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Metamorphoses of TerritoryIvaylo Ditchev aa University of Sofia, St Kliment Ohridski , BulgariaPublished online: 02 Nov 2006.

To cite this article: Ivaylo Ditchev (2006) Metamorphoses of Territory, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 14:2,213-220, DOI: 10.1080/14782800600892267

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Metamorphoses of Territory

IVAYLO DITCHEVUniversity of Sofia, St Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria

ABSTRACT This paper, based on field research in Bulgaria, presents the reshaping of the nationalterritory under the influence of the application for EU accession. The traditional North–Southcoordinates of modern/oriental are turned upside down and what used to be seen as the backwardpart of the country is now the vanguard of liberal, trade-centred capitalism. The century long battlebetween the national centre and the countryside has been fuelled by European projects and moneyused by the centre to reconstruct the nation state, but also by the periphery to acquire independencefrom the capital. After half a century of communist efforts to establish absolute control, the territoryis honeycombed by traffic and increased human mobility, some denounced as illegal, otherscelebrated as an expression of new global forms of citizenship. These developments may add to ourunderstanding of the paradoxes of the new multiperspective European space.

KEY WORDS: Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, European enlargement, mental maps, transition, nationalterritory

South Versus North

One effect of transition on Bulgaria was that it turned the map upside down. Until 1989 it

was the northern (or north-western) border that was perceived as more prestigious.

Modernization came in from the north via the Danube, making the northern cities look

much more European than the southern ones. The north was associated with national

liberation from the Ottomans as it was from that direction that the Bulgarian emigrant rebel

detachments attacked the Empire; the Russian army of liberation came in from the north as

well, leaving behind, among other things, abundant monuments and a complex mythology.

The southern part of the country remained under Ottoman rule a decade longer and was

thus somewhat pushed aside in the symbolic geography of the young nation state (there are

also many more Moslems in the south, who have been a problem for the nation builders).

Finally, in the years of communism industrialization was quicker and more intense in the

north. One major reason for that was that the Comecon countries were to the north (north-

east) of Bulgaria and exchange furthered development; the frontier with NATO members

Greece and Turkey to the south was an impasse, an underdeveloped buffer zone.

The 1990s turned this space upside down. Economic exchange with the former

Comecon countries declined dramatically; while the wars in Yugoslavia and, especially,

the blocking of the Danube after NATO’s bombing of Serbia almost stopped transport

to the north-west, the overland route via Romania remained in very bad condition due to

1478-2804 Print/1478-2790 Online/06/020213-8 q 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14782800600892267

Correpondence Address: Ivaylo Ditchev, Oborishte str. 67, 1504 Sofia, Bulgaria. Email: ivayloditchev@gmail.com

Journal of Contemporary European StudiesVol. 14, No. 2, 213–220, August 2006

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a lack of money. Add to this the socio-political crises in Serbia and the slow rate of change

in Romania, as well as the general aversion for former allies and neighbours that caused

Eastern Europe to explode. All of a sudden the new global attractors were to the south

(Urry, 2003), with the EU and NATO closest (a folk song of the 1990s called Europe the

‘southern butterfly’). In the 1990s formerly prosperous cities like Russe and Vidin,

economically linked to Comecon, became a kind of territorial dead-end, which was how

southern cities like Kurdjaly and Gotze Delchev had felt in the 1960s and 1970s.

On the other hand, the southern and south-eastern borders with Greece and Turkey

acquired an unexpected prestige. Thus, when the requirements for tourist visas for the

Schengen area were lifted in 2001, the minister of the interior Mihailova crossed the Greek

border triumphantly on foot accompanied by her two daughters, students of European

studies and lots of cameras. Heavily guarded from within, the southern borders are

nowadays the target of a feverish traffic of goods, workers, sex-workers, businessmen,

etc., and there is a constant pressure to open new checkpoints. Nevertheless, Greece has

resisted this pressure for a decade under various pretexts, including the well-being of wild

bears, so there is still only one operational checkpoint for a 500 kilometre border between

two future (January 2007?) members of the EU. Athens also fears increased immigration

and close contacts between ethnic minorities on either side of the border.

The attraction of the south can be understoode in terms of per capita gross national

income, with that of Bulgaria being $2100, Romania $2300, Serbia & Montenegro $1900,

Macedonia $2000, whereas the per capita GNP of Greece is $13,700! The enormous

difference between very similar cultures makes it possible for a low paid seasonal worker

who goes to pick oranges to come back after a couple of months with several thousand

euros and even start a business at home.

