Bulgarian Forced Assimilation Policy and the So-Called ‘Revival Process’ Towards Turks and Muslims in Bulgaria 40 Years Later: Documents, Studies and Memories

Abstract

The article is aimed at building on the existing studies devoted to the last stage of the assimilation policy directed at the Muslim population in Communist Bulgaria during the second half of the 1980s. The 40th anniversary of the forced change of the given Turkish–Arabic and Persian names of this population is an occasion to revisit this dark period of the recent past. This study focuses on the short- and long-term consequences of the political measures, which became known as the ‘Revival process’ (1984/1985–1989). For the first time, the author presents new written sources, including analytical and field reports commissioned by the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and prepared by Bulgarian scholars during the second half of the 1980s, as well as later collected biographical data related to Muslims affected by the events, derived through an (auto)ethnographic method of research among Turks, Crimean Tatars and Muslim Roma.

1. Historical Background, Concept, and Measures of the So-Called ‘Revival Process’

Pour me a drink, my dear

In the name of…

Taking my name

they took everything from me.

Mehmed Karahyuseinov, 19851

In 1984–1985, the Turkish–Arabic and Persian names of Muslims in Bulgaria were replaced with Slavic and Bulgarian names within the forced assimilation policy conducted by the Communist regime in Bulgaria. This act was designated as a ‘Revival process’ (‘Vazroditelen protses’), a term supported by ‘seemingly relevant scholarly’ argumentation. In its essence, this process was a form of forced assimilation of Bulgaria’s Turks, considered to be ‘Islamised Bulgarians’, because it refers not only to the Bulgarianisation of given names but also to different measures of their ‘return’ to ‘Bulgarian historical roots’ and ‘Revival’ of their Bulgarian identity. This renaming of Muslims in Bulgaria was the latest in a series of such campaigns.

Since the establishment of the independent Bulgarian state in 1908, archival sources provided numerous and varied data on the implementation of assimilationist policies towards the Pomaks2 through their forced or voluntary Christianisation in 1912–1913 and 1942–1943 (Blagoeva 2019, pp. 304–27; Eminov 1997, p. 101; Ivanova 2002; Stoyanova 2006, pp. 128–44). On those occasions, the Muslim Roma in various settlements were also affected (CSA, f. 791, op. 1 a.u. 24, pp. 228–41; Stoyanova 2006, p. 141).

During the totalitarian communist regime in Bulgaria (1944–1989), the authorities pursued a targeted, but often inconsistent, policy towards Muslims in Bulgaria. Its ultimate goal was to reduce the number of them, which, according to official statistics, generally exceeded 13% of the country’s total population in 1946 (NSI n.d.). Two periods of the implemented approaches can be distinguished: targeted integration in 1944–1955 and forced assimilation in 1956–1989. During the first period (1944–1955), Muslims, like all Bulgarian citizens, were also affected by the abolishment of the right to private property, the forced participation in cooperative forms of work, the proclaimed equality between men and women, and the inclusion of Muslim women in labour activities—this latter measure clashing with the cultural tradition in some families and local communities. The Bulgarian government tried to adapt the ‘Soviet’ model of cultural development of the Turkish community, which was implemented through cooperation with Soviet Azerbaijan in the fields of education and culture. The management of Turkish minority schools, the introduction of special quotas and scholarships for Turks in many educational institutions, the establishment of Turkish studies as a university discipline, the creation of Turkish theatres and folklore groups, the promotion of Turkish media publications, etc. (Bücksenschütz 2000, pp. 125–26; Stoyanov 1998, pp. 118–21), seem to have largely been a form of implementation of cultural and linguistic autonomy. According to Stefan Troebst, the Communist Party sought to weaken the religious identity of Turks through their language (Troebst 1987, pp. 231–53). However, the creation of new secular elites meant to replace traditional religious leaders had unexpected consequences, as language not only ‘replaced’ religion but also affirmed a Turkish ethnic identity.

The second period (1956–1989) came after the April plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1956, at which Todor Zhivkov was elected general secretary. There was a reversal of policy towards the Turkish population and other Muslim communities (Pomaks, Roma, and Tatars); measures against their Turkisation were undertaken (CSA, f. 1Б, op. 15 a.u. 765, p. 8; Stoyanov 1998, pp. 125–39). Almost throughout the entire period of Communist rule, the policy towards the Pomak population was dominated by an active ethno-nationalist approach (Blagoeva 2019), according to which they were Bulgarians who had been Islamized during the period of Ottoman rule (cf. Muratova 2015, pp. 252–61). Designated by the authorities at that time as ‘Bulgarian Mohammedans’ (and today as ‘Bulgarian Muslims’), they were subjected to almost constant assimilation through the Bulgarianisation of their given names and the banning of their Islamic religious traditions (such as circumcision, syunet; specific clothing; veiling; etc.). Between 1970 and 1974, the authorities also conducted a large-scale campaign for changing their Muslim given names (Eminov 1997, pp. 106–7; Gruev and Kalionski 2008; Stoyanov 1998, pp. 143–47). The majority of the Muslim Roma were also affected by this policy, as the largest renaming campaigns among them took place during the periods of 1960–1962 and 1980–1982 (Eminov 1997, p. 117; Stoyanova 2017, pp. 78–96). Despite the attempts of scholars to ‘distance’ the small Crimean Tatar community in Bulgaria from the Turks (as was also carried out with Muslims of the Shia confession), it remained strongly linked to the Turkish population. Ultimately, the Crimean Tatars were subjected to the same measures as the Turks (Antonov 2004, pp. 66–67). Gradually, the concept of national consolidation of the Bulgarian socialist nation was imposed in the Bulgarianisation policy during the 1970s and 1980s. This formulation was influenced by the concept of the unified Soviet nation (‘yedinaya sovetskaya natsiya’), which Leonid Brezhnev (general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist party of USSR from 1964 to 1982) had defined in 1971 as a new and superior form of development of the individual nationalities (Stoyanov 1998, pp. 142–3). At the end of 1984, the last stage of the Bulgarianisation of Muslims in Bulgaria began. It included a large-scale change of their names, including the names of all Turks; with regard to the latter, the idea of their Bulgarian origin (‘ethnogenezis’) was also ‘developed’. In June 1984, the state authorities decided to restrict the activities of Muslim preachers, and the construction of new mosques was halted; the use of the Turkish language in public places was banned, and violations of the prohibition were punished with fines amounting to a monthly salary. Different archival sources provide information that the renaming of the Turks began in southern Bulgaria and then continued in the northern part of the country (Eminov 1997, pp. 86–88). The number of affected Turks is most often associated with the figure of 850,000 people (Kalinova 2016, p. 125). Bulgarian economist and historian Rumen Avramov considers that 1,306,000 Muslims (incl. Turks, Muslim Roma, Pomaks, and Tatars) had their names changed (Kalinova 2016, p. 110). Notably, the renaming was carried out on a settlement-by-settlement basis by specially organised staff, including leading Party cadres assisted by law enforcement and state security units, under a complete information blackout and communication breakdown between individual settlements. The majority of Turks felt strong fears and conceded, albeit reluctantly, to the changing of their given and family names. Some resisted, as a result of which hundreds were arrested and detained in prisons and the Belene concentration camp without judicial sentences. Some were released and later died prematurely. The number of those executed remains unclear (Eminov 1997, pp. 86–88; Bücksenschütz 2000, pp. 179–82). In 1986, Amnesty International reported over 250 arrests and over 100 deaths between December 1984 and March 1985 (Amnesty International 1986, pp. 272–5).

