Responses to Fandom in Bulgarian Context

The editorial team of Shadow Dance—the leading fandom magazine in Bulgaria.

Nyasha to Dora:

I enjoyed reading very much your opening statement, Dora - partly because my background is film and media studies (my PhD was in film - specifically the Hollywood gaze on Africa in turn of the century films such as Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond and Last King of Scotland) but also because of the really interesting theoretical work you are doing on the tertium quid ('third thing') that is Bulgaria/Eastern Europe that seems not to fit the normative global south/global north binary. Your location of the origins of this tertium quid, via Chari and Verdery’s “Thinking Between the Posts”, in the Balkans/Cold War is also salient and intellectually very provocative. In my PhD, I sought to examine if the Hollywood gaze had changed since colonial and cold war times, now that all of Africa had by 2000 become - at least nominally - independent from European colonisation. I found that the more things change the more they remain the same. Many of the racist tropes in colonial films had been updated and recharged for 21st century audiences.

I am interested to find out from you if Bulgarian fandom reflects, refracts and/or resists the rather unique Cold war, post-Cold war and post-Communist histories that you highlight, how it does so, and in which forms of entertainment/genres such attitudes and practices are to be seen most saliently at play. Football? Movies? Music? What makes such genres especially liable to be affected by these histories and conditions? Also, is there a normative Bulgarian fandom or there are plural fandoms? If there is a plurality of fandoms, what explains such plurality? It would be nice if you could use specific illustrations, particularly contemporary ones, but also some seminal ones from the late 20th century.

Of some interest to me is that the Cold War, in Africa (and South America and Asia), was not “cold” at all. Wars, proxy wars and civil wars (for instance, in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola and the Congo etc.) were a key testament to the hotness of the Cold war, but also its constant shape-shifting to fit changing conditions.. Was there the same sort of hot, shape-shifting Cold war in Bulgaria/Eastern Europe? How hot was the Cold war in Bulgaria, and how would that fact affect the nature of the post-Communist terrain? Furthermore, the nature of the Cold war in Africa was that it effectively Balkanised many parts of the continent, partly through fomenting tribalism and “tribal war”, and the clearest effect of that Balkanisation today can be seen in the Congo and the Great Lakes region. The Cold war has, sadly, not ended in many parts of Africa. Anyhow, the reason I mention the Cold war in Africa and other places is to suggest that, perhaps, Bulgaria might share certain similarities with, say, Southern Africa - at least as far as Cold war histories are concerned. Firstly, the Cold war was an extension of colonialism and an element of its metamorphosis. Secondly, it thrived on division. Finally, the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 had important ramifications for South Africa and other Southern African countries which had been used as Cold war proxies. In South Africa, for instance, historians maintain that the ANC was forced to come to the negotiating table because of this geopolitical shift to a unipolar world. Also, the apartheid regime could not use the Russian communist menace as an convenient excuse for its primitive violence. So how different/unique is Bulgaria/Eastern Europe, really, from this point of view?

Finally, could you comment briefly, if you can, on the place of the Roma in this non-binary/extra-binary lens/framework that you are advancing? Are the Roma, with their traditionally marginal identities, easily incorporated into Bulgarian fandoms? Why/why not?

In my feedback to your Opening Statement, Dora, I want to focus on augmenting your interest in formulating an “integrated analytical framework (of fandom)”and what I see as the relatable sites of such a framework. I like this focus of yours very much, and am excited by the fact that you are from the “Balkans” because I have always been fascinated by the history of this region and what it means and portends for truly international analytical frameworks of our modern times. So, I’m going to meander and loop a lot, and there will be gaps in my feedback. Nothing that I am going to say is gospel: I merely seek to open avenues for intellectual engagement. My initial engagement, also, is much broader than a narrower focus on “fandom” should allow. This is deliberate, because I expect to engage with you starting from a broad-based discourse on Bulgarian history/Bulgarian identity/Balkan history/Balkan identity, before narrowing further to a discussion of Bulgarian media work and the sites of fandom around it.

Note that I have not proof-read my response, and so there will be many typos and punctuation and grammatical errors, and many sentences that make no sense. I apologise in advance. I think I offered a similar apology in my response to Stelios! So this should become standard, I guess.

So, where to begin? I think that – and most people would probably agree – there is very little doubt that the Balkans is not only a salient part of modern international history, but plays an outsized role for a tiny “peninsula” in south-eastern Europe. Thus, I’ll begin by mentioning two bits of fact that link the present to the past, and then build my thinking about Bulgaria, Bulgarian/Balkan identity, and fandom on these thoughts.

First bit of fact: In 2007, Vasil Levski (Levski = Lionlike) was voted the all-time greatest Bulgarian in a nationwide television poll conducted as part of the Velikite Balgari (“The Great Bulgarians”) survey. This is a man been born 170 years before that television poll. 

What links contemporary Bulgarians to such a long past? Indeed, several sites in Bulgaria such as the town of Levski, the Bulgarian national stadium, the Levski Sofia football club, and the Vasil Levski National Military University, are all named after Levski. The day when Levski’s was hanged is observed each year across Bulgaria on February 19, and several personal items – including some of his hair, a silver cross, copper water vessel, Gasser revolver, and the shackles from the episode of his imprisonment in Sofia – are on exhibit at the National Museum of Military History. 

Now, on to the second bit of fact: East Thrace, which is Turkish to this day, once belonged to Bulgaria but was appropriated by Turkey in the Second Balkans War. East Thrace is significant in this discussion because it is the European part of Turkey (the one where Istanbul province is). What is the role of the “Oriental” in the Bulgarian (and Balkan) imaginary? What is the meaning of this contest over the European part of the Orient?

Perhaps a third thing I can add is a personal note – that before I read about the Balkans in school, I had had prior introduction to Bulgaria in the larger-than-life sporting figure of footballer Hristo Stoichkov at the 1994 FIFA football world cup in America. Which footballing fan who was watching football at the time can forget Stoichkov? Stoichkov also played for Barcelona FC in Spain. 

When I read your introductory note, Dora, and then thought back to my high school and undergraduate history, I have to say that I find the move you make in utilising Todorova’s conception of “Balkanism”-as-a-discourse to be quite salient and productive. I cannot help but add to this by framing my feedback to you in the form of an additional proposition: that the “Balkans” is as much a “discourse” as a “paradigm” (if we want, we may say “discursive paradigm”), and that this paradigm shapes not only the identity and perception of being Bulgarian, but the also the outcomes of being Bulgarian in a contemporary world (and Europe) that is in a flux and is undergoing uncertain (economic, social, and political) reconfiguration. 

It is important – and serendipitous – that you happen to come from Bulgaria because, when you mention Bulgaria, there is already a default association with the Balkans since the name Bulgaria itself is drawn from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria (i.e., the Balkan Mountains are mostly located in Northern Bulgaria). Perhaps Bulgaria is the original seat of what Zizek calls the “spectre of Balkan”. I think that the account of fandom that I read in your submission is one that is shaped by the specific notion of Balkans as “discourse” and/or “paradigm”, a paradigm that simultaneously competes with, restricts, constrains, and complements yet another paradigm that you focus on quite saliently: the “(post)Cold War” paradigm. 

I am drawn to your remark that your contemporary lived experience in the U.S., as a Bulgarian woman and scholar, “has been mediated through U.S. perceptions (and misperceptions) of Soviet and Eastern European communism and post-communism.” The history we did in high school (if I recall correctly) was that, during the Cold War the Balkans were split between the two blocs of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Bulgaria and Romania belonged to the Warsaw Pact, while Greece and Turkey were members of NATO. Yugoslavia belonged to a “third way” as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Since Bulgaria, along with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, are all former communist states, this could explain why the “communist” tag in the US is probably unescapable. 

However, to limit the historical splay of Balkans history (and narrative) to communism seems to be a reflection of the limited historical imaginations of the Americans themselves. The joke is on them! So, I would perhaps like to start with the contemporary frame of Bulgaria-as-communism’s-left-overs, and then lead back (and forth) to the “Balkans” (as paradigm), because there is a sense in which being-Bulgarian appears to be constituted in the productive tensions of pasts that refuse to be properly past. The past not only competes with the present for salience, but even opens a portal or revolving door through which the past sends the present back to the past. 

