TOL STORE BY COUNTRY "Bulgaria"

Balkan Ghosts : A Journey Through History

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare now sweeping Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. This enthralling and often chilling political travelogue fully deciphers the Balkans' ancient passions and intractable hatreds for outsiders. For as Kaplan travels among the vibrantly-adorned churches and soul-destroying slums of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, he allows us to see the region's history as a time warp in which Slobodan Milosevic becomes the reincarnation of a fourteenth-century Serbian martyr; Nicolae Ceaucescu is called "Drac," or "the Devil"; and the one-time Soviet Union turns out to be a continuation of the Ottoman Empire.

Women Migrants from East to West documents the contemporary phenomenon of the feminisation of migration through an exploration of the lives of women who have moved from Bulgaria and Hungary to Italy and the Netherlands. The research is based on the oral histories of eighty migrant women and thirty additional interviews with ‘native’ women in the ‘receiving’ countries. The research assumes migrants to be active subjects, creating possibilities and taking decisions in their own lives, as well as being subject to legal and political regulation, and the book analyses the new forms of subjectivity that come about through mobility. Part I is a largely conceptual exploration of subjectivity, mobility and gender in Europe. The chapters in Part II focus on love, work, home, communication, and food, themes which emerged from the migrant women’s accounts. In Part III, based on the interviews with ‘native’ women – employers, friends, or in associations relevant to migrant women – the chapters analyse their representations of migrants, and the book goes on to explore forms of intersubjectivity between European women of different cultural origins. A major contribution of this book is to consider how the movement of people across Europe is changing the cultural and social landscape with implications for how we think about what Europe means.

Narratives Unbound: Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

The first work to cover post-Communist developments in historical studies in six Eastern European countries (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria) from a comparative and critical perspective, written by scholars from the region itself. It is a building block for scholars of the history of European and global historical studies, and a useful pedagogical tool for classes on the history of historical studies. Each individual chapter is in itself a guide to further research through a wealth of detailed notes and references.

Bones of Contention: The Living Archives of Vasil Levski and the Making of Bulgaria's National Hero

This is a historical study, taking as its narrative focus the life, death and posthumous fate of Vasil Levski (1837-1873), arguably the major and only uncontested hero of the Bulgarian national pantheon. The main title refers to the 'thick description' of the reburial controversy during the final phase of communist Bulgaria, which centered on the search for Levski's bones. The book gives a specific understanding also of the relationship between nationalism and religion in the post-communist period, by analyzing the recent canonization of Levski. The processes described, although with a chronological depth of almost two centuries, are still very much in the making, and the living archive expands not only in size but with the constant addition of surprising new forms they take.At another level, the book engages in a variety of general theoretical questions. It offers insights into the problems of history and memory: the question of public, social or collective memory; the nature of national memory in comparison to other types of memory; the variability of memory over time and social space; alternative memories; and, memory's techniques like commemorations, the mechanism of creating and transmitting memory.

Minority rights is an important issue in all modern states, but for those countries hoping to join the European Union the protection of minorities is a key condition for success in the accession process.This book provides a comprehensive assessment of minority rights in Central and Eastern Europe, covering all the countries of the region that have joined the EU since 2004, including Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. For each country it outlines the major developments since 1989, highlights the salient issues in minority rights politics, assesses the actual implementation of policies and legislation, explores the roles that domestic and international factors have played - including the impact of the EU succession process - and discusses whether there have been any major changes once EU accession was secured. Overall, this book is important for all those interested in European integration and minority rights politics, as well as for specialists on Central and Eastern Europe.

Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts: Representations of Self and Other

In spite of the growing literature on discourse analysis, some of which focuses on representations of self and other, the analysis of the relationship of discourse to violent/non-violent outcomes of conflicts is an under researched area. This book combines theories on ethnic conflict, theories on identity construction and discourse analysis with a comprehensive and inclusive survey of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, embracing film, radio, television and newspapers. As such, it presents an understanding of the interrelationship between 'words' and 'deeds', grounded in close reading and extensive analysis of specific media texts of the period, an understanding which permits broad comparisons with other similar conflicts. Combining ground-breaking applications of theory with detailed empirical case studies, "Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts" will be of interest not only to those concerned with ethnopolitical conflict, but to scholars across a range of social sciences including sociology, discourse analysis and media, conflict and peace studies.

Diplomats and Dreamers: The Stancioff Family in Bulgarian History

This book chronicles a family of diplomats who experienced the world in transition. Subjects of capricious fate, they forged a destiny as a family that overcame some of the most cataclysmic events of the twentieth century. Diplomats and Dreamers is a family biography that begins with the careers of the parents in 1887 and ends with the death of Nadejda Stancioff, their eldest child, in 1957. The context of historical developments in an uncertain period of European history highlights their lives. Members of the haute bourgeoisie, this accomplished family is noteworthy for an unflagging ability to survive and persist with success and grace.

Furthermore, this book addresses issues of gender by using the careers of the Stancioff women as exemplars of how a woman could develop her life in an atmosphere of strict gender divisions in labor. The Stancioff women's way of fitting into the mainstream of elite society is yet another model of a new generation of women who stepped beyond the narrow expectations of what their gender could achieve. Based on unexplored, unpublished primary materials, this book enriches both women's history and European history.

The study of dynamics of democratisation in societies is divided along ethnic and religious lines. Challenging the commonly held belief that democratisation necessarily leads to aggressive ethnic nationalism and even violent conflict, this book offers an alternative account of democratisation and interethnic relations, suggesting that democratisation can in fact help to prevent violent conflict in divided societies, as demonstrated by two case studies, Bulgaria and Macedonia. In a time when democracy promotion is increasingly becoming part of international relations and foreign policy, this study offers some poignant lessons for democratisation and conflict resolution in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine to name but a few.