In addition to integration and forced assimilation, the Bulgarian Communist government also applied a third approach in reducing the Muslim population: expulsion. The assimilation and expulsion campaigns were intertwined in specific ways, and the study of the two can hardly be separated. Three resettlements of Turks and Muslims from Bulgaria to neighbouring Turkey took place under the Communist regime: (1) between 1949 and 1951 (when more than 150,000 were resettled); (2) between 1968/1969 and 1978 (when approximately 130,000 were resettled); (3) in the summer of 1989 (with more than 350,000 expelled and resettled) (Kalinova 2016, pp. 111–31; Şimşir 2012, pp. 225–30). The last-mentioned flow, between May and August 1989, which affected more than 350,000 people, was the result of the failure of the planned integration of the Turks for national consolidation aimed at building a Bulgarian socialist, ethnically homogeneous nation. This expulsion became known in Bulgarian media and some academic studies as the ‘Great Excursion’, as the national authorities issued tourist visas to the Turks and other Muslims (Kalinova 2016, p. 132; Maeva 2006, pp. 65–74). In Turkey, the exiles were granted refugee status (UNHCR 2001, pp. 156, 160). International institutions, observers and researchers designated the process as ‘forced migration’, ‘deportation’, ‘an escape’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ (Kamusella 2019; US-GAO 1991). Two further migration campaigns should be noted. Tens of thousands of Turks could not adapt to the conditions of their reception in Turkey and returned to Bulgaria. It is estimated that the number of exiles who remained in Turkey was approximately 250,000 (Elchinova 2005; Vasileva 1992). Those Muslims who failed to obtain international passports in the summer of 1989 were later granted them under the new political regime and continued to migrate to Turkey until 1993 (Erolova 2013, pp. 9–10).

After the collapse of Communist rule, in the context of a democratic state order in Bulgaria, more than 600,000 Muslims succeeded in officially reclaiming their birth names in 1991 (Höpken 1997, p. 72). In 2012, the Bulgarian Parliament adopted a declaration condemning this act as ‘a form of ethnic cleansing’ (Bulgarian Parliament Declaration 2012). However, no one was convicted of conducting the assimilation and expulsion campaign. Today, 40 years later, it is important to reconsider the darkest times of minority policies in Bulgaria, and to ‘hear’ the voice of those who were subjected to it.

2. Research Methods and Clarification

The main objective of this study is to analyse the short and long-term consequences of the assimilationist policy of the Communist government in the second half of the 1980s. The research methodology combines historical and ethnological approaches, chosen as most appropriate given the chronology and the problems of the events discussed. It should also be noted that, since the second half of the 1990s, many Bulgarian scholars have focused on compiling and analysing the available declassified archival sources of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party from the time of the so-called ‘Revival process’ (Anghelov 2008; Gruev and Kalionski 2008; Baeva and Kalinova 2010; Tsvetanski 2015). The discovery of new data from archival sources continues to this day. Reading and re-reading the number of scientific publications dedicated to the situation of the Muslims in communist Bulgaria, it is interesting to clarify two facts. We should not forget that the Communist government officially engaged the largest scientific organisation, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, in its policies as early as the beginning of the 1960s. In Appendix B (8), Protocol A No. 101 of 5 April 1962 (in which the policy and measures against ‘the Turkisation of Gypsies, Tatars and Bulgarian Mohammedans’ were officially defined), we read the following:

‘8. The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences must send complex expeditions of historians, ethnographers, philologists, etc. for the comprehensive study of the national origins and the nationality of the population in the respective regions of the country; the expeditions should especially establish the ethnic origin and the national peculiarities of Turks, Tatars, Gypsies who live in Bulgaria. The study of the historic past of the Bulgarian Muslims in the Rhodopes, the Lovech region, and other parts of the country must continue in order to make further discoveries about the historical truth about the results of the assimilation policies of the Turkish oppressors, and about the mass and individual conversions to Islam. A special section must be set up at the Institute for the History of Bulgaria at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for the study of the historic past of the Bulgarian Muslims’.

(Helsinki Watch Committee 1991, p. 73)

Since then, and until the end of the Communist regime, some researchers from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and university institutions3, including those of Turkish origin4, had argued the scientific justification of the concept of ‘Revival process’, ‘proving’ the ethnically Bulgarian origin of the Muslim communities. After 1989, some of them continued their research work and, to some extent, ‘rewrote’ their views about Muslim communities, focusing on the policies of the totalitarian state. The role of these scholars is still a rarely raised and under-studied issue (Karamihova 1999, p. 7; Pashova 2006, pp. 319–40; Avramov 2016, pp. 20–22). Did they feel compelled to choose these topics of research under the pressure of the Communist Party? Or, did they really believe in what they had to ‘prove’? Perhaps both assumptions are true. Some scholars have later justified the work they did before 1989 by pointing out that the Communist Party orders were not to be ignored; others point to considerations of professional growth. Some continue to believe ‘there are no Turks’ in Bulgaria.

Another scarcely discussed issue in Bulgarian scholarship on minority policies is that the prevalently used set of terminological tools is narrow (cf. Kamusella 2019, p. 53). Although, in 2012, the Bulgarian Parliament adopted a declaration condemning the ‘attempted forced assimilation’ and defining the expulsion that took place in the summer of 1989 as ‘ethnic cleansing’, these terms are not visibly used in relevant Bulgarian-language studies. The most widely used term still remains ‘Revival process’, justified by the narrative used at that time. For example, the collection ‘Migrations. Europe between Historical Experience and the Fears of Modern Times’ (2016, in Bulgarian) contains a chapter by E. Kalinova, entitled ‘Emigration Practices and the Policy of Bulgaria (Late Nineteenth-Late Twentieth Century)’, in which the author states that the 1989 expulsion was cynically called ‘The Great Excursion’, and that it was perceived around the world as a case of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (2016, p. 132). But, the section of Kalinova’s paper devoted to these events is entitled precisely ‘The Great Excursion’ (2016, p. 130). Similarly, in the book by M. Gruev and A. Kalionski, ‘The Revival Process. Muslim Communities and the Communist Regime’ (2013), one of the chapters is entitled ‘The May Events’ and ‘The Great Excursion’. Possibly, my reading of such publications in Bulgaria is burdened by the fact that I myself belong to the Turkish community, and my reflections on the matter are perhaps too subjective. But the question still remains: is the scholarly terminology used in a particular historical period a sufficient justification for its continued, often mechanical, use? Bibliographical analysis of the dozens of publications on minority policies in Bulgaria shows that discussions on this question are mostly overlooked, with a few exceptions (Avramov 2016, pp. 22–24). In any case, I believe that a clear dividing line must be drawn between the uses of terminology as historical reflection on the one hand and as a ‘Socialist legacy’ on the other; here, the ethical aspect must certainly be taken into account. In the context of an increasingly widespread view that researchers must take a more committed, active, responsible stance, there is a growing need to pursue ‘uncomfortable’ debates, such as the role of scholars in the so-called ‘Revival process’, the ethical aspect of the present-day use of terminology taken from the Socialist period, etc.

