Screening Minorities

After a brief period of denouncing “bourgeois” nationalism and supporting minority cultures, Bulgaria's socialist rulers swerved to “modernizing” minorities.Footnote ²¹ Following Todor Zhivkov's ascent to power in 1956, nationalism gradually took precedence over class struggle.Footnote ²² Concerning Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, this process had begun earlier.Footnote ²³ These policies intensified in later years, as the authorities worried that Bulgarian-speaking Muslims might identify as Turkish. In the western Rhodopes, in 1964, the local elites even tried to forcibly rename Muslims, but were compelled to reverse these policies by local resistance and the central authorities.Footnote ²⁴ Meanwhile, the dissemination of “correct” visions of the past through visual culture persisted.

In 1948, a public monopoly, Bŭlgarska Kinematografiia (Bulgarian Cinematography)—placed under the authority of the Committee for Science, the Arts, and Culture—was charged with “the production of films dedicated to building socialism in our country by creating on-screen images of new people.”Footnote ²⁵ Among a Muslim population whose literacy rate was far below the national average, the development of a film culture was expected to foster national and socialist conformity.Footnote ²⁶ From the late 1940s onward, traveling movie theaters offering outdoor films were replaced by indoor facilities, often in local houses of culture. Efforts were devoted to increasing women's attendance by altering earlier perceptions of female movie-going as immoral. While “cinema organizers” tried to place tickets with the trade unions of agricultural cooperatives and industries, pupils attended school-sponsored screenings. In the 1950s, a specific system of discount multiple-entry cards was introduced for villagers.Footnote ²⁷

From the start, a specific film repertoire was designed for Muslims. It included documentaries on subjects such as hygiene, health issues, women's clothing, child-rearing, and atheism. As far as fiction was concerned, precedence went to features portraying the anti-Ottoman struggles or depicting the transformation of local mores. Pod igoto (Under the Yoke), a movie released in 1952 and based on the novel by nineteenth-century Bulgarian novelist Ivan Vazov, toured the Pirin region relentlessly. So did Rebro Adamovo (Adam's Rib), a film directed in 1956 by Anton Marinovich, which tells the story of a Muslim woman who leaves her village to receive a socialist education and returns to her hometown as a teacher to transform her fellow Muslims. At moments when assimilation efforts became more intense, the Propaganda and Agitation Departments of the Communist Party, as well as the Department of Patriotic Education, advocated the rescreening of patriotic movies. This occurred in 1964, and in the early 1970s when the regime imposed the Bulgarization of names. In 1971, a report of the Blagoevgrad branch of Kinefikatsiia stated: “The regional branch should consider it a permanent mission to work on the national consciousness of the Bulgarian-Mohammedan workers in movie theaters. The economic committee should organize a meeting with them regarding the adoption of new names on a voluntary basis. . . . Films whose theme is suited for the Bulgarian-Mohammedan regions should be collected. In all regions, various activities should be organized around the film Rebro Adamovo.”Footnote ²⁸

Print media and targeted radio and television programs complemented the Party's arsenal. On Radio Blagoevgrad, daily broadcasts praised the beauty of local landscapes, celebrated (Bulgarian) authenticity, and engaged in the political education of the public.Footnote ²⁹ In addition to hearing long hours of Bulgarian folk music, listeners were invited to discover the “Strongholds of the Bulgarian Spirit” (the name of a radio show). From the late 1970s, assembling the traces of a chosen past became systematic. Pirinsko delo, the regional Party newspaper, devoted a column to documents and memories about the region. A research group was set up at the Blagoevgrad regional historical museum to investigate the district's Bulgarian “culture and mores.”Footnote ³⁰ Additionally, a nationwide campaign—Narodna pamet razkazva (National memory relates)—was inaugurated in 1983 “to contribute to the collection and preservation of the spiritual principles of the past and present.” By 1986, more than 9,000 memoirs, 1,000 first-hand accounts, and hundreds of family stories had been solicited.Footnote ³¹

