Radost Ivanova, Folklore of the Change. Folk Culture in Post-Socialist Bulgaria.
Folklore Fellows’ Communications No. 270. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica). 127 pp. 1999.
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After 1980 many reforms were introduced in Bulgaria and other Balkan states. These changes involved all spheres of life, several of them connected with urbanisation. A turning point of the same importance came on November 10, 1989, when the rule of Todor Zhivkov as president and leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party ended. The political revaluation that followed brought cardinal changes in society, new values, attitudes, and norms. This process is still going on. In his work “Bourgeois Culture and Civil Society in Southeast Europe – A Contribution to the Debate on Modernization” Klaus Roth writes, “new values and norms almost always clash with central and unquestioned categories with which they often seem to be incompatible” (NIF Papers 5/1997: 11). There are always people, especially young people, who rebel against the norms of society. One way to express their attitude is through folkloric channels of popular culture, such as graffiti, slogans and the political discourse of mass meetings. Radost Ivanova discusses this kind of contemporary folklore, the “folklore of crisis and change”, as Klaus Roth calls it.
The title of the monograph refers to folklore but it combines both folkloristic and ethnological approaches and methods. Some of the sources, such as slogans, parodies of political texts, graffiti, incantations, articles in the Bulgarian daily press, etc. involve textual analysis, which is a traditional method in folkloristics. On the other hand, Radost Ivanova has analysed mass political protests, banners, symbols and other non-verbal manifestations of popular culture which can also be discussed from an ethnological perspective. Her book can also be seen as a sociological study of the Bulgarian nation, a monograph of cultural semiotics. She has successfully combined different methods. The author focuses on essential symbols of Bulgarian culture, on their changing meanings and the dynamic processes that are reflected in these symbols.
Probably it is not right to make a sharp distinction between folklore and ethnology, as their objects of research and methodologies overlap to a great extent. Both folklorists and ethnologists study the values, norms, attitudes, and mentalities of different societies and social groups, they both do fieldwork. By researching folklore we can get to know about the people and their mentalities, about social processes and constructing new identities. Folkloric self-reflections of an ethnic group or a nation can spread to the oral traditions of the others and determine how other nations see them. A nation can be interpreted as a living organism whose world-view is reflected in folklore.
In her book Ivanova analyses the changes in the mentality of Bulgarian people during the years 1989-1995, the period of strong emotions. She stresses the importance of the chronological approach (p. 10): “No doubt, the modern man is mainly interested in the present, of which he is personally taking part and in which he is looking for the answer to his current problems.”
The book contains eight studies written after 1989 and is based on the author’s synchronous observations of Bulgaria’s socio-political changes. It is one of the first folkloristic monographs to analyse these issues in post-socialist countries. Seven chapters of the book are dedicated to the modern urban culture, only one to the countryside. This division is understandable because during the past few years Sofia has been the centre of processes of modernisation and change and has thus proved to be the most attractive field for folklorists.
The first study, “The Road to Democracy: Spatial Dimensions of the Mass Political Protests”, serves as an introduction to the book. Here Ivanova creates the atmosphere and illusion of “being there”, it seems to the reader as if he or she is standing in the field – in Sofia. The author observes the mass political protests which started in 1989 and led to the Bulgarian “velvet revolution”. Similarly, in Estonia people protested against the totalitarian Communist system, and in both countries the non-violent struggle for independence succeeded in avoiding bloodshed and victims (which was unfortunately not the case in Latvia and Lithuania).
The second study is titled “‘Goodbye Dinosaurs, Welcome Crocodiles’: Political Slogans through the Eyes of the Folklorist”. As Ivanova shows, although “rallies generally belong to a non-folkloric cultural and social system” (p. 29), the slogans used during these rallies, which are acted out similarly to rites, can even be considered as a contemporary genre of folklore, used for people’s self-manifestation during certain periods. It is evident that in socialist countries there were certainly more people who never believed in the messages delivered through the communist slogans than people who truly believed in them.
The third study deals with the language of objects, concentrating upon banners – symbols with great semiotic loading. Banners are used in traditional rites and rituals, as well as in the mass political culture of the past and the present-day. This chapter analyses the sign systems of banners in Bulgarian culture, offering examples of the semiotics of wedding and the national flag, and of party banners.
The fourth study characterises the Bulgarian practice of parodying political texts. This form of popular culture is very short-lived and specific to every nationality and demands special orientation to the given society. The author has included some of these rather humorous documents to exemplify her statements.
The fifth study is dedicated to incantations in present-day political life. Both incantations and exorcisms have been popular in Bulgarian folklore up to the present day. “The common generic origin of incantations, for example, the belief in the magic power of words, defines their common ideological character as wishes with an opposite sign, for good or bad, or for success or bad luck.” (p. 64) The objects of research are present-day “incantations” used in the context of the political transformations after November 10, 1989. Most of the contemporary incantations are in the form of slogans, which may be written (The guilty ones should stand trial!) or verbal (Death to the BCP!) (p. 66). The author considers incantations as rich sources of information about the spirituality of Bulgarians and their inner world.
