling it the Devils work,40 and
do not use their hands, considering them the instrument of the Devils work, and while
rustlers fetishise metal and thrive on its lethal power, Margaret neither totally trusts nor
completely distrusts metal. She is sceptical of the enormous metal hulks and carcasses41
of old-style ships she sees on the coast, considering them inhuman debris of the past with
no floating, future-exploring potential. She finds comfort, however, in her metal talismans
a necklace and coins, the two relics of the past lost at the beginning of the novel and
retrieved at the end. Their Abraham-centred, opaque yet appealing engravements keep
the past floating, i.e., open to future-building explorations. Interestingly, this capacity is
released by gentle touch, so different from rustlers fierce grip on their weapons or the
complete flabbiness of Baptists hands. Fingered, rubbed, stroked,42 the talismans are
patiently and lovingly turned and turned again, making those bits of the past quicken
37
Ibid., p. 249.
38
Ibid., p. 269.
39
Ibid., p. 193.
40
Ibid., p. 192.
41
Ibid., p. 261.
42
Ibid., p. 27.
imagination and fan the desire for more abundant life. Running ones fingers over
something/somebody does not yield any new knowledge, but revives the tarnished or
the ailing. It is thanks to Franklins dedicated fingering of Margarets feet that she fights
off her fever and starts convalescing. Similarly, it is through imaginative fingering of the
past through a weak overcoming of the unhealthy fever consuming the Bible-based
myth that the myth of the Promised Land loses its violent edge, and, entering the state
of debolezza or recovery, changes into a myth.
When Franklin decides against boarding one of the ships going towards the Promised Land,
he and Margaret start their journey back to where they began. Traversing America in the old,
westward direction and following in the footsteps of ancient American adherents of the myth
of the Promised Land, they show that their myth was not the future but the past43 the past,
however, accessible only through the logic of re-turning. Margaret and Franklin re-turn the myth to
its previous form, simultaneously re-turning fingering, re-thinking, renegotiating, transforming
it, giving a new twist to the always already flexible biblical myth and its later variants. Thus,
they understand that the condition on which you can hope to reach their Promised Land is
neither wealth, nor strength (both required at the east coast), but weakness. The myth of the
Promised Land unfolds when Margaret shaves Franklins whole body clean, marking him with
the traditional sign of flux, a life-threatening illness. This deliberate display of post-illness frailty,
which makes Franklin undisguised and shockingly [...] vulnerable,44 differs from Baptists
pitiful helplessness, in that the former does not yield easily to violence but effectively keeps it
at a distance. The moment the would-be attackers register Franklins shaven head and chin, they
retreat immediately. Built on such power-confusing weakness, the myth of the Promised Land
does not encourage fantasies about the elimination of violence any more than it believes brutality
can be a ticket to the Promised Land. Exposing his own weakness, the pilgrim to the Promised
Land avoids defeat. The myth he is driven by is not the consuming fever but its echo, re-turning
the myths mechanisms in a distorted, reduced shape.
They return to the Pesthouse, the place on a hill above Ferrytown, where the diseased are
43
Ibid., p. 249.
44
Ibid., p. 283.
242 Ewa Rychter
left either to die or to recuperate. Yet, they do not treat the hut as the obvious end of their
journey the Promised Land achieved, but treat this safest acre in America, [as] a place of
remedy and recovery where, surely, they could at least spend the night or spend the month or
spend eternity.45 Their myth does not thrive on finality, but on the constant tension between
the sense of the realised promise and the horizon open for the myths future re-turns. Like
the ancient spyglass Margaret and Franklin have found, the myth enables them to view
the distance sharply, and simultaneously, to understand that any device which makes you
believe that distant things you are looking are close at hand only fools your thinking46. The
Promised Land might be the little house standing on the hill; Margaret, however, seems to
suggest otherwise as she calls out standing in front of the Pesthouse, So this is it? [...] An
exclamation and a question.47
Will Selfs The Book of Dave. A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future
In Will Selfs novel, there are two interrelated worlds and temporalities: twentieth-
century London and sixth-century AD (After Dave) post-catastrophic England, renamed as
Ingerland. Since the former has been wiped away by a cataclysm (most probably, a flood), the
latter a new-calendar-based civilisation of the far-off future stays largely unaware of the
earlier, now extinct, populace. Among the few things the post-deluvian society inherits from
the twentieth century is a book the Book of Dave believed to possess sacred, scriptural
significance. As we gather from the second line of narration, the book was written by Dave
Rudman, a late-twentieth century mentally disturbed cabbie. Rudam has been unhappily
married to a woman who makes him believe she is pregnant by him, but who later decides
to abandon Dave and live with her sons real father. Dave suffers mental collapse during
which he writes his book modelled on scriptures his friends or family venerate (the Bible, the
Quran, the Book of Mormons). Addressed to his son, the book is meant to explain the world,
provide an authoritarian reference point for all aspects of existence, and offer guidance
45
Ibid., p. 306.
46
Ibid., p. 240.
47
Ibid., p. 306.
to the boy. In its final form, the book proves a bundle of proscriptions and injunctions
that seem to be derived from the working life of London cabbies, mixed with a cock-eyed
grasp on a mlange of fundamentalism, and Rudmans own vindictive misogynism48. The
framework for the books doctrines and covenants is the Knowledge (London cabbing
lore) with its runs and points defining all driving routes in London. This basic structure is
fleshed out with a rich brocade of parable, chiasmus and homily, in which Dave gives vent
to his racism, expounds on the necessity of strict division of post-divorce parental access to
their children, and requires A COMPLETE RE-EVALUATION OF THE WAY MEN AND
WOMEN should conduct their life together, which means men avoid women, or [k]nock
em up then fuck off!49
Discovered by the people of Ingerland, the book becomes their Holy Writ enveloping their
world and informing all aspects of their religious, social, private lives. In raising the Book
of Dave to the status of the central text of the post-apocalyptic England, Self evokes and
interrogates the myth essential for all Book-based religions the myth of the divine origin
of Scriptures. Such myth usually (1) focuses on deities demand to write down, to read or/
and disseminate their sacred words (e.g., the myth of Moses at Sinai or St John the Divine
on Patmos; the myth of the origin of the Book of Mormon or of the Quran), or (2) tells the
story of the divine inspiration guiding the work of scribes or translators (e.g., the myth of
the Septuagint). Alluding to this myths reliance on the originary and divine Word/Logos, yet
making the alleged Word the product of a diseased and rather primitive mind, Self not only
creates a grotesquely overdrawn vision of the myth gone totalitarian, but also conjures up
the world in which the myths inability to sustain the societys and its own stability can be
anatomised. Interestingly, probing the myth of divine origin, Self provocatively turns it into
the myth of davine (dvine in the novels spelling), i.e., Dave-based origin, and toys with such
distortion as the possibility of the basis for a weak, convalescing myth.
As the revealed and therefore unquestionable Word of god, the Book of Dave provides a total
explanation of the world, by means of which social unity should be consolidated, and individual
48
Self (2007), p.281, thereafter cited as TBOD.
49
Ibid., pp. 347-48.
244 Ewa Rychter
stability should be ensured. However, instead of smoothing social tensions or resolving individual
anxieties, the myth of scriptures divine origin reinforces or even creates dread and disquiet. The
divinely decreed truth of the separation of the sexes (the Breakup and Changeover) destroys family
ties and ruins the possibility of intimate relationships between men (dads), women (mummies)
and children. The dark, mummy-hating underbelly50 of the Book of Dave authorises violence
against women, who can be raped at will, or executed for the heinous malefaction, a profaning
of the Book51, i.e., for neglecting the Breakup. Moreover, the Book-based separation of the sexes
prevents individuals from achieving inner balance and harmonising the softer part of the psyche
(the mummyself) and a more resolute, violence-prone one (the daddyself). On becoming an
adult who no longer stays with his mother, one loses contact with the feminine source of kindness
and yields to the Book-licensed misogyny.
In Selfs novel the stability of the myth of scriptures divine origin is threatened. The Book is
under constant pressure of ever new heresies (flying) which either indicate a tension between
Daves intended meaning of the Book and its present misprisions, or, more importantly, question
the very identity/divinity of the Books Author. The most significant heresy seems to be the one
whose advocates strongly represented among the imprisoned flyers [i.e., heretics] hold that
Dave was a bloke in another Book, which had been set down by the true and only God52. This
heresy articulates the disintegration of the myth the Books divine origin. First, if seen in the light
of the twentieth-century part of the novel, it undermines Daves supernatural status, pointing to
his human identity. Second, if seen in the context of the novel as such, it challenges the idea of
God-the-source-of-scripture, since another book evoked in the heresy has been set down by Will
Self, whose divinity if any is of purely literary type. Next, it challenges the myth of the divine
origin of scriptures known outside the novel, i.e., those which were set down neither by Dave nor
by Self. For example, it strengthens the doubt Dave himself expresses when he learns of Faisals
(his Muslim friend) belief in the divine provenience of the Quran and in its resulting scientific,
moral, political authority.53
50
Ibid., p. 305.
51
Ibid., p. 387.
52
Ibid., p. 194.
53
Ibid., p. 209.
For all its insistence on tracing the disintegration of the myth of the divine origin, The
Book of Dave does not try to abolish it. On the contrary, the novel explores the possibility
of a transformed form of the myth, i.e., of myth in which the divine presence legitimising
scripture is bracketed off, weakened or playfully distorted. The novel makes it clear that it
is under ill-prescribed antidepressants that Dave Rudman begins to think he is god. When
Dave receives professional psychiatric treatment and starts to recuperate after his mental
collapse, he decides to write one more text a new Book entitled EPISTLE TO THE SON,
a thoroughly human document which simply preaches responsibility and respect. Dave
realizes that the divine voice of his first Book cannot be the final word. Its bad enough
that its there at all, [...] screaming at the future54. The second Book, written by Phyllis
[Daves new partner] quite as much as Dave55, is liberated from the straight-jacket of the
Knowledge, and resonates with a purely human still small voice, too weak to claim for
itself any finality, independence or perfection. Echoing various types of wisdom, which
make a chorus of scriptural traditions, the new Book paraphrases the Gospels, and alludes
to STOICISM worthy of Roman citizens [...], or Sumerian scribes56 (Self 420). Composite
rather than monologic, the new Book bears witness to Daves overcoming of his unhealthily
self-validating divinity, to his recovery from the incapacitating bout of godhood, and his
coming to terms with his human or davine finitude.
As Dave empties himself of divinity a gesture which cannot but bring to mind Jesuss kenosis
(Philippians 2:6-7), he manages to better articulate human yearnings and to make his articulation
commanding for people of later times. Like the Lords Prayer, whose appeal is indicated at the end of
Selfs novel, Daves weak or emptied divinity (davinity) proves captivating long after Daves death.
While Jesus gospel prayer, recited at Daves funeral, has undeniable drawing power untainted
by the impotence of the dissipating Catholic church, Daves second Book intrigues people living
in Ingerland, who are largely unaffected by the fact that the Books message is announced and
guarded by somebody far from ideal. Significantly, in England of the distant future, the second
54
Ibid., p. 418.
55
Ibid., p. 420.
56
Ibid., p. 420.
246 Ewa Rychter
Book figures not only as an antidote to the first Books totalitarianism, but also as a prevention
against making any scripture the final word. The second Books guardian maintains that since the
scripture is no longer physically accessible, everyone should be making their own books. With
the divine voice withdrawn, or irretrievably lost, people should rely on their davine potential and
create their own scriptures, their own myths. Thus, in The Book of Dave the weakening of myth
does not annihilate the mythic potential as much as sends it its distorted myth version flying.
In Will Self, the myth of the Books divine origin is shorn of its supernatural traits and turned into
the myth which detaches itself from the idea of otherworldly sources of inspiration but retains
faith in the shaping/salutary power of scriptures.
Conclusions
Weak biblical/scriptural myth, or myth, bears witness to the fact that today biblical
narratives are not merely remnants of the past which lost their viability. Biblical myths
participate in the temporal process of mythopoeia: they are capable of activating and
re-activating the inner dynamism characteristic of myth, their permanent possibility,57
which pushes them out of the state of finality, closure, and therefore, prevents myth
from turning obsolete or/and dead. As weak myths, biblical/scriptural narratives keep
responding to the present moment, acknowledging their historical condition, and
grasping themselves as shaped by historical events. The weak biblical/scriptural myths
created by Jim Crace and Will Self are responses to the way some scripture-related
myths operate today, and to the imagined nightmarish results of their functioning.
Craces dystopian America is the dream of the Promised Land gone wrong. The Pesthouse
provides a bitter commentary on contemporary Americans self-perception as the elect
and indispensable nation. Since contemporary Americans erroneously interpret their
Promised Land as an object to be manipulated rather than an ongoing responsibility,
they alienate themselves from it and from one another, leaving behind traces of their
perfect but unnatural or craziest work, befitting not human beings but something
57
Coupe (2009), p. 93.
worse than men.58 While todays America forgets that the Promised Land is more of a
task than a taken for granted gift, Craces characters remember that and undertake the
task, giving it a twist characteristic of weak biblical myth. Reflecting on the various Book-
based fundamentalisms currently gaining strength in the West, Self offers a dystopian
vision of a society which absolutises its Scripture, making it a blueprint of reality and
totally subordinating the social life to the Word-become-flesh doctrine. His weak version
of the myth of the Holy Writ the myth of Scripture is a salutary and self-consciously
unassuming counterbalance to the rapacious but ultimately disintegrating myth.
Biblical myth is predicated on the understanding that no narrative is definitive, that