The 1984–85 Assimilation Campaign

Although the renaming of Muslims had been mostly completed by 1974 in the Pirin area, here too local commissions were set up in December 1984 to ensure the swift implementation of the assimilation process. To appreciate the breadth of the campaign, one needs to recall that Bulgarian authorities had earlier encouraged a rapprochement (priobshtavane) between the majority and the minorities. At the time, most high-ranking officials doubted that ethno-cultural differences could be erased. Historically, the consolidation of Bulgarian national identity had rested upon the drawing of a symbolic boundary between Bulgarians and Ottomans/Turks/Muslims. As a 1980 report from the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee explained, “we believe that . . . an approach that . . . eludes deeply anchored ethnic differences cannot be deemed Marxist-Leninist.”Footnote ³² The 1984–89 assimilation campaign marked a radical departure from this position. Prompted by political, ideological, and geopolitical considerations, communist authorities now advocated a “merger” (slivane) of all ethno-cultural groups into the Bulgarian “mother womb.”

This construction demanded that the “true” Bulgarian identity of the remaining Muslims be demonstrated, and that majority and minority members come to believe in it. The identification of people was modified through measures such as the destruction of birth certificates, school records, and medical files that bore “foreign” patronymics, as well as the defacing of funeral steles in Muslim cemeteries. The authorities sought to silence Turkish speech and alter the identity of streets and public squares.Footnote ³³

In May 1985, “the regional branch of Kinefikatsiia [was asked to] elaborate a targeted repertoire comprising films with a patriotic and internationalist theme, and . . . organize meetings with the artistic collectives, the creators of the strong works of filmic art that foster patriotic pride.”Footnote ³⁴ For persons in ‘mixed marriages,’ the goal was “to overcome their foreign religious complex and to build, in particular among children and youth, a feeling of self-esteem and optimism, of pride in belonging to the Bulgarian socialist nation.” Lectures and research on the “Bulgarian roots” of the local inhabitants were recommended.Footnote ³⁵ It is against this backdrop that the production, distribution, and reception of Vreme razdelno needs to be contextualized.

Bulgaria's Hollywood-Style Epics

From the 1960s, Bulgaria's rulers espoused a patriotic turn. As hope for a better future receded into the background, the socialist leadership started digging into the more distant past. Bulgaria's national aspirations, long fed by a belief in the possibility of speeding up development and modernization, were now oriented toward a quest for roots.Footnote ³⁶ This nationalist impulse was widely supported in the intellectual circles of Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of communist ruler Todor Zhivkov, who headed the Committee on Culture until her premature death in 1981.Footnote ³⁷

The cultivation of nationalist sentiments received a major impetus on the eve of the 1300th anniversary of the creation of a Bulgarian state, in 681. The Central Committee set up a jubilee committee responsible for the elaboration of exhibitions, symposia, literary works, movies, and commemorations.Footnote ³⁸ A wave of historical epics swept through the Bulgarian film industry.Footnote ³⁹ These expansive dramas required a reconstitution of historical settings, the creation of richly decorated costumes, the recruitment of large numbers of extras, and the staging of complex battle scenes. Commissioned by the state, they received direct funding from the Central Committee. A glance at budgetary allocations indicates the significance accorded to these dramas. In 1981, the production plan of feature film Studio Boiana foresaw the making of 23 films, 17 of them “ordinary” and 6 commissioned. The expenditures were estimated at 19,331 million leva. The jubilee films alone accounted for 59.5 percent of the studio's budget.Footnote ⁴⁰ While on average a movie cost 382,000 leva in 1980 and 460,000 in 1981, Boris I (parts I and II) received an original allocation of 5 million, and Konstantin Filozof, 3.5 million.Footnote ⁴¹

