Russia made huge efforts to win the hybrid war, says Prof. Veselin Metodiev. If anyone is going to save the situation now, paradoxically it is us from Eastern Europe. Because we know the world of Soviet communism.
Prof. Dr. Veselin Metodiev is a historian, deputy prime minister and minister of education and science in the government of Ivan Kostov (1997-1999), a representative in several Bulgarian parliaments. He is the chairman of the board of the New Bulgarian University, where he teaches philosophy of history, history of the modern Bulgarian state, European history.
With Prof. Metodiev, however, we are not talking about politics. Because political talk wears out words and accumulates layers of sadness. We are meeting in the hall of the NBU, where he opened the National Scientific Conference "The New Bulgarian Studies and the New Literature". and ended his introduction with the words:
During these thirty years, you never stopped telling stories. And these stories are the threads that create our common whole.
I refer to these words of his to ask him:
What are the stories of these thirty years that we failed to tell and failed to make sense of?
prof. Veselin Metodiev: In these thirty-odd years, I, like everyone, have changed. I hope for the best. One of the changes I realized is that the historian should not allow himself to summarize, to generalize. First, it is very risky. He will be wrong. And secondly, generalizations breed propaganda and ideology, not knowledge of the past. If we accept this as some kind of principle, I will answer specifically: What hurts me the most is that during these 35 years, the story about the Bulgarian intelligentsia, about urban culture, about people with a contribution to society is quite small. Stereotypes from the past have remained, which prevent the realization of their significance.
I still hear some - when talking about various conjunctural things, say: "bourgeois parliamentarism", "bourgeois democracy", as if there is a democracy that is not bourgeois, or a parliamentarism that is not bourgeois. Bourgeois comes from Burg - city, city person. A citizen in the sense of belonging to this new culture that built the modern world of people in Europe and America. This story from 1989 finally seems relatively poor to me.
"The time of authority is restored"
You are talking about the Bulgarian intelligentsia… I will quote Dr. Krastyu Krastev, who writes about the anti-sociality of the Bulgarian intelligentsia, about the fact that it does not realize its duty to society.
Yes, I know such criticisms. They are poured into the time after the Second World War. When I got acquainted with the whole heritage of the magazine "Zlatorog" (1920 – 1943), I wrote "Book about modern Bulgarians”. There is all this criticism of the Bulgarian intelligentsia. However, this is always a claim in my opinion. It's more of a request. And because the request is set very high - the success of what has been achieved is not visible. And there is success.
In the rise of semi-intelligence, if I may refer to Petar Mutafchiev?
I also know Vera Mutafchieva's critical nature - she carried it with her to the end. But both she and other people with whom I communicate admit that there are great successes, and this thing in some particularly modest way is not said - "so as not to make things difficult". I think these things should be said more categorically, publicly. Because there is also such a crisis - of publicity. And in order for it to be overcome, these successes must be said. I will give an example:
When a person reads Zahari Karabashliev, Georgi Gospodinov, Teodora Dimova, it makes him happy. Why hide it? These are great achievements. They build moral and ethical frameworks in which everyone can judge himself.
And one more thing to say: there are people with huge claims, public figures, politicians. Some of them are rude, some are simple, but I have heard and seen how they respect each other when they hear what the people of the spirit have to say. How they keep quiet. How much they understand them is not important. It is important that the time of the authorities is restored. Because there was a period in recent years when the authorities were crushed, they were hit very hard. For a number of reasons. I think there is a kind of renaissance of authority right now.
Where do you see it? In this bubble we communicate in? Don't you think that the more powerful voice heard by the population of the country is the Voice of the TV and not the voice of the people of the spirit?
Let's connect this about the bubble, with how many people it is about - at the beginning of the 20th century the bubble is tiny, and at the beginning of the 21st it is a huge bubble because it is about a lot of people. And we cannot have such an expectation from six and a half million Bulgarians. We can't. But the people who are affected are hundreds of thousands. We come from a time when that had shrunk into insignificance, now it's quite another. I observe the first and second year students every year. I have lectures with them. The difference between today and those who were students in 2003 is very big. For the benefit of today.
You are the first to talk about such a positive difference.
I don't know how it is elsewhere or why others don't say it, but here at the NBU this is the opinion of many colleagues. It's not just my personal opinion.
"Russia has won the hybrid war. We have to realize it."
How will you then explain that not a small part of this more literate, more knowledgeable generation willingly accepts the ideas of the extreme right?
Yes, this is a very important question. On the one hand, those people who want to read - they are back to reading books, which is also very good news - are encountering things they do not know. They start arguing with their parents at home about things that their parents don't even know about. And radicalization easily emerges in these conversations. Because there is no sustainability. When there are such generational gaps in society, you can easily go to extremes.
