site.btaSerbian Press: How Tens of Thousands of Bulgarians "Disappeared" in Serbia? Bulgarian Minority Members Dwell on Poverty, EU, State and Co-existence

The Serbian newspaper Danas has published two articles in which it looks at the problems of the Bulgarian minority in Serbia from the viewpoint of various representatives of the community. The stories examine the statistics and analyze the possible reasons why Bulgarians chose not to self-declare themselves as Bulgarians such in the national censuses in Serbia. While everyone agrees that the number of Bulgarians in the country is decreasing more and more, opinions are divided as to why this is so. 

One Danas article was published last week with the title "How tens of thousands of Bulgarians "disappeared" in Serbia? Representatives of the Bulgarian minority dwell on poverty, the EU, the State and coexistence". It was part of a project entitled "Our differences bring us together" and co-funded by the Serbian Ministry of Information. It says that according to the latest census in Serbia, the Bulgarian minority totals 12,918 people, considerably down from the 59,472 in the 1948 census. Most Bulgarians "disappeared" in the period between 1971 and 1991, but continue to "disappear" to this day, Danas notes.

Southeastern Serbia is the most populous Serbian region with Bulgarians, but there are Bulgarians in almost every town or municipality in the country, including the autonomous region of Vojvodina. The latest census, however, shows a large reduction in the numbers of the Bulgarian minority in Serbia, and according to representatives of the Bulgarian community this is due to two reasons - emigration and "mimicry".

The "flight" from Bulgarian identity is often blamed by representatives of the Bulgarian minority in Serbia on the fact that Bulgarians are most numerous in the border region of Southeastern Serbia, which is also the poorest in the country and where it is difficult to find good jobs and salaries. "Danas notes that Bulgaria's EU membership, which opens the door wider for emigration and a 'better life', also contributes to the decline in the number of Bulgarians in this region.

"Poverty in the regions where Bulgarians live is a very big problem. Many of the young have left: there are not enough roads and the villages are empty. In Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad, investment and road infrastructure are needed to tackle unemployment, so that people can find jobs and those who have left can return. The problem is that many people are leaving and I don't see them coming back", says Vance Bojkov, a lecturer at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Nis.

Petar Videnov, editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian and Serbian language multimedia internet portal Far in Dimitrovgrad, told Danas that there are also problems for the media outlets of the Bulgarian minority: they face problems with the funding as well as attempts by the state and local authorities to put them under their control.

"There are enough media outlets in the language of the Bulgarian minority in Serbia, but the question is to what extent these cover the problems of the minority in an objective, professional and realistic way. Moreover, the Bulgarian-language television broadcast of the national RTS has been missing for more than 20 years," Videnov noted.

"The fact is that through funding via competitions for media outlets or otherwise, the state and local governments want to put these media under their control, and it is the duty of those working in the media to resist, if possible, the pressure and to create confidence in the audience that follows them with a better, more professional and objective editorial policy," Videnov says.

Stefan Stojkov, chairman of the National Council for the Bulgarian Minority, stressed that 90% of Bulgarian young people in Serbia pursue their university studies in Bulgaria. 

"I am sure that there are more than 100,000 Bulgarians living in Serbia at the moment. I have no explanation and I do not understand why people have not identified themselves as Bulgarians in the census, even though we urged them to do so and explained to them that it is OK to say they are Bulgarians. Although many of them have dual citizenship - Serbian and Bulgarian - drive cars with Bulgarian plates and their children study in Sofia, they did not self-identify as Bulgarians", Stojkov said.

He adds that in his opinion this is a "mimicry" and not "assimilation", because the Bulgarian minority "is not subject to any repression by the Serbian state".

Danas also published an article by the chairman of the Cultural Information Centre of Bulgarians in Bosilegrad, Ivan Nikolov, titled "Think of a Bulgarian who was a hero in Serbian history". He asks, if it not really dangerous to identify oneself as a Bulgarian in Serbia, then why people choose to conceal their Bulgarian origin as a way to survive in Serbia?

"National identity is not acquired by birth, it is created and nurtured through the upbringing and education. The number of Bulgarians (in Serbia) began to decline dramatically when the Bulgarian language was dropped from the mother tongues which are taught in primary schools in Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad, and when the destruction/privatization of factories and all kinds of businesses took away people's livelihood," Nikolov writes.

He points out that the Bulgarian minority is not the only one that is shrinking: the Hungarian, Croatian and Montenegrin minorities are also reporting a two-thirds decline. According to him, the national minorities in Serbia have for a long time been seen not as a factor in Serbian statehood, but as a danger to be eliminated.