every narrative is subject to change as it acquires new meanings and, in the meantime,
loses its (frequently postulated) status of ultimate truth. To a large extent, the weakening
of biblical myth is a process which remains faithful not only to the Bibles mythoclastic
streak, but also to a particular hermeneutic stance central for the Bible, the stance which
makes Bible stories seem to resist closure.59 Like the new biblical narrative repeating and
reinventing the old one, biblical myths reinterpret and recycle the recognisable biblical
myths. They do not suppress or overcome biblical myths, but maintain a charitable
relation with the past whose traces are preserved within their mythic narrative. While
biblical myth of the past carried the weight of dogmatic assertion, while its words served
to articulate the Word/Logos rather than to engender narrative exploration, weak biblical
myth simultaneously impairs such dogmatism and accepts the inevitable vestiges of
the crippled, or weakened, myth-as-explanation. Neither simply regaining strength
nor dying from exhaustion, biblical myth self-consciously manoeuvres between those
two extremes. On the one hand, resigned from the possibility of ultimate recuperation,
the weak biblical myth invariably keeps convalescing from the effects of the dominant
biblical myth. On the other hand, establishing a charitable attitude towards the past as
the limit of weakening, biblical myth never fails to piously (lovingly) remember the
Bible both in its arresting vibrance and in its endearing brittleness.
58
Crace (2007), p. 239, 261.
59
Fisch (1998), p. 5.
248 Ewa Rychter
REFERENCES
Coupe, Laurence. Myth. 2d ed. London and New York, 2009.
Crace, Jim. The Pesthouse. London, 2007.
Fisch, Harold. New Stories For Old: Biblical Patterns in the Novel. London, 1998.
Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture. A Study of the Structure of Romance. Harvard, 1976.
____. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. 3d ed. New York, 1983.
Gordin, Michael D, Helen Tilley, and Gyan Prakash. Introduction: Utopia and Dystopia Beyond Space and
Time. Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility: 1-17. Ed. Michael D. Gordin, Helen Tilley, and
Gyan Prakash. Princeton, 2010.
Koakowski, Leszek. The Presence of Myth. Chicago, 2001.
Schneidau, Herbert N. Sacred Discontent. The Bible and Western Tradition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976.
____. Biblical Narrative and Modern Consciousness. The Bible and Narrative Tradition: 132-149. Ed. Frank
McConnell. Oxford, 1991.
Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, 2004.
Self, Will. The Book of Dave: A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future. London, 2007.
Sheehan, Jonathan. The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture. Princeton, 2005.
Sherwood, Yvonne. A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture. Cambridge, 2000.
Shuger, Deborah. The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994.
Vattimo, Gianni. Verwindung: Nihilism and the Postmodern Philosophy. SubStance 16.2 (1987): 7-17.
Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking
in Polish-German Relations after
the Second World War
Izabela Skrzyska
Adam Mickiewicz University, Pozna
Anna Wachowiak
The School of Higher Education in Humanities of the Association for Adult Education, Szczecin
Abstract This article focuses on the Polish-German relations after the fall of
communism. It aims to describe and analyse the changes that occurred in the
symbolic repertoire defining attitudes towards the German heritage in Poland after 1989. Monuments
and cemeteries in Szamocin, Gdask, Wrocaw, Szczecin, Wesoa, Nakomiady and many other places
all over Poland play an important role in redefining the image of the Germans and in the reconciliation
process between Germany and Poland. Our research on Polish-German symbolic domains shows that
the changes in the perception of the Germans occurred where harsh experiences of the past overlap
with good ones, and where people prefer universal emotions such as the respect for the dead and for
common heritage to revenge and retaliation.
Keywords Polish-German relations, the evil German myth, symbolic domains
This article focuses on Polish-German relations after the fall of communism. It aims to describe
and analyse the changes that occurred in the symbolic repertoire defining Polish attitudes
towards the German heritage in Poland after 1989. We address the question of the Polish myth
of the wicked or evil German among local communities in western and northern Poland (the
250 Izabela Skrzyska & Anna Wachowiak
Regained Lands or Western Borderlines, where before the Second World War Polish and
German elements co-existed).1
The symbolic domain
Statistics from 1931 (the second common census of the second Polish Republic) show that of the
total population inhabiting the territory of Poland, which was almost 32 million (31,916,000), over
four million were Ukrainians (4,442,000), nearly three millions Jews (2,733,000), 990,000 Belarusians,
741,000 Germans and more than one million people belonged to other ethnic groups. In cities like
Wrocaw, Gdask and Szczecin, German at that time, or like Gdask free and multicultural
Poles constituted the minority. After the Second World War, these demographic realities were
completely reversed. After 1956, when broad compulsory and voluntary migrations stopped,
Poland became more homogenous in terms of population. According to the common census of
2002, the Polish territory is inhabited by 2,868,500 people belonging to the national minorities,
including 1,529,000 Germans of a general population of about 39 million (38,230,100).2
Although today the German minority represents less than half of one percentage point,3 the
Polish symbolic domain continues to expand. By the notion of symbolic domain we understand,
following Lech M. Nijakowski, the significant differences in the evaluation of past events and
the meaning of symbolic cultural elements connected with claims of recognition of our own
interpretation of both history and culture.4
We define the notion of myth, following Jerzy Topolski, as unverifiable convictions that endure in
the social consciousness. A myth derives its power from an interpretation of the world deeply rooted
in a given society.5 Myth, history, and memory always have a cultural and symbolic character.6 As the
1
Comprehensive studies on the history, memory, and identity of the Regained Lands were conducted in Poland
after the Second World War by among others the Cultural Community Association Borussia, Olsztyn, and the
Borderland Foundation, Sejny.
2
Strk; Nijakowski and odziski (2003), p. 279.
3
Ibid.
4
Nijakowski (2006), p. 32.
5
Topolski (1996), p. 203.
6
Ibid.
Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in Polish-German Relations after the Second World War 251
meaning of the notion of myth itself is changing over time, it must be reinterpreted continuously in
relation to the social practices of dealing with the past, from writing history to building monuments
and celebrating holidays.7
The context: Polish-German reconciliation
Twenty years after the signing of the good-neighbourliness and cooperation treaty between
Poland and Germany (Bonn, 17 July 1991), we propose to analyse the Polish-German symbolic
domains and their impact on deconstructing the myth of Germany as the eternal enemy of Poles
a topic which is lively debated in Poland nowadays.
The treaty applied the good practices of the French-German relationship, and as such
included the principles of inter-governmental consultation, city partnerships, economic,
scientific, and cultural cross-border co-operation, as well as youth exchange programmes
and collaboration in drafting Polish and German history textbooks. One visible result of this
treaty was the creation of the Foundation for Polish-German Co-operation which regulated
the status of Polish and German minorities in the two countries. This treaty proclaimed
the principles of respect for the neighbours culture and of schooling in both languages,
German and Polish.8 The aim of the treaty was to open the way for Poland accessions to the
European Union in 2005.9
On the one hand, the Polish-German reconciliation was praised by many people. The German
historian, Heinrich August Winkler noticed that:
In 1989, for the first time in three hundred years, German matters [i.e. the unification of country]
and Polish matters [regaining sovereignty] were not in conflict with each other but were supporting
each other.10
7
Ibid., p. 204.
8
Krzemiski (2011), p. 2.
9
Ibid.
10
Quoted in ibid., pp. 1-2. .
On the other hand, the Polish-German past was still interpreted as an antagonistic one and
endowed with the power of shaping the present and leaving the future unpredictable. Anna
Wolff-Powska argues that
The national-Catholic political group supported the continuation of the old communist rhetoric towards
West Germany. They strongly claimed that the German hegemonic pursuits and the German-Russian
business community are going to abuse Poland and that the German neighbours are taking advantage
of European integration exclusively to enforce their own businesses in Central and Eastern Europe.
Although a discourse meant to gain and mobilise voters, it publicises old clichs and myths, using
history as an unlimited repertoire of arguments.11
As this quote shows, the Polish public debate on Polish-German relations remains dominated by a
pathetic and heroic version of history propagated by some Polish historians and populist politicians.
The myth of the evil German in the Regained Western and Northern Lands
The two tendencies mentioned above partly conceal a third one, namely the regional and local memorial
practices. Crucial changes in the Poles attitude towards the Germans can be detected at this level.
These changes occurred slowly, yet contributed to the deconstruction of the evil German myth.
In domestic and private memory, besides the beliefs in the wicked German, one might also find
memories about the decent German.12 Cities like Toru promote public policies, influenced by
business interests, of reconsidering the German heritage. In Toru, the public administration
proposed to build a monument of the Knight of the Virgin Mary, which in Polish national mythology
represents the German, but the idea faced strong opposition from conservative politicians so it
was not approved after all. The local and regional proposals of commemorating the German
heritage stir more controversies on a nation-wide scale than at the local and regional level.
In local references to Polish-German past one can detect small-scale foreign policies different
11
Quoted in ibid., p. 4.
12
Machcewicz (2010), pp. 7-12; cites Barbara Szacka, ibid., pp. 81-132.
from the official ones. Nevertheless, these are overshadowed by the public debates in which ideas
about Polish-German relations are expressed within the limits of political correctness (the policy
of reconciliation) or on the contrary in the spirit of historical revisionism and hostility.
Two decades ago people on both sides of the border were interested in each other and were
looking for new ways of coming together in every sphere of life. Overwhelmed by memories, Poles
and Germans desperately need projects heading towards the future.13 One essential indicator
of contemporary Polish attitudes towards Polands German residents is the process of updating
German past in the so-called Regained Lands. After the Second World War, in these territories
anti-Germanism led to the total negation of the local German presence. Several towns from the
area were subject to an unprecedented process of de-Germanisation.
Our peregrinations through the Regained Lands document both the existence of support for the
German presence in the region and the revival of old myths. On the one hand we have detected
numerous forms of open civic patriotism inspired by Jan Jzef Lipski. At the beginning of the 1980s, he
argued that in their pursuit of freedom and democracy Poles must rethink their history and memory
in order to integrate the national, ethnic, and religious minorities that used to live in multicultural
Poland. The country is not the heir of Polish heritage alone, but also of German, Jewish, Russian, and
Tatar heritage. He furthermore advocated changing the Poles relations with their neighbours.
On the other hand, we have recorded the attitude of Edmund Glaza, the founder of Committee
of Defence against Germanisation. Another example, which we discovered in 2011, was an
anonymous letter placed on the pedestal of Maria Konopnickas monument in Gdask, appealing
