Formation and Modification of Notions ‘Revolution’ and ‘War’: Bulgarian Case

Abstract

Related notions of war and revolution are not something primordial and constant. They are constructed and constantly changing. The paper traces some aspects of these processes in the mentality of the 19th and early 20th century Bulgarians, with attention to their Balkan context. The lack of the own state for a long period of time (1396–1878) determined the initial negative image of the war. For the Bulgarians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a war was something definitely negative, as it brings death, troubles, and disasters; it was also something alien or external as only few of them were recruited in the Ottoman army. The wars between Russia and Ottoman Empire generated some hopes for independence among certain elite groups of society (although not so much among common people). The Greek War for Independence (started in 1821) and other uprisings in European dominions of Turkey had their impact on Bulgarians. The idea of revolution grew in the 1860s and 1870s within the group of radicals, mainly the alumni of Russian Universities and high schools. Literature played a serious role in this process, and April uprising (1876), not without some debates, was represented as ‘revolution’ in the last decades of the 19th century. The two notions were mixed after the Russian-Turkish Liberation War (1877–78), especially in later interpretations. The newly established Principality of Bulgaria lived in constant threat (real or imagined) of Ottoman invasion and soon got drawn into the war with Serbia (1885) which contributed to creating the fully positive image of a patriotic war. This image persisted during the First (1912–1913) and Second (1913) Balkan wars, called in Bulgaria ‘inter-allied’. The defeat motivated to shift the image of war from something patriotic to something making the ordinary people suffer. This was a gradual change catalyzed by the World War I (1914–18) that made the previous image problematic. The notion of revolution that was previously associated only with the past (1876, 1878) also shifted and became associated in some leftist minds with the future as well. First and still shy anti-war humanitarian ideas appeared; the last poems of Dimcho Debelianov (1887–1916), who died in the war, were the most representative examples of this trend.