In my indigenous language (Karanga from Zimbabwe), there is a saying that “Kare haagari ari kare” (The past does not stay past). For some people this means that the past gives way to the present, in linear, progressive fashion, but this is a weak reading of this idiom – or at least there is another compelling re-reading that I have always preferred. This alternative reading is that, in reality, “Kare haagari ari kare” means that the past has no interest in being or staying (as) the past. Rather, the past is always updating itself, largely by raiding and invading the present and the resources of the present. 

In the reading that I do below, I find that the Balkan “past” has not stayed past at any point, but is constantly reconnoitring and updating itself in the present. I thus agree with your long-held/deeply felt skepticism about the efficacy of frameworks that rely on the geographical separation of the world between a Global North and a Global South in order to read not just the ensuing world order but the everyday lives and identities of local populations. Perhaps looking at the Balkans as paradigm might, at least in part, shed newer light on the problem and perhaps even bear out your (and Chari & Verdery’s) framing of the limitations of the Three-World Model Nawal El Saadawi, the Egyptian novelist and philosopher, has innovatively rejected the idea of either the Three-World or Two-World Model, saying:

Why do we have inequality and poverty in the world? I notice that some people still use the phrase ‘Third World’ to name us, to name the people who live in Africa, Asia and South America. This term is no longer used by many people, including myself, because we live in one world (not three) and we are dominated or governed by one global system which is now called the New World Order. However, we know that in fact it is an old world order which uses new methods of exploitation and domination, both economic and intellectual. Language and the media have become more efficient at obscuring the real aims of those international institutions or groups that speak about peace, development, justice, equality, human rights and democracy, but whose agreements and decisions lead to the opposite – that is, to war, poverty, inequality and dictatorship. (Newson-Horst (2010), The Essential Nawal El Saadawi, London: Zed, 78.)

Considering these critiques, we can be broadly agreed that the normative tendency to see the world through the two or even three world split (as well as the East/West, Communism/Capitalism binary) is mostly unfeasible.  

Your gravitation towards Chari and Verdery’s view that “an integrated analytical field ought to explore intertwined histories of capital and empire…. but also the ongoing effects of the Cold War’s Three-Worlds ideology” is to my mind well-founded, if only because it allows your study of Bulgarian fandoms to be much richer than it would have been had you merely followed the contours of received Cold War binaries (or “three-naries”?). I certainly agree with you that there is an “odd fit”, which your opening statement does well to refract and disrupt, although I would still argue that there is scope to see coloniality and post-coloniality in the broader account of the “Balkans” itself. 

Certainly, coloniality and post-coloniality, as frames with which to see our modern times, seem to me to have more utility than the framing of communism and post-communism. I will explin myself. In fact, I do not broadly agree with the claim that “Balkan people…were not colonized” if by colonialism we mean a specific practice of mutation of empire. Bulgaria (and the Balkans) are certainly marked by so-called “great power” politics, stretching for hundreds of years, including a genealogy that leads back to the heritage of the Roman empire (i.e., during the Middle Ages, the Balkans was the arena of a succession of conflicts and wars between the Byzantine Roman and the Bulgarian Empires) and, more importantly (for our current discussion) of the Ottoman empire, the perennial tension between the Ottoman empire and “the West”, between (feudal/Tsarist) Russia and “the West”, between, during and after the two World Wars, and between the Communist Soviet Union and “the West”, and so on. 

Where the Bulgarians never colonised? There is a sense in which one can say that, historically, the Bulgarians have been colonised by, and been (framed as) the victims of the Turks/Ottoman Empire, whether in terms of the almost five centuries of Ottoman rule, or (singular incidents such as) the April Uprising of the 1870s which resulted in Bulgarian massacres by the Turks, the Liberation struggle of 1878, or the First and Second Balkan Wars. More precisely they have been victims of great power machinations and competing empires, through WWI and WWII, through the Cold War and post-Cold War, and now through gradual absorption into EU and NATO. Whether or not we see the play and splay of (Ottoman, and, later, Soviet) imperialism in Bulgaria as constituting colonialism is worth a technical (perhaps more than a technical) discussion. 

Yet, also, interestingly, Bulgaria itself may have had colonising impulses, and could even be considered a “sub”-coloniser. Consider, for instance, that so-called Greater Bulgaria in the 19th century had irredentist claims, with claims on Macedonia and, later, in terms of the loss of East Thrace to Turkey. The Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, for example, had indicated that Macedonia was part of Greater Bulgaria, yet Macedonia in practice remained part of Ottoman Empire. That is, in the early 20th century, control over Macedonia was a key point of contention between the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, all of whom fought in both the First Balkan War of 1912–1913 and the Second Balkan War of 1913. Bulgaria, at the same time, has historical claims to parts of the Western borders of Turkey, including the area where Istanbul today is located. 

Even the claim that you make, Dora, that “Balkan people are…Christian (albeit Orthodox Christian)” appears to elide and efface several interesting historical strands of the sorts of religions and religious cultures of the region: e.g., the history of the influx of “pagan” Bulgars and Slavs into the area (i.e., the confluence of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity came a little later) or even the more interesting theme of the Balkans as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity. After all, the Ottoman heritage in the Balkans expresses both the exchange of “far eastern” culture and religion in the form of Islam. Ottoman society, we have heard, was multi-ethnic and multi-religious, with confessional groups divided on the basis of the “millet system” in which Orthodox Christians (Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, etc.) constituted the Rum Millet while, in Islamic jurisprudence, the Christians had dhimmi status, which entailed certain taxes and lesser rights. 

Through Islamization, communities of Slavic Muslims emerged, which survive until today in Bosnia, south Serbia, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria. It would also seem that there have always been many/plural strands of “Slav”, including Eastern Orthodox Slav, Hellenised Slav, the Muslim/Turkic Slav, and so on. More notably, the tension between Islam and Christianity has proved durable, though always differentiable, and has joined other nested tensions coalescing around identities, belonging, politics, (allocation of) resources (who gets what?), class, gender, nationality, and so on.  If you consider the language situation in contemporary Bulgaria, for instance, most people (nearly 80%?) speak Bulgarian, but some speaking Turkish (nearly 10%), others Romani (4%), and so on. I dare say that the Ottoman/oriental factor is still present even in the languages of Bulgaria. So, I want to think that the “Balkans” is not just nested – Milica Bakic-Hayden conceptualisation of “nesting orientalisms” – but also involves exchanges (and even transfusions) between past and present, amongst cultures, across itineraries of power (Ottoman, Russian, Soviet, “Western” etc.) and across modes of domination and influence.

So, what kinds of epistemic itineraries would “an integrated analytical framework” (to use your succinct phrase) of fandom in Bulgaria trace and re-trace? If, as you suggest, the literal bodies of contemporary fans in Bulgaria have been “invoiced” (to use a term from Apartheid Studies) the gaps (and costs) of the Balkan-with-Cold War past that does not want to be past, what should be the scope of our (re)search of such integrated analytical frameworks? 

As already indicated, my reading of your opening statement revolves around, and is specifically drawn to, your interest in formulating an integrated analytical framework (of fandom) and what I see as the relatable sites of such a framework. I think that such an analytical framework, if it is to be properly integrated, needs an additional dimension that you seem to have silenced or at least glossed over. Certainly, there is a gap. So, when you mention Orientalism in your opening statement, you do not include it as part of the integrated analytical framework. Why not? The fact that the provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe existed from 1500 until 1928 indicates the longevity of the “Oriental” in the Balkans landscape. I think/strongly suggest that you must consider including it in the integrated analytical framework because of the major role that the “Ottoman factor” plays in the whole Balkans imaginary. 

That is, Orientalism = East/Ottoman. Balkan nationalism in the 19th century was, clearly, anti-Ottoman both in spirit and letter. It is, in the same vein, difficult to speak of the birth of the Bulgarian nation, and of Bulgarian nationalism, and of being Bulgarian, while excluding the anti-Ottoman/Oriental factor in shaping the foundations of Bulgarian identity. Consider the fact that Ivan Vazov’s 1888 novel Under the Yoke, (a novel which is celebrated in Bulgarian accounts of the rise of Bulgarian national identity), is centred on the depiction of Ottoman oppression of Bulgaria. Bulgaria is chafing under the Ottoman “yoke”. Bulgaria’s Liberation Day, March 3 (1878), represents liberation from the Ottomans and the agreements of the Treaty of San Stefano. The Bulgarian “revival” itself coincided with (and exploited) Ottoman decline since the Crimean War and eventual disintegration of Ottoman rule following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. Indeed, Bulgaria as an independent nation arises after almost five centuries of Ottoman domination (1386–1878), with the help and military intervention of Russia. It is safe to say that Ottoman glue held Bulgaria together and shaped it, for better or for worse. 