to the Poles conscience to protect their identity against German claims. There are also civil
servants, politicians, and even historians who opposed the updating of German memory in
Nakomiady (the case of Bismarcks boulder; see below) and the restoration of its former German
name (Century Hall) to the Wrocaw Folk Hall.14
The revival of German memory has been accomplished through numerous regional and local
commemorations of the German presence in the Regained Lands. The return to German origins
13
Krzemiski (2011).
14
Prais and Wojciechowska (2005); Kurs and Prais (2005).
is most evident in Wrocaw, e.g., in the renovation of German buildings and the return in the
urban topology of the old German and Prussian names.15 The edification of the Monument of the
destroyed cemeteries, Grabiszyn II (Wrocaw, 2008), commemorating former German, Czech, and
Jewish cemeteries which were destroyed in the 1960s and 1970s is another effort meant to revive
German memory.16 This monument is far from unique. Intensive renovation has also been taking
place in the Szczecin Central Cemetery. The Wrocaw monument was preceded by a similar
monument in Gdask (2002).17 In 2009 in the small town of Szamocin (Pia region), the local
community and the government organized A Walk along the Street of the Dead, during which
two boulders commemorating the former Szamocin Evangelic cemetery were unveiled.18
These types of initiatives can be detected not only in Gdask, but in many other localities in
Pomorze, Warmia, Mazury, Upper and Lower Silesia, as well as the Wielkopolska region. A very
specific example of such a project is the woodland graveyard in Wesoa (near Mysowice), where
the hidden bones of Jewish, Russian, Italian, Ukrainian, and Polish prisoners in the local labour
camp were discovered together with the ashes of about three hundred German soldiers.19 The
case of the Wesoa graveyard is very interesting when considered from the perspective of the local
practices of deconstructing the myths concerning the Polish-German past. In this particular town,
the local community successfully opposed not only Polish state policies, but also the German
initiative of the Memory Foundation to exhume the ashes of German soldiers and transfer them
to the military cemetery in Mysowice.20
A completely different enterprise related to the Polish-German past took place in Olsztynek,
namely the restoration of a board containing the names of sixty-eight students from the local
Teachers Seminary, victims of the First World War. The board had disappeared from the walls of
the Olsztynek Castle after 1945. The list contained both Polish and German names. The board was
re-discovered during the castles renovation and was restored in its old place, thereby dividing
15
http://cmentarze.szczecin.pl/cmentarze/chapter_11811.asp [accessed on 17.09.2011].
16
http://wroclaw.naszemiasto.pl/artykul/273657,zobacz-pomnik-wspolnej-pamieci-na-wroclawskim-grabiszynie,id,t.html
[accessed on 17.09.11].
17
http://www.pg.gda.pl/~jkrenz/projekty-r4.html [accessed on 17.09.11].
18
Skrzyska (2010), pp. 41-77.
19
Klich and Krzyk (2010).
20
Ibid.
the local community into those accepting the restoration and those opposing it. The antagonists,
as reported by Gazeta Wyborcza, wanted the board to be exhibited in the Olsztynek Museum.21
In the following pages we propose to examine each of these cases in more detail.
Bismarcks boulder in Nakomiady and the Centenary Hall in Wrocaw
Two local scale events gained large fame all over Poland and turned out to be significant for the history
of Polish-German reconciliation after the 1991 treaty. The first is the decision of the local community
of Nakomiady (Mazuria) to present to the public Bismarcks boulder, which was discovered during
road works and taken out by two German tourists. Conservative politicians and scientists criticized the
decision of setting the obelisk in the local cultural landscape. They argued that the boulder was bringing
up the Prussian myth of Bismarck (referring to the visible proofs of his cult, such as the monuments and
towers erected all over the Prussian parts of Poland during the German rule). The Nakomiady boulder
dates back to 1899 and was erected by local German citizens. The boulder was still there in the 1960s. Its
restoration was made possible by the efforts of the Ktrzyn borough administrator, Councillor Halina
Szara. With the approval of the inhabitants of the town, the boulder was set up close to the Nakomiady
church, where it had originally stood. This location is historically justified, although unfortunate from
the point of view of the Polish national mythology based on Catholic tradition, considering that the
region was subject to Bismarcks intensive colonisation policy (the so-called Kulturkampf).
The victims of the First World War in Olsztynek
The decision of restoring a board in Olsztynek castle displaying the names of sixty-eight
students of the local Teachers Seminary who died in the First World War, reveals a third way of
updating the Polish-German memory.22 The problem was not whether it should be exposed in
public, but where precisely it should be located: in a museum of history or within the frame of
the local cultural landscape, where German heritage would thus come back into its proper place.
21
Kurs and Prais (2005).
22
Ibid.
The cemetery of the victims of the Second World War in Wesoa
The woodland graveyard in Wesoa commemorates the victims of the labour camp established
there by the Nazis in 1943, and also hosts the ashes of Wehrmacht soldiers.23 An article in the
leading newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza pointed out that
People in Mysowice were stubborn in their efforts not to forget the Jews from the labour camp, who died of
hunger and exhaustion, or the Ukrainian and Russian women who died of hard labour, or the German soldiers.24
The graveyard is a small necropolis with a modest concrete pathway. Burial fields are formed by a
few small piles of earth, dug by local residents who were uncertain where the dead corpses were buried
exactly. In the middle of the quadrangle there are several bigger graves separated with stone slabs.25
Dispute over the graveyard broke out twice. The first time it happened right after the war:
During the day some workers sent by communist officials were planting trees. At night people uprooted
them and lit candles. In the morning candles went to rubbish and once again workers planted trees. It
had gone on for months until authorities learned they could not win against human stubbornness.26
The second time, the dispute began in 2010 when the Memory Foundation, having gained a
German grant, decided to transfer the ashes of the German soldiers to a military cemetery. The
local community ensured that the cemetery remained at the same location.
The local community saved the Wesoa graveyard but other traces of German presence in the Regained
Lands, including numerous German and Protestant cemeteries, were devastated. In the 1950s and 1960s, all
over Poland many Jewish and German necropolises were destroyed. This was the fate of the Central Cemetery
in Szczecin, where new bodies were buried in the German graves (with or without exhumation of the existing
corpses), and also the case in Gdask and Wrocaw, where parks still hide the remains of many Germans.
23
Klich and Krzyk (2010).
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
The destroyed cemeteries
In the case of the Szczecin Central Cemetery the fight was one against prejudice, inasmuch as
the restoration concerned not only the German tombstones, but also other works of art of great
historic and aesthetic value.
In Szamocin, Luba Zarembiska, a theatre animator, using the description of the Szamocin
graveyards in the diary of the German-Jewish playwright, Ernst Hugo Toller, put together
an amateur performance entitled The Long Street of the Living and the Dead. The theatre
performances made Szamocin famous as one of the most interesting theatrical centres among the
multicultural border towns.27 In 2009 stones commemorating the Evangelic and Jewish cemeteries
were also unveiled.
Forgiveness as a political strategy was inspired, as we have shown above, by the Western
European achievements in re-thinking the dramatic events of the Second World War, specifically
by rejecting revenge and retaliation.28 At the regional level of small-scale Polish-German foreign
relations, this rejection was brought into the foreground. It was expressed in local efforts to bring
up the German past, inspired by civic responsibility and generous human impulses. On the one
hand, this attitude is a form of respect for the dead, while on the other hand it expresses the
appreciation for the cultural value of the historic sites which the present-day Polish communities
owe to the Germans who once lived there.
Grabiszyn II
A complicated process of debunking the myths surrounding the Germans took place in
Wrocaw, in connection with the planned commemorative site of Grabiszyn II.29
During its long history, Wrocaw was part of the Habsburgs lands which does not provoke
many controversies today and then became a Prussian city in 1741, when the army of Frederick
27
Skrzyska (2010), pp. 41-77.
28
Beylin (2011); Wigura (2011).
29
Burak and Oklska (2007); Maciejewska (2009a and 2009b); Bachmann (2009); Bramorski (2009).
II entered Wrocaw. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Wrocaw, previously a fortress,
became an open city and gained more space for development.30 In the second half of the century,
it became a railway hub. In 1913, to mark the centenary anniversary of the Germans victory in the
Battle of the nations (Leipzig), the Centennial Hall was built in Wrocaw.31
The city avoided the calamities of the Second World War to some extent. In 1945 and the following years an
almost complete exchange of population took place in Wrocaw, from which the German population had fled
since the final stages of the war and the Soviet offensive.32 Many newcomers from Central Poland, Wielkopolska,
Zabuan, and Lwow subsequently settled in the city. The settlement of the Polish population was accompanied by
intensive de-Germanisation and Polonisation policies. The result was a complete rejection of the German heritage.
One of the spectacular forms of this policy was (as Zbigniew Mazur has pointed out) the complete
replacement of German monuments and commemorative plaques by Polish ones.33 The fate of the
monuments and of the street names was shared by cemeteries, too, which were systematically
destroyed until the end of the 1960s.34 Only in the 1980s a process of systematically cataloguing
the German heritage including the destroyed cemeteries was initiated. This is the background
against which the 2008 Grabiszyn II monument should be understood (as discussed above).
The monument is located at the outskirts of the city. It is in harmony with the natural surroundings
of Grabiszyns Park, where old tombstones are scattered among exuberant plants. Thus, in addition to
its commemorative function, the monument has an aesthetic value as well. There are two inscriptions
on the monument. The first one, on a vertical plaque, points out the circumstances of monuments
origin and its function. The second one, horizontal, lists the destroyed German cemeteries of Wrocaw.
A local inquiry
In 2011, we investigated the reception of these symbolic domains at the site of Grabiszyn II. We
30
Kulak (2001), vol. 2, p. 201.
31
Ibid., pp. 217-26.
32
Ibid., p. 339.
33
Mazur (1997), p. 305.
34
In 1945 the Polish administration of Wrocaw took over seventy cemeteries. Between 1960 and 1963 it eliminated
fifteen cemeteries, and between 1964 and 1967 another twenty-nine. See Burak and Oklska (2007).
used sampling, questioning a number of 206 sociology and history students. We also used focus
group interviews on two groups of students. We were particularly concerned with three problems
regarding the process of debunking the myth of the German as the eternal enemy of Poland.
The first deals with the perception of the symbolic domain of Grabiszyn II through the prism of
twentieth-century Polish-German national conflicts. The second issue concerns the citizens of
Wrocaws approach to the symbolic domain of Grabiszyn II in the context of commemorative
practices. The third is connected
to the historical knowledge about
the creation of the Grabiszyn II
monument and the importance
of this knowledge for conferring
symbolic meaning to the place.
The findings of our investigation
shed new light on the broader
understanding of the complicated
process of deconstructing the
myth of Germany as the eternal