This article focuses on new written sources that provide information on how assimilationist policies affected Muslim communities in Bulgaria and changed their way of life. We could provisionally divide these sources into two groups according to the time of their production. The first group, created in the period 1987–1989, refers to new, previously unanalysed scholarly works commissioned directly by the Ideological Policy Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The second group of written sources was created after 2007 and essentially comprises field materials containing biographical data personally collected by me. The use of the biographical method as qualitative ‘narrative research’ (Atkinson 2002, pp. 121–40) offers an opportunity for respondents to talk about their lives, including the time of re-naming and the expulsion to Turkey. Emphasis is placed on auto-ethnographic reflections (Ellis et al. 2010) on my memories and the accounts of my relatives, which provides an emic (in-group) perspective and may add different nuances to the study of the consequences of the forced assimilation policy and the 1989 act of ethnic cleansing.

The parallel study of historical documents (scientific reports) and ethnographic materials (biographical narratives), which have not been discussed until now, complements the multifaceted discussion on forced assimilation as a problem and brings new insights to it. To a large extent, the examination of the two groups of primary sources, historical and ethnographic, does not deepen the dichotomy between the historical and anthropological approaches (Carmack 1972, pp. 227–46; Kuiper et al. 2024); rather, these two groups of sources complement each other, and this examination serves as an example of their joint use in scholarly research. I believe that the description of the empirical data is the most important contribution of this article. On the one hand, scientific reports as part of the archives of the Bulgarian Communist Party were probably destroyed before they were declassified. My access to them, provided by my colleagues, is most likely due to my scientific interest in the subject, as well as my background. I believe that complementing these historical sources with biographical records from representatives of the affected communities brings the narrative of the recent past and violent assimilation to life and reveals the multifaceted viewpoints of the personal experience. Focusing on my personal memories could be seen as a limitation, possibly because my perspective is too subjective, or as an advantage, since I can speak about certain issues that I was directly involved in. I should note that the challenge of being both a researcher and a respondent for the first time somewhat shifted the traditional approach in anthropology and ethnology of necessarily adhering to certain theoretical frameworks. I hope that this detailed description of my first autoethnographic attempt will lead to a clearer, more nuanced, and deeper understanding of the context, the events, and all parties involved.

3. Was the Policy of Forced Assimilation Successful? Discussion Based on New Documentary Sources

The currently available large mass of archival sources, including documents of the central Communist government and local Party organisations (Anghelov 2008; Tsvetanski 2015), provides information about the preparation, implementation, and objectives of the policy of forced assimilation known as the ‘Revival process’. To these written sources, we could add some of the scientific research carried out in the second half of the 1980s, aimed at establishing the impact of the measures upon the communities in question. In the course of this study, I was provided with unarchived documents, including a collection of scientific papers as well as a fieldwork report, which I have archived and made available to interested researchers at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (AIEFEM–BAS a.u. 372-IV; AIEFEM–BAS a.u. 1307-III). For the first time, these materials will be discussed in this article.

A collection of research papers compiled by Delcho Todorov.

The collection carries the main title ‘A COMPREHENSIVE SCIENTIFIC STUDY ON ‘THE FAMILY AND THE REVIVAL PROCESS’ and the subtitle ‘Scientific findings on the topic THE FAMILY AND THE REVIVAL PROCESS’, Part II (AIEFEM–BAS a.u. 372-IV). On the first page of the document, the time of the research is indicated as December 1987–January 1990; the contractors were the Institute of Sociology (today the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology) and the Ethnographic Institute with Museum (today the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The document includes 15 scientific papers on 444 typewritten and computer pages, and is structured as follows:

• ‘The Family and the Revival Process. Main Conclusions and Recommendations’ by Delcho Todorov [pp. 3–20];
• ‘On the Nature and Course of the So-called Revival Process and Some Initial Assumptions about the Current Stage and Prospects for Its Development’ by Delcho Todorov [pp. 21–33];
• ‘Social-class and Labour-professional Characteristics of the Descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’ by Mariana Draganova [pp. 34–48];
• ‘Labour Activity’ by Sasha Todorova [pp. 49–71];
• ‘Reproductive and Migration Consciousness and Behaviour’ by Valentina Zlatanova [pp. 72–108];
• ‘Socio-political Activity’ by Sasha Todorova [pp. 109–16];
• ‘Family and Family Environment’ by Lyuba Makaveeva [pp. 117–70];
• ‘Material Culture and Everyday Life’ by Mirella Decheva [pp. 171–201];
• ‘Spiritual Culture and Everyday Life’ by Rachko Popov [pp. 202–30];
• ‘Language and Language Contacts’ by Maksim Mladenov and Vladimir Zhobov [pp. 231–59];
• ‘Social Contacts’ by Veneta Stoilova [pp. 260–90];
• ‘Historical Knowledge’ by Elena Grozdanova [pp. 290–341];
• ‘Health and Demographic Status, Level of Medical Service and Health Culture of the Population’ by Mincho Georgiev and Angel Panev [pp. 342–83];
• ‘General Characteristics of the Ethno-orientation of the Descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’ by Atanas Atanasov [pp. 384–412];
• ‘Attitude of Traditional Bulgarians towards the Descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’ by Kiril Kertikov, Valentina Zlatanova, and Atanas Atanasov [pp. 413–44].