At the same time, the successful quest for independence from Ottoman rule suggests the presence of a strong strand of Bulgarian identity that sought an autonomous existence from the fraught identities conferred by Empire. The international rivals of the Ottomans, for their part, supported and promoted the rise of an independent Bulgaria, further complicating the picture of competing interests. Pre-Communist/Tsarist Russia supported the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Balkan nationalism not so much for the benefit of the people of the Balkans but for its own strategic reasons. One of those reasons was the Orthodox/Pan Slavic idea that all Slavs should be united under Russian leadership. I read somewhere that Slavophiles, including Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, regarded the impending Russo-Turkish war in Bulgaria in the late 19th century as a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to unite all Orthodox nations under Russia’s helm, thus fulfilling what they believed was a/the historic mission of Russia. 

The rest of Great powers (such as Britain, Austria and France) sought to use Balkan nationalism to erode and counter their rivals’ power and reconfigure the international order in their favour, when and if it suited them. That is, all the great powers used the Balkans as a sandbox and training ground where they would “proxy” and “offshore” their conflicts. Indeed, all the Great Powers were rivals in the Balkans such that the expansion into Balkans by other Great Powers was itself an anti-Ottoman move. 

In the main, the Great Powers operated typically by parcelling out the Balkans amongst themselves. We can see the opaqueness of great power machinations in the fact that the Paris Peace Treaty included guarantees of Ottoman territorial integrity by Great Britain, France and Austria. The Great Powers never wanted the creation of a large new united Slavic state. Hence the Congress of Berlin modified the Treat of San Stefano. There was to be no Greater Bulgaria, for instance. In a kind of slow-motion Truman Doctrine, the Balkans remains to this day a proprietary playground and sandbox of the “big boys” (the so-called great powers). 

On the other hand, as intimated, the Balkan nationalists themselves had their own separate intentions, and sought to use the tensions amongst the Great Powers to their own advantage, with varying results. But even if we do not go back beyond the 20th century, we may still find elements of Balkan paradigm at play in the time before the Cold War. Consider, for instance, the fact that Bulgaria had entered WWII on the so-called Axis side. It was rewarded with territory by Hitler, but this was reversed by the so-called Allies in 1947 at the Paris Peace Conference. In fact, with the start of the Second World War, all Balkan countries, with the exception of Greece, were allies of Nazi Germany, having bilateral military agreements or being part of the Axis Pact. Thus, Bulgaria and the other Balkan states, in the geopolitical space since the end of WWII, must be seen as part of the defeated “axis” that included Japan, Italy, and Germany, but – unlike the other three – Bulgaria (and the other war-ravaged Balkan states) did not benefit from American post-war support such as the Marshall Plan or American support for Japanese economic reconstruction.

It is the Orientalist/Ottoman factor that, for me, is largely responsible for the thread of the past that is no longer past. Indeed, it has been said that the origins of the word Balkan itself might be Persian or Turkish, further indicating a debt to the “Oriental factor”. Whatever the word’s origin, it is hard to separate any conception of Balkan-as-paradigm from the “Ottoman pivot”. In one sense, we could actually talk about the Balkans as anti-Ottoman, or as an anti-Ottoman paradigm. If the term “Balkan Peninsula” was once a synonym for the so-called “European Turkey” (that is, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces) the term later morphed into an affirmation of anti-Ottoman nationalism with South Slavs as its spear-head (“Yugoslavia” = Serbs, Croats, Slovenes). The Orientalist/Ottoman/anti-Ottoman factor can (even) explain not just the genealogy of NATO but also the utility of the Balkans as “buffer”. That is, if we look at NATO, as a “defence concept”, it seems to go back to the conception of military frontier and cordon sanitaire against the Ottomans. 

The Orientalist/Ottoman factor, to my mind, inaugurates the Balkans-as-Buffer concept, expressed, in large part, in the notion of the Military Frontier established in the 16th century (following the election of Ferdinand I as King), with the primary aim of keeping out the Ottomans. The Military Frontier formed both a special system of military organisation, military border and even land ownership that served Habsburg aims of anti-Ottoman war. Indeed, the anti-Ottoman and anti-Islamic nature of the Balkans-as-buffer cannot be overemphasised. If we note that, for more than two centuries (1553-1881), the Croatian Military Frontier and the Slavonian Military Frontier (both conceived as the Militärgrenze, Vojna krajina/Vojna granica or cordon sanitaire against the Ottomans), was in place, exercising and retaining complete civilian and military authority over the area until abolition of the Military Frontier in 1881, we can even start to see the outlines of NATO not just as a “defence concept” but as a defence concept against the Ottoman/the East. Note, also, that the dominant religion within the Militärgrenze cordon sanitaire itself would be either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, while Islam was meant to be outside. Today, the Militärgrenze countries would be Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Hungary, and Romania. Interestingly, some of the Militärgrenze countries (in the Western Balkans) generally belong in a “marginal EU” and, even, “pre-EU” where they are subjected to a waiting period of “growing up” before they can “graduate” into full EU members.  Bulgaria itself was in the vetting/waiting programme known as CEFTA – the Central European Free Trade Agreement – before it could fully join the EU. 

For me, when I hear “Balkans”, some of what I hear is “shared history”, although I do not know to what extent the shared history is shared, or even to measure how much is shared and why. I can only speculate. At the same time, I hear displacement, and then assimilation. If the Balkans normatively comprise Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia (Do we even call these countries the countries of South Eastern Europe or Balkans?), then there is scope to engage, at least at the beginning, in a move that reads back (way back) to the framing of the Balkans as a site, locus and crossroads of cultures (with the emphasis on crossroads), from the Latin and Greek extensions of the Roman Empire (note, for instance, that, in the 19th century, the concept of the Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia, which etymologically means “Land of the Romans”), before being the locus (as already mentioned) of demographic shifts (and reorientations) caused by the sustained influx of “pagan” Bulgars and Slavs, and being  the meeting place (and crossroads) of religions (Orthodox Christianity, Catholic Christianity and Islam) and cultures, ways of seeing, and ways of being.

Indeed, in the long, long past, there was a point in history where there was a Slavic invasion of the Balkans itself, before the Slav’s became indigenous to the Balkans region. That is, even the Balkan Slavs themselves came from elsewhere. The historical narrative indicates that, in the long past (in 681, to be precise), Bulgaria became the first South Slavic polity and regional power, formed in 681 as a union between the more populous Slavic tribes and the bulgars of Khan Asparuh, before the First Bulgarian Empire was conquered by the Byzantine Empire in 1018. The Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396) defeated and replaced the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans, becoming the dominant empire in the Balkans until 1256, followed by decline under constant invasions by Mongols, Byzantines, Hungarians, and Serbs, as well as internal unrest and revolts, in the late 13th century. Interestingly, the 14th century saw temporary recovery and stability, but also the peak of Balkan feudalism as central authorities gradually lost power in many regions, such that Bulgaria was divided into three parts on the eve of the Ottoman invasion. By the time the Ottomans came the Bulgarian Empire was already in decline; already dismembered. 

The European shift to the Atlantic (and thus turning Europe’s back on the Balkans as a pivot of European strategic power) starts just as the Bulgarian Empire is about to be defeated and absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. Hence, much of the Balkans was under Ottoman rule throughout the early modern period, with Ottoman rule lasting from the 14th into the early 20th century in some territories. The fact that the Balkans existed, for the longest time, as provinces of Turkey/Ottoman Empire, means that Balkan culture and society (and by extension the Balkan “paradigm”) were also shaped, for better or worse, by the notion of the “Oriental”. The point I am trying to make is that looking at coloniality and postcoloniality, on the one hand, and the “Orientalism” aspect, can add to the integrated analytical framework you wish to privilege in your study of the contours of Bulgarian fandoms.