Figure 1. Grabiszyn II, Wrocaw. Authors photo.
enemy of Poland. First, we suggest
that the debate over Grabiszyn II
can be understood as a cultural conflict about the possession of a symbolic place.
Second, we have discovered that most of the people interviewed regarded Grabiszyn II through
the prism of memorial practices and the cult of the dead, and were interested in the ways in which
Grabiszyn II could solidify Wrocaws image as a multicultural city. Inasmuch as Grabiszyn II is
associated with general values like the respect for those already gone it can play an important role in
forging a new climate for Polish-German relations. From our interviews with young people, Polish-
German conflicts did not emerge as part of their lived experience as it was the case with their
parents and grandparents. Our findings confirm the results of earlier social investigations of historical
memory, showing that the Polish memory of the war is to a great extent a memory shaped after 1989.
Third, when describing the functions of the monument, our subjects pointed out that apart
from its role in commemorating the dead the monument is also connected with historical memory.
They stressed this cognitive function of the monument and argued that it should be made known
to the larger public. It is quite clear that the young generation is convinced of the crucial role that
critical historical reflection can play in shaping local awareness and creating a more inclusive
identity.35 In this respect, the popularisation of historical research plays the key role.
Conclusions
Bismarcks boulder in Nakomiady speaks about the difficult legacy of Prussian colonisation in
Poland. Alternatively, it can be seen as the Polish victory in the fight against the iron chancellor
(as Zbigniew Bujak puts it). As Marek Beylin points out, the graveyard in Wesoa shows that it
is possible to repudiate revenge and retaliation in Polish-German relations. The cemeteries of