It is not possible to discuss all the scholarly works presented in the collection but I will consider in detail the first two, written by Delcho Todorov, director at that time of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum. He summarises the results and conclusions of the other papers, which are in the fields of ethnography, sociology, history, linguistics, and medicine. It should be pointed out that, in these texts, Muslims from different ethnic communities are all designated by the general name ‘descendants of Islamised Bulgarians’, while the Bulgarian population is referred to as ‘traditional Bulgarians’. In the introductory part of the first text by Delcho Todorov, ‘The Family and the Revival Process. Main Conclusions and Recommendations’ (pp. 3–20), it is stated that this scientific and practical study was commissioned as a ‘social order’ by the Ideological Policy Department of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The topics of the scientific studies are listed. It is emphasised that, ‘in order to shed light on the two-sided nature of the national consolidation process, the problem of the attitude of Bulgarians with traditional names towards Bulgarians with restored names, and respectively their attitude towards the process itself, was researched through four studies […]’; ‘as a specific addition to the clarification of the objective course of the process, expert assessments by leading figures from the districts of Haskovo and Burgas were taken’ (p. 3). The study covers the administrative districts of Haskovo, Burgas, Razgrad, Varna, Mihaylovgrad [present-day Montana], and Sofia. It is clarified that the population in both groups, the ‘traditional Bulgarians’ and the ‘descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’, was surveyed (pp. 3–4). The study started in December 1987 and was completed in the spring of 1989, ‘immediately before the mass departure of the Islamised Bulgarians to Turkey’ (p. 4). After this introductory part, the text provides information about the share of ‘Islamised Bulgarians’ employed in the national economy: 42% of them worked in agriculture and 29% in industry. It is observed that the national indicators differ from these data: the largest share of these people are industrial workers; the second largest share work in construction; and the third largest work in agriculture (p. 4). Based on these figures, it is concluded that ‘the descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’ are characterised by a significant lag behind the rest of the Bulgarian population; they have a ‘modest and ineffective contribution to the overall material and spiritual life, to the quality reproduction of labour and the intellectual potential of the Bulgarian nation’ (p. 4). The arguments are that these people have a lower level of education and a high relative share of employment in hard physical and unskilled labour. It is pointed out that tobacco cultivation [one of the typical occupations of Muslims in Southern Bulgaria] helps to strengthen the family, kinship and settlement isolation of the group within society, and ‘negatively affects the desired course of unification’; the level of labour and creative activity is low, and the main motivation of parents and children for training and acquiring a given profession is purely pragmatic, related to the prospect of it being practiced as a sought-after and profitable one in Turkey. While 70% of parents have a primary education, the entire young generation strives to complete secondary and vocational education, with a relatively high share of young people completing secondary and higher education. It is predicted that in 10–15 years, the birth rate among ‘Islamised Bulgarians’ will exceed the national level, including an increase in their share of the country’s working population (pp. 5–6). Expectations for high birth rates are also explained as being due to ‘a situation of painfully affected ethnic consciousness and a sense of group protection’ resulting from the name change (p. 7). Based on these arguments, a change in the demographic and labour-professional status of the group of ‘Islamised Bulgarians’ is recommended, accompanied by a ‘prolonged and active migration process’; the author specifies that ‘the current state of migration processes is not a cyclical one, but a situation with a long-term perspective’ (p. 7). The text also states that, at the moment, two main flows are emerging in the internal migrations of Islamised Bulgarians:

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Intra-regional migration, whereby there is a regrouping and new concentration of ‘the descendants of the Islamised population’. For example, in the towns of Momchilgrad and Ardino, immigration was seven times higher than the total for the region. This leads to preservation of the group’s internal isolation.

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Migration to closer and more distant regions of the country where there is an acute labour shortage.

The geographical area of ‘the Islamised group’ is expected to expand, as it begins to settle in depopulated villages with a traditional Bulgarian population (p. 8). Two more points are added to this ‘negative’ forecast. First, there is growth in ‘the Turkised population’ in industrial areas, which would become the vital administrative, economic, spiritual and political centres of such people; these centres would also attract Bulgarian–Mohammedans and Gypsies. The author writes that it is not too late to ‘regulate these trends’ (p. 10). Here, we must add the more specific recommendation contained in the linguistic study of Maksim Mladenov and Vladimir Zhobov, which was not taken into account in the summarised recommendations by D. Todorov. M. Mladenov and Vl. Zhobov advises not to limit the use of the Turkish language administratively, since attention is being drawn to the ethnically distinguishing role of the language. They also recommend that a Bulgarian-speaking population has to be ‘infiltrated’ in areas with a concentrated presence of Turkish-speaking communities (p. 248). This recommendation, as can be seen from the field data appendices, may not be well-founded and is therefore not included in D. Todorov’s summary text, since, as M. Mladenov and Vl. Zhobov note, there is also a trend of Bulgarian-speaking residents of the settlements learning Turkish to communicate with their Turkish-speaking fellow villagers (pp. 253, 255, 258).

From the first article in the collection, we also learn that the obtained data on attitudes towards emigration are contradictory. The results of the social survey indicate that 40% of ‘the descendants of Islamised Bulgarians’ are willing to leave Bulgaria permanently or temporarily. However, according to local public activists, this percentage is twice as high as they claim. The mass expulsion in the summer of 1989 confirmed the accuracy of the latter assessment (p. 10). It is important to note the finding that ‘the ideas about the Turkish origin of the Bulgarian Turkised population, instilled for centuries by the Ottoman Empire, and later by us ourselves, have not been outlived to this day by the majority of them; the results of the sociological survey show that a significant part of this population is (openly or covertly) a bearer of Turkish ethnic orientation’. It is also said that, according to the expert assessment by civil servants, 90% of these people have Turkish ethnic self-awareness (pp. 10–11). Some reasons are suggested: that historical knowledge about their Bulgarian origin is not popular among them, and that the lecture propaganda and political meetings being conducted are insufficient. It is emphasised that, out of the propagated information, ‘the Islamised Bulgarians’ accept ‘with the greatest confidence’ the data from archaeological excavations, ethnographic information, and local traditions and legends (p. 12). An important conclusion added by D. Todorov is that ‘the complex set of scientific, propaganda and ideological influences in the course of the so-called Revival process has not managed to significantly affect the ideas and self-awareness of Turkish ethnicity’. It is also said that a large part of the other (‘traditional’) Bulgarians believe in the thesis of the Bulgarian origin of ‘the Islamised Bulgarians’, but ‘retain the stereotypes of ethnic alienation and separation’ and treat the Islamised Bulgarians with ‘national arrogance’. Hence, D. Todorov concludes that ‘the proclaimed unifying national process failed to become bilateral’ (p. 11).

Regarding the family of the ‘Islamised Bulgarians’, the text states that it is ‘the main conservative social environment and a primary factor holding back the process of national unification and the formation of a Bulgarian ethnic self-consciousness’ (p. 13). After the renaming, the closedness of the family significantly increased (p. 14). Furthermore, in the same sense, the author also concludes that the official proclamation of the thesis of Bulgarian origin and the renaming ‘are shaking but not destroying the fortress of the family’ (p. 18).

It is interesting to note the observation that, until the 1985 renaming, social contacts between the two groups of the Bulgarian population [‘traditional’ and ‘Islamised’] had developed normally, with tendencies towards constant expansion and deepening. After this, a decrease in contact between the two groups was observed, while social interactions within ‘the group of Islamised Bulgarians’ became stronger in all spheres of life. The most open to contact are children and adolescent people of school age, but many of them are ‘living in constant mental crisis and are feeling torn’ (pp. 15–16). The study notably concludes that, after 1985, the mutual religious stereotypes between Sunni and Shiite Turks, and the ethnic stereotypes between Muslim Gypsies and Muslim Bulgarians [Pomaks], became muted, and as a result, new forms of social contact are developing again ‘in the name of stabilising the Islamic confessional community’ (p. 16).