Because I watch football frequently, I know of a Bulgarian football team known as Sofia Levsky which sometimes competes in European football competitions (UEFA champions league and Europa league) and which hails from the Bulgarian city of Sofia. The link is the idea of Bulgaria and the historical figure of Vasil Levski. There are, not surprisingly, and as already intimated, many monuments to Levski in Bulgaria (and across Southeastern Europe and even in western Europe); many streets in Bulgaria carry his name. 

These contemporary sites and naming(s) have deep pasts in the Bulgarian imaginary, linking the idea of being-Bulgarian with independence-seeking but also with nation building in the context of resisting empire and exploiting possibilities and tensions of/within the international order. That is, I seem to find that the idea of Bulgaria itself, in its originary sense, might have been shaped (in part) by the construct of Bulgaria as anti-Ottoman/buffer construct, and by (playing off) the tension between two “Easts” of the Ottomans and Russia. Hence, Bulgarian heroes, such as Levsky, came to be national heroes in the war of liberation from the Ottomans in the 1870s and the Balgarsko natsionalno vazrazhdane, a period of Bulgarian “national awakening”, renaissance, socio-economic development and national cohesiveness emerged among oppressed Bulgarians living under Ottoman rule (1762/1820s), and reached its zenith with the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 (as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78). Levski himself, regarded as the one responsible for the original act of imagining a Bulgarian republic based on ethnic and religious equality, seems to have drawn on liberal ideas reflected, for instance, in the French Revolution, among other sources. Levski is quoted as saying, “We will be free in complete liberty where the Bulgarian lives: in Bulgaria, Thrace, Macedonia; people of whatever ethnicity live in this heaven of ours, they will be equal in rights to the Bulgarian in everything.” Being Bulgarian today, as it was in the past, thus seems to be a pluralistic identity that draws from many sources, histories, and influences, as well as tensions and contradictions.

That is, if I were to represent the Balkans, it would first have to be seen as a melting pot, and then as an equation: displacement + assimilation + more displacement and more assimilation = Balkans. If we throw in all these influences, then we may have to say that there is more in the mix here than just the claim that Bulgarians are white, Orthodox Christian, and non-colonised. There seems to me to be more than meets the eye once we accept the “Balkan-ness” of Bulgaria. What does it mean to be Balkan? I thus read with interest you reference to the notion of the Balkans as “incomplete self”, not so much one that has yet to reach enlightenment, as you say, but as one that has yet to become itself. Your reference to Slavoj Zizek’s description of the Balkans as a region “caught in another’s dream” is especially relevant to thinking of the Balkans (and by extension countries like Bulgaria) as loophole in the world order. There is an irresolvable tension (and ongoing “incompleteness” [undecidability?]) at the heart of the concept of the Balkans – one that is a bit like the one that we see, for instance, with the perennially irresolvable question of “European Turkey” (can such a thing exist?) and “Muslim Europe” (can Europe be Islamic?), but now with an even longer, much longer, history, genealogy, heritage and itinerary preceding the Ottoman Empire. When Zizek writes of “The Spectre of Balkan”, he appears to be framing the Balkans as an ever-present ungovernable. 

The elusive, constantly shifting and even illusory Balkans can be seen in the fact that the concept of the “Balkan Peninsula” itself was created in error by a German geographer who, in 1808, mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains to be the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe, or if one considers that the Balkan Peninsula, as Rumelia, had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition. At any rate, the so-called peninsula itself is also, technically, not a peninsula – because in a peninsula the water border must be longer than land, with the land side being the shortest in the triangle. This is not the case with the Balkan Peninsula. 

What is the Balkan and how does it emerge in relation to the East and the West? Note, for instance, that a country like Greece is “Western” rather than “Balkan” not so much by geography but by – among other things – having been pro-Western and non-communist during the Cold War. In one sense, one can see that the “West’s” geopolitical moves in its eternal power struggles against the Ottoman empire shaped the Balkans, first as buffer, and then later as forgotten backwater, and, finally, as a sandbox for experimenting with new modes of configuring international power, capitalism, and world order. As an example, we can see that Europe’s shift to the Atlantic (at the dawn of “modernity”), done largely to isolate “the Ottoman pivot”, had the (unintended) consequence of isolating the once central Balkans. This isolation (and marginality) has marked the Balkans ever since, and shaped its interactions with local and global power. The European shift to the Atlantic is best indicated in the countries that participated in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Neither Turkey nor the Balkans participated in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, showing their marginality to European modernity, since European modernity was forged by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I think that, had the Balkans participated in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, they would certainly have been a part of the “West”. 

The marginality of the Balkans was on show, again, in the 20th century in the fact (already mentioned) that there was no Marshall Plan for South Eastern Europe. Why? Why was there no Marshall Plan for South Eastern Europe? This aspect could be crucial in thinking about the separate and differentiated trajectory that the Cold War took within the Balkans. The latest iterations are seen in the moves around which Balkan countries get into NATO and the EU, when they do (i.e., how long before they join), and how they do so (i.e., the conditions for joining). Indeed, a consideration of the differentiated manner in which the access of the countries of the Balkans to NATO and the EU could be instructive in thinking about the Balkans as paradigm. Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 (joining in the same year as Romania and Slovenia). Albania and Croatia had to wait until 2009 to become members. Montenegro was only let in 2017, and North Macedonia only in 2020. The NATO memberships of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are paused and pending for a whole range of reasons. Since 2000, all Balkan countries are friendly towards the EU and the US, and want to join NATO and the EU or have already joined or are in the process of joining. An interesting question, in light of Brexit, is what happens if the EU breaks up? Or why some are desperate to get into the EU while some want out. 

In every European country, the population consists of elements who are EU-philes and those who are anti-EU, and the reasons tend to be complex, as we saw with Brexit. We saw how Levski’s ideas followed a liberal path, and it might not be an exaggeration that had he lived in contemporary Europe he might have advocated for Bulgaria to be in the EU and to stay in the EU, and to retain a “European” identity as far as such a thing can be said to exist. Were this to be the case, and considering the national poll in 2007 that identified Levski as the greatest Bulgarian in history, could one say that many/most Bulgarians are of a liberal (and pro-EU) persuasion? However, as we noted, things are not that simple in reality. 

Levski and other early Balkan patriots were not pawns of great power but, instead, sought to retain independence of thought and action, within the bounds allowed the “subaltern”. As their shifting historical alliances show (allying with Tsarist Russia against the Ottomans; allying with other Balkan nations against Turkey (in the First Balkan War); allying with other Balkan nations against other Balkan nations (in the Second Balkan War); being monarchical during WWI and before WWII; being republican after WWII; allying with Hitler against the “Allies”; being part of the Soviet Union and Communism post-1945; being non-aligned (in the case of Yugoslavia since the Tito-Stalin split of 1948); being fragmented after the fall of the Soviet union; and currently being EU-aligned, WTO-aligned, and NATO-aligned), we can see that being-Balkan resists generalisation. 

Does absorption into the EU represent the end of Balkan shape-shifting? Have we seen the end of the shifting alliances? Could one say that Bulgarians, in general, are traditionally freedom and independence loving and therefore their relationship with Europe is ambiguous? Or is the general desire to be non-aligned? Or to have the freedom to choose one’s friends? As Levski is quoted as saying, “We will be free in complete liberty where the Bulgarian lives”. What does freedom and independence have to do with it. Can “Yugoslavia” return in the future (say, if the EU at some point disintegrates)? Where is pan-(Southern) Slavic identity today? Being-in-the-EU, and how each Balkan nation gets to be in the EU, has also had significant influence on hierarchies of nations, with some having higher incomes and rates of economic development while others are poor (the most unequal Balkan nation by Gini coefficient is Bosnia. Bulgaria is one of the comparatively well off, but with demographics of the poor internally, such as the Roma).  Anyhow, the phenomenon of “Balkanism” is an ongoing complicated relationship with Europe, and of the Balkan countries with each other. 