The sudden switching of direction, comparable in geology to a change of the Earth’s

magnetic poles, has brought back the culturalist notions of southern and northern Bulgaria

with additionalnew content. The north, which historically was associated with capitalist

diligence and communist productivism, is now referred to as dull, slow and lacking

initiative. The south, traditionally stereotyped as poor and backward, is now the vector of

modernization associated with trade and entrepreneurial spirit, as well as the consumerist

and mass culture that go with it. As to the negative version of this image, it is based on the

so-called ‘chalga’ music with its video clips and the dancing and sexual parading that

go with it, as well as bars where you dance on the tables. In a way, chalga, Turkish

merchandise, suitcase trade, southward seasonal work and prostitution are the revenge of

the ‘oriental’ that the communists were so eager to erase in their modernization effort.

The Autonomization of Periphery

A fight between the centre and the periphery accompanies the making of any nation state.

In Bulgaria decentralization within the second republic was strongest in 1992, under the

anti-communist government of Philip Dimitrov (seen nowadays as the high point of the

decay of the state). After that the various governing parties have tried to tighten control

over the country: the socialists under Videnov through the economy; the democrats under

Kostov by the introduction of district governors, with control over town mayors; the liberal

coalition of Saxcobourggotha through the management of European funds.

However, curiously, the local elections of 2003 marked a sudden twist in this tendency.

To the dismay of the national Sofia-based parties the elections saw the rise of new,

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non-national parties, apolitical movements and citizens’ committees who nominated most

of the winning candidates for mayor and other key posts. For instance, in Russe the local

movement (registered as a party) ‘Professionals for Russe’ is the main actor in the city,

while in Nessebar out of 16 members of the city council 11 are sole representatives of their

party, the only bloc of 5 being the non-parliamentary, obscure ‘Liberal union’ and in Vidin

the non-parliamentary party of the Gypsy minority, ‘Roma’, entered the council with 6

representatives. Everywhere it is said that once the city council is established there are no

colours any more, just corporate interests. In fact, the only party that still has some sort of

electoral base is the Socialist party, which is more linked to the past than to interests or

visions in the present.

One reason for this fragmentation of the political scene is the ruling party (Simeon the

Second National Movement) that won the elections in 2001. It is not a real party, having no

structure, coherent ideology or internal discipline. They have no town mayors and no real

local representation (the people voted for the former King, with no idea with whom he

intended to govern) and this polarizes the situation: ‘we’ here against ‘them’ in Sofia.

The other factor is EU funds. Since 2000–2001 the proposing of projects has become a

major source if not of livelihoods, at least of hope in the Bulgarian countryside. The level

of income seems relevant: a young qualified person would expect the highest salary in a

foreign funded NGOs, then comes the State, followed by the finally business. Sofia seems

to be slowly changing this pattern: NGO salaries are decreasing while business incomes

are increasing. Even if the really big money always goes through the ministries, there is

at least an open field for initiative and even for directly addressing EU partners and

institutions.

To quote some examples in the realm of identity, where the state has abruptly cut the

ostentatious funding given under communism: the new mayor of Kavarna has attracted EU

funds to transform grain silos into fancy castles; the district governor of Vidin has

requested monies for the transformation of the Baba Vida fortress into a Disney-like

attraction with puppets of medieval knights and a street with artisans producing souvenirs;

the mining city Kurdjaly, with no tradition of tourism, has created an international tourist

site out of the Thracian ruins of Perpericon; dozens of municipalities have restored the

facades on their main streets as part of the ‘Beautiful Bulgaria’ project.

In 2000, under the government of Ivan Kostov, it looked as if EU integration was to be a

powerful instrument in the reconstruction of the State (Ditchev, 2000), even if at the price

of creating local clienteles and partisan corruption. It seems now that integration has been

much better used by local actors and has fragmented the nation, thus adding to the post-

communist economic and social inequalities an institutional culture dimension: some

know how to apply, others don’t, some possess specialists who can speak English and surf

the Internet, others don’t, some are able to adapt to the world of projects, others are not.

Thus, as EU money has steadily flown into cities such as Sofia, Varna and Dobrich, almost

one-third of municipalities have not applied for pre-accession funds and one-fifth have not

even thought of it (UNDP and the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works,

Sega, 27 July 2004).

From Conditional Mobility to the Heisenberg Principle

Communist urbanization introduced the principle of residence permits, thus making

modern mobility an instrument of domination. However, despite the general impression of

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injustice and immobility, systematic policies for furthering migration should not be

overlooked, among which were: very cheap public or corporate transport with an ever

denser network of lines; the integration and education of migrant workers by the

Communist party and other public organizations (of course, in a very ideologized way);

the allocation of state or corporate accommodation for mobile workers. Let me also

mention the less known fact that from the 1960s onwards communist Bulgaria, like other

Comecon countries, was systematically exporting labour to the third world, negotiating

on their behalf, granting them ‘exit visas’, organizing their stay abroad, then receiving

two-thirds of their pay.