Members of the film guild welcomed the production of patriotic epics. At a time of financial crisis, the leadership of Kinematografiia saw the making of historical dramas as an opportunity to boost revenues and, thanks to creative accounting management, to finance the production of smaller Bulgarian films on the side. The directors, operators, actors, and critics took pride in Bulgaria's ability to mount ambitious productions, most often adaptations whose prestige was magnified by the high cultural status of the books on which they were based. Members of the film industry were longing for international recognition. Besides, production teams enjoyed exceptionally favorable working conditions, including modern cameras, high-quality film, ample choice of locations, and extra time for shooting and editing. A handful of filmmakers soon became key participants in the portrayal of Bulgarian greatness, notably Liudmil Staĭkov, who had made his debut with Obich (Affection, 1972), winner of the Golden Prize at the 1973 Moscow International Film Festival, and authored Iliuzia (Illusion, 1980), a noted film. Staĭkov directed several national epics, including the Khan Asparuh trilogy in 1981, 681—Velichieto na khana in 1983, and Vreme razdelno in 1988.Footnote ⁴²

Famous actors—Stefan Danailov and Ĭosif Sŭrchadzhiev, among others—competed to impersonate the heroes of Bulgaria's past. For younger ones, such as Momchil Karamitev, who was just finishing the Theater Academy, such roles bode well for their career. The “promotional crusade” from which the epics benefited and their wide resonance with the audience bestowed on their creators additional public acclaim.Footnote ⁴³ The fate of Khan Asparuh illustrates this. The film premiered at the recently inaugurated National Palace of Culture, whose larger hall could accommodate over 3,000 spectators.Footnote ⁴⁴ The box office numbers were unheard of: 12,814 million tickets were sold.Footnote ⁴⁵ Dictator Zhivkov in person welcomed members of the film crew at his private residence on the Black Sea coast.Footnote ⁴⁶ The strengthening of personal ties with the communist leadership was but one of the symbolic rewards that artists could expect from their part in the re-creation on screen of Bulgaria's officially sanctioned past. Actors were likely to be awarded honors that involved significant financial rewards. In the 1980s about 20 per cent of the salary fund were distributed in the form of “complementary individual work salaries,” whose allocation was decided by the Directorial Council of Cinematography.Footnote ⁴⁷ In the fourth quarter of 1987, the team of Vreme razdelno received 20,795 leva out of a total 28,896 leva.Footnote ⁴⁸

As one would expect, the state-approved historical narration was linear, tying the medieval period to the socialist revolution. The heroic deeds featured a selected number of episodes: the adoption of Christianity (Boris I—Pokrŭstvaneto), the founding of the state and medieval empires (681—Velichieto na khana, 1983; Khan Asparuh, 1981), the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet (Konstantin filozof, 1983), the anti-Ottoman struggle and the Macedonian question (Mera spored mera, 1983). The struggles for independence from Ottoman rule were depicted as a prefiguration of socialist revolutionary battles. Meanwhile, past, present, and future were closely intertwined.Footnote ⁴⁹ In his welcome address to the Boris I team on April 1, 1985, Zhivkov summarized the exemplary function attributed to the past:

Novelist Donchev, who had received the prestigious—and, like the Stalin Prize, politically loaded—Dimitrov Award two years after the publication of Vreme razdelno, resolved to write a piece worthy of the country's 1300^th anniversary. He undertook a tetralogy dedicated to Khan Asparuh, the first volume of which appeared in 1982. The author also tried to benefit from the momentum of the 1981 celebrations to adapt his 1964 novel for the screen.Footnote ⁵¹ However, despite his fame, and much vying for high-level connections, the proposal for a cinematic recreation was not included in the priority list.