A further interesting aspect that shows how intertwined with global power the reconfigurations in the Balkans are, for instance, would be that the countries of the Balkans were monarchies up to WWII, but became republics since that time, with the end of WWII marking a watershed between “monarchical Balkans” and “Republican Balkans”. What did this shift mean? What did it imply? What did the Balkans positioning in WWII mean for the shift to republicanism? Was this the logical culmination, for instance, of Levski’s espousing of liberal ideas from the French Revolution? The same watershed-like reconfiguration happened with the fall of the Soviet Union, which saw the Balkans absorbed into the orbit of NATO and the EU (and of capitalism), with differentiated vetting and conditions of entry. Today all the Balkan states have open market economies, instead of the “planned economies” of some of the states from the former Eastern Bloc. Qualification criteria (such as World Trade Organisation membership and any European Union Association Agreement) and the gradual induction into the EU function to draw the Balkan countries into a very specific form of US and EU-mediated capitalism and versions of democracy and territorial sovereignty.  For instance, the EU pledged to include the Western Balkan states after “their” civil wars (in fact, two states, Slovenia – in 2004 – and Croatia – in 2013 – have already been absorbed, four are candidates, and the remaining two have pre-accession agreements). While Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania and Slovenia are now part of the EU, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia are negotiating for EU membership. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are “potential candidates” for EU membership. (Footnote: The curious case of Turkey, which applied to get into the EU in 1987, and has been stalled since 2016, continues). There are other dimensions, too. For instance, Bulgaria (with Croatia and Romania) is legally bound to join the Schengen Area (which Greece and Slovenia are already part of), thus initiating the country into a specific form of border control and trade criteria. The outsized influence of George Soros in the Balkans and former Soviet bloc since the fall of the Soviet Union may also require mention if one is to make sense of the shift to privatisation and neoliberal capitalism in the former Soviet Union. 

Question for Dora: Does the sense still persist that the Balkans is still framed as Europe’s buffer (and also proxy and playground) against whatever existential threat that might come from the “East”, as well as a sandbox in which to test and experiment new modes of power, sovereignty, violence and socio-economic ordering? If this sense no longer persists, what has replaced it?

Question for Dora: Do you think that Balkans identity would have been different if the region had been part (instead of being left out) of the shift by Europe to the Atlantic? Is the current move to absorb the Balkans into the EU (including “cultural inclusion” into European sporting and singing competitions etc.) signalling another shift away from the Atlantic, or at least a post-Atlantic reconfiguration of the European international order?

Question for Dora: Do we see the same cleavages in contemporary Bulgaria about being pro-EU and anti-EU as those we saw with Brexit? What does being-in-the-EU mean for Bulgarian identity? Does being in the EU mean the same thing as being-of-Europe and being-European? Do you see the possibility of a post-EU and post-NATO Balkans? Why or why not? The First Balkan war, and later the Tito-Stalin split of 1948, could be said to have showed the traditional independence and non-alignment (and tendency towards decentralisation-centralisation-disintegration) of the South-Slavs coming to the fore. Could the idea of “Yugoslavia” ever return in the future? Or is the move towards a reconfigured pan-European, EU-based, identity irreversible and permanent? Is the idea of an EU-based identity too hubristic to be feasible? Is it too big/too centralised to be feasible? Or, in fact, is an EU-centred identity too big to fail?

Question for Dora: Bulgaria is generally excluded from the pan-Slavic idea which saw the birth, in the 20th century, of Yugoslavia (meaning “South Slavia” or “Southern Slavland”), uniting all South Slavic peoples (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) under a single state. The fact that Bulgaria was not part of the Yuzhni Slavyani (South Slavia/Yugoslavia) is an important exception. It means that Bulgaria is intersected by, but falls outside of, the Pan-Slavic idea. Bulgaria’s place and identity in the Balkan paradigm, therefore, carries an asterisk. How does being-Bulgarian/Bulgarian identity relate to Southern Slavic identity, seeing that Bulgarian traditionally stands outside the “Yugoslav” grouping? 

Question for Dora: when Levski says, “We will be free in complete liberty where the Bulgarian lives: in Bulgaria, Thrace, Macedonia; people of whatever ethnicity live in this heaven of ours, they will be equal in rights to the Bulgarian in everything,” is he not – somehow – also setting up the idea of Bulgarian exceptionalism? Do you ever get a sense that, within the Balkans, Bulgaria is exceptions/Bulgarians are exceptional? Is the idea of a Greater Bulgaria feasible? Think of the Greek irredentist Enosis and Megali idea (mythologies about resurrecting the Byzantine Empire) that continue to cause problems in Cyprus (and problems with Turkey in Cyprus).

Question for Dora: Is there such a thing as pan-Balkan folklore? For instance, I read somewhere that the Pan-Slavic colours are blue, white and red. Balkan cuisine? Is there a genre of music that we can call Balkan music?

Question for Dora: There is normative tendency to associate the word “Balkan” with disintegration and constantly shifting, unstable alliance. So, for instance, in 1912–1913 the First Balkan War broke out when Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro united in an alliance against the Ottoman Empire, meaning that 1912 was the moment when the Ottoman Empire was dismembered. The glue of the oppressor that had held the Balkans together also fell away, and the disintegration was to continue after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire. In the Second Balkan War, the former allies Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro turned against each other. (The Second Balkan War amongst the allies actually helped to solidify the Western borders of Turkey). Fast forward to 1989: the moment when the Soviet Empire is dismembered, and the glue of the oppressor falls away again, and disintegration appears to have continued apace. In June 1991, Slovenia became the first republic that split from Yugoslavia and became an independent sovereign state. There have been seemingly endless splits then, and “civil wars”, and the EU has appeared to wait until the end of Balkan “civil wars” before integrating the South eastern European states into the EU. My question is: how has the association of “Balkanisation” with disintegration and fragmentation framed Balkan (and Bulgarian) identity? How wary should we be of such a stereotype? What place should such an association have in your integrated analytical framework?

Question for Dora: What role has the U.S. “system” (of overreaching power) (basically the U.S. Empire and the so-called Truman Doctrine) played in the current and ongoing configurations of Balkan (and Bulgarian) identity? 

Question for Dora: Bulgaria seeking independence and self-determination in the late 19th century was constantly caught in-between two empires that were in trouble: the Ottoman Empire (the so-called “Sick man of Europe”) and the Russian Empire facing revolution at home. It has found itself constantly caught in between competing power in the First and Second Balkan wars, in WWI and WWII, in the Cold War and the post-Cold War, and in the current shifts heavily influenced by the EU, the U.S., and NATO power plays. How much has Bulgarian identity (and by extension, fandom) been altered by all these forms of “being-caught-in-between” and reacting to/and negotiating “being-caught-in-between”?

Question for Dora: The book Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya by Paisius of Hilendar (1762) is celebrated in Bulgaria as having laid the outlines Bulgarian national identity. How much has Bulgarian identity stayed within/moved beyond these originary frames, particularly in the context of the sharp (and also gradual) shifts of the 20th century and early 21st century?

Discussion point for Dora:  When you mention “the Cold War roots [of these concepts”, Dora, it seems clear to me that you could easily go beyond the Cold War if you wanted. In my feedback I’ll try to emphasise this “largeness” (and “incompleteness” and “undecidability”) of Balkan history and Balkan identity that may be of utility in a discussion of the interstices of fandom in contemporary Bulgaria.  If the integrated analytical framework that you seek to build is to be truly integrated, I feel that there are areas where you can go further than the post-Soviet, post-socialist construct.

For now, I’ll end here, and look forward to learning and engaging.

Shadow Dance magazine spread

Dora to Nyasha: 

Thank you for your thorough engagement with my opening statement, Nyasha. You hone in on critical questions that I (and I am sure many others) continue to grapple with and that strike at the core of “Balkan identity” (to the extent, to which we can speak of such a construction) and Bulgarian identity. You are also correct in pointing out that there are multiple and overlapping layers of history here that make generalizations difficult and not particularly helpful. There are also many contradictions such as the one that you point out: Bulgaria was subjected to imperial rule—first by the Ottomans and then by the Soviet Union—and yet it has itself exhibited imperial ambitions, whose vestiges continue to this day in the form of Bulgaria’s veto of North Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union. The veto itself is motivated by what to many Bulgarians is an unresolved territorial dispute: the idea that North Macedonia is part of a Greater Bulgaria. These are, of course, macro-level considerations and what I intend to do in this write-up is respond to some of your questions, while also connecting macro-level constructs to Bulgarian fandom. 