D. Todorov distinguishes three groups among the ‘descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’ according to their attitudes towards the act of renaming. A small part of them, including a part of the intelligentsia, have accepted the Bulgarian names as a legitimation of the personal feeling and self-consciousness of Bulgarian ancestral roots in the perspective of fuller social and national equality. This group is caught between ‘punches’ coming from both sides: the contempt of their community and the sceptical attitude of those Bulgarians with whom they want to integrate (p. 18). A second, larger group relates to the people hesitant about their ethnic orientation. They are distinguished by a covert passivity when the course of the process [the change of names] is calm, but in extreme situations, they tend to gravitate towards the nationalists and to join in the mass demonstrations. The third group includes the overt and semi-covert opponents of the act of renaming (p. 19). Taking into account the psychological effects of the name change, the paper recommends a policy of tolerance and sincere brotherly attitude towards the descendants of ‘the Islamised Bulgarians’ and the creation of equal conditions with the rest of the population. This approach ‘should heal the wounds of an ill-considered act that led to the destabilisation of the normal course of our national socialist integration’ (p. 18).

The second text by D. Todorov, dating back to 26 December 1989 and entitled ‘On the Nature and Course of the So-called Revival Process and Some Initial Assumptions about the Current Stage and Prospects for Its Development’, discusses the failure of the ‘Revival process’. The first reason is that the official thesis about the Bulgarian ethnic origin of ‘the Islamised Bulgarians’ was not accompanied by a scientifically grounded state–governmental document addressed to the outside world and our nation. It is also said that even if such a document existed, it would remain highly vulnerable due to the opposite thesis, maintained by the same government until 1985, about the Turkish origin of this population. Hence, the thesis about the predominant Bulgarian ethnic element in the composition of ‘the Turkised group’ is considered compromised, as is that about the entirely Bulgarian origin of the ‘Pomak Bulgarians’ (pp. 22–23). The second reason for the failure of the ‘Process’ is the massive change of the names of ‘the Turkised Bulgarian population’, including changes to surnames and family names. D. Todorov criticised the fact that the idea of renaming originated in a limited circle of Todor Zhivkov’s team, and that it was not consulted with scientific specialists (p. 23). The renaming was carried out through a violent state administrative act, implemented by state administrative and party cadres with the assistance of state security forces (p. 24). D. Todorov is quoted as saying that the renaming was presented by our official propaganda as ‘voluntary and as a self-initiative’; however, ‘no one in the world believed us regarding the voluntary nature of the renaming’. Furthermore, ‘people were also skeptical about the reliable ethnogenetic thesis’. The scientists and propagandists were invited to explain the thesis about the Bulgarian origin of the renamed people during and after the act of renaming. D. Todorov points out that the grossest mistake was that the renaming was guided by people who ‘do not possess the necessary knowledge’. According to him, ‘the historical truth about the Bulgarian origin of the Turkised population’ should be defended with arguments in the context of the deepening of the national consolidation process; he is condemning the wrong and crude method of implementation of the mass renaming (p. 28). Further in the text, the author gives a more detailed and specific analysis of the positive consequences and the mistakes made in the act of renaming, emphasising the different degrees of propaganda and the contradictory instructions: he points out that ethnic self-consciousness cannot be built in a few months; that it would take at least one or two generations; and that the [national-consolidation] process was not turned into a two-sided one, with the participation of the rest of the Bulgarian population (p. 28).

An important conclusion reached by D. Todorov is that the readiness to deport ‘the Islamised Bulgarians’ to Turkey four months earlier than planned was in contradiction to the previously existing aspiration to integrate them into the Bulgarian nation. The response of the remaining Bulgarian population, which had adopted a patriotic stance, is not what it should be when ‘brothers in kind’ are separated. Another mistake is that the returning [from Turkey] Turks are asked to admit their guilt to the nation, to make declarations of repentance5. They are resettled in other regions of the country instead of being allowed to return to their native places. Widespread antipathy towards ‘the descendants of the Islamised Bulgarians’ has emerged in Bulgarian society. In the conclusion of the text, D. Todorov says that the final result of the so-called ‘Revival process’ has been the destabilisation of the normal integration process [a conclusion that I have also reached based on my personal and ethnographic observations] and the escalation of the attitude of ethnic intolerance and antipathy on the part of the ‘population having traditional names’ (pp. 29–31).

In almost all studies included in the collection, the authors consider that the national-consolidation process is possible through long-term and active ideological and scientifically argued propaganda that would popularise the thesis regarding the Bulgarian origin; the so-called ‘Revival process’ is qualified as an unsuccessful solution. It is noticeable that the authors of the ethnographic studies (Rachko Popov, Lyuba Makaveeva, Mirella Decheva) find it difficult to use the changing terminology in the period 1987–1989, which reflects the dominant Party discourse at that time. Some of the terms are crossed out with a pen, and other ones are written in their place. For instance, in Lyuba Makaveeva’s text, the term ‘Revival process’ was replaced by ‘national-consolidation’ (pp. 132, 137); the phrase ‘Bulgarians with restored names’ (Bulgari s vazstanoveni imena), together with the abbreviation ‘BRN’ (BVN), was replaced with ‘descendants of Islamised Bulgarians’ (pp. 134, 136, 140, 143, 146, 147, 153); ‘Bulgarian Muslim population’ or ‘Muslim Bulgarians’ was replaced with ‘Islamised Bulgarian population’ or ‘descendants of Bulgarian Muslims’ (pp. 140, 153, 156, 164). In Mirella Decheva’s text, which is difficult to read due to the poor quality of the ink, the terms are preserved in the form of the abbreviations ‘BRN’—‘Bulgarians with restored names’ (‘Bulgari s vazstanoveni imena’—‘BVI’); BTN—‘Bulgarians with traditional names’ (‘Bulgari s traditsionni imena’—‘BTI’). Furthermore, the designation ‘Bulgarians—Muslims’ is not crossed out and replaced by another term such as ‘Islamised Bulgarians’.

It is important to note that the ethnographic study by Rachko Popov mentions that targeted measures were taken to restore community female gatherings (sedyanki) among ‘the Islamised Bulgarians’ (p. 221). This example of an ‘infiltrated’ cultural practice calls into question all evidence for the existence of an ancient Bulgarian layer in the culture of Muslims in Bulgaria. Yet, there has not been any research conducted on the origin of such artificially spread cultural elements, which also serve as ‘arguments’ in the theory of the Bulgarian ethnogenesis of the Muslim communities in Bulgaria.

The text by the historian Elena Grozdanova regarding historical knowledge as a tool in ideological propaganda suggests various conclusions. She criticised the lecturers who delivered propaganda speeches on historical topics among the ‘Bulgarians with restored names’ for equating the processes of Islamisation and Turkisation. According to the author, Islamisation should not be presented as a one-off violent act, but as a process involving various forms of coercion.

Setting aside the ideological–propaganda context, we may generally conclude that the studies in this collection were the result of a complex study of various aspects of the culture and life of Muslims in Bulgaria, and may serve as a valuable historical source. Moreover, the primary notes of the researchers would be even more enlightening. Unfortunately, only Rachko Popov’s field report was available for the needs of the present study.

