THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411180418
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA H. SCANLAN
LENGTH: Long : 225 lines
Bulgarians seem to be waiting to be propelled painlessly from the disaster of collapsed communism into the success of a market economy. But no one in Bulgaria, where I spent the last academic year as a Fulbright professor of journalism, seems to have much idea how to achieve that miracle.
And so they wait.
They wait for money from the West to flow into new joint ventures and newly privatized old businesses. They wait for a government strong enough to pass laws to make it happen.
They wait for the war in Yugoslavia to end so their produce can flow out of the country and tourists can fly in.
They wait for local governments to find the money to repair crumbling streets and sidewalks and they wait for their neighbor to tire of darkness and put a bulb in the hall fixture of their apartment building.
And, now that they are eligible, many wait for a lucky draw in the U.S. green card lottery that will give them a chance to immigrate to the country of ``Cheers,'' and ``MTV,'' two of their most popular TV fare.
Bulgaria is a small nation of about 9 million, largely unknown to the rest of the world. Although Bulgaria is an oasis of stability in Eastern Europe, the problems of many of its neighbors lie just below the surface. As in Yugoslavia, the potential for ethnic and religious strife is real. Inflation is high, but not as high as in Romania or the Ukraine. Food is seasonal and monotonous, but available. Electricity is costly, but reliable. Public transportation is decrepit, but runs, and new private buses are most costly, but at least an alternative. Water is a problem, often restricted to an hour or less a day, but that is because of severe drought, not crumbling infrastructure.
Pessimism and cynicism are Bulgaria's biggest problems.
I was at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), one of the few joint ventures started in Bulgaria since 1989. Bulgaria has contributed buildings and the U.S. government and private foundations supply most of the operating budget. Classes are in the former regional Communist Party headquarters, and students are housed in the former secret police training complex, an old Balkan Tourist hotel and one of the former premier's hunting lodges.
The university is located in Blagoevgrad, a city of 80,000 and provincial center of Western Bulgaria.
Even though the first class will not graduate until May 1995, AUBG has already drawn some of the brightest young Bulgarians.
But, even among young people with such potential, pessimism runs high. ``I think everything's lost for my generation. Perhaps my children will have it better,'' said one of my junior students from the capital city of Sofia.
For the past 600 years Bulgaria has been under foreign domination. Pessimism and hopelessness, along with an acute national inferiority complex, has been the result. But even worse was what never happened. Bulgaria never developed any strong local or national government or sense of national self-determination.
The ``Turkish yoke'' imposed by the Ottoman Empire of neighboring Turkey was thrown off in the 1870s with help from Russia. The Communist domination lasted more than 50 years, ending in 1989. Between the Turks and the Russians, Bulgaria aligned itself with Germany in both World Wars. Each period left a bitter legacy.
The Soviets left a broken economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union also left a power vacuum and loss of ethnic pride. As long as Russia was a superpower, Slavic countries such as Bulgaria could bask in the reflected glory of ``Grandfather Ivan.'' Now there is fairly strong support among Bulgarians for the Bosnian Serbs, who some believe are making the Slavic peoples' last stand.
``The Serbs have won the war, why do you Americans insist on keeping their victory from them?'' a Bulgarian television journalist asked me.
``It took us 500 years to drive the Moslems out and now you Americans want to give them a new foothold in Europe.'' The ``Turkish Yoke'' remains a very real burden in modern Bulgaria. But, like many of his countrymen, this journalist was less concerned with theology than with rumors of activities by Iranian-backed Islamic fundamentalists in the region.
The Turkish legacy also includes ethnic and religious minorities with which most Bulgarians would rather not deal. About 20 percent of the population belongs to one of three recognized minorities.
Half are ``Pomachs,'' Bulgarians who converted to Islam during Turkish rule. The term is now politically incorrect and ``Islamized Bulgarians'' is often substituted.
The smallest minority, less than five percent, is of Turkish ancestry who continue to speak Turkish and practice the Islamic relision. The former cCommunist government attempted ethnic cleansing in 1986, requiring both groups to take Bulgarian names and abandon their religion or have their land confiscated and be forcibly resettled. The policy was criticized both internally and externally and soon dropped. But many Bulgarians have two names - the public name and the private, Turkish name.
Both the Moslem and Christian religions seem to be going through a revival in Bulgaria. Mosques with their tall minarets visible for miles are being built in some small villages where they were once destroyed or put to other usees. In Blagoevgrad the old mosque is a store by day and disco at night.
A branch of Eastern Orthodoxy is the dominant religion. Closely related to Russian Orthodoxy, it was tolerated even during the communist period. During the Ottoman occupation, isolated monasteries provided refuges for guerrilla bandit groups that harassed the Turks. In villages where farming is hard, time-consuming work, church services draw mostly elderly women. But in larger cities, young people of both genders attend.
Unless they are part of a monastic order, Orthodox priests can marry and so they live in the community. In their flowing black robes, tall cylindrical hats and full beards, they stride along city sidewalks and village lanes swinging briefcases, looking as much on a business as a religious mission.
Some Bulgarians say the church's main income is from the sale of candles. That may well be. Gilt icons adorn every inch of the interior of a church, but are so covered with soot that most detail is lost. Dunking burning stubs into sand buckets keeps at least one sexton busy in every church. But income was enough for the church to finance one of the new private banks.
The third minority group, a bit more than five percent of the population, is Gypsy or Romany. Ancient wanderers from India, these small, dark people are social outcasts in Bulgaria and across Eastern Europe. Many live in shanty towns on city outskirts and cling to their own language. They also make their living in ways others won't or don't want to.