After 1989 things changed darmatically. People are now fully free to travel, inside and

outside the country, but there is no policy to help them do it. As a result, some become ever

more free to move while others are doomed to immobility. According to the Social

Democratic Institute (2000), in 1999 56% of adults had never left their place of residence,

about 800 villages did not have regular transport and in many cases where there was

transport, public transport had been replaced by private transport at market prices, for

instance only Gypsy owners of jitneys serve the ‘New Road’ Gypsy quarter of Vidin,

which is supposed to be the centre of one of the six Euro-planning regions.

Of course a much greater number of people nowadays work abroad as there is no

political control on leaving the country, and in 2002 the money sent home by emigrants

exceeded foreign investment. Whole villages and small towns are moving to Greece,

Spain or Italy, helping each other, thereby creating compact Bulgarian communities

abroad, as Greeks, Spaniards and Italians did decades earlier. It should be noted that there

is a significant difference between previous emigration and that now—under communism

mobility primarily concerned highly qualified professions like engineers, physicians or

teachers, while nowadays the majority are poorly qualified, probably most of them

working illegally in the host country.

The most unexpected aspect of the new situation is the demographic variant of

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: no one seems to know how many people are where at

any given moment. Some three or four cities have more residents than in the officially

census, among them the capital Sofia, where marketing agencies base their work not on the

official population of 1.2 million but on 1.6 million. However, most places have far fewer

people than declared in the 2001 census. For instance, estimates of how many people live

in Vidin given in interviews with representatives of the local authorities ranged from the

official 69,000 to 20,000. The weird thing is that no one seems to see a problem in this

surrealist situation. Asked on what basis they prepare for the school year with no figures at

hand, the city inspector of education told us: ‘We learn how many children there will be on

the first school day’.

The uncertainty principle is not only a matter of bad management, it is in the interests of

various institutions to maintain Gogol-style ‘dead souls’, because state funding and EU

programmes depend on numbers. Moreover, most emigrants have not made a definitive

break with their home town or village, hoping to have some place to come back to if things

go wrong. The result of this curious combination of third world emigration and first world

bureaucracy is the parallel coexistence of two countries: the real one (the smaller it is, the

fewer problems it creates) and the virtual one (the bigger it is, the more funding it attracts).

There seems to be an asymmetrical attitude towards people coming in and those going

out. The latter are the major topic of the post-communist debate, and there is hardly a

politician who does not promise ‘to bring our sons and daughters back home’. On the other

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hand, the ever-growing number of immigrants from the Near East, Albania, China and the

former USSR is almost invisible—they appear in the media only if charged with a crime.

There is no debate about how a Chinese could become a genuine Bulgarian citizen and this

is certainly linked to a narrowly ethnic definition of the nation.

Porosity of the National Territory

Territoriality has been seen as a way to ‘control people and things by controlling area’, ‘a

strategy to establish different degrees of access to people, things and relationships’ (Sack,

1986, pp. 2, 20). The early nation states created a single vision of territory where cultural

and political, economic and military lines appear on the same mental map; this process has

been compared to the appearance of perspective in painting in the same period, where the

pictorial representation is conceived from a single point of view (Ruggie, 1993, p. 159).

I would suggest distinguishing these two sides of territoriality: the practices of control over

a certain area and the representations of its unity.

Establishing the unity of the national territory was among the highest achievements of

the communist regime. This was done, on the one hand, on the level of practices by

establishing nation-wide forms of control, sealing the borders, nationalizing transportation

and commerce and abolishing ‘deviant’ ways of life, like nomadism. On the other hand, it

was done at the level of representation by the persecution of any form of challenge to unity

and central authority, the imposition of a homogenized folklore and a teleological history.

Both these were challenged by the post-89 world. The territory was quickly honeycombed

by an ever-growing number of channels of traffic evading the control of the nation state,

ruled by alternative logics, including ethnic, criminal, European, NGO network and

linguistic affinity.

The ethnic link can be illustrated by the exchange of persons with Turkey: one of the

family (often an older male) is left behind to look after the house in Bulgaria while the

women and children settle somewhere in western Turkey and the younger males move

between the two places, transporting merchandise such as cloth, china and food.