The next chapter of the monograph is entitled “‘All Frogs Are Green, Only Ours Is Red’: Graffiti on the Monument to the Soviet Army and the Mausoleum”. Just as 10,000 years ago people drew on the walls of caves and carved pictographs on rocks, in contemporary urban society they produce graffiti, write political slogans. In both cases people believe that by this action they can influence reality. Graffiti can be part of a ritual which is believed to have magical functions. During the political changes in Bulgaria graffiti became one way for subcultures to express their protest against society. Texts that appeared on the walls of the monument of the Soviet Army and the mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov acquired a political orientation.
The study “Valiant Young Men, Wrestlers, Bodyguards, Thugs” discusses the role of daily newspapers in creating the images of heroes and transmitting folklore. Since crime is a big problem in Bulgaria, it is frequently reflected in the mass media. While discussing the role of political jokes during the socialist period, Ivanova refers to Alan Dundes, who has written that what is taboo in society is a favourite subject for its folklore (p. 102), nowadays for its journalists, too. This paradoxical statement is also valid in Ivanova’s analyses of Bulgarian daily newspapers. Every nation needs heroes who have a place in the everyday life of the people. Men choose the heroes among themselves and express their personal attitudes towards them. Criminals fit these parameters. We can recognise quite a few folkloric genres of mass media where criminals are heroised: biographic stories, jokes, riddles, rumours, gossips, proverbs and sayings, songs, etc. In this chapter classical genres of folklore prevailing in village society are opposed to the new genres that dominate in urban socio-cultural reality.
The last study in the book, “‘There Is No Stopping!’: Social Change as Reflected in the Lives of Bulgarian Villagers”, discusses the processes in the rural regions which took place after 1989. Ivanova also goes back in time in analysing the influence of socialist collectivisation on the villagers’ mentality. In this chapter she shows that traditional rural society follows the mainstream of political changes and that this is reflected in the folklore and mentality of the villagers.
Slowly but surely the studies of contemporary or alternative folklore have gained their right to exist in post-socialist countries; earlier these topics were quite marginal and not in favour. The present day imperceptibly becomes the past; contemporary folklore should therefore be documented and studied. It seems that Ivanova regards folklore as something that is recreated again and again: “One manifestation of folkloric creativity not forgotten from the past has acquired new dimensions during the years of change, for example, the political graffiti” (p. 13). But all new is well-forgotten old. The relationship between tradition and innovation in folklore is a constant research problem, and as topical now as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, although the approaches and emphases have changed. Thus, similar historical processes can be traced both in folklore and folkloristics. Jawaharlal Handoo, in his presidential address to the 20th Indian Folklore Congress (Patiala, January 2000), stressed the cyclic nature of folklore in India and in general. However, channels of folklore transmission have changed and become more diverse. As Ivanova notes (p. 14): “Nowadays, quite a big share in the creation and dissemination of the contemporary folklore goes to the daily and weekly press, book-publishing, the electronic media: radio, television, telephone and fax, and e-mail on a wider scale.”
Readers with personal experience of Communist systems are probably in a better position to understand the book. Being an Estonian reader, I recognised several tendencies in the post-communist culture of the Baltic states that are probably universal. But Western readers can also learn to appreciate that they have escaped something which others had to go through. For them the whole story may be interesting, but for those with personal (bad) experience, even repression by the state regime, it may even be painful to face these topics again. Many of us remember a certain amount of black humour inspired by the ideologised life of the communist era. It is also true that there is already a young generation in Post-Socialist countries for whom the years of change (1989-1995) are merely part of history, which seems to be almost as distant as First World War. Although some of the phenomena observed in the book have already become history, it is hard to remain indifferent to what was happening in dealing with such recent events loaded with many emotions. Indeed, it is quite difficult for a researcher to remain impartial and objective if she herself has taken part in making the history. However, Ivanova has managed to maintain a kind of distance, to remain neutral as far as possible.
Juri Lotman, founder of the Tartu school of semiotics, has made a distinction between texts that function as mere mediators of information and those that acquire new roles in the process of social communication. Those well organised texts become partners of communication for the author, readers, and the whole cultural context. It may be said that Ivanova’s monograph is a text which enters into dialogue with the reader and starts to talk with him or her, directing the thinking in an inspiring way.
This book offers a novel insight into folklore due to its sociological and political orientation. “Folklore of the Change” has a good chance of becoming a “canonical” monograph on contemporary folklore which, because of its manifold nature, may attract people both within the discipline of folklore and far beyond it.
Liina Sillaots
University of Tartu
FF Network No. 20
(November): 22-24