Dr. Dimiter Tasic will present his research proposal on the topic: "Violence as Cause and Consequence: Comparisons of Anti-Communist Armed Resistance in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria After the Second World War" on 18 May 2017 (Thursday) at 16:30h at CAS Conference Hall.

Abstract:

The general aim of this research is comparative study of armed resistance against establishment of communist regimes in two neighboring Balkan countries. Yugoslavia and Bulgaria with their particular historical developments represent good example for comparative study of specific phenomenon that has marked post-WWII years in most of the East European countries where, by different means and ways, communist regimes had been established. This process was carried out under the strong influence of Soviet Union under whose sphere of influence these countries ended after 1945.

In Bulgarian historiography topic of anti-communist armed resistance was for the first time opened after 1989 and fall of communism. Through research of this particular phenomenon authors have tried to give their interpretations of events after the WWII, and also to demystify already embedded assumptions.

Bulgarian researchers used this topic to express criticism towards communism as well as to challenge ruling assumption that introduction of communist regime in Bulgaria that happened after the events in September 1944 went on without serious resistance and that Bulgarian public had accepted this transformation peacefully and obediently.

In Yugoslav case a thing that has clouded and afterwards strongly influenced research of this and almost every other topic is rise of nationalism that was epitomised in series of bloody war conflicts from 1991 till 1999 that are sometimes named as Wars of Yugoslav Succession. As in the case of Yugoslav states-successors, particularisation or Balkanization happened on the field of research and it led to appearance of several different and in some cases confronted historiographies. Their main feature was politically driven revisionism, which is following existing pattern of equalizing two totalitarian regimes – fascism and communism. This equalisation is used as tool for rehabilitation of quisling and, by the rule, extreme right regimes and movements that functioned in different parts of Yugoslavia during the WWII. They need to be presented as fighters against establishment of communist rule as well as victims of communist terror and repression.