The Yugoslav oil embargo brought easy money to the region along the western border,

as gasoline was about twice as expensive as in Bulgaria and four crossings of the

checkpoint with a full tank of fuel could earn one the average monthly salary (linguistic

affinity facilitated this exchange). Drugs travel from the south-east to the north-west,

stolen or simply used cars in the opposite direction. As for Greece, instead of goods that

are difficult to smuggle because of tighter EU controls, it is humans (illegal workers,

prostitutes, emigrants from the Middle East or the former USSR) who wish to enter the

EU. There is even a well-established traffic in babies for adoption, which are custom bred

by Gypsy women who deliberately travel in the late stages of pregnancy to deliver the

merchandise on the spot (the go-betweens get around e5,000 for a girl, e15000 for a boy).

And some less fortunate children are sold for organs.

Besides this shady porosity, there is the sunnier one that the ideology of general

circulation (of Bill Gates’ ‘frictionless capitalism’) is being promoted. The Utopian

character of this vision can best be seen in George Soros’ suggestion that if customs dues

within the Balkans were to be lifted he would make up the money the states would lose.

The idea is brilliant, however, what he did not take into consideration was the interests of

the political players, who would have lost the political initiative with the disappearance

of this form of territorial control.

Metamorphoses of Territory 217

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Circulation requires a transport network and there has been a lot of pressure from the

EU to develop the Pan-European Transport Corridors. However, there is an inherent

ambiguity in the debates surrounding them. Officially the point is to link regions by axes

that are as short as possible, but quarrels between Bulgaria and Romania over the layout of

corridor no. 4 (north–south via Sofia) and with Greece over no. 8 (east–west from Turkey

to Albania) reveal a hidden part of the story. Those countries participating in the project

want to have as much of the network as possible running through their territories. The

transportation axes are thus conceived not only as a link, a tool for commerce and

mobility, but as a means of attracting funds, a source of livelihood. This is another paradox

of capitalism imposed ‘from above’.

The decision to build a second bridge over the Bulgarian–Romanian Danube border

was taken as a result of the Yugoslav wars, i.e. primarily for political reasons. Now that the

road through Nis is again open it is seen as less economically attractive. Curiously, no one

expects a boom in trade with the new EU members and former Comecon allies to the

North! Many people in the north-west, to whom it is of the most concern, have grown tired

of believing it will be built in the next five years. The topic was politicized by the Union of

Democratic Forces, who built their campaign on the slogan ‘there will be a bridge here’

and conquered this traditional socialist stronghold. It is interesting to note that while

Europe amass funds for the second bridge over the Danube between Vidin and Kalafat, the

US ‘Shifter’ plan plans to give a grant of $800,000 for reconstruction of the ferry, so there

will be competition.

Protection of the national market—the fight against economic porosity—more and more

becomes an issue. The last debates (July 2004) under discussion concern the import of

cheap tomatoes and lamb from Turkey and elsewhere, undermining national production.

At the beginning of the ‘transition’from a centralized to a free economy it was the rights

of the consumer that were more clearly articulated in the public shere (let us buy what

is cheapest), however, the closer the country comes to accession, the more visible the

producer becomes.

The Ambiguities Surrounding Land

The ecology is beginning to be seen as a resource, especially in the border regions, mainly

by representatives of the ‘culture of projects’, who have had contact with foreigners. In the

complete absence of control and objective information, media rumours circulate that along

the Serbian border cancer rates have risen by three times because of NATO bombs

containing low grade uranium. Thus the land is seen at the same time as exceptionally

clean and exceptionally polluted. Obviously ecological activism is an epiphenomenon of

politics and no single influential ecological movement of those active in 1989–1990 has

survived transition. Another example of the political (ab)use of ecology was the uproar

around the destruction of Scud missiles in 2002, when the somewhat absurd ecological

worries articulated in fact expressed opposition to NATO.

Those who say that the Kozlodui nuclear plant may be dangerous are more often EU

enthusiasts and are looking for arguments for fulfillment of the country’s engagements.

Curiously enough, there has been no NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) phenomenon and the

majority of people living in the town of Kozlodui are supportive of the plant (which

provides work and good salaries), rather than being worried about their health. The nuclear

plant was the pride of socialist Bulgaria and since 1970 there has hardly been a photo

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collection of the country without a picture of it. Closing down Kozlodui seems to be a

symbol of the general process of de-industrialization of the country, whose development is

seen as slipping backwards, becoming a nation of peasants, ‘waiters and hired labourers in

the EU’. The ambiguities of land thus touch the question of identity: on one side the idyllic

eco-vision of nice landscapes and tasty tomatoes, on the other the productivist one that

claims ‘we are Europeans’.