I see Orientalism as a subcategory of post-socialism. In my dissertation I discuss the orientalization of the Soviet Union and communism itself both in U.S. historical documents as well as Cold War film. Thus, invoking a post-socialist framework invariably forces us to grapple with the orientalization of the Soviet World. We can, however, following Bakic-Hayden (1995), distinguish between different strains of Orientalism. Here we also have to be careful in how we are defining the term Orientalism, which in Said’s (1979) original formulation is a Western invention and describes the West’s conceptual lens of the Middle East and Asia. Still, we can speak of a specific strand of Orientalism in the Balkans, which finds an expression in attitudes towards music of the region.

Eastern (i.e. Turkish and Arabic) influences are present in the music of many Balkan countries, including Bulgaria. Pop-folk, also known as turbo-folk, also known as chalga is a Bulgarian music genre that combines elements of Western pop music with elements of Turkish and Arabic beats and sometimes Bulgarian folk motifs. The popular term for the genre—chalga—is itself derived from the Turkish word çalgı, which means “musical instrument,” further denoting the Eastern influences that define the genre. Chalga music tends to be reviled ostensibly for the hypersexualization of chalga stars who are overwhelmingly women and simplistic lyrics. Furthermore, as a genre that grew exponentially after the fall of communism, it drew intellectuals' condemnation for “... [propagating] nothing more than the new ‘culture’ of corruption, easy money, indiscriminate sex, and mugs driving fast cars.” In the eyes of intellectuals (but also people who don’t necessarily regard themselves as such), chalga is synonymous with low culture and trashy taste. Simultaneously, “many ‘ordinary’ people became so enthralled by the new freedom that they would embrace chalga as their alternative to officialdom” (Georgieff, 2009).  It has remained consistently popular and in the three decades since the fall of communism it has given rise to a lucrative entertainment industry around it. A Facebook page titled “The Pop-Folk Hits are Here” has over 580K followers, which is a significant number, considering that the population of Bulgaria is 6.9 million. I would argue that in addition to the reasons mentioned above chalga also draws contempt for two related reasons: 1) it is seen as a cheap knock-off of Western pop-music, thus stoking specific resentments reserved for imitations of the West (Krastev & Holmes, 2019); 2) it has noticeable Eastern musical influences that trigger internalized Orientalism; 3) chalga is one of few popular media genres where Romani people are represented. I am writing this with the provision that even something like “internalized Orientalism” becomes complicated here by the fact that Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (or colonized, even though historians (Todorova, 2009) debate whether the term applies to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire) for five centuries. I was a highschool student when chalga really started to gain momentum and I recall an ambivalent attitude towards it whereby even those who actively condemned it for supposedly catering to “the lowest common denominator” also enjoyed it and would feel shame in admitting so. 

What I have briefly delineated so far would fit a high/low culture explanatory framework, where an educated elite and those aligned with it look down upon a popular cultural form, of which chalga music is an example, as “low culture.” However, as we have discussed so far, a more complex, integrated framework allows us to understand the explosion of chalga music after 1990 (i.e. the fall of communism), its integration of musical elements both from the West and from the East, and the specific brand of contempt it elicits that shows characteristics of internalized Orientalism mixed with a resentment for all that resembles a cheap copy of a Western cultural form. 

It should be mentioned that while chalga itself is a Bulgarian genre, its musical DNA is recognizable in other Balkan countries (notably, Serbia) and here, I think, we catch a glimpse of what can be called “Balkan culture.” A notable example that should be cited here is the Romani folk song “Ederlezi” (“St. George’s Day”), which was popularized in the soundtrack of Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies (1988) and was more recently used in Borat (2006) in the construction of Sacha Baron Cohen’s eponymous character.. The Romani word Edirlezi itself is believed to be a variant of the Turkish Hıdırellez—a holiday, which celebrates the first day of Spring and coincides with St. George’s Day in Orthodox Christianity. Ederlezi has been remixed and covered by a number of Bulgarian performers—some of those explicitly identified with the chalga genre and others less so. The title of the Bulgarian version of the song is “Gergiovden” (“St. George’s Day” in Bulgarian) and one of the covers was performed on live television by two Bulgarian chalga/pop-folk singers: Neli Petkova who is white and sings in Bulgarian and Sofi Marinova who is Romani and sings in Romani and Bulgarian languages. A more recent version by Turkish performer K-Billy feat. Merve Deniz blends electronic beats with the original and speaks of the song’s continued appeal. Going back to your question, Nyasha, about Balkan identity, I think we can read a cultural imbrication across Balkan countries in the many versions and remixes of “Ederlezi” that speaks of a nebulous sense of a shared identity.  

The explosion of pop-folk music in Bulgaria after the fall of communism lends support to the usefulness of a post-socialist analytical frame—the argument I outlined in my opening statement. The genre has grown through its rapid commercialization afforded by the newly established structures of the capitalist market post-1990. Crucially, prior to 1990 the communist regime through its strict control of the media supported only those cultural forms that furthered the party line. In art that included art forms that could be broadly categorized as falling under the banner of “socialist realism.” That rarely included art or folklore by or about other ethnicities but white Bulgarians. In fact, during communism, in an effort to “integrate” ethnic Turks into Bulgarian society and culture, people with Islamic-sounding names were ordered to change their names under a directive called “Process of Revival.” The directive was met with protests and while some of those were peaceful, others ended with arrests, violence, deaths, and people sent to labor camps. 

To reiterate, the case of pop-folk illustrates your point, Nyasha, that Orientalism should be part of an integrated analytical framework that takes into consideration the ruptures brought about by the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. What also becomes clear and what I touched on in my opening statement is that the country’s membership within the Eastern Bloc has exerted an influence on the development of fan communities in the second half of the 20th century, which necessitates a post-socialist analytical framework. In the remainder of this write-up I will briefly discuss how the advent and growth of science fiction fandom communities in Bulgaria illustrate that point. 

The first science fiction fan club in Bulgaria called “Friends of the Future” was founded in 1962 (Borisova, 2020). We could thus take that year as the starting point of science fiction fandom in the country. In terms of the timeline of the communist regime in Bulgaria, 1962 was a time of a process of “destalinization” where the cult of Stalin in the country was being dismantled. There was some hope of an end to the “dogmatic winter,” but the process itself was superficial and political persecutions of enemies of the people nevertheless continued. 

While this first club was active only until 1966, science fiction clubs continued to crop up around the country in the following decades. Although the exact origins of science fiction аs a concept among fandom communities are being debated, it is clear that from its early days, the conception of science fiction in Bulgaria included ideas of “forecasting” (in Bulgarian: прогностика) and “futurology” (футурология). Thus, a fan club founded at Sofia University in 1971, for example, was called “Science Fiction and Futurology.” Club “Ivan Yefremov” in Sofia, founded in 1974 is an “Integrated Club on Science Fiction, Forecasting, and Heuristics.” I suspect that the conception of the genre as “science fiction and futurology” was influenced by Stanisław Lem’s monograph Science Fiction and Futurology (1970), in which he theorizes the genre, reviews science fiction literature from around the world, and sharply criticizes Western science fiction. Furthermore, I suspect that as the work of a Polish citizen (i.e. originating from within the Eastern Bloc) critical of a Western cultural form, Science Fiction and Futurology (1970) faced no barriers to publication and distribution in communist Bulgaria. 

I asked Yuri Ilkov—one of the early members of Club “Ivan Yefremov” about access to Western science fiction literature during communism and he explained that since the publication of Western science fiction was limited, much of that access was through two Soviet series titled Зарубежная Фантастика (i.e. Foreign Science Fiction) and Библиотека Современной Фантастики (i.e. Library of Contemporary Science Fiction), which was published between 1965-1973 through an initiative of Ivan Yefremov—a Soviet science fiction writer and paleontologist—after whom the science fiction fan club in Sofia is named. The publication of the series was supervised by prominent Soviet science fiction writers Ariadna Gromova, Sergey Zhemaytis, Yeremey Parnov, and Arkady Strugatsky. The series does feature prominent science fiction works from around the world though the notable omission of Philip K. Dick should be pointed out. 

What this suggests so far is that one of the ways, in which Bulgaria’s status as a member of the Soviet Bloc has shaped the development of fandom is through access to material culture. The question of how access shapes fandom is certainly complex and requires a more thoroughgoing investigation than what can be covered within this forum, but I hope that what I have described so far begins to provide a glimpse of how access to material culture (science fiction literature during communism, to be specific) influenced the early development of fandom in Bulgaria.

