Summary of the book “The Bulgarian-Romanian Political Relations (1944 – 1989)”

The cover of the book “The Bulgarian-Romanian political relations (1944-1989)” (source: The Bridge of Friendship)

The author of the research – Spaska Shumanova gave this summary to the readers of The Bridge of Friendship blog.

The development of the Bulgarian-Romanian political relations from 1944–1989 was influenced by multiple factors. Undoubtedly, the placement of Bulgaria and Romania in the sphere of Soviet influence at the end of the Second World War predetermined the imposition of a certain political regime in these countries, namely Soviet-type socialism. The Communist Party, the central decision-maker for the established state political system, defined the objectives, set the tasks, directed the processes and provided an assessment of the results obtained in all areas of public life in the country, as well as in foreign policy and international activity. Therefore, bilateral relations between Bulgaria and Romania depended directly on the ruling communist parties, and at a later stage they were umbilically linked to the personal perceptions or dissatisfaction of party and state leaders in the two neighboring countries.

The remarkable Romanian literature and its Bulgarian translations

Hristo Boev speaking at an event with the participation of the Romanian writer Bogdan Boeru (left) (source: Hristo Boev)

Elena Vladova

Hristo Boev was born in Plovdiv. He graduated in English philology at the Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv. In 2013 he defended his Ph.D. research in British and American literature at Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania, on “Modern (ist) Portrayals of the City in Dickens and Dos Passos: Similarities, Differences, Continuities.” In 2020 he published a monograph on “The Different Dobrudja in the interwar literature.” He has participated in international conferences on topics such as: “literary urbanism”, “translation issues”, “immigration and relocation” and others. His research interests are in the field of new British and American literature, Romanian literature between the wars, geocriticism, literary urbanism, as well as comparative literature. He teaches British and American literature at the University of Sofia “Bishop Konstantin Preslavski”. He is the winner of the translation award of the Liviu Rebranu Literary Museum (2016) and of Media AwART Varna (2020) for his translation of Cella Serghi’s Spider Web. He has translated a number of classical and contemporary novels from Romanian into Bulgarian.

This article was published on January 17, 2021 on the site “The Urban Magazine”.

The Romanian IT sector’s marvel of unionisation

SITT’s logo (source: SITT)

Vladimir Mitev

This article was published on 2 January 2021 at the English section of the site The Barricade.

The IT sector in Southeastern Europe might seem like a bit of an unconventional place for labour unionisation, as it offers usually well-paid jobs with high social status. But labour issues and possibility for improvement abounds there, too. On 19 December 2020 members of the Discord channel Workplaces of the Future, hosted by the Collective for Social Interventions (Bulgarian NGO dealing with various social issues), organised a discussion with the leader of the Romanian labour union for IT workers Florentin Iancu, as they wanted insight into the experience of Romanian labour unions in this domain. 

Bulgaria is a NATO and EU member with the corresponding obligations and loyalties

Interview given to the Iranian Labour News Agency about the Romaniann politics after the formation of the centre-right government in December 2020 and about the state and future of Bulgarian-Russian relations in 2021

Bulgaria is a NATO and EU member with the corresponding obligations and loyalties — The Persian Bridge of Friendship – Персийският мост на приятелството – Podul Persan al Prieteniei – پل دوستی فارسی

Lora Nenkovska: The Romanian Awards Sofia Nădejde are very much needed because women’s literature continues to be unnoticed

There is a lack of Bulgarian literature translations into Romanian (sourc: Pixabay, CC0)

Vladimir Mitev

Lora Nenkovska is a lecturer in Romanian language and literature at Sofia University “Kliment Ohridski”. She has translated into Bulgarian authors such as Matei Vişniec, Petru Cimpoeşu, Mircea Eliade, Dan Lungu, Claudiu Komartin, Elena Vlădăreanu, Simona Popescu, Ioan Es. Pop, Max Blecher and others.

The golden age of the right and the answer of the left in Romania

Bucharest (photo: Pixabay, CC0)

Eniko Vincze

This article was published on Baricada România on 12th December 2020.