Gdask and Wrocaw similarly teach us how to live together in spite of our differences.
As we have tried to show, twenty years after the Polish-German treaty of mutual co-operation
and friendship, the process of deconstructing the myth of the German as the eternal enemy of the
Poles is still under way. In our opinion, the sources of this deconstruction reside in the regional,
local, and domestic practices of rediscovering the German heritage in the Polish territories,
especially the Regained Lands.
Our ongoing research leads us to conclude that the change in attitude towards both the
German, and in particular the Polish-German, past can be successful in those areas where harsh
experiences of the past overlap with good ones and where people, learning from history, prefer
the universal emotions of respect for the dead and for common heritage to revenge or retaliation.
However, this does not mean that the old myth of the evil German is no longer in force. Nor does
it mean that our society is suddenly capable of collective judicious reflection on the past or that
we have already forgiven historical injustices.
The monuments reviewed in this article were established by local authorities with the support
35
Zamorski (2008), p. 63.
of the local communities. They emerged in defiance of state policies that oscillated between an
idealised image of Polish-German reconciliation and populist attempts to rekindle the fear of the
German. Thus, it is Polish civic society that has opted for honest gestures of respect and reconciliation.
The Polish-German symbolic domains have a real potential for moving beyond the old national
perspectives. In this process a key role will be played by small communities that creatively treat the
German heritage as something that not only separates, but can also connect Germans and Poles as
they begin to recognise that their historical sites are also the places of the other.36
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The Heterotopology of Body and
State: Against Essentialism in
the History of Democracy and
Medicine with Michel Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze, and John W. Meyer
Alexander I. Stingl
INTRAG, European University Viadriana, Frankfurt an der Oder
Abstract This paper shows how a reading of Foucaults deliberations on heterotopology

and on governmentality through the lens of Deleuze as a philosopher of
science, a lens suggested by DeLanda, allows for operationalisations that critical historians can translate
into forms of discourse analysis and cultural analysis in the style of Mieke Bal, as well as reconcile it with
the language world polity and organisational isomorphism in the style of John W. Meyer. In Foucaults
world, the State and the body, I argue, have structural similarities for they are both heterotopic, but
they are also pace Physiocracy fundamentally dissimilar. The State, like the conception of man
(anthropos) can also be described as a dispositif. From an elaboration of these similarities and differences
in the concepts along the discursive line of Deleuze, the narratives of the body and of the State are
reconstructed between discourse and organisation through a philosophy of the event as an argument
against essentialism.
Keywords Mieke Bal, Bodypolitics, Cultural Analysis, Dispositif, Event, Gilles

Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Heterotopology, John W. Meyer, World Polity
Life is full of detours,
for if each and everyone
would choose the shortest path,
only one would arrive.
Paraphrasing Hans Blumenberg

264 Alexander I. Stingl
Introduction
It must be said that as a dispositif, the State is only a problem for Foucault.1 The concept of the
body, on the other hand, is far more it is a problematisation.
If we were to look for an adequate comparison for his small text (1984) on state-phobia that
would allow us to regain his concept of the body, I suggest we could begin with a provocation:
the claim that the body is a heterotopia of a kind.2 I am disinclined to think that the same can be
said of the State; after all, the State is static and the body is not. At the same time both share, at
the very least, the property of not having an essence. Foucaults explication of the matter of the
non-essential State is an excellent opportunity to elucidate the provocation of a heterotopology
of the body and to explicate why this mode of investigation does not lead to an essentialist
conception. The body is like a State in that one respect that it is non-essential, and it is unlike
a state and more like a democracy, because it has an inside than can be subject to intervention3.
Respectively, body and State are both subject to myths and phantasms, which are the sources
of intervention that constitute the subject experiences of the narratives that re-constitute bodies
and democracies.
In this paper, I will entertain the heterotopological point of view, in its connection to the scientific
philosophy of Deleuze and DeLanda, as reconcilable with cultural analysis and world polity analysis
and furthermore apt to offer a broader frame of understanding and a more robust analysis of the
historical roots of the isomorphisms of contemporary knowledge regimes and decision-making
practices. This is a pragmatic gesture in historical analysis and the philosophy of the event.
1
The paper, originally written for the conference, was a little monster of over forty pages, although by far not the first
oversize single paper I had written (which is the The many lives of the body with more than seventy pages). The first
draft of the bulk of this smaller version of the paper was written at a fellow scholars and environmental activists
house, whom I wish to thank for her hospitality. I want to thank the conference participants and organisers for the
stimulating conference and the comments on this paper in particular Ionu Epurescu-Pascovici and Cecile dAlbis,
who asked the only really important question: What can you do with this?
2
Foucault (1986).
3
The question of whether corporeality and statehood can be viewed as co-located problematizations (outside of the
largely past and, thus, historic discourse of the Physiocratic School around Quesnay) is not so bizarre as it seems, if
one accepts that the philosophical conceptions inherited by modern thinkers derived from the work of philosophers
who operated in times where the academic disciplines were less differentiated and less keen on upholding
interdisciplinary untranslatability than they are today. This can be seen in a Deleuzean study of the development of
American democratic thought by Bernd Herzogenrath (2009) or in a study of Hannah Arendts political philosophy
by John Tambornino (2002).
The Heterotopology of Body and State 265
The heartless state
Foucaults non-essential State and the heterotopic the body-concept are characterised by
an abstinence of making explicit or even stipulating a theory of the state. His critics, Foucault
summarises, claim that he forecloses and evades in his analytics of the State the existence and
effects of the mechanisms of States. On the contrary, he says, whether in dealing with mental health,
discipline, punishment, or clinic, he always analysed the fragmented yet increasing statism/
etatism. It is, he points out, actually at the very centre of his inquiries that we find the process of
stately subsumption of practices. But this emphasises subsumption, not constitution. One cannot
infer practices from the State as if it were a state from nature and the practices immediate derivates
of such a State. The State has no essence, Foucault says, it is not a universal or autonomous source
of power. Rather, it is made of the states of affairs or facts as in statements (or rather state-meants);
it is made from negotiations of boundaries between local and central powers.4 The State, he
claims, is a moving effect of a regime of pluralistic governmentality (gouvernementalit). And most
importantly: The state is without a heart, it knows no feelings, and it has no inner side or inside.
Therefore, we can only inquire about the State from the outside. It is not a chartable or mappable
territory. In many ways, the concept of the body was like this for a long time throughout history,
until a new episteme emerged at the dawn of the age of anthropology, which enabled the body to
become a heterotopia.
The body heterotopia or multiplicity against essentialism (An exercise in working the archive)
In the times before the modern conceptualisation of the body and its regimes of intervention
practices, the body was of a conceptualisation of the human (i.e., of man) that was conceived
in the episteme of the classical age of representation. Only with the new episteme and its novel
dispositif of man,5 a different body could be conceived of while a shift in the nature of the
State now became a problem. Before, the State was, indeed, a body and the body had no
4
Under (boundary) negotiations I summarise all kinds of differentiation, revolution, transformation, etc., that involve
actors with a minimum degrees of freedom in an existing regime (more on regime later on).
5
Miller (1991), p. 68.
inside. In the same vein, in medical semiotics before Kant diagnostics meant to read the
signs right off of the body (specifically, of the bodys outside surface). The body so treated was
always a conscious and reactive one or at least that was how the interventional practices
were de-signed: the space of possibilities of surgical interventions and of the legal power of
the state over the body included the definition of life and death. It was not until post-Kantian
shifts within the new episteme that the controlled and public demonstration of anaesthesia
in 1846 transformed the body into one that could be interfered in through complex surgical
intervention: the inside of the body became problematic and the signs were now to be read
from the living inert. And only now could the political categories of gender, race, and ethnicity
not just occupy but really rise from within the body, and become a matter of negotiation.
Through the emergence of cultural anthropology in the late nineteenth century, conceptual
strategies were made available in the discourse between scholarship and the new public
sphere that would effectively create melting pots and hyphenated Americans, enabled by
the internalisation of semiotics which makes fragmentation of identities possible inasmuch
as identity is now questionable.
This new form of displacement, a displacement that means to displace something within itself
rather than take some body and place it in another place, is only truly possible once the idea has been
stated that something inside can be displaced within itself: the shift of one layer of tissue into another
or, in medical terms: heterotopia. Reginald Fitz, a student of Rudolf Virchow who disseminated the
concept heterotopia within medicine, would introduce the idea to the medical community of Boston
in the late 1800s, in the vicinity of the same place where in 1846 the first anaesthetic act occurred at the
Massachusetts General Hospital. The notion of displacement that cultural anthropologists managed
to introduce into the study of culture and into public debate was taken over by Virchows students,
Adolf Bastian and Franz Boas. People so-displaced became decidedly different from the stranger from
a different place, country, or continent. The so-displaced were here and would not leave; they were
part of the here-and-now and also of the foreseeable future (of a state), while not being from here. In
other words, they were at the same time in the here and not in it, just as anaesthesia offered a way to
control the state between living consciousness and (clinical) death, thus enabling the intervention into
the inside to actively displace, discover, and treat pathological displacements of the bodys tissues.
The body was unfolded, inside out, from the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century,
and epistemic space created in the image of the map in a semiotics of tissue, reproduction, and
heredity. New spaces were created by new practices: first the practices of the speculative language
of philosophy, then the practice of the scalpel.6
From the historians methodological point of view, we must face the following
task. To be a (Foucauldian) heterotopia that allows us to understand how the political
categories could emerge, we need to understand what the body itself was in a figuration
of displacement. The body really was the object of actual interventions, and the persons so
interfered are enabled to say this is my body. But must we not ask, what does that really
mean, and how is that statement even possible? It comes with prerequisites that we need
to reconstruct and analyse.
To speak of my body does not mean that the body references something of essence. The body,
because it is a heterotopia, is more like what Deleuze, and following him, DeLanda, have so aptly
called a multiplicity:
[M]ultiplicities specify the structures of spaces of possibilities, spaces which, in turn, explain the regularities
exhibited by morphogenetic processes.7
In many of his works, Foucault notices how the language we practise is related to space;
indeed, space is, perhaps, the defining dimension for Foucaults work. To paraphrase, one
might say that the use of a conceptual regime (i.e., language) creates and opens spaces.
Heterotopology (hetero-topology) is not just any inquiry into concepts or knowledge regimes,
it is the act of charting and mapping its territory. And this territory is neither fully determined
in a linear fashion nor fully arbitrary. Possibilities are manifold, even if they should not
to be qualified as limitless, infinite, or eternal. Heterotopology, the study and mapping of
heterotopias, is therefore also the study of multiplicities (those multiplicities that we can
6
Rheinberger and Mueller-Wille (2009).
7
DeLanda (2002), p. 10.
conceptualise as part of our experience, perhaps).8
To quote Deleuze:
Multiplicity must not designate a combination of the many and the one, but rather an organization of
belonging to the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system.9
DeLanda shows us how this would necessarily have to be different for an essentialist perspective:
Essences, on the other hand, do posses a defining unity (e.g. the unity of rationality and animality
defining the human essence), and, moreover, taken to exist in transcendent space which serves as a
container for them or in which they are embedded.10
Respectively, we need to establish a more intimate relation between the geometric properties
of manifolds and the properties which define morphogenetic processes.11
DeLandas manifold equals spaces of possible states that, in relation to their (sets of)
singularities that define multiplicity, are not just geometric but topological. It follows that where
essences are clear and distinct multiplicities are obscure and distinct.12
This leads us, as historians of the body, to ask the question of the shift of perspective of the
displacement of perspective and displacement of tissue, known as parallax and heterotopia. The
question is Is this body real?, and it has found its answer: no, it is not but it is intensely actual,
and with the actual body comes its opposite, the virtual. The political categories that are then
realised are virtual, and the more categories (I am tempted to say: pathologies) emerge, the more
the body virtualises.
8
As with for heterotopological practices in literature, see DeLougherys (2007: 253) acquisition of Foucaults concept
matching Deleuzes idea of mutlicplicity.
9
Deleuze (1994), p. 182.
10
DeLanda (2002), p. 12.
11
Ibid., p. 13
12
Ibid., p. 16.
Respectively, the body is the prerequisite of any statement that is accompanied by this is my
body or this is a body, just like the Ich denke must, according to Kant, accompany any thought.
The body is always the actuality of the body, whereas all the rest is virtual. But that also means that
there is space for essentialism here, for where there is actuality, there is no essence.
Of course, this is can only conceptualised once the body has become the subject of internal
intervention, after the inception of the anthropological regime in the new episteme. And only
then can the political categories emerge taking the form of attractors which are, of course
never actualized.13
To uncover both these attractors and virtualisations, one must become a cartographer of the
actualisations, and these actualisations of the body are engraved onto the new dispositif of man.
World polity or heterotopia
The human body is, of course, the subject of (interventions by) the regimes of medical
practice and (health) care. It is also a product of contingent conceptual histories that structured
these regimes while the regimes shaped both the concept of the body and the individual
(or individuated) bodies. The medical gaze and the human body entered, in other words,
into a configuration of a dialectics of seeing (Walter Benjamin and Susan Buck-Morss). As a
consequence, a question of time-frames that are in-play arises and needs further clarification.
It is in time that the philosophy of the event and the method of heterotopology relate to
practical interventions in policies and organisations, negotiated by human actors through
concepts. Therefore, conceptual histories must be accounted for through their problematic time-
frames. The metaphors and concepts that play an important constitutive role in our production
of social reality and social production of reality have a half-life. As the concept of half-life
indicates, these time-frames can be incredibly lengthy as they can be horrendously minute.
If we are to accept the (Foucauldian) idea that we can use our understanding of the historic
contingencies in order to make a political difference, we must also heed the lesson that Hans-
13
DeLanda (2002): p. 34.
Joerg Rheinberger offers us:
The practical turn in the history of science of the past three decades has, naturally, privileged micro-
stories. However, the smaller the temporal intervals under scrutiny, the more grave the danger of the
systematic omission of historical duration has become. In order to prevent the return of the grand
narratives of progress, the time has come to put before us the question of the long duration of historical
interrelations, without, however, abandoning their richness of details.14
But since language and heteropology are spatial, not temporal, we must understand historicity
under the notion of correlation length, defined as the distance across which events influence
each others probabilities.15 Correlation length re-describes the historians concept of longue
dure in a spatial way, so that it can be employed for our purposes. Consider, for example, the
following question: in what ways does the virtualisation the body, originating in the nineteenth
century, make present-day clinical decisions or health care policies more or less viable? How
does this affect the emergence and continuation of a regime of medical practice, of public health
or social medicine?
Research has shown how this long-ranging process has taken place in conjunction with the
emergence of the so-called world environment regime.16 Building on Meyers idea of regime
and introducing the notion of the event into it, I think it is possible to argue in favour of
certain similarities that allow a translation of Meyers results into world-polity analysis and
heterotopology. This can enable productive and robust interventions by historians.. Meyer and
his colleagues define the environmental regime as a partially integrated sum of organisations,
ideas, and assumptions on a global scale, concerning the regulation of the relation between
human society and nature.17 For them, a regime consists of both organisations and mutually
14
Rheinberger (2006), p. 17; translation by the author. In the original German: Die praktische Wende in der
Wissenschaftsgeschichte, der letzten drei Jahrzehnte hat naturgem Mikrogeschichten privilegiert. Doch je krzer
dabei die untersuchten Zeitrume geworden sind, umso mehr droht die systematische Ausblendung der historischen
Dauer. Gerade um die Wiederkehr der grossen Fortschrittserzhlungen zu verhindern, ist es an der Zeit, nach
lngerfristigen historischen Anschlssen zu fragen, ohne deren Detailreichtum aufzugeben.
15
DeLanda (2002), p. 86.
16
Meyer et al. (1977).
17
See also Lau and Keller (2001) and Viehoefer et al. (2004).
influential discourses. They focus their analysis on the environmental regime and argue that they
deal for lack of discursive data only with organisations rather than discourses, nevertheless
acknowledging the legitimacy of discourse analysis.
With regard to the history of medicine, the history of democracy, and their zones of convergence,
I argue that we have enough data waiting to be uncovered for a heterotopological study of
institutions and discourses. What holds both dimensions of analysis together and enables us to
translate them is that we can conceive of the moment and location of actual production of data,
i.e., events.18 Events are the paper-clip between discourses and organisations:
Discourse < Event > Organization
While Meyer and his co-authors view the events in relation to organisations, I view
them, with Deleuze and Foucault, in relation to discourse. And where Meyer et al. give an
account of the world environment regime c. 1870-1990 based on how organizations formed
in response to certain events, the discourse analyst will focus on how the discourses reacted
to the events or constituted them conceptually through practices. In the same manner, the
subject that most of my own research focuses on, the human body, can be reconstructed
in the same way by investigating the events that at once organized the body and medical
practices around the body.19
The Mini-Ethnography of the Event
Events comprise the data we need to look at, and they are filled with a range of meanings and
possibilities, which we, as human interlocutors, can only tap into by use of concepts. Through
the application of concepts we can access the events stored in the archives of our own discursive
history. Concepts are both embedded in narratives and encode them. Narratives are thus the
Indeed, what else are data if not (the material for producing) events?
18
For technical reasons, I often use a different vocabulary that leans on Rabinows adoption of Foucault and Deleuze,
19
but can be easily translated into this general frame for pragmatic purposes that do not require the same analytical
depth; Stingl (2011): Assemblage(~discourse)<Assembly(~event)>Arrangement(~organization)
main form of enablement of human actions. In medical practice, this becomes apparent in the
central role that illness narratives play for patients life-courses.20
Fritz Breithaupt shows how we are constantly embedded in a process of deciding between
narrative alternatives, making this form of narrative empathy (or narrative pragmatics) a fundamental
dimension of all human interaction.21 Mieke Bal and the school of cultural narratology state that the
narrative is not a genre but a mode.22 More importantly, they also argue that a concept of the concept
that follows through with this premise enables us to understand that all human actors are part
of a process wherein they forge and wield concepts as tools of intersubjectivity that are explicit,
clear, and commonly defined, but also fluid and ephemeral (yet normative and programmatic).
In reconstructing a process on the basis of events, and events as instances where concepts have
been explicitly and visibly used, the heterotopological historians view events like an ethnographer
would, and consequently offer a thick description of events, revealing how the human actors
participating in the events use a concept in a practice. Series of events are we assume connected
by the use of each concept, which remains the same time subject to the properties described by Bal.
The interplay of transformation and stability what Deleuze dubbed obscure&distinct necessitates
that the historian speculate on a rule of transformation of the concept from one event to the other:
a mini-theory. It is the series of mini-theories which will show us how a concept is virtualised, and
this description of its virtualisation is what we are looking for.
The heart of democracy
Democratic societies are not designed to have a good heart, meaning that in democratic
societies citizens are not good at heart by nature. But then, they are not intrinsically bad-
hearted or inherently evil, either. Instead, democratic societies operate with two value-laden
tendencies that are complementary rather than rival: inclusion and exclusion. How we deal
20
Diagnosis of an illness will, for example, often lead to a reinterpretation of a patients past life, and the creation of a
new identity and narrative of self. Persons diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity disorder) at
a later stage in their lives, will reinterpret past failures or successes accordingly, either blaming the disorder (victim
motif) or examining their success through a narrative of overcoming obstacles (survivor motif).
21
Breithaupt (2009).
22
Bal (2006), p. 9.
with both these processes is what makes political action necessary and interesting (and, at
times, interested). The corollary insight is simple enough: we cannot have a democratic
society or a community without the idea that some people belong to it and others do not.
How we deal with those that do not, what we do in order to try and include them into our
deliberations and (collective) actions, says a lot about us and partly defines what has once
been called civics. Civics has recently witnessed a post-Bellah revival that was long overdue:
one the one hand, with regard to the question of how democratic life can help negotiate
global-local differences (Jeffrey Alexander), and on the other hand, with the regard to the
potential for, and consequences of, the rise of biopower (Nikolas Rose). Both dimensions
rest on the fundamental claim that, despite the victory cries of capitalism after the fall of
communism, inequalities and social injustice have not miraculously disappeared. On the
contrary, in some cases the gaps in wealth, knowledge, and power, both between groups
within developed countries and between supposedly developed and developing countries
have widened often due to the effects of the so-called digital divide.
The need and the possibility to empower us biological citizens, who are constantly in
negotiation with experts, is the other important dimension and, as a discourse, has been
underwritten and proliferated by numerous scholars. Those engaged in the discourse on
biopower, in particular, help us see channels through which to navigate the unruly waters of
the inequalities that the biomedical sciences and health-care have stirred. Likewise, the more
general problem of knowledge economies in modern societies has been taken up in scholarly
and political discussions, leading to general perspectives that include the biomedical dimension,
the moral of markets, and the effects of the new forms of inequality and injustice created by the
digital divide. And yet, these structural assertions cry for agency, so to speak. In his Cultures
of Empathy, Fritz Breithaupt provides a saturated account for this need to reinvigorate the
civics discourse for good. He grounds the problem of agency in democratic life on a pragmatic
premise that accounts for both inclusion and exclusion on the fundamental level of action. As
a democratic project, this is an account that can be reconciled with both the demands of justice
in digital economies of knowledge and the modes of incorporation in the bio-civil sphere. But
the space of democracy that we need to explore, like the bio-politicised human body, will need
a cartographic gesture. Without charts to navigate and a harbour from where to plot our course,
we will end up helplessly adrift in the unruly waters or idle in the Doldrums. Democracy, like
the body, is a process, not a state.
As Kant stated with regard to the Enlightenment, it is not a time of democracy we live in
but a time of democratisation. Democracy has to be renewed, regained, recovered, redefined,
renegotiated, and fought for continuously with passion and with heart. Our body, too, has to be
renewed, regained, recovered, redefined, and renegotiated between genders and sexes, colours
and shapes, the monster of normalcy itself and the passions of living otherness, ageing with grace
or ageing managed like a disease.
Cartographies
In biomedicine, both from a historical and practical perspective, there are a number of areas
where the heteretopological investigation has been aiding me to understand and unravel the
problems that surround the concept of the human body and its embedding in practices and
decision-making. I am thinking particularly of the doctor-patient and the doctor-parent-
underage patient interactive situations;23 the emergence of ADHD as a contemporary disorder;24

