Haven't I already grown old from the time I spent on this earth, quite likely, but what is constantly being attributed as a threat and danger to Bulgaria, I somehow don't understand exactly in this way. The main postulate:
Bulgaria has always suffered from its geostrategic position between great empires and powers:
Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian or should we say European. Squeezed by these giants, we have been flattened, stretched, torn apart, harassed, and our national spirit has always been oppressed and suffers, even to this day. We no longer resemble anything from these deserted empires.
Is that right?
In fact, according to genetic data, the vast majority of our people have lived in these lands for at least several thousand years. Empires and invaders have changed, religions and languages too, but the people have remained. Good or bad. But let's think about the fact that these lands were dominated by different rulers, often cruel and unjust, but were our own Bulgarian medieval, and not only, rulers a model of humanity, including towards their own people?
I will not mention the communists and Todor Zhivkov, but was our own tyranny of rulers more humane than that of foreigners in the distant past? It is worth checking in thick books. Or were the taxes, the drudgery, the military service, the arbitrariness of the local rulers smaller and more bearable?
They were probably all from the same source, and sometimes the foreign administration might have worked better.
What bad things did the mixing of different cultures in our lands lead to? Baklava, sarmi, moussaka, meatballs, kapama or, God forbid, kachamak!
In Bulgarian, corn is called zarevitsa. And corn came from Constantinople, from the Tsar, who was actually the Sultan at that time! An agricultural crop imported from America and spread by the enlightened administration of the Sultan to feed the local population, including as food for the pigs rejected by the Islamic religion. Much better food than the sorghum they had been eating before. The same with the potato, called kartovo, with the peppers, tomatoes, etc. to the extent that the developed horticulture in the Ottoman Empire and its Bulgarian experts spread it upstream of the Danube, to Central Europe.
So the common turkey, they probably also call it misirka, because it eats misir, that is, corn, and it was imported from America by the sensible administration of the Turkish Empire and has successfully multiplied throughout our lands and subsequently throughout Europe, even as far as England. America was an English colony, but to this day the turkey in the English language is called turkey, exactly as the country Turkey is called.
Because the turkey came to England through "backward" Turkey, and not directly from the pilgrims in North America on Thanksgiving Day.
It was probably domesticated in Turkey and spread, although I am not an expert on the matter. But the name of the turkey still remains to this day. What is wrong with those woven material cultural traces in our way of life, in the calm habits of conversation, of the moab, of the cafe and the tavern, borrowed from our other neighbors? They also share the civilization of conversation, of communication, of unhurried friendly drinking of a glass of brandy or raki or ouzo while discussing the news of the day. Even the very drinking of coffee in a cup, which as a drink probably came earlier to our lands from Ethiopia due to its proximity to the Empire than to Western Europe.
What a pity that our Spanish-speaking Jews, after being expelled by the Reconquista and the Inquisition of Spain, were accepted and came to our lands to develop their skills and trade. They were integrated and accepted by our people because they enriched life and culture in their own way and were accepted and loved by our people, as World War II proved.
Well, it is true that many evils were committed for religious reasons, but the Ottoman multinational Empire with its Kanun was in many ways quite tolerant and it was not by chance that it lasted so long.
It failed due to corruption and its conservative inability to technological progress.
And in principle, the end of all multinational empires in the modern era had come. But, living among all these peoples, perhaps gave some taste for life, some way of life, even the architecture of the houses, style, closeness and cordiality, which was characteristic of our lands, perhaps more than elsewhere.
But let's leave that aside.
Didn't the Russian Empire, the Russian language, education, and influence also contribute to a cultural layer formed and educated through Russia and indirectly from Europe, should those young people educated in Russia or the teachers who came after the Liberation be ignored? I'm not even talking about Prince Battenberg, but about professors of anatomy or teachers at the Theater or Art Academy, I'm even talking about the founders of the Fire Department.
I'm not even mentioning the White Guard intelligentsia that found a haven in our country after the Bolshevik Revolution and their cultural contribution. This is also a wealth, and not some imperialist undertaking, but a mutual enrichment of cultures, influences, and contributions that have left good fruits, if one wants to see them. And can the influence of Austro-Hungarian culture and Germany be underestimated? Of France? The culture brought by the then young Bulgarians, educated in Europe, brought their skills, built buildings, cities, water pipes, founded university schools and departments, introduced a culture of behavior and communication, different from oriental traditions...
All these influences, superimposed on the complex amalgam of the cultural organism of our people and, as they say today, interactively building modern Bulgaria, are actually a great wealth. I think of Sarajevo as a symbolic and cultural midpoint of this type, which could have been an example and in fact was such for a while, as it was presented to the whole world by the great Ivo Andrić, but it was demolished by people with rabid nationalist alabaster like Milošević or Karadžić.
But, oh well.
I always hope that our people can appreciate the richness of the cultures to which we are heirs, to appreciate them and to enjoy them instead of forever looking for faults, differences and opposition. I will not hide my concern about where many of our Gypsies will stand in this civilizational framework, who seem to want to fall out of any cultural definition and identity, except for affirming themselves demographically, but not culturally.
However, I think it is good to start by thinking about what unites and enriches us mutually, not what divides us. Bulgaria can be a very pleasant and sympathetic country to live in. And the worst thing would be to separate ourselves for religious or pseudo-religious reasons. Especially in this bristling and hostile world of religious opposition.