There is a growing role of wilderness within the national territory. Entire sectors of the

population, especially in the mountains, depend on collecting mushrooms or herbs. Some

Gypsy groups have gone back to a form of nomadism or semi-nomadism, setting up

mushroom camps in the summer. The same is true for some shepherds after dissolution of

the collective farms. Wilderness attracts tourists of a higher socio-cultural level (the

crowded sea resorts are mostly for the lower western social strata). Bulgaria is one of the

least peopled countries in Europe and wilderness romanticism (wild foods, ecological

tourism, individual tourism) could certainly become an economic resource. For the

moment it only gives rise to shame and is seen as a temporary setback before industry

returns.

Property rights for foreigners have been resisted all over Eastern Europe (Verdery,

1998): the homeland is not supposed to be shared. Fears often revolve around the

possibility of Turks buying land, and comparisons have been made with Macedonia, where

Albanians have driven the Slav population out of various regions by purchasing land. The

figure of a Dutch or French farmer is much less common in the popular imagination. When

the question is put in economic terms opponents are less noisy and the media have even

started discussing the possibility of Bulgaria giving up the transitional period and allowing

foreigners to buy land immediately after accession. A specific aspect of the Bulgarian

situation is the low level of land ownership, which is a result of three populist agrarian

reforms (after Liberation in the 19th century, after the coming to power of the communists

and after the fall of communism), as well as the extremely important role played by a

subsistence economy. Land consolidation would appear indispensable before the

introduction of a real market in land as, at present, the average owner has 11 parcels of

land amounting to around 3 hectares. Opening the land market to foreigners (i.e. big

investors) thus has an existential dimension, as it threatens to throw elder subsistence

farmers off their parcel of land: this has already happened twice in history after the

populist reforms mentioned above (while in the case of communism the shock was

collectivization in the 1950s).

In the 1990s the land issue turned a vicious circle. There was a rush to restore the ‘real

borders’ of one’s parcel of land, urging the state to accelerate the destruction of the

cooperative farms in the general anti-communist euphoria. Then it turned out that the new

owners, most of whom lived in the cities, could not cultivate it. Land stayed deserted for

years, or slipped back to the new/old cooperatives organized now for subsistence farming

by ageing poor peasants, usually run by the former communist directors. These farms

couldn’t possibly pay dividends to the urban owners except for a sporadic bag of corn they

didn’t know what to do with. Of course, it would have been much better to sell the land and

invest in something else, but there is no market for land. And there is no market because

foreigners cannot buy, while Bulgarians do not have the money. Why wouldn’t Bulgarians

be ready to sell land to foreigners? Because there is the risk that foreigners would buy it at

a knockdown price and dupe them. What could make the price rise? Opening the market to

foreigners.

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Conclusion

The above concrete observations are meant to contribute to an understanding of the

paradoxical nature of European enlargement. ‘The EU is the first “multiperspectival

polity” since the advent of the modern era’ (Ruggie, 1993, p. 172), in which we must

consider the increasing roles of new actors besides the state, like networks, NGOs and

international organizations (Magnette, 1999). Opening up a centralized (both politically

and ideologically) communist country to the widening forms of global complexity (Urry,

2003) produces mounting ambiguities around the national territory. On the one hand, it is

reinforced as a sovereign entity as the process of integration depends on and reinforces the

state, seriously shattered in the early 1990s. On the other hand, it is fragmented by various

types of exchange that the process explicitly furthers, tolerates or is no longer able to

prevent because of the dismantling of the repressive apparatus. Moreover, this situation

produces rising polarizations at the level of representation. On the one hand, fragmentation

is presented as democratization, as the overcoming of the narrowness of the nation state,

giving more freedom to regions and networks; on the other, it produces a growing feeling

of helplessness in the face of criminality, bureaucratic absurdity and privatization of the

public sphere.

References

Ditchev, I. (2000) Europe as Legitimation (in Bulgarian), Sociologitcheski Problemi, 1(2), pp. 87–108.

Magnette, P. (1999) La Citoyennete Europeenne (Brussels, Belgium: Universite de Bruxelles).

Ruggie, G. (1993) Territoriality and beyond: problematizing modernity in international relations, International

Organization, 47(1), pp. 139–174.

Sack, R. (1986) Human Territoriality. Its Theory and History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).

Social Democratic Institute (2000) Social Stratification in Bulgaria (in Bulgarian) (Sofia, Bulgaria: LIK).

Urry, J. (2003) Global Complexity (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press).

Verdery, K. (1998) Transnationalism, nationalism and property. Eastern Europe since 1989, American

Ethnologist, 25, pp. 291–306.

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