Before we start with the topic of nationalist movements and the group “Blood and Honor“, which made a splash in Plovdiv, we need to talk about what nationalism is and what a nationalist is. Such movements generally arise in societies during the Napoleonic Wars. But there it is about “Blood and Soil“. That is, it is about the new nations that will oppose the Napoleonic Empire. This was announced to Lili Marinkova in the “FACTI“ studio and the program “Conversation“ by Prof. Dimitar Denkov.
“And such movements are emerging in Central and Eastern Europe - soil, blood, gender, language, popular education, the purity of the people. This is a model for national differentiation that does not ignore all those supranational tendencies that have existed since the Middle Ages, then the French bourgeois revolution, and struck very strongly at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, when national socialism and fascism appeared. After the war, national socialism lost, but another type of movement appeared, rather internationalist and with a different sign“, he commented.
Prof. Denkov also draws attention to the changes in Bulgaria, which, in his opinion, should not be ignored when analyzing contemporary social processes.
“A very special moment appears, which is not very noticeable” this is the ethnic change on the map of Bulgaria. Let's take Plovdiv – in the wider center things are the same, but in Stolipinovo we will see a completely different cultural picture“, he points out the historian.
In his words, these processes should also be considered in the context of relations between different communities and their integration into Bulgarian society.
„Alongside the very strong Christian traditions, we see how Roma communities are developing in Southern Bulgaria. I would not say that there is good integration everywhere there, but we must keep in mind the strategy of how to develop this society. When we talk about the Roma population in Bulgaria, we must take into account the entry of extremists, because exclusion from the system makes people unstable“, adds Prof. Dimitar Denkov.
See more of the conversation in the VIDEO.