This lack of interest vanished overnight after the assimilation process was launched. On April 16, 1985—a few weeks after the ending of the violent name-changing campaign—Nikola Nenov, then general director of the Cinematography and vice-president of the Committee on Culture, proposed a film based on Donchev's novel in a letter to Georgi Ĭordanov, the head of the Committee on Culture, and to Stoian Mikhaĭlov, secretary of the Party's Central Committee:

On the same day, a note signed by the head of the Ideological Policy Department of the Party's Central Committee stated that “Approval was orally given to Com[rade] N. Nenov for the making of a film based on Vreme razdelno, but with a Bulgarian filmmaker and Bulgarian actors.”Footnote ⁵³ In his letter, Nenov had recommended the cast of foreign actors as a way to ensure that the film would have a “commercial presence in the world.”Footnote ⁵⁴ In the end, Italian actor Walter Toski played the character of the “Venetian,” one of the two voices recounting the story of the “forced” conversions. The writing of the script, however, was not entrusted to the novelist, but instead to a team of four: director Staĭkov, writers Georgi Danaĭlov and Mikhail Kirkov, and cameraman Radoslav Spasov.Footnote ⁵⁵

The creation of this epic required unprecedented financial, human, and technical resources. Shooting started in September 1986 and lasted well into 1987. Cameraman Spasov and his assistants travelled for weeks throughout Bulgaria to choose the exterior settings. The construction of sets included several months of work to recreate the residence of Suleĭman Aga, the regional Ottoman ruler in the film, at the high-perched Rozhen Monastery, south of Pirin National Park. “We built a set right in front of the monastery, which was set on fire and burned down,” Spasov recalls, “part of the entrance was actually built from scratch, with real walls, and real houses. That was the strength of the movie; that you should be progressively drawn into the set.” He added, “We needed to be very well organized to stage such scenes as violence in the konak.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Indeed, to maximize the visual impact of combat sequences, no fewer than 10,000 army soldiers were utilized. In technical terms too, Vreme razdelno represented a challenge: it was the first Bulgarian movie ever made using Dolby Stereo technology. Renowned sound engineer Liudmila Makhalnishka was sent to London for special training, while British specialist Ray Belon provided his expertise to the Bulgarian team.Footnote ⁵⁷

When completed, cultural officials gave the film a warm welcome. On February 7, 1988, the communist daily Otechestven front printed a large picture of actor Rusi Chanev, who played the Orthodox priest Aligorko (that is, Metodi Draginov), with the caption “Vreme razdelno coming soon!” The date of the premiere at the National Palace of Culture was selected to coincide with the 110^th anniversary of Bulgaria's liberation from the “Ottoman yoke” on March 1.Footnote ⁵⁸ Shortly thereafter, the Bulgarian Film Professionals Association awarded Staĭkov a prize for the direction of the film, and composer Georgi Genkov one for his work on the soundtrack.

Public Discourse on a True Fiction of the Past

Before and after its release, the film received a significant number of press articles. These reviews shed light on the channels through which the movie was expected to impact the public. Emphasis was placed on the film's historical veracity. Three features were deemed to ensure its authenticity, namely the use of academics as consultants, the selection of shooting locations, and the contribution of local residents to the performance. Vreme razdelno was portrayed as a feature film that documented history. Or, as cinema pedagogue Mariana Georgieva put it in a phrase that nicely lumped together facts and fiction, placing them under the aegis of art, “it is an artistic document about the incredible conflicting forces in our people, who have defended with their own blood their name, their face, and their dignity.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Moreover, public discourse on the movie was grounded in a blurring of boundaries between past and present.

On October 7, 1986, Otechestven front ran an article calling attention to the role of scholars in the true-to-life re-creation of the past:

Further evidence of the veracity of the movie was to be found in the choice of the settings, as indicated in Pirinsko delo on March 29, 1988:

It is interesting to note how this discourse operates. The insistence on the locations “where events actually occurred” bypasses questions whether such events did actually take place or how they might be interpreted. As elsewhere, nature has played a central role since the nineteenth century in the construction of a Bulgarian national idiom. At the time of the national revival natural spaces, and mountains in particular, were imbued with cultural meanings and turned into national markers. The fact that “most monasteries in which the Bulgarian literary tradition was maintained were located in mountain regions” added to the significance granted to these reliefs.Footnote ⁶³