As commenters have noted in recent days, the attractiveness of the AUR party (which is an abbreviaure of The Aliiance for Union of Romanians as well as means Gold) is based on a discursive mix that has the potential to mobilize various social categories. Because of this diversity, many people can find a message on the AUR agenda that might match their overwhelming feelings (including, as Cornel Ban pointed out in his article for FEPS – Foundation for European Progressive Studies: anti-vaccinists, football hooligans, Holocaust deniers, anti-Hungarian ultranationalists, the military, pious Christians and believers in New Age medicine).

Behind the diffused rhetoric shaped by the discursive mixture mentioned above, there is also an ideological amalgam that has the potential to attract people from different backgrounds, even from different social classes. At first glance, this mixture combines – on the one hand – cultural conservatism fueled by opposition to political correctness and revengeful hatred of all kinds of identity policies, and on the other hand populism based on the sense of dignity that people want to regain it from the various humiliations suffered by all major political parties (both old and new). Precisely for this reason, like any manifestation of nationalism, the AUR ideology has the potential to build a diffuse sense of belonging that transcends various social boundaries (age, profession, class). And, in addition, it has the potential to justify the strengthening of the police state and militarization, phenomena that we have seen manifesting itself more and more strongly in 2020…

The Cluj Declaration

The Cluj Napoca protests of 2014, where the Cluj Declaration was approved of (source: YouTube)

The new Romanian government of the right forces – the National Liberal Party, the Alliance 2020 (Save Romania Union and Plus) and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romanians declared in its programme willingness to allocate 6% of GDP for health, 6% of GDP for education and 1% of GDP for research. These three promises copy important points from the Cluj Declaration – a document of the Romanian civil society, accepted in November 2014 on the central square in Cluj-Napoca as part of the protests that preceded the election of Klaus Iohannis in his first term as a president. Mihai Goţiu, then coordinator of the site “Clean Romania”, declared before this blog in 2016 that the Cluj Declaration remains a programme of the civil society and it is being advanced by the NGO sector. The blog “The Bridge of Friendshp” shares with you an English-language translation of this document, which was originally published at Clean Romania – a site of Romanian civil society:

Virtual bourgeois tour of Rousse

Alexandrovska Street has preserved to a large extent its architectural image from the beginnin of the XXth century (source: Vladimir Mitev)

On 11 November 2020 the founder of the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” Vladimir Mitev was the guide for a virtual tour of the center of the city of Rousse. The tour took place through photos and comments for the public of the Danish organisation “Democracy in Europe”, which deals with political education and debates on Europe. Vladimir Mitev is part of the team of the Ruse Summer Free Tour. 

I grew up with Romanian dance hits

Screenshot from the video Jokery by Akcent (source: YouTube)

Matey Matev

Matey Matev has never studied Romanian language. But since his school years, he has been captivated by Romanian music. Every summer, when he was a student in the United States, the Netherlands and other European countries, he spent at least a week traveling around Romania. In his relations with Romanians and Romanian music, there are both moments full of positive emotion and disappointment. As in any true love. Matey shared with the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” some Romanian bands and songs that make his life richer and happier.

Romania: Social Democrats won elections unexpectedly. People didn’t want privatization

The Romanian voter sent a signal that the Romanian right-wing parties are disconnected from the masses (source: Pixabay, CC0)

Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat

This article was published on December 7, 2020 on the Polish website Strajk.eu. On December 8, 2020, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban resigned, and the government was taken over by the minister of defense, general Nicolae Ciuca. Until now, Ciuca was an extremely influential minister on whom many decisions depended. If he continues to be the prime minister of the future government, it will probably be a sign that Bucharest is preparing for Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House, when Romania and Bulgaria are expected to be at the forefront of US efforts to contain Russia and perhaps Turkey.

The activity of Romanian social democrats resembles Law and Justice Party in many respects: it is a party politically representing smaller urban centers or rural areas rather than metropolises and people who have lost as a result of transition, rather than the middle class. It is usual for PSD to take a rather conservative position. During its last rule in 2016-2019, the PSD introduced, inter alia, an increase in pensions. However, the party was weakened by corruption scandals; at the end of 2019, it had to hand over power to the pro-European National Liberal Party (PNL), while PSD’s leader, Liviu Dragnea, was sentenced in the spring of 2019 to prison for abuses (he had committed them several years earlier as a prefect in the Teleorman region).