On the other hand, radicalization also occurs because some envy those who succeed. Malice and envy one hundred percent breed radicalization. On the third hand, there was an overconfidence at the beginning of the transition, an expression of which is contained in Fukuyama's title "The End of History". In the early 1990s, we thought everything was done, everything was over. That success is forever…And there is no such thing. There is no success forever. Success is a fickle thing. And that's why it takes effort. And the defense that "success is forever" has generated valid criticism. This is another factor of radicalization.
And if you ask me if there is anything else on the ground where this radicalization occurs, I will answer you: There is. And this other to a high degree are moral and ethical people. To what extent they can consolidate and defend positions is another matter. My impression is that people who are ethical and moral are very easily withdrawn and tend to be flexible where they shouldn't be flexible - in the public world.
In the public world, in the whole European world, we see a dangerous advance of the extreme right. It is as if we are forgetting history in Europe. Here is a Marine Le Pen in France, which as of this week is without a government…
We don't forget history. We don't know her. You say France…There is a belief in France that they represent the navel of the world. This is not knowledge of the past. It is glorification of the past. Not that the French intelligentsia and French culture have not made a huge contribution to world culture. This contribution is huge! But this is no reason to deceive yourself. And to decide, for example, that in Germany they have a smaller contribution. This is ridiculous. Such thinking can give birth to world wars.
In Germany we are also witnessing the emergence of the extreme right. In Hungary, her messages sound from the highest place.
There will always be madness. The success of such things is the result of a very heavy loss that our world suffered in the hybrid war with Russia. Russia won it. And we have to say it more often to realize ourselves. We are confident that Russia is weak. To some extent, she is very weak indeed. However, they threw huge efforts and incredible investments to win the hybrid clashes. We looked down on this lie on social media.
When I say "we", I mean all of Europe. But it seems to me that the sobering up in Eastern Europe is stronger. Because here we know the world of Soviet communism. Western Europe does not know it so well. It seems to me that if anyone is going to save the situation now, then - paradoxically - it is us from Eastern Europe. And in this regard, we - the Bulgarians - have a great obligation. I hope we can fulfill it.
The idea of widespread Russophilism is not true
Us? Which we are very permeable, much more susceptible to Russian influence?
I don't think that's true. It's more of an inferiority complex. The mockery of Russophilism, with which I served myself and which I heard around me in the 1980s, was a mass phenomenon. In the Faculty of History, where I studied, prof. Nikolay Genchev raised us to have complete contempt for that reality. And all history teachers at that time passed through this faculty.
We return again to the "bubble”… because I know small shops in various settlements where there are pictures not only of Putin, but also of Stalin.
A part of the people had fallen for the propaganda and believed it. But the idea of widespread Russophilism is not true. Let's not forget that some people put such pictures on themselves simply because they don't like the ones they constantly see on TV. They are looking for something else. The question is what kind of pictures do you want to post. The question is what you believe.
If we judge what the voters believe, according to the results of the elections, it will turn out that the majority believes in that voice that says "You are simple and I am simple, that's why we get along."
Yes, 500 thousand probably believe. Only 500,000 don't live here. That's the majority of those who vote. And if we want to turn to some wider reality, we will see that there is a large group of people who live very well. I am amazed by a recent announcement by economists that in Bulgaria every month there are one million and two hundred thousand people who save. They save! So they have enough money. Of these million and two hundred thousand, probably half do not vote. And there may be more. They are self-confident people: they listen to good music, live well, have wonderful vacations, and for them the world is wonderful, and the fact that some idiots appear in elections… disrupts their everyday life.
This arrogance is dangerous. I strive in my public appearances to attack him. And I hope that people like you who ask these questions will be able to find more accurate answers. As these conversations emerge, changes will begin to emerge. The changes, however, are a fact. At some point it will affect the arrogant people as well.
Are you saying they will realize the connection between value choices and political choices?
Before the US elections, there was a survey in all countries in Europe: Who would you vote for - Trump or Harris. They want to vote for Trump in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia. Over 80 percent want to vote for Harris in Denmark, Finland, Scandinavia. Where do they live best in Europe? In Denmark, in the Scandinavian countries….
Is there a memory of history today?
There is - it is impossible not to have. The question is whether this memory is related to aggression. I love Bulgarians not because I hate Serbs. Because at the moment the version of an entire unhappy republic is: "I am Macedonian because I hate Bulgarians". To her entire political clique. They cannot get an identity through hatred of Bulgarians. They will never get it. They will fall apart, poor things. And no one tells them in plain text. Be careful people, identity cannot be built on hate.
In several conversations, you claim that today society is moving forward, and the state is lagging behind. Will they catch up soon?
I don't know. The question is to what extent political parties will make the necessary changes within themselves to become better models of democracy. They are very bad at the moment. No exceptions! There is work to be done there. And whether this work will be done in three years or six months, I have no idea. Because these are people placed in a situation of tension, which comes from the fact that they have to fight for the voter's trust. And it is hard to find such people who would sacrifice themselves to move their own political power to a better place. I have no idea when that will happen, but I know it will. I don't know if I'll be alive.