From the 1960s onward, landscapes were again awarded a powerful metaphorical content and, increasingly, a magical quality. The publication of Donchev's novel represented a milestone in this rediscovery of nature. Two decades later, critic Atanas Svilenov still recalled: “The novel shook us not only with the display of the cruel and terrible truth, but also with the sounds of a powerful national saga. . . . The Rhodope region was being reborn as the repository of family memory, as the enduring fortress of the national soul.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Under the guidance of cameraman Spasov—“I wanted people to feel nature as a living being, not to envision it as some kind of background to the main storyline”—the film followed in the novel's footsteps, and centuries were turned into physical and proximate time.Footnote ⁶⁵

This political use of landscape acquires additional shades of meaning if one bears in mind that during the assimilation process, the communist leadership did not just purport to rewrite individual self-definitions; it also assigned new identities to places, not unlike other states intent on assimilating minorities. Since the early 1980s, the state had sponsored massive archaeological explorations. Gradually, the once familiar ground started to reveal unknown historical artifacts, which were placed in the service of a nationalist revision of history aiming to demonstrate the Bulgarian roots of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. Thus reinterpreted, the land was later renamed. In March 1985, the Central Committee ruled that toponyms that still had an “Ottoman”/ “Turkish” connotation must be Bulgarized.

Against this backdrop, filming locations were key to the claim of Vreme razdelno's historical accuracy. First, these were landscapes repeatedly depicted in legends, songs, and literary works; they were also routine destinations for pilgrimage and tourism. This familiarity was even stronger for those viewers who were born and raised in the western Rhodopes. Channeling the entry into the plot, it also contributed to a mingling of foregone eras and contemporary life. Second, several of these locations had long been sites of ethno-cultural controversy. Svoboda (Freedom) Peak in the Rhodopes, for instance, was associated in Bulgarian imagery with the figure of “Momchil voivoda,” who is said to have slowed the Ottoman military advance into the region in 1345. The same location, however, also resonates with Enikhan Baba (Yeni Khan Baba), an Islamic preacher revered by Muslims in Bulgaria as a saint of the Ottoman conquest.Footnote ⁶⁶ Vreme razdelno, by contrast, features Enikhan Baba as a former military leader missing from his own grave, which has been desecrated by Momchil, the son of Manol.Footnote ⁶⁷

No less interesting, in the light of the role of monasteries in the definition of Bulgarian national consciousness is the decision to house the konak of Suleĭman Aga in the Rozhen Monastery. The largest sanctuary in the Pirin region and one of the few Bulgarian monasteries of the Middle Ages to have survived relatively intact, Rozhen served as a regional spiritual center in the nineteenth century. In Balkan national mythologies, conversions are often associated with the taking over or destruction of religious buildings or their reallocation to the newly dominant faith. In Vreme razdelno, the link is reversed: most of the local Orthodox yield to foreign pressure and convert. What is destroyed in the film, however, is the Muslim decor, leaving intact the monastery behind it. The creators of the epic may not have intended, or even seen, this connection. However, they shared a common body of socially-construed representations and memories.

One final element was repeatedly invoked to convey the film's historical authenticity: the contribution of local inhabitants to the re-enactment of past events. The final takes of the movie are explicit: “The film is shot in the Rhodope Mountains, where most of the events took place; the majority of the participants in the mass scenes belong to the very lineage that endured these terrible days of violence.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Nearly all newspaper articles published about the feature emphasized this recruitment of local extras, as does the story printed in Rodopski-Ustrem Smolian:

Twenty-five years later, this amateur contribution was one of the episodes that Staĭkov, the film's director, recalled most vividly:

The staging of the local extras’ participation in public speech is striking: the very “same” people are said to be re-experiencing the past with their own bodies. More accurately, the supposed descendants of former victims (Orthodox believers converted to Islam) are now impersonating victimizers on screen, precisely at a time when the Bulgarian state, off stage, is tearing apart their self-definitions. Fictionalized past violence and the present-day use of force thus seem to be conjoined as the distant reinvented past is turned into the present in the making. Could it be that the past needed to become actual to account for the “voluntary” reversion of Muslims to their “true” Bulgarian identities?

