The Political Economy of Forgetfulness

Near Samokov, a small Bulgarian city, thousands of people stand in front of a “Roman” fortress. Some of them are watching an historical reenactment of the battle between Romans and Huns, or trying out a bow like allegedly protobulgarians did. Some of them are lighting a candle in the nearby Orthodox Church. Among the crowd we can see the minister of Culture and the city council. Everybody’s here to see Tzari Mali Grad – a fictional name that a year ago nobody knew. Now this postmodern roman-protobulgarian-christian attraction is the most popular Bulgarian touristic site with a half million visitors annually. People express gratitude to the businessman who built this place from scratch. In the same time, at “Tzar Boris III” street, (before the fall of socialism the street was named after the Bulgarian communist Boris Hadhzisotirov) underneath a billboard advertising sausages, stands the memorial of Michail Dashin. He was one of the leaders of the Samokov Commune – the first commune оn the Balkans. Further down the street, at the library, the commune book-stock is marginalized and the former Museum of the Commune is reorganized into a children’s library. The museum’s director admitted “the commune is no longer fashionable” and this necessitates the closure of expositions dedicated to it. In this paper I will look into the politics of forgetting by focusing on the displacement of the memory of the commune with the neo-medieval business attraction of Tzari Mali Grad and its invention of a fictional past.