Access, of course, is only one aspect of the whole media ecosystem during communism. Another one is censorship and self-censorship. Ilkov reports that the activity of the club he founded in Pazardgik—Club “Arkady and Boris Strugatsky''—was monitored by party operatives who on a number of occasions sent an Officer of Ideological Work to observe the activities of the club. At a time when listening to “decadent” Western music or dressing in a Western fashion could result in being sent to a labor camp, it is easy to suspect a level of self-censorship when it comes to engagement with Western literature. Ilkov reports that he had written a manuscript on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, but was advised by an acquaintance to scrap it. In retrospect he reflects that this was more of an act of overcautious self-censorship than a realistically existing danger of punishment. Yet the caution was warranted by circulating rumors of authors who had been beaten for their deviating from the party line. 

Without having exhausted the question of the development of fandom during communism, in the interest of brevity, I want to skip forward to the 1990s. The 90s were a period of crisis for Bulgarian fandom. Ilkov reports that a vast majority of clubs were wiped out and those that remained were struggling. The question of what was happening in that decade demands its own thorough investigation, itself beyond the scope of the present project. Suffice to say that during my interview with Ilkov, he mentioned his belief that two of the reasons for that crisis were the mass emigration to the West and a reorientation among club members to profit-generating/lucrative activities (i.e. starting one’s own business). 

Fan activity started to pick up again towards the end of the decade. In 2000 the first issue of ShadowDance magazine came out. Interestingly, the description on ShadowDance’s website mentions that it is a magazine for “фантастика, култура и футурология” (“science fiction, culture, and futurology”) (“About Us”), which reflects the specific conception of the genre within the fandom communities during communism. Yet the audience of ShadowDance is more oriented towards Western culture and media. The info section of their Facebook page includes a one-line description written in English: “Online Sci-Fi and Fantasy Magazine.” Responses to a brief survey published on ShadowDance’s Facebook page indicate that two of the most popular texts among those who completed the survey are the tv series The Wheel of Time and The Wicher.  

The reason I briefly mention these developments is because they demonstrate the necessity of a post-Socialist/post-Cold War analytical framework. Club “Ivan Yefremov'' continues to be active to this day; its members organize Bulgakon—the country's main annual fandom convention. As the club’s name itself reflects its close linkages with Soviet science fiction in the second half of the 20th century, its current activities bear traces of that history. Bulgakon 2021, for example, featured a talk by Yuri Ilkov titled: “The Unknown Lem—A Conversation on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth.” ShadowDance magazine, on the other hand, is more in sync with Western fandom communities and pop culture texts. They are the “younger generation” about whom Ilkov comments: “Another type of literature has shaped their tastes” (Borisova, 2019). While we could speak of Club “Ivan Yefremov” as the “old guard” of fandom and the community around ShadowDance as the “new generation,” it should also be mentioned that Club “Ivan Yefremov” continues to attract younger members thus resisting a clear-cut categorization. 

From my interviews with Ilkov I understand that both Club “Ivan Yefremov” (and the clubs around the country that are affiliated with it) and ShadowDance magazine enjoy a friendly and cooperative relationship. As previously mentioned, the description of ShadowDance as a magazine for “science fiction, culture, and futurology” reflects the specific historical inflections of science fiction fandom in Bulgaria. However, if we are to gain a thorough understanding of science fiction fandom then and now (given that in the contemporary moment that fandom converges with globalized fandom communities), a post-Socialist/post-Cold War integrated analytical framework is necessary. 

Bibliography

“About Us.” ShadowDance, http://www.shadowdance.info/magazine/about/ 

Bakic-Hayden, M. (1995). Nesting Orientalisms: The case of former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54(4), 917-931.

Borisova, E. (2019, August 23). Юрий Илкое: За миналото и насточщето на научната фантастика (Yuri Ilkov: About the past and present of science fiction). Фантастика и Бъдеще (Science Fiction and Future). https://fantastika-bg.eu/юрий-илков-за-миналото-и-настоящето-на/

Borisova, E. (2020, March 29). Накратко за българския фендъм (Briefly about Bulgarian fandom). Фантастика и Бъдеще (Science Fiction and Future): https://fantastika-bg.eu/накратко-за-българския-фендъм/

Georgieff, A. (2009, May 1). A brief history of Bulgarian chalga music. Vagabond. https://web.archive.org/web/20190124203344/http://www.vagabond.bg/features/item/126-a-brief-history-of-bulgarian-chalga-music.html

Krastev, I. & Holmes, S. (2019). The light that failed: Why the West is losing the fight for democracy. New York, NY: Pegasus Books. 

Krastev, I. & Holmes, S. (2019). The light that failed: Why the West is losing the fight for democracy. New York, NY: Pegasus Books.

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Todorova, M. (2009). Imagining the Balkans. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

The first print issue of Shadow Dance magazine titled “Cyberpunk,” released in October, 2019. More information about the magazine is available here: https://www.shadowdance.info/magazine/shadowdance/

Stelios Stylianou's Reply to Dora Valkanova's Opening Statement

In the course of this forum, we have presented opening statements to set a ground for exchanging ideas.  I have been thinking about these opening statements as points of departure rather than mature texts to be evaluated for completeness or correctness.  With this in mind, I have read your opening statement, dear Dora, as a proposal to construct an exciting and ambitious analytical framework.  In replying, my intention is to present an opportunity for elaboration on some issues in an open and creative way.

(1) My first point is about the level of analysis.  As a sociologist, I would say that there is clearly a macrolevel aspect in your study of Bulgarian fandom.  This aspect is both historical, as a single society is being studied through time (with primary emphasis on the eras of Cold War and post-communism), and comparative, as it looks at how fandom has developed in Bulgaria in juxtaposition to instances of "otherness" (be it those developed in the West or the East, in the sense that you describe, which leaves Bulgaria—or even the Balkans and Eastern Europe—in some kind of middle ground). At the same time, fandom, substantively and analytically, involves microlevel elements, such as identity, choice, learning, and emotion.  Thus, if I am correct, you are indeed on an ambitious track: to present an instance of the application of the micro-macro link, what C. W. Mills has called the sociological imagination.  Obviously, sociologically speaking, this is a very exciting project.  Could you please talk a little bit more about these two levels of analysis in your study and the empirical methods you have used and will be using to support this task.  I already see in the opening statement that you have been interviewing people and that you have been following the history of fan clubs and this is probably part of the answer, but I would be interested to read a little bit more about this matter.

(2) Then, you suggest that the post-Cold War condition can be an analytical category in understanding fandom and you explore the genealogy and the ecology of fan clubs.  You suggest that we need to move in the direction of an integrative analysis of fandom, one that synthesizes continuity and change with respect to major divisions, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and ableism.  I would be interested to see more on the gender issue.  In my own study, gender and gender-related issues are in the center of interest.  In particular, I study how various forms of masculinities are manifested in live events such as football games; thus, it would be interesting to see, theoretically and/or through an example, what kinds of masculinities dominate or are at least detectable in the discursive practices that make up the world of Bulgarian fandom.  In my case, I suggested that the shift from hegemonic toward more inclusive masculinities does not seem to have effectively reached deeper cultural tiers, where the dehegemonizing project is far from complete.  Does this apply to Bulgarian fandom?

(3) Another point is that the change in the media landscape from the end of the 20th century to the two decades that followed has been rapid and profound. Can we attempt a generation analysis regarding this change, with respect to Bulgarian fandom? The Zoomers are probably of special interest.  These are the people that we are getting to know in recent years as our undergraduate students.  I tell them that, unlike earlier generations, who were introduced to digital media as young children, teenagers or adults, "you were born with a tablet at hand."  This means that the world as they know it is contained in a screen and that includes perhaps all objects of media fandom; thus, the question is how has this affected the very development of media fandom. This is a huge question of course, but what I am thinking is that you may provide a narrow answer, focusing on contemporary Bulgaria? 

(4) Finally, such questions invite considerations about access and economic inequality as well.  Online fan communities require access to the internet and perhaps subscriptions.  On the other hand, access to a wide variety of content has been much more universal, compared to previous decades. So, my last question is to what extent and in what ways does social inequality matter in the development of Bulgarian fandom?  

