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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 reenactment 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 countries 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 struggles 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. 563