Retrospectively, the creators of the patriotic epic favor neither of these options. Following the 1989 political changes, cinematographer and co-scriptwriter Radoslav Spasov made a feature titled Otkradnati ochi (Stolen Eyes, 2005) that denounced the violence associated with the “revival campaign” and the mass exodus of more than 340,000 Bulgarian Turks in spring 1989. At the time, some observers wondered whether Spasov might have wished to make amends for his contribution to Vreme razdelno. While conceding that Staĭkov's film had been commissioned, the cameraman offered a different view of it:

In talking about the showing of the movie at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988, Staĭkov defends a more clear-cut position:

Was the movie understood in this way by the audience? An examination of the response of the public to the drama shall answer this question.

The Reception of Vreme razdelno

Which film did spectators actually watch? The epic follows the route of an Ottoman Janissary sent to the Elindeniia valley to Islamize the local Christians, at a time when the empire was engaged in a costly war in Crete and was in desperate need for military manpower (and, therefore, Muslim converts). To “convince” the local inhabitants to adopt the “true” faith, Karaibrakhim interns their elite in the local konak, ordering rapes of virgins, murder by impalement, and quartering or beheading (bodies speared onto sticks). The episodes of violence are much longer and more horrendous than in the novel, leaving the viewer stupefied.Footnote ⁷³

Vreme razdelno reached Blagoevgrad on March 28, 1988, and remained in local theaters until April 15, with four daily screenings. At the time, most features were programmed for two or three days, one week at most. In the region, the film's success was overwhelming. Rumen Zhechev, vice-head of Blagoevgrad's Kinorazprostranenie, expressed a somewhat naïve amazement at this success: “In nearly all the regional centers, including Varna, Shumen, Smolian, and Kŭrdzhali, the tickets are sold out for the first week of April. . . . There are numerous announcements of collective screenings, but this time, we are not those seeking [them], they are looking for us.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Attendance, however, does not tell us much about the audience's decoding of the movie. Neither the members of the majority nor minorities were devoid of agency, and reception was more diverse than official media and statistics might suggest.Footnote ⁷⁵ In Bulgaria in the 1980s, a portion of the educated public tended to give preference to those foreign films—western or Soviet—perceived as offering a critical, artistically creative message. Others, without publicly dissenting from the general patriotic mood, privately lamented the revision of national history. Mikhail Ivanov, who became an advisor on minority issues to President Zheliu Zhelev in 1990, recalls: “At the time, I did not go and watch the movie. People in my circles did not care much for this kind of film. The state propaganda was appalling. But there was nothing like a dissident attitude there. Simply a matter of personal taste.”Footnote ⁷⁶ In his study of the Bulgarian Union of Writers, Plamen Doĭnov has shown the internal diversity and limited empathy of the urban elite for minorities. Some intellectuals, while close to the dissident movement, were reluctant to take sides on a question they felt to be extremely divisive, as well as remote from their own concerns.Footnote ⁷⁷

In other social milieus, the film seems to have resonated more deeply. Readers’ letters to the press are revealing, although they should be handled with care, as editors published only letters they deemed “in line.” In June 1989, in the Party organ Rabotnichesko delo, E. Mikhailova of Sofia rejoiced that “this film really leaves a mark as it transmits souvenirs from our ancestors, from the traditions and moral virtues preserved deep in the heart of Bulgarians.” Engineer Stanchev of Sofia added: “I had read. I had learned. But now I am horrified. I am proud I had a grandfather like Manol”—the main Bulgarian character in the film, who fights against the supposedly “forced” conversions to Islam.Footnote ⁷⁸ Manol, the defender of Bulgarian-ness and religious integrity, is here incorporated into the personal genealogy of the viewer. A 60-year-old woman concluded: “Moving, with an unspoken strength. A grandmother 60 years of age and a 9-year-old granddaughter come out of the movie theater, bowing before the film. Thanks for the unique music. Words fail me.”Footnote ⁷⁹

Even for those youngsters who attended lectures on national history, there were several ways of getting interested in the costume drama. Among the high schoolers, rumors circulated that the movie featured scenes of nudity, a rarity in the 1980s.Footnote ⁸⁰ Some also looked forward to the impressive battle scenes, as one recalls:

What about the film's reception in minority-inhabited rural areas? Evidence of how spectators reacted to the display of Muslim brutality, the numerous rapes, and the portrayal of “forced conversions” is sketchy. Pirinsko delo printed a few readers’ opinions on the movie, enthusiastic overall. The “spontaneous” character of these letters may be doubted. Another feature of the correspondence deserves attention: because, in official language, Bulgaria was now devoid of minorities, how could readers identify comments by Bulgarian-speaking Muslims? References to ethnic differences were prohibited; names were not always easily identifiable, as they had been “Bulgarized” in the 1970s. Yet if the local authorities wished to ascertain the benevolent reception by the local Muslims of the state-sponsored reading of history, the “separate” identity of those who had “merged” needed somehow to be revealed. This perilous exercise was accomplished by the reference to religious backgrounds and the location of the authors—in this case, Ribnovo. In June 1988, Pirinsko delo ran a column titled “A ‘Survey’ among Bulgarian Muslims: A Film on Truth, on Roots.” Two inhabitants from the predominantly Muslim village attested:

Local Muslims and non-Muslims alike were familiar with the ethnic composition of the vicinity. They remembered, or at least had heard, that in 1964, when the regional communist leadership tried to bring about the forcible change of names, opposition was the staunchest precisely in Ribnovo. The publication of these letters, therefore, exposed the acquiescence of those who had been most reluctant to abide by the new state rules.

Documents from communist State Security and interviews conducted with Muslims who were schoolchildren at the time suggest a very different account. Watching the movie was hardly an individual choice. Collective screenings, followed by lectures on the proper deciphering of the film and its present-day significance, were supplemented by televised reruns, especially on the eve of March 3, Bulgaria's national holiday.Footnote ⁸³ Early on, the State Security observed local responses to the film. A report from the Interior Ministry's Information-Organization department, dated April 1, 1988, implies some proud responses to the forced screening, as well as fears that anti-Turkish feelings might further increase.Footnote ⁸⁴ A week later, the same department drew further attention to local beliefs that the movie served a propaganda purpose, as well as the pain experienced by viewers from this rewriting of the past.Footnote ⁸⁵

Interviews of Muslim teenagers relay the sense of despair provoked by the contrast between self-image and the othering image sustained by official ideology. N., a Turk, recalled how she felt when asked by a close Bulgarian friend about the truthfulness of the state version of Turkish lineage:

In some circumstances, pupils’ frustration and humiliation led to a boastful attempt to reverse the imposition of the stigma, as in this anecdote recounted by a Bulgarian of German descent:

Nevertheless, to conclude that all members of minorities were equally affected by state propaganda would be methodologically wrong. The discussion so far has focused on party policies and bureaucratic injunctions, presuming that state decisions were always successfully implemented, and daily lives limited to state surveillance. Even during these painful years, there were limitations to the rulers’ ability to control the imaginaries of the local Muslims. The second half of the 1980s also coincided with an increasing circulation of videotapes. In April 1988, Banichanski, the head of Kinefikatsiia's regional branch, tellingly complained:

Reports from the Interior Ministry confirm the decreasing ability of the central authorities to prevent access to alternative sources of information and entertainment:

Videotapes were a sensitive issue in the tense relationships between Bulgaria and Turkey—as was the release of Vreme razdelno. Turkey's leadership naturally had seen in the Bulgarian epic a tool in the campaign to legitimize the erasure of Turkish identities in Bulgaria.Footnote ⁹⁰ On August 9 and 19, 1988, the two parties discussed the possibility that the Bulgarians would give up the screening in Seoul in exchange for an agreement not to broadcast on Turkish television Belene, Hüseyin Karakaș's documentary film on the camp where opponents to the assimilation process were detained.Footnote ⁹¹ In May 1989, Turkish diplomats expressed further concern over the televising of Vreme razdelno at a time of mass exodus of Bulgarian Turks. Turkey responded in kind, with documentaries circulating in Bulgaria as videotapes.Footnote ⁹²

Examining the use of cinema in the service of state assimilatory policies has offered insight into the complex interweaving of physical and symbolic violence aimed at minorities, and, ultimately, into the diverse social experiences under late socialism in Bulgaria. The making of Vreme razdelno testified to the primacy accorded to films in the formation of national and political consciousness. Yet, to account for the impact of national epics, one cannot study cinema in isolation from the visual, auditory, and written environment of which it was part. Shaped before Bulgaria's independence from the Ottoman empire and later transmitted through both high and popular culture, some representations of the past and the national body were appropriated by Bulgaria's socialist elites, especially after the 1960s. These representations, in turn, were internalized by citizens to the extent that they permeated their daily universe—through tales, literary works, songs and melodies, as much as through official party slogans, and were circulated through diverse media, including radio and television. Exploring the workings of national ideology under socialism thus requires that one traces the multiple ties that unite propaganda and sensibilities.

From this perspective, cinema offers a heuristic device for scholars of nationalism. Symbolic violence, the attempt at establishing names, norms, and categories and achieving support for them from those subjected to state domination, starts at the moment a schoolchild reads history texts that depict their group as the “villain.” It continues with novels, ballads, and historical dramas that further challenge a young person's definition of self and understanding of family history and community values. Filmed at a time of a radical negation of the “other,” Vreme razdelno has proven useful in reconstructing the process through which specific actualizations of the past made certain aspects of the present conceivable and perhaps even legitimate. Examination of these connections does not reflect an assumption that ideological products are always efficacious. Rather, it informs us about the strategies pursued by ruling elites. Interestingly, however, Vreme razdelno's message has outlived socialism. The movie was named best Bulgarian film in two national surveys, the first in 2010 and the second in 2015. It continues to be broadcast regularly on Bulgarian television.

In my survey of nation-building via the cinema, I have also argued that it is appropriate to widen the analytical scope beyond filmic content. The story of a movie begins before the production phase and continues after its showing in theaters. Only by considering the entire film-making process can one get a glimpse of the meaning-making activities of cultural officials, critics, and average viewers. In dark auditoriums, these diverse segments of the public engage their bodies, emotions, thoughts, and memories, as well as individual reactions to the past, as they watch the colorful events on the screen. Trying to gauge the impact of Vreme razdelno on socialist Bulgaria—a challenging endeavor at any time—I have therefore incorporated into my analysis several factors that I believe had an influence on reception by audiences, such as shooting locations, use of local background cast members, and reviews published before the film's release. This approach helps to illuminate the ways in which fictionalized past violence and the current use of force against minorities became intimately entangled.

Finally, once contextualized, the study of Vreme razdelno offers a window on the fragmented experiences of late state socialism in Bulgaria. Scholars of eastern Europe have contrasted the highly repressive early years of socialist rule with the more lenient 1960s and 1970s.Footnote ⁹³ By the second half of the 1980s, Bulgaria had evolved into a milder form of authoritarianism. The intelligentsia in Sofia, which closely followed developments in the USSR, hoped for further liberalization and a renewal of the top leadership.Footnote ⁹⁴ But the 1980s are also associated with the most brutal assault on minority rights. How can one reconcile these conflicting features? The problem lies in the assumption that it might be possible to write a unitary narrative of socialism at the nation-state level. While Sofia was experiencing a timid, albeit genuine, move toward perestroika, border regions inhabited by minorities were facing a brutal attempt to alter their identities. In the last resort, while deconstructing national narratives, many scholars of socialism seem to have remained attached to nation-states as the proper unit of analysis. My case study suggests that it might be both fruitful and necessary to reconsider spatial frames in order to interpret the complex reality of nation-building during socialism.