2013/12/12 by Tchavdar Marinov, Alexander Vezenkov · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Ancient history #Balkans: History, Politics, Society #Bulgarian #Communism #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics #History #Ideology #Law #Macedonian #Nationalism #Philosophy #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Romanian #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1163/9789004261914_007
openalex publication_date 2013/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
It is true that communism was a universalistic project and communists were openly critical toward chauvinism. And compared to other political movements of the first half of the twentieth century, communism was certainly less nationalistic. That could be considered an advantage, but most often the communist parties' alleged lack of nationalism was and is still seen as something negative. This chapter analyzes the long and meandering relationship between communism and nationalism in the case of the Balkan communist parties and states. Ironically, the theory of nationalism as a bourgeois ideology turned into a communist practice of constructing nationalism: the communists invented alphabets, wrote histories of the Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian or other people and published great national encyclopedias. Finally, instead of being a of convenience, the relationship between communism and nationalism constituted a mutual attraction. Keywords: Balkan communist parties; Bulgarian; Macedonian; marriage of convenience; mutual attraction; nationalism; political movements; Romanian