The Primary Field Notes of Rachko Popov

The above-mentioned compilation, edited by D. Todorov, includes a report entitled ‘Spiritual Culture and Everyday Life’ (pp. 202–30) by the ethnographer Rachko Popov, who was at that time a research fellow at the Ethnographic Institute with Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. A few years ago, before retiring, R. Popov provided me with his original field notes, which he had kept but not archived, as is the practice for transcribed interviews from our field studies at the Institute. I archived this 44-page typewritten document in the Ethnographic Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum (AIEFEM–BAS a.u. 1307-III), and thus I made it publicly available. The field report is entitled ‘Spiritual Life and Culture of the Population with Restored Names’. It summarises the field study conducted in 23 villages in the districts of Sliven, Targovishte, Burgas, Razgrad, Silistra, Varna, and Kardzhali between June and July 1988 and in February 1989. Although his research aimed to register the consequences of the so-called ‘Revival process’ in the period between 1984/5 and 1989, R. Popov, being generally interested in the topic of calendar customs and practices, focused on describing the ritual system of local Muslim communities. He interviewed not only the local Communist Party leaders, members and activists involved in organising the name change in different localities in 1984/1985, but also the Muslims, whom he rarely refers to as ‘Bulgarians with restored names’, i.e., ‘revived’, but more often designates as ‘Sunni Turks’, ‘Kazalbash’6 [Shia], ‘Pomaks’ and ‘Gypsies’. During the field research, he most likely had to ask prepared questions about the following: the attitudes of Muslim residents; the number of Party activists, including those of Muslim communities; the problem with the continued unofficial use and adoption of Muslim names; the use of the Turkish language; the preservation and Revival of Muslim family and religious practices and customs; the spread of new socialist rituals; relations between Turks and Bulgarians. For almost every village, he noted whether and how many people had watched the propaganda film Time of Parting (Vreme Razdelno) (1988, directed by Lyudmil Staykov), the main storyline of which is devoted to the violent Islamisation and subsequent Turkisation of Bulgarians during the Ottoman rule (14–19 с.) in the Bulgarian lands. During the field research, he asked questions about the influence of the international meetings in Belgrade7 and Vienna8 on the Muslims’ emigration attitudes and the increased use of the Turkish language. The interviews with the local Party leaders and activists show that the replacement of one way of life with another among the Muslims continued to be closely monitored. It is noted that the ‘Revival process’ does not proceed in the same way everywhere and is being implemented by the authorities with varying degrees of diligence and concern. For example, the Party leader in the municipality of Kotel, Burgas district, said the following about the village of Yablanovo: ‘I think the process is going well. On May 8, there was a big gathering in Yablanovo and I invited many Bulgarians [including Muslims]. They communicate with each other, talk about work. They visit each other as colleagues. Everyone watched Time of Parting and people said that the [so-called Revival] process must be carried out with strict measures’. Those who circumcised their male children were dismissed from their jobs, and some received 4-year prison sentences. In his opinion, ‘the measures are not strict enough and gaps appear’. He refers to the village of Ticha [in the same municipality] as an example, where Bulgarians speak Turkish with Turks; there is unrest after Belgrade; ‘The process has not become everyone’s cause! Economic managers are not involved in it!’.

Another village that R. Popov visited in June 1988 was Bisertsi, Razgrad district. The local population are Shiite Turks and Bulgarians. An interviewed local party activist said that they had a village headquarters for the ‘Revival process’, comprising 100 people, and ‘they had intellectuals, good cadres, and good results’. In total, 700 people had watched the film Time of Parting, and its screening was accompanied by a lecture. Among the problems mentioned was that, before the name changes, there had been three–four mixed marriages between Bulgarians and Turks, but none after that. Many residents of the village had resettled in Turkey and, after the Belgrade meeting, they had been waiting to be allowed to go to Turkey to emigrate or just to visit their relatives; they listened to Turkish radio. The Bulgarians, who are very few, do not want to have a common cemetery with the Turks. ‘Women, who have had their names restored, still do not go to the cemetery’. According to this party activist, the situation was similar in the village of Okorsh, Silistra region. Although they [the Communist Party] had staff working on the ‘Revival process’, which had organised ‘Three Days of Atheistic Education’, he considered the implemented policy to be a ‘failure’. The reasons are that the Turks were compactly settled in their own neighbourhoods and villages, isolated from the Bulgarians. Bulgarian managers did not want to spoil their relations with the Turks and continued to call them by their old [Muslim] names. The Bulgarian population did not want to share cemeteries with ‘Bulgarians who have had their names restored’.

R. Popov’s report generally contains similar data about every village, which is introductory or the only information regarding the visited settlements. Also, the respondents referred to other villages as well in order to show the differences in policy implementation. Reading the entire document from my current position as a researcher and participant in the renaming process, I am left with the impression that not only were certain questions prepared in advance, but there was also a preliminary thesis that the results of the field study were supposed to ‘prove’—the failure of the 1984/1985 renaming and the existence of attitudes for emigration to Turkey. Such conclusions are also made in the final summary texts by D. Todorov in the above-mentioned compilation of scientific reports. Considering their beginnings, it is likely that all the studies were meant to be used as a justification for the expulsion in the summer of 1989. However, since they were completed in early 1990, they were not taken into account by the Ideological Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which had commissioned the research.

4. (Auto)ethnographic Narratives on the Forced Assimilation in the 1980s

According to data from my fieldwork over the years among various ethnic Muslim communities in Bulgaria, as well as my own observations and experience, the second half of the 1980s was a period perceived as traumatic by all Muslims. Although the given Bulgarian names of the Pomaks and Muslim Roma had been changed years earlier, the ‘Revival process’ policy affected them as well as it aimed at the total ethnocultural assimilation of all Muslim communities through prohibitions on the use of language, religious practices and customs, including clothing, and their replacement with new ‘Bulgarian and Socialist’ ones. Their memories of the experienced trauma have been the subject of various studies describing memories of sanctions, various forms of coercion, and physical violence, as well as anger and shame imposed on them because of their different ethnic and religious affiliation (cf. Kyuchukov and Solak 2020; Zafer and Chernokozhev 2024). In addition to archival sources and later research, as a part of the Turkish and Muslim community affected by the forced assimilation policy, I feel compelled to mention my own reflections and memories in my family, as well as individual stories and reactions recorded in ethnological studies conducted by me after 2007. I consider that the inclusion of an autoethnographic approach would deepen the interpretation of the narrative about forced assimilation and trauma. I should note that the local Muslim community in my hometown of Svishtov, North–Central Bulgaria, before 1985, had, to a large extent, gradually adapted to the new material conditions and social relations under the influence of technological progress and modernisation, but without losing its identity based on common ethnic origin and culture. This was its ‘spontaneous path’ to integration into Bulgarian society.

4.1. Personal and Family Auto-Reflections on the Re-Naming Process

My family belongs to the Turkish community, and while the memory of this period remains vivid for them, they avoid talking about the topic of the renaming process. My mother told me that, at the end of 1984, most Turks thought only the names of Muslim Roma were supposed to be changed. A close relative of ours was married to a local Muslim Roma man, who refused to change his name. He tried to hide in different places in the country. The militia [the police] were looking for him and even came to our house. At that time, there was no talk about changing the names of Turks. However, the renaming process extended to the Turkish community as well at the beginning of 1985.

