Magazine / Society / Romania and Bulgaria / Essay | 07/02/2007

Autistic Neighbours

A bridge over the Danube links the neighbours of Romania and Bulgaria, yet the two countries seem to have little in common. Why do the two nations lead a separate existence?

"Every nation”, writes cultural philosopher Mircea Vulcanescu in the Introduction to his essay "The Romanian Dimension of Being”, "has its own physiognomy and its particular point of view from which it observes the world and reflects it to others. Every nation creates for itself a picture of the world and the human condition as a function of the dimension through which existence manifests itself to that nation.”

The Danube divides Romania and Bulgaria for 500 kilometres, yet the border river is traversed by only a single bridge.
Photo: Photocase.com

And in the same way ever European nation believes it has at least one word that can never be properly translated. In Romanian this word is "dor”. It is not quite the same thing as "yearning”. An untranslatable word is one that to some extent only applies to native users of it. It gives them a collective secret. The word itself becomes an emblem of originality.

In the short story "The Tower of Babel” by the Hungarian author Dezsö Kosztolanyi, the central character, Kornel Esti, spends 24 hours in Bulgaria, or to be more precise in the sleeping car of a train to Istanbul. He does not speak a word of Bulgarian, apart from an expression meaning "yes”, and yet he manages to spend half the night in conversation with the Bulgarian conductor by making the latter talk and continually prompting him to continue by uttering the Bulgarian expression for "yes” at regular intervals. Nothing more. He does not know what the Bulgarian is telling him, although he occasionally has a sense that he has caught a meaning. Whereas his interlocutor feels constantly endorsed by the repeated "yes”, he himself basically never knows what the man thinks of him.

This helpful yet misleading word "da” – that is, "yes” – is something Romanians and Bulgarians have in common. Apart from this the two languages have very little to do with each other. They are even written in different scripts: Romanian in Latin letters and Bulgarian in Cyrillic. However, these two nations each have a clear picture of the other. They may be neighbours, although divided by the Danube, but they have never sought to turn this neighbourhood into anything of particular use.

This non-reference to one another can be observed in the river ports on opposite banks of the Danube. Each country manages navigation for itself. Vidin to the right, Calafat to the left, Nicopol to the right, Turnu Magurele to the left, Svishtov to the right, Zimnicea to the left, Ruse to the right, Giurgiu to the left, Tutrakan to the right, Oltenita to the left, