Below is an interview that scholar Ondřej Slačálek conducted with political author Yavor Tarinski on the historical vicissitudes of the Bulgarian anarchist movement and their impact on the current condition of anarchism in the region. The interview was originally published in the academic periodical Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought Volume 7 number 2 (2023). The particular issue has a focus on experiences of Central and Eastern European anarchisms.
Anarchism in Bulgaria has a long-standing history, going back to the 1870s. It includes participation in insurrections against the Ottoman Empire, as well as attempts to build independent communes. A vibrant movement of tens of thousands of people in the 1920s was crushed by the repression of the far-right monarchist regime in the 1930s and even more by the Stalinist dictatorship. While hundreds of anarchists ended up in Stalinist labour camps, some others continued to struggle in the mountains or in exile. We can see imprints of this movement in reconstructed Bulgarian anarchism after 1989, and its experience is sometimes debated – but more often omitted – in discussions about international anarchist history and theory. Yavor Tarinski has been devoted to researching the grassroots history of the Balkans for a long time.
Comments