Members of my family recall that their names were changed by their work supervisors, and they were forced to agree with the change for fear of losing their jobs. For my father’s mother, my grandmother, who was then a member of the local structure of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), the change in policy towards the Turks was her greatest disappointment with the Party, and she ‘tore up her party card’. According to her, she sincerely ‘believed in the Party’s ideas until the names were changed’. She remembers with a sense of anger how she was summoned by her boss: on the table, there was a large notebook in which the new names were recorded and a box of chocolate candies. There is a Bulgarian tradition to treat people with chocolate candy on happy occasions—for health, for the birth of a child, etc. It was probably offered on the occasion of the ‘Revival’ of those who were considered ‘Islamised Bulgarians’; this ‘treat’ only intensified the humiliation my grandmother felt. She chose the name Greta. My grandmother was religious, but was not and still is not observant with regard to the canonical religious norms and practices. Hence, I believe her negative feelings were mainly due to having to renounce the cultural heritage of her ancestors, her birth name chosen by her parents, which was one of her symbolic links to them (Erolova 2025).

My mother seemed to show a lack of understanding of the reason for the renaming. When her boss told her she had to choose a new name, she naively replied ‘that she couldn’t make such a decision without talking to her father’, whom she deeply respected. Her parents lived in the nearby village of Novgrad, whose Muslim population was soon subjected to the renaming campaign. Unlike Svishtov, the changing of the Muslim names in Novgrad took place overnight; the authorities visited the Turkish and Turkish Roma families house by house until all names were changed. Several men resisted and were arrested. They were released after a few months, and one of them died afterwards. At that time, my uncle, my mother’s brother, was partaking in military service in the Black Sea city of Bourgas. My grandparents found a way to contact him by phone and told him not to resist the name change lest something bad happen to him. In my family, there was no active resistance to the renaming process, most likely due to fear of what might follow (Erolova 2025).

In general, my relatives’ memory of the period of forced assimilation (1985–1989) focuses on two events: the renaming in 1985 and the expulsion in 1989. The years between the two events are often omitted. For example, my mother says laconically, ‘First they changed our names, and then there was the expulsion’. They have no designation for this period, and the term ‘Revival process’ has never been mentioned by the members of my family or by other Muslims I have spoken to over the years. Individual experiences in my family are often complemented by stories about other members of the Turkish community. In this sense, my relatives are bearers of memories that carry an individual trauma but also the kind of collective trauma that J. Alexander discusses (Alexander 2004, p. 22). Its overcoming is achieved precisely by skipping those few years during which, bearing Bulgarian names, they were restricted from speaking their native language and practicing their customs, or during which they were torn between their sense of ethnic and cultural affiliation bequeathed by their ancestors and the shame attached to that identity when the state attempted to replace it. Considering the life of my relatives before 1985 (Erolova 2025), I believe that the period of forced assimilation in fact slowed down the course of spontaneous assimilation in Bulgarian society that my family had been undergoing until then.

My personal memories of the period 1985–1989 are few but quite vivid. In 1985, I was soon to be six years old. I remember one winter evening, my relatives had gathered and were choosing names from a book. The first letter of most of their new Bulgarian names corresponded to the first letter of their native Turkish names. Until then, they had called me ‘Eli’ for short, and they decided that in order for me to be addressed by my new name, it had to be close to what I was used to. They chose the name ‘Elitsa’ for me, so that they could continue to call me by the derived shortened name ‘Eli’. Also, I remember the period from 1985 to 1989, when I was between 5 and 10 years old, when the use of Turkish at home increased. My relatives would constantly scold me if they spoke to me in Turkish and I answered in Bulgarian. I was often called by my full name, ‘Yelis’, so that I would not forget it, which I heard as ‘Elis’. My grandmother had chosen it for me at my birth in 1979, naming me after Yeliz, a famous pop singer in Turkey. After 1990, I saw my full real name, ‘Yelis’, for the first time written in some document, and I was surprised that its first letter was ‘Y’. Years later, I realised that the name is Turkish, but not Muslim.

In the period 1985–1989, my family and its oldest members made me congratulate them on the occasion of the most important Muslim holidays—Kurban and Ramadan Bayram. They actively participated in all the commemorative community practices of the Muslims in the area, some of which I sometimes attended. My upbringing in the family was largely in contradiction with what I was taught at school. On the one hand, my family raised me with a sense of attachment to Turkey as the country of the ‘mother nation’ (anavatan) (cf. Poulton 1997, pp. 194–213); on other hand, I had to hate that country as the heir to the five-century-old enslaver of Bulgaria. I was considered Bulgarian, but not quite. With my new Bulgarian name, I had to ‘hide’ my origin.

In 1989, part of my family was strongly inclined to migrate to Turkey and we were almost ready to go. We had rented a truck to take the most necessary belongings with us, but at the last moment, we dropped the idea of re-settlement. This was because some of the Turks who had emigrated a few months earlier had failed to adapt to Turkey and had started to return. My oldest relatives eventually decided to stay in Bulgaria because ‘[here] at least we have a roof over our heads, and in Turkey–you don’t know’ (Erolova 2025).

In 1990–1991, my native Turkish name was restored officially and again I had to explain my name in my contacts with the Bulgarian population; this caused me occasional feelings of discomfort in expectation of a possible negative reaction due to the social attitude that I was one of the descendants of the five-century-old Turkish enslaver. I overcame this feeling in the 1990s, when I was the only student with a Turkish name in the secondary school I attended in the city of Gabrovo. Since then, including my years at university and the Institute where I work, I have been used to being distinguished by my name. Very often, when I meet Bulgarians for the first time, I am asked the same questions, such as the following: ‘What is the origin of your name?’, ‘What does it mean?’, ‘Where are you from? Are there any Turks in Svishtov?’, etc. Somehow, these questions contain references to my identity, which also retains the trauma of a past period that I know I have not forgotten but have overcome.

4.2. Case Studies of the Renaming Among Different Ethnic Communities

In my work as a researcher, I often record oral histories, including biographical data, related to the assimilation policy of the 1980s. During my field study on the identity of the Crimean Tatars in Bulgaria, conducted between 2007 and 2009, an interviewee from the village of Onogur, northeastern Bulgaria, said the following:

‘When you’re a single bird, the falcon grabs you, but if you’re in a flock, it doesn’t dare attack you… Back in 1985, nobody asked us what we were. Everyone said: “You are Turks and we are changing your names”. If they are going to think of us like that, we will be with them [the Turks]’.

(Erolova 2010, pp. 61–62)

Today, the small number of individuals in the Crimean Tatar community makes it impossible to maintain the community’s characteristic marriage endogamy, which leads to their constant assimilation into the larger community of local Turks. Thus, the Bulgarianisation policy in the 1980s had the opposite effect and strengthened the Turkish assimilation of the Crimean Tatars.