Gypsy women, blue smocks covering their bright woolen skirts, are hired to sweep the streets. Children, usually barefoot and in tattered clothes, beg in streets and marketplaces. Groups of young boys not yet in their teens hang out in the markets, drinking and fighting. Petty thievery often results.
My students were keenly aware of racial strife in the United States and vocal in criticizing Americans for it. But they justified their nation's treatment of minorities, saying the minorities' refusal to assimilate into mainstream Bulgarian culture. The students were particularly critical of AUBG's efforts to prepare minorities for entrance, contending that money spent on a minority tutoring program, should have gone toward their own scholarships. They adopted a ``told you so'' attitude when one of the more promising minority students, a young Gypsy woman still in her teens, refused admission to AUBG because her family insisted she honor the marriage they had arranged.
Early, arranged marriages remain common among all minority groups, while Bulgarians are now marrying later. And, privately, many Bulgarians express concern about growing birth rates among minorities. The birth rate among Bulgarians is not even maintaining the population. In probably another manifestation of pessimism, young couples are opting for only one child, if any, and estimates are that half or more of all pregnancies are aborted.
The shortest period of foreign domination, the world war alliances with Germany, cost Bulgaria territory it historically claimed. A conversation of any length eventually turns to an explanation of how Bulgaria was cheated out of much of what used to be Yugoslavia.
Most countries in Eastern Europe are artificially established geopolitical entities. Their boundaries were drawn by treaty and bear little resemblance to boundaries within which ethnic populations actually live. Yet, ethnicity, not geography, is how most people in the region, especially the Balkans, define their nationalism.
Bulgaria and its new neighbor Macedonia are an ironic example. Ancient Bulgaria included parts of the now independent republic that was formerly the most southern province of Yugoslavia. Bulgarians call those living in the new country Bulgarians, yet casually and somewhat disparagingly call those Bulgarians living near the border Macedonians. The countries share a language with only a few artificial distinctions, but when agreements are made between the two countries, Macedonia insists on bilingual versions as if it were confirmation of its sovereignty.
Once they know you, Bulgarians will admit some responsibility for their current status of nation-in-waiting for something good to happen. It most often shows in their dark and self-deprecating sense of humor. A common saying is that Bulgarians don't care about doing well, they just want to do better than their neighbors.
A more apocryphal version is a story of how the devil maintains separate boiling vats in hell for each of the people of the Balkans. A guard is posted around every vat but one. A visitor asks why there is no guard around that one. The devil replies, ``That's the Bulgarian pot. If one tries to escape the others will just pull him right back down.''
Bulgaria's present laws don't favor anyone doing very well. There are no bankruptcy laws to shield those willing to take risks. Non-Bulgarians must have a Bulgarian majority partner, so major properties such as hotels and the state airline have not attracted foreign investment. A value-added tax to generate the money needed to keep the country running took effect in April. Prices on items manufactured or altered have jumped as much as 30 percent, but results will be much longer in coming.
Elections, constitutionally required next year, could come earlier, depending on whethter they receive a vote of no-confidence. In fact, the present government, an unwieldy combination of several small parties and factions, was probably saved from a constitutional crisis by Bulgaria's performance in the World Cup soccer tournament. In late May, a vote of no confidence was near. Then the government's and the people's attention was diverted as Bulgaria made it to soccer's final four, beating both teams that had played in the 1990 championship.
Many anticipate that when the elections come, the socialists, nee former communists, are likely to win as they have in other Eastern European countries. If that happens, privatization legislation may take on a new urgency. Former communists are said to have access to wealth to invest.
But many average Bulgarians are testing the waters of free enterprise, too. Small boutiques and kiosks are springing up everywhere. Entrepreneurs with enough capital to buy or rent a trailer, stock it with everything from canned goods to hardware and open the Bulgarian version of a convenience store. If they can add a table and a few plastic chairs, they have a cafe.
Where money is being made, crime often follows. In Bulgaria this is no exception. Smuggling into Yugoslavia is very profitable, but so is extortion targeting new legitimate businesses.
AUBG encourages its students to develop small business ideas. The most promising are given the equivalent of $500 in Amertican dollars - a large amount by Bulgarian standards - to get the venture off the ground. The most successful to date, is a young man who opened what we would call a manufacturer's close-out store. He had to convince the local protection racketeers that he was too small to bother with. But now, he must be sure to remain small.
Crime is the modern reason for Bulgarians to not want to do too well. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Linda Scanlan is a retired associate professor and former acting
head of the Journalism Department at Norfolk State University. She
was a Fulbright Fellow from August 1993 to June 1994 in Bulgaria,
where she taught at the American University. She lives in Virginia
Beach.
PHOTOS BY JUDITH HORSTMAN AND LINDA SCANLAN
AT RIGHT: These men sit outside a small store in Bansko.
BELOW: an old man leads his sheep and two goats down a residential
street. Farm animals are kept in most homes - even in the cities.
The animals graze throughout the city and the owners often forage
for them in dumpsters.
AT TOP: View from the author's apartment. The entire complex housed
approximately 15,000 people at one time. The row of shacks and
lean-tos at the bottom are grocery stores and cares.
AT LEFT: The author bargaining at an open air market in Sofia, the
capial[sic] city of Bulgaria.
ABOVE: View overlooking the plaza built in 1986 as the former
Communist Party headquarters. The building on the left houses the
regional theater and drama company, city hall is in the round tower
and a bank is beside it.
by CNB