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Representations of the Medieval Past in Socialist Bulgaria
flected in the Bulgarian Literature" and a festival entitled "Dear Party" were held.
On March 3, the Day of Liberation from Ottoman rule, the “followers of Khan
Krum” from the school participated in a “parade of the Blue Ties” and paid homage
to those who died for the liberation.
Just before the reenactment, the newspaper Karnobatska Pravda published an
announcement that the “pioneers eagerly wait the day June 15, when the battle
near the fortress Markeli will be reenacted”.* The reenactment was held on June 15,
after which the organizers released two photographs in the local newspaper—“The
grandchildren of Krum in front of the Markeli fortress” and “From the military
game "Krums Battle". Ihe report of the city’s pioneer organization to the city
committee of the Communist Party in Karnobat said that 1,200 pioneers were
involved in the “military game” and that they had reenacted “the struggles of our
ancestors to strengthen the Bulgarian state” and that 508 pioneers participated in
the competition about the “glorious past” named Khan Krum.° Thus, the reenact¬
ment of Krum’s battle was an instrument in the policy of the socialist state towards
adolescents, in which nationalistic and class-political messages were interwoven. It
was carried out near a military base in the context of strained relations of the coun¬
tries of the Warsaw Pact and NATO forces because of the invasion of the Soviet
bloc in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In the field research conducted in 2014, a female respondent from the village
of Krumovo Gradishte talked about her participation in the reenactment of the
1969 battle in Markeli. The woman was at that time a schoolgirl in Karnobat in
the eighth grade. She remembered that the school pupils were sewn blue tunics
for the battle. The battle took place among the ruins of the fortress and was led by
members of the real military forces, who gave instructions to the pupils on how to
act and what to do. The respondent was one of the attackers; she had to be killed
and fall down but could not remember whose role she actually played. However,
she remembered well how after the reenactment all pupils were sitting on the lawn
and were treated with soup from the cauldrons of the soldiers from the nearby
military base.
A similar reenactment, also called “a military game”, was held in 1973 in the
fortress of Pernik. Photographs from this event have been stored in the state archive
in Pernik. The participants were pupils from school named after Vasil Levski, one
of them still keeps an armour made of jar lids.
‘These representations of the medieval age outline trends in the interpretations
and uses of the past in socialist Bulgaria. In the first decades following 1945, the
official historiography and the policies of representation were focused on the strug¬
gles of the Bulgarian people for liberation from Ottoman rule in the nineteenth
4 KaproGarcka rpaBaa, 1969, June 12, no. 9, p-1.
> Kapnodarcka ıpasaa, 1969, July 4, no. 10, p. 2.
5 KapnoGarcka npaBaa, 1969, September 25, no. 14, p. 1.
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