In another case, during my field research among Bulgarian emigrants of Turkish origin in Turkey in the period 2011–2015, I came across an interesting story, the credibility of which I initially doubted. It was told to me by a man from the Roma community born in the Bulgarian Danube town of Nikopol, who was then living in Bursa. His memories of 1980s Bulgaria were connected to a strong emotion of irreconcilability to the new Bulgarian name he had received at the end of 1984 and the loss of freedom of ethnic and religious self-identification. In 1988, learning that a high-ranking delegation from Turkey would be visiting Romania, he decided to ask for political asylum. He took his family and illegally crossed the Danube River. They reached Bucharest, where they were caught by the Romanian militia and returned to Bulgaria. He was sent to a prison in the city of Vratsa, northwestern Bulgaria, where he was beaten because of his tattoos of a crescent moon and a mosque. He was later released. In the summer of 1989, he was informed by the authorities that he and his family had 24 h to leave Bulgaria. In this short time, they were barely able to find a car to take them to the Bulgarian border. Later, they settled in Bursa. Now he is a member of the association of repressed Turks detained in Bulgarian prisons without a sentence. One of his daughters graduated in sociology from the local university in Bursa. She preserves her childhood memories of crossing the Danube River and the muddy roads they travelled on to Bucharest. In fact, her memories made me believe her father’s story.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, my colleague Mila Maeva and I interviewed some members of the Pomak community in Targovishte district, Northeastern Bulgaria (the interviews were conducted as part of the research project ‘Still in Bulgaria. Cultural and Social Effects of Labour Mobility and Migration on Bulgarian Society (1990–2019)’, funded by the Bulgarian National Science Fund). The respondents remembered that their names had been changed in 1974. They had previously lived in the area of the Western Rhodopes, southwestern Bulgaria, but in order to avoid the renaming process, which they thought was local to that area, they had settled between 1970 and 1974 in Northeastern Bulgaria. But the renaming reached them there as well. One of the interviewed recounts the following:

‘We were here. I was in the 8th grade. They summoned us to the [Municipal] Council and gave us dictionaries from which to choose Bulgarian names. What were we supposed to choose?! We cannot choose without our parents. […] And here, there was fighting again, we hid again, they did not give us bread. It lasted for several months until they changed all our names. My brother, who was an adult, was returning from work at 6 p.m. when they caught him and took him to the Council to change his name. He refused and they beat him. He came home bruised and with a changed name. After that, at 7–8 p.m., they caught us all, it was like a war. They took photos for our new passports. Some people were crying … words fail me.’ (IEFSEM–BAS n.d.).

The other respondents added that the renaming was easier for the Turks, while in their native region in the Rhodope Mountains (southwestern Bulgaria), some villages were stormed with tanks, people were killed, ‘there are mass graves like in Bosnia’ (IEFSEM–BAS n.d.). Although more than 50 years have passed since then, the Pomaks’ memories of their assimilation are still passed down from generation to generation and keep alive the feeling of an experienced trauma.

In the individual cases of renaming among different ethnic communities, carried out at different periods of time, the memory of forced ethnic de-identification makes them empathetic to one another. After 1990, the economic and political crises in Bulgaria, accompanying the transition to a market economy and parliamentary democracy, have also led to the reconstruction of the Muslim’s memory of the recent past. The contemporary remembrance of the recent past includes a contradictory mixture of trauma and disappointment due to the denial of their ethnocultural identity and attempts at demographic engineering9, and, on the other hand, newly emerging feelings of nostalgia for the sense of social security and order that people had in Communist Bulgaria

5. Instead of a Conclusions

The present study confirms that the parallel study of historical and ethnographic data allows for a deeper, multifaceted interpretation of the forced assimilation policy and the experiences of those who were subjected to it. Essentially, this policy was multi-layered and included various mechanisms of ideological propaganda, coercion, and physical violence. Archival sources provide abundant information about the integration and assimilation of the Muslims within the so-called ‘Revival process’/national consolidation in different periods under the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria. The last renaming of Muslims in 1984/1985 is an occasion that allows us not only to draw attention to the effects and consequences of the measures taken, but also to reconsider the role of scholars, their views, and their choice of terminology in their studies both then and now. The review of the newly introduced archival materials shows that some of the researchers at that time advised a ‘softer’ approach than that of the Communist authorities; their recommendations generally include the following: condemnation of the name change as a whole; more scientifically grounded ideological propaganda aimed at gradually convincing Muslims in Bulgaria of their Bulgarian ethnogenesis, within one or two generations; the settlement of the ‘traditional’ Bulgarian population in areas with a compact presence of ‘descendants of Islamised Bulgarians’ as well as a more prolonged and smoother emigration process to Turkey. Rachko Popov’s ‘hidden’ field notes on his ethnographic research reveals that measures were being taken to disseminate traditional Bulgarian cultural practices, such as women’s gatherings, among the Muslim population. If successfully imposed, they could be used as an ‘ethnographic argument’ in the scientific justification of the thesis of the Bulgarian ethnogenesis of individual communities.

Remarkably, the decisions of the authorities and the opinions of scholars coincide with regards to the view that different ethnic and religious subgroups should be separated from each other, both physically and spiritually, in order to avoid the formation of Muslim community. The approach proposed by scholars was no ‘better’ than the one the authorities were actually applying, as it was essentially ethno-assimilationist, excluding a number of civil rights to ethnic and cultural self-determination. The spontaneous course of the Muslims’ integration into Bulgarian society, without violent and artificial interventions, would actually have been the most reliable multidimensional bilateral consolidation process, involving both minorities and the majority society in the context of their experience of cultural and social interactions. This view was shared by the scholars themselves, authors of the collection reports discussed above, and it has been confirmed by my later research and observations among Turks.

The (auto)ethnographic reflections on case studies from ethnic communities, professing the Islamic religion, show that these people did not have a specific name for the policy of forced assimilation implemented in the 1980s—unlike the researchers, who had preferred designations for this campaign: ‘Revival Process’, ‘The Great Excursion’, ‘Ethnic assimilation’ or ‘Ethnic Cleansing’. Remembering the past includes narratives about various degrees of trauma. One of the mechanisms for overcoming it can be explained with the (post-Soviet) ‘aphasia’ that Serguei Oushakine speaks about in his research (Oushakine 2000). To a large extent, the merging of the two events—renaming and expulsion—and the ‘silence’ surrounding the time of ‘Bulgarian names’ (from 1985 to 1989) resemble a ‘black hole’ in the collected oral histories. However, this period is real, and I believe that its discussion will lead to a more multifaceted study of the effects and consequences of the forced assimilation policy. The reconstruction of the memory of the affected Muslims includes individual and collective experiences, which lead to the idea of a common sense of trauma. The collected field materials and observations also confirm the conclusions of J. Alexander, according to whom the way of imagining the collective/community identity follows the way in which the collective/community trauma is rethought (Alexander 2004, p. 22). After 1990, in the spirit of democratic governance, the so-called ‘Revival process’ was condemned; the victims and the actions taken against them have been identified, but not the perpetrators. There have been no judicial sentences and no convicted perpetrators of the policy of violent assimilation and the methods used in its implementation. That is why remembering this dark period remains the only ‘sanction’ for the guilty, albeit only a moral one. It also carries a lesson for the formulation of future minority policies.