the virtualisation of the patient experience;25 the co-evolution of sociology and biology;26 or the
use of medical imaging technologies in diagnosis and therapeutic decision-making.
The technological gaze or cyborg visuality (Prasad) of imaging technologies and rendered
visual representations of the human body used in todays diagnostics is constituted by a
complex historicity and by myths and visual metaphors drawn from a long series of discursive
transformations. The possibility of body transparency has emerged of making the interior and
the trope of internalisation (Verinnerlichung) visible and open to manipulation from outside.
What defines this kind of intervention is that it avoids actually venturing into the interior. But
23
Stingl (2011).
24
Stingl, ADHD regime, (2010).
25
Stingl, Virtualisation, (2010).
26
Stingl (forthcoming).
this popular surface-narrative does not describe the reality of clinical practice, where imaging
technologies do not actually produce images directly; instead, they produce a lot of data,
some of which is the result of time-lag reaction and can be discarded and filtered as white
noise. What counts as an event, what amounts to genuine data is, subsequently, the product
of much negotiation:
For example, magnetic resonance images are computer-generated visual reconfigurations of physical
data such as the relaxation times of hydrogen atoms that are found abundantly in the body. These
images should truly be called image data because they can conveniently slide between being data or
images. Scientists themselves agree that these images are models of reality, which are once or even
twice removed from reality.27
The authors of the medical-visual narratives enacted in these images produce a reality of mere
models that feed the popular perception that the body is fully transparent, making diagnostic
uncertainty a thing of the past.
Following up on Anne Beaulieus proverbial statement images are not the (only) truth, Colin
Klein concludes with a distinctive twist, that
Neuroimages colorised pictures of `brain activity are the most well-known products of MRI
experiments. They are often taken to be evidence for functional hypotheses: that is, evidence that a
given brain region plays a particular causal role during the performance of a cognitive task.
neither neuroimages nor what they depict provide evidence for functional hypotheses.
scepticism about neuroimages can be grounded in well-known problems with the use of null
hypothesis significance testing (NHST). The problems with neuroimages are thus conceptual, rather
than merely practical, and cannot be easily avoided.28
27
Prasad (2005), p. 292.
28
Klein (2010).
This judgment reiterates the notion of the actual vagueness of images and their dependence on
epistemic authorities to count as medical ontologies. Biomedical and cultural narratives in myth
and metaphor are inseparable and interdependent in shaping the historicities of experimental
systems,29 the epistemic culture of clinical practice (Knorr-Cetina), and the trajectories of patients
life-courses. In the primacy of the image of the body (visualisation) in imaging technologies,
historicity becomes focalised in
Narratives that suggest MRI images provide unbiased knowledge, and thus reveal the truth about
the health of a persons body also erase how referring to physicians the doctors who initially
order the MRI examinations use medical images in conjunction with other tests to make sense of
a persons situation.30
The old myth of the bodys transparency attains phantasmagorical status for the patients life-
course in the process of decision-making between doctor and patient. The patient begins to re-
arrange his or her own identity past, present, future life-course, and biographic narrative of self
according to this narrative structure. The self-narrative, the narrative of the technological and
visual regime, and the narrative of popular culture, begin to reconstitute the body. But this cannot
be achieved outside of the contingencies already virtually present in the bodys multiplicity. The
body is re-mapped, re-charted, de-territorialised in the process, but at the end of the day the map
is still not the territory. Pathological notions, diagnostic decisions, therapeutic regimes, as well
as the patients career trajectory and life-course, are not really open but closed by the reference
to the pre-existing anatomical and physiological narratives that rest on the exclusion of data.
The sentence, This is my body, is re-constructed as This is my body in relation to this (perfect)
picture or to the atlases that are real but do not amount to actual topologies. As Amit Prasad
argues, these atlases are produced in relation to a visual regime that he tentatively names cyborg
visuality. The (parallactic) removal that occurs between patient body, MRI machines, rendering
software, technician, radiologist, diagnosing physician, and patient, or between a vague and
29
Rheinberger (2006).
30
Bal (2005), p. 452.
fuzzy entity, set software algorithms, standardised and trained gazes, and all sorts of narratives
and metaphors, is not the novelty here, even if the publics illusion that MRI renders the human
body transparent remains significant. The novelty is that there is a level of standardised reference
that closes and limits diagnostic trajectories and pathways by use of body atlases, which are
basically man-made myths:
Body atlases, which contain standardised MR and schematic images of the normal and the pathological
anatomy, form the ideal-type for cross-referencing during the process of detection of pathology. These
body atlases, through experience and instruction, become part of the radiologists memory.31
The tricky part is that these atlases are used to domesticate the production of visual regimes
and images (according to Prasad). I would venture to say that this is true as far as self-narratives
go. But they are also inherently probabilistic: the structures that an act of imaging creates are
only approximations of the structures that can be cross-referenced with the atlas. The maps
that are produced are probability maps: a certain brain structure that shows up in an MRI is the
thalamus with seventy-five percent probability, nearly twenty-five percent probability putamen,
and to a minute probability something else entirely.32
The myth of the transparent human body is just that: a myth, in its plainest, common sense.
But the heterotopologists work is not merely about debunking the myth, which in itself does little
to facilitate change. We must accept the existence of the myths, find them, and explain how and
why they work. Thus [i]mages of the body are cartographed to serve as navigational maps to
explore human anatomy and detect pathology.33 However, while the images of the body can be
manipulated to fit the human myths of the body through the regime of cyborg visuality, the actual
body does not disappear.
To translate this into deeper theoretical history, our question would be, how can the body
be essential and constructed at the same time? Well, it is not! To try and reconcile these two
31
Ibid., p. 297.
32
Prasad (2005), p. 307.
33
Ibid., 305.
perspectives would only lead to the old assumptions of dualisms and parallelism that plague
modern medicine through its reduction to Cartesianism. The body has to be considered as a
heterotopia and a multiplicity.
Conclusion
To operationalise this originally heavily jargonised yet, with translation into world polity
analysis, also pragmatic set of ideas, I would sum up my argument as follows.
The method was developed from discourse and cultural analysis and was then revised towards
increasing its effectiveness and making it more robust. It operates on the idea that the notion of
the event, originally suggested by Alfred N Whitehead, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze, can
be empirically applied on the local level in a genealogical study to produce a series of mini-
ethnographies that can facilitate the integration of (biomedical) scientific practices. This process
is usually denoted as the production of an epistemic culture and its epistemic object. In my
research epistemic cultures signify: a) the historical, local nineteenth-century expert culture and
its sensationalist public, and b) global knowledge society as health care consumers. By epistemic
objects I mean a) the human body as a heterotopia or object for controlled internal displacement,
and b) the human body as a body multiple, i.e., its parts represented through abstracted data-
packages and managed in predetermined care-pathways. The advantage of the transformation of
methods that I suggest lies in the expansion of the historical scope, intensifying the appraisal of
agency and decision-making, and accounting equally for theoretical dynamics and social inertia
while accepting that innovative practices and concepts cannot obtain without a priori structures
of social acceptance.
In democracy, we are all in the same boat, in the body we call our own; we are the boat:
the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed
in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port
to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of
the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the
boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the
great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but
has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia
par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of
adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.34
In picking up where Foucault left, I say: Take heart, set sail.
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Note on contributors
tefan BOSOMITU has a doctorate in history from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iai.
He is currently a researcher at the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the
Memory of the Romanian Exile.
Email: stefan.bosomitu@gmail.com
Neven BUDAK is a Professor of Croatian medieval history and Head of the Medieval Studies
doctoral programme at the University of Zagreb. He has published extensively on Croatian
medieval history, medieval urban history, and Croatian historiography.
Email: nbudak@ffzg.hr
Ccile DALBIS holds a joint doctorate in history from the cole des hautes tudes en sciences
sociales, Paris and the University of Grenada; she was a Max Weber postdoctoral fellow at the
European University Institute, Florence. Currently, Ccile dAlbis is postdoctoral researcher at
the Institut fr Europische Geschichte, Mainz. She is the author of Richelieu: Lessor dun nouvel
quilibre europen (Armand Collin, 2012). Her current research project compares the celebrations
of the Christian victory over the Ottomans at the second siege of Vienna (1683) across Italy, Spain,
Portugal, and France.
Email: cecile.dalbis@gmail.com
Liliana DEYANOVA is Professor of Sociology at St Kliment Ohridski Sofia University. Her
research interests include social theory and the history of the social sciences, the historical
sociology of Eastern European communism and post-communism, and historical memory and
282 Note on contributors
biography. She has published extensively on social theory, the memory of communism, and
Bulgarian historiography. Most recently, she contributed the Bulgarian section of a comparative
volume on the social sciences in contemporary south-eastern Europe.
Email: lilidey51@gmail.com
Claudia-Florentina DOBRE has a masters degree in social sciences from the cole doctorale
francophone en sciences sociales and a doctorate in history from Laval University, Qubec
(2007), with a thesis on women political detainees memories of persecution and imprisonment
in communist Romania. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bucharest
and the editor of the journal Memoria. Her research interests include the memory of Romanian
communism and political persecution, oral history, life-writing, womens participation in politics,
museums, monuments, and memorials.
Email: claudiaflorentinadobre@yahoo.com
Gbor EGRY is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Political History in Budapest and editor-
in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal of political history, Mltunk (Our Past). He has a doctorate
from Etvs Lornd University, Budapest. His research focuses on the history of nationalism and
national minorities in Central and Eastern Europe and the politics of identity. He is the author of
three monographs and numerous articles in journals and edited volumes.
Email: egrygabor@freemail.hu
Ionu EPURESCU-PASCOVICI has a PhD in Medieval Studies from Cornell University and is
presently a postdoctoral researcher in history at the University of Bucharest. His published work
covers ego-documents, pragmatic literacy, and the social imaginary, with a focus on France and
Italy, c. 1200-1400. Currently, he is working on a book about agency in medieval society and its
implications for understanding the medieval roots of European modernity.
Email: epurescu.pascovici@gmail.com
Nadezhda Velinova GALABOVA has a doctorate from the University of Sofia (2009), with a
Note on contributors 283
dissertation on Socialism and its foreign language: The English language school in the cultural field of
socialist Bulgaria (1950-1989). In 2009-2010, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre of Excellence
Dialogue Europe at the University of Sofia. She is currently a member of the research team Oral
History of Communism in Bulgaria (1944-1989) at the Institute for Studies of the Recent Past, Sofia.
Her research interests include oral history, everyday life, socialism, and education.
Email: nadejda_gulub@hotmail.com
Cristian Emilian GHI has a PhD in Classics and Ancient History from the University of Exeter.
Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bucharest. His interests include
Hellenistic Studies, Asia Minor, and ancient warfare. All of these are happily combined in his
current research project, Military Traditions and Innovations in Hellenistic Asia Minor.
Email: ceghita@gmail.com
Leonardo GREGORATTI is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Udine. In 2010, he was a
fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the University of Kiel, where he
worked on a monograph based on his doctoral thesis, Between Rome and Ctesiphon: Royal authority
and peripheral powers along the trade routes of the Parthian kingdom. His work focuses on the Roman
Near East, Palmyra, long distance trade, and the Parthian Kingdom.
Email: dergrego@googlemail.com
Luciana Mrioara JINGA is a researcher at the Institute for the Investigation of Communist
Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. She holds a joint doctorate from the University
of Angers and the University of Iai (2011). Her research interests focus on gender studies and
womens history as well as the history of communist parties in Eastern Europe.
Email: mia.jinga@gmail.com
Valentina MARCELLA is a doctoral candidate at the Department of History and Civilization of
the European University Institute, Florence. She has a masters degree in Turkish Studies from the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has been working on several
284 Note on contributors
aspects of the political and cultural history of Turkey from the late Ottoman period to present
day, and is currently researching the satirical production of Turkey in the 1980s, focusing on the
tension between political cartoonists and the military regime of 1980-1983.
Email: Valentina.Marcella@eui.eu
Alexander NIKOLOV is Associate Professor of Medieval History at St Kliment Ohridski
Sofia University. His published work covers a diversity of topics in medieval studies, including
the image of the Oriental in crusade propaganda, medieval migrations and border societies,
medieval conceptions of community and nation, and the uses and abuses of the medieval past
in Bulgarian historiography.
Email: alnik_1999@yahoo.com
Emilien RUIZ is doctoral candidate and assistant lecturer in contemporary history at the cole
des hautes tudes en sciences socials, Paris. He is also a teaching assistant at the Institut dtudes
politiques de Paris (aka Sciences Po) and animates two professional blogs: La Boite Outils des
Historiens and Devenir historien-ne.
Email: emilien.ruiz@ehess.fr
Ewa RYCHTER is Senior Lecturer at the Angelus Silesius State College in Wabrzych. She
holds a doctorate in literary theory. In 2008, she completed the Biblical Studies programme
at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology, Wrocaw. She is author of (Un)Saying the Other: Allegory
and Irony in Emmanuel Levinass Ethical Language (Peter Lang Verlag, 2004) and of numerous
articles on literary theory, contemporary philosophy, the Bible in contemporary culture, and
contemporary British fiction.
Email: rje@wp.pl
Izabela SKRZYSKA is Assistant Professor of History at the Adam Mickiewicz University of
Pozna. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Chaire de recherche du Canada en histoire
compare de la mmoire, Laval University, Quebec. She is the author of two monographs (in Polish),
Note on contributors 285
on students theatre in Pozna, 1953-1989, and on the alternative politics of memory in post-
communist Poland. Her research interests include historical memory and performance, historical
civic education, and multiculturalism.
Email: izabela_skorzynska@tlen.pl
Alexandr STIGL is Visiting Research Fellow at INTRAG, European University Viadriana,
Frankfurt an der Oder, and adjunct lecturer at Leuphana University, Lueneburg. He holds a DPhil
in sociology from FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg. His research area is in the medical humanities and
science and technology studies, broadly construed. He is the editor of Pompeii, a peer reviewed,
open access journal publishing young scholars.
Email: alexanderstingl@hotmail.com
Elitsa STOILOVA is currently finishing her joint PhD in the History of Technologies at the
Technical University, Eindhoven and the University of Plovdiv. Her research interests include the
history and sociology of technology, social identity, local heritage and food authenticity.
Email: E.R.Stoilova@tue.nl
Anna Maria WACHOWIAK is Professor at the Higher School of Humanities, Szczecin. Her
research interests span the sociology of family and education, interpersonal communication,
gender studies, contemporary social theory and the methodology of social research, the sociology
of memory, and Polish political history. She has published numerous scholarly articles and is the
author and editor of several volumes. Professor Wachowiak is a member of the Polish Sociological
Association and of the International Federation for Home Economics.
Email: annawach@neostrada.pl