Bulgacon, 2010

Dear Stelios, 

Thank you for your thoughtful questions, which provide me with an opportunity to elaborate in more depth about aspects of my research on Bulgarian fandom. To begin with your first question, you are correct that my approach to the subject of Bulgarian fandom combines both macro- and micro-level analysis. I have found that approach to be necessary as the micro—fan and fan club activity—seems to have been deeply impacted by the macro-level—the socio-political structure under the communist regime up until 1990 (Borisova, 2020). As Borisova notes, the 90s marked a period of crisis for Bulgarian fandom parallel to the broader social and political crises the country was undergoing as it was transitioning from a communist social, political, and economic structure to a Western-style liberal capitalist democracy. More specifically, both Borisova and Yuri Ilkov (a founding member of Bulgarian fandom whom I interviewed for this project) talk about a marked decline in fan activity in the 90s, which further points to the complex interlinkages between the macro and micro levels. Indeed, in sociological terms, part of my argument is that in order to arrive at a more thoroughgoing understanding of Bulgarian fandom, it is necessary to interrogate the macro context, or, what Chari and Verdery term a (post-) Cold War analytical framework that asks “how Cold War representations have shaped and continue to shape theory and politics” (p. 18). Such a framework is particularly necessary when studying social, political, and cultural phenomena in Eastern Europe as countries across the region form a metaphorical faultline between Russia and the West (as the war in Ukraine has thrown into stark relief); a faultline that at its southern tip extends to Turkey. 

A (post-) Cold War analytical framework can also help us understand the role of social categories such as race, gender, and class. I should mention, however, that I think that it is important to distinguish between fandom communities based on the object of fandom. The focus of my study is science fiction fandom in Bulgaria both before and after the fall of communism. While science fiction fandom (broadly defined) shares similarities with soccer fandom, there are also crucial differences. As you mention in your write-up, Stelios, identification with a given soccer club and antagonism of its rivals is a key structuring characteristic of soccer fandom in Cyprus. Thus, it seems like fan identity is defined not only in terms of loyalty to a given soccer club, but also, and crucially, oppositionally to other soccer clubs. While my focus is not soccer fandom specifically, a cursory look at reports of soccer fans in Bulgaria suggests that a similar dynamic is structuring that fandom community. 

Such antagonism and rivalry are ostensibly missing from science fiction fandom (Jenkins, 2013). Certainly, social categories of difference such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, age, and ability structure the experience of fans in the science fiction community, but those categories are not further refracted by an added lens of rivalry and/or antagonism towards specific fan clubs within that community. These are differences that appear to stem from the specific characteristics of the object of fandom: a competitive game in the case of soccer fandom and media texts in the case of science fiction fandom. I think that these distinctions are particularly relevant when considering configurations of hegemonic masculinity. Soccer as a sport has historically been dominated by all-male teams and fans. In that sense, it is a privileged site for the production and reproduction of hegemonic masculinity. In soccer (as in other sports), “hegemonic masculinity is the most valued form of masculinity and is associated with being white, heterosexual, privileged/middle class and able-bodied” (Owton, 2018). As you note, articulations of hegemonic masculinity are central to soccer fandom and fans in turn form relationships to such articulations. Stafill (2011) has similarly pointed out that “sports fandom [...] would commonly be understood to be integral to normative masculinity.” Furthermore, Stanfill adds: 

“The distinction that can be made here between sports fandom and other sorts does point to some challenges of looking at "fan" as a broad discursive category; fan type may well be another axis of intersection, with more or less privileged types of fandom positioning one as closer to or farther from heteronormativity. Further research is clearly needed.”

One interesting question that emerges from this comparative framework—specifically between your case study, Stelios, and mine is if an argument can be made about soccer fandom as a privileged site of hegemonic masculinity vis-a-vis science fiction fandom. On what grounds could such an argument be made? The production and reproduction of hegemonic masculinity is undoubtedly an aspect of Bulgarian science fiction fandom as well. Bringing a (post-) Cold War analytical framework to bear on this question would mean taking into consideration the complex role of gender in post-socialist countries that eschewed feminism as one of the “-isms” of the West throughout much of 20th century (Valkanova, 2007). As Šmejkalova-Strickland (1994) succinctly summarized: “current feminist theories cannot be separated from the development of postwar Western thinking and writing about society and culture” (p. 277). A (post-) Cold War framework, I would argue, would help us better understand, for example, anecdotes like this one, which emerged from my interviews:

“Arkady Strugatsky came [to Bulgaria] in 1978 [...] and he had read a lot of works [of science fiction] and I remember him saying [of Ursula K. Le Guin]: ‘This woman is amazing. If you didn’t know this was a woman, you’d think a man wrote this. The style is super intelligent…a very smart, very wise woman. There’s no other like her. ’”

Age/generation is certainly a related category. In her study of Bulgarian fandom Ilieva (2011) has noted: “fandom is perceived as a project primarily of the old generation of fans whose objective and obligation is to socialize the younger generation of fans while for the younger generation it is a matter of choice whether to join the project or to reject it due to the ‘totalitarianism of the old dogs’” (p. 41). The mention of “totalitarianism” here suggests that normative generational gaps that we see, for example, in Western societies here are complicated by association of the older generation with communism/the Soviet Union—entanglements that are better understood through a (post-) Cold War analytical framework. As Dimiter Kenarov (Case, 2014) suggested in his interview with Holly Case, the project of post-communist transition in Bulgaria involved grappling with the question of how to reject an oppressor (i.e. the Soviet Union) while simultaneously holding onto aspects of their culture (i.e. language, literature (i.e. science fiction works), etc.). I suspect that this tension also mediates the generational divide between older and younger fans. 

With respect to your fourth (and last) question, if we are to understand social inequality in terms of class, its impact is significant and underexplored. Crucially, class is intertwined with race and ethnicity in a way that within Bulgarian culture lacks recognition and/or legitimacy. As previously mentioned, I conducted a screening survey, which I shared in social media groups related to various fandoms (science fiction, k-pop, astrology, and reddit). Comments to two separate Facebook posts of the survey attracted comments on the question about ethnicity. Commenters either asked what ethnicity means or wondered why it was included in the survey. Another commenter found the question insulting. The ethnicity question was open-ended and while almost all respondents filled “Bulgarian” as a response, some used the space to also add: “Bulgarian, but why this question?” That in turn points to the next big question about the role of race and ethnicity in Bulgarian fandom (I briefly touched on this question in my previous response to Nyasha and elaborated on how a (post-) Cold War analytical framework could further illuminate it). Members of the Bulgarian Roma community are mostly absent from online fan spaces, which is a result of the fact that they disproportionately live in extreme poverty and without internet connection. As previously mentioned, Bulgaria reports the highest income inequality index in Europe (fifth in the world after South Africa, Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico). This inequality certainly impacts who gets to participate in fandom—both offline and online, disproportionately affecting racially marginalized communities (specifically the Roma)—a central and critical question I will continue to explore in my study. 

Works Cited: 

Borisova, E. (2020, March 29). Накратко за българския фендъм (Briefly about Bulgarian fandom). Фантастика и Бъдеще (Science Fiction and Future): https://fantastika-bg.eu/накратко-за-българския-фендъм/

Case, H. (Host). (2014, December 29). Interview with Dimiter Kenarov. [Audio Podcast Episode]. In East-Central Europe Past and Present. Cornell University. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/39026

Chari, S. & Verdery, K. (2009). Thinking between the posts: Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and

ethnography after the Cold War. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51(6), 6-34.

Jenkins, H. (2013). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ilieva, A. (2011) Science fiction and fantasy fans in Bulgaria: Boundaries of fandom. Bulgarian Ethnology 1, 30-43.

Owton, H. (2018). Sporting women in the media. The Open University. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/sporting-women-the-media/content-section-4

Šmejkalova-Strickland, J. (1994). Do Czech women need feminism? Perspectives of feminist theories and practices in Czechoslovakia. Women’s Studies International Forum 17(2/3), 277-282.

Stanfill, M. (2011). Doing fandom, (mis)doing whiteness: Heteronormativity, racialization, and the discursive construction of fandom. In Reid A. R. & Gatson, S. (Eds.) Transformative Works and Cultures 8.

Valkanova, D. (2007). Comparison of attitudes towards abortion between post-communist and post-industrial countries. John Wesley Powel Annual Research Conference.