Conclusion

It[259] is significant that for more than half a decade after 1989 the Bulgarians were not able to agree upon a new state emblem. There was, it seemed, a sense of doubt as to their national identity and their place in the contemporary world. There have been many articles and books dealing with this issue. An excellent example is Ivan Elenkov and Rumen Daskalov’s compilation, Zashto nie sme takiva; v tûrsene na bûlgarskata kulturna identichnost, 【„Защо сме такива –в търсенето на българската културна идентичност“】 published in Sofia in 1994. The title means ‘Why are we like we are? In search of Bulgaria’s cultural identity’, and the book is a collection of fifty articles written by nineteen authors and published in Bulgarian journals between 1898 and 1943. All the articles try and define what it means to be Bulgarian, what is specific about ‘Bulgarianness’. At a time when the future contains many challenges as well as many possible rewards it is to the past that many present-day Bulgarians look for clues as to their true identity, for grid references to plot their position in an increasingly unstable and unsure world. What, then, can their own history tell the Bulgarians of their national identity and their place in the contemporary world as they are about to enter the European Union?
In[260] the political arena decisions on whether to align with Russia or its adversaries could and did prove critical. In 1913 and 1915 and again in 1941 Bulgaria chose to defy Russian interests with ultimately catastrophic consequences for Bulgarian aspirations towards full national unification. After 1944 Bulgaria’s rulers opted for close relations[261] with Russia at enormous cost to the political liberty of the Bulgarian citizen, as well as to the long-term economic and environmental well-being of the country. In the immediate aftermath of the changes of 1989, Bulgarian foreign policy swung around full circle. Close association with the EU became the ultimate goal of Bulgaria’s foreign policy-makers and there was a wave of intense pro-American feeling. A malign fate meant that shortly before Bulgaria began to make its most concerned effort ever to integrate with the states of central and western Europe, it was cut off from those states by economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro; a new curtain descended over the Balkans and as far as many western Europeans were concerned Bulgaria seemed to have dropped off the edge of the map. Bulgaria was reintegrated into the western world during the Afghan and Iraqi wars and the politicians of Sofia showed considerable skill in ensuring that their commitment to helping the US-led wars did not seriously or lastingly impair their standing in the EU. By the summer of 2004 Bulgaria was experiencing a new form of integration with central and western Europe as citizens from the EU poured into the country not only as holiday-makers and tourists but as prospective property purchasers; the British and the Italians were prominent in this process.
The[268] post-1989 governments rapidly rectified the errors of the regenerative process and if the Bulgarians now have a problem in overcoming their past it is less in the way that they have treated other peoples than in the way they believe foreign domination has affected them.[269] There is still tendency amongst many Bulgarians, particularly when an outsider points out a shortecoming, to relapse into a regressive fatalism, a fatalism expressed most often I phrases such as ‘Five hundred years of Ottoman rule …’ This is an unhelpful attitude. It is using the past to escape from the present and more so from the future. Furthermore, the Bulgarians are not alone in having suffered long centuries of foreign domination. That domination was without doubt at times extremely repressive but the Bulgarian nation, the Bulgarian church, and the Bulgarian language survived. When the Ottoman departed from Bulgaria the Bulgarians still spoke Bulgarian and Bulgarian manufacturing had flourished as a supplier to the Ottoman army; when British rule ended in southern Ireland the Irish language was almost dead and Irish industry had been stifled to prevent competition with British manufactures. Past oppression is inevitably a part of national consciousness and respect for those who suffered is a proper sentiment, but that oppression should not be used as an excuse for present failings or for a lack of commitment to rectifying them.
Bulgarian history has better things to offer the Bulgarian nation than a lack of confidence in their own ability to adapt and survive.