C.-F. Dobre, I. Epurescu-Pascovici & C. E. Ghiţă (Ed.), Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in History and The Humanities PDF

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Myth-Making

and Myth-Breaking in History

Proceedings of the Conference

Claudia-Florentina Dobre (University of Bucharest)

Creating and Transforming a Dynastic Myth the Commagenian Case ......................... 13

Cristian Emilian Ghi (University of Bucharest)

Leonardo Gregoratti (Udine University)

The Protobulgarians: Old Theories, New Myths and the Phenomenon of

Parahistory In Post-Communist Bulgaria ......................... 37

Neven Budak (University of Zagreb)

from the 16th to the 18th Century ......................... 73

Ccile dAlbis (Institut fr Europische Geschichte Mainz)

How Old Is the History of Modernity? ......................... 87

Gabor Egry (Institute of Political History, Budapest)

Valentina Marcella (European University Institute, Florence)

Number of Civil Servants and Historiographical Myths in France ......................... 143

tefan Bosomitu (IICCMER, Bucharest)

Memories of Romanian Communism: Myths, Representations, Discourses ......................... 187

Claudia-Florentina Dobre (University of Bucharest)

Scriptural Myths in Some Contemporary British Novels ......................... 231

Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in Polish-German Relationships after WW II ......................... 249

Note on Contributors ......................... 281

process of the conference papers.

for their participation in the conference and their engaging remarks.

historical, political, narrative, or relating to ones identity.

interpretative system and a behavioural model.3

investigate the construction, cultural significance, and socio-political function of an array of

new conceptual possibilities.

Rychter, Scriptural Myths in Two Contemporary British Novels).

Florentina Dobre, Memories of Romanian Communism: Myths, Representations, Discourses; original

French title: Mmoires du communismeroumain: mythes, reprsentations, discours) or act as ideological

such ludic means of expression proved instrumental in demystifying an all-powerful institution,

the Turkish Army.

Shapings and Reshapings of Bulgarian Post-Socialist Narrative Identities).

in the process of elaborating an explanatory scheme of national history. In Elitsa Stoilovas

establishment in redefining local authenticity as a marketable, exportable product. Popular myth

particularly when confronted with the archival record.

Historiography. Deyanova shows how contemporary historians have become complicit in

the perpetuation of the mythicised, nineteenth-century nationalistic view of Bulgarian

researchers equally hegemonic ambition of accomplishing a unified, univocal perspective

on the history of communist regimes. Moving towards a sociology of historical practices,

on their efforts to rethink traditional, publicly-sanctioned paradigms.

historical interpretation, facilitated by the Internet, can lead to parahistorical perspectives in

on different bases in the new European context.

and of course periodisation.

Similarly, the analysis of historiographical myths leads to important methodological observations

individuals, local communities, nations, and societies operate at different moments in

elaborating meta-discourses: national, European, multi- and trans-disciplinary.

the challenges of history writing.

Cristian Emilian GHI

Keywords Commagenian Orontids, dynastic myth, Alexander, Darius, Seleukos

I. Historical and geographical setting

and who these kings were.

Seleukids, the most influential power in the region.

even in the capital, Antiocheia.4

the hierothesion of Nemrut Da, of which more will be said shortly.

transformed its identity in the course of time.

II. The myth

Mithradates Kallinikos. Kallinikos is honoured throughout the Nemrud Da complex, as the

fortunate roots of my family.10

dynast reassess his dynastic origins.

is constructed in Dion Chrysostomos series of speeches Peri Basileias. Moreover, it is known

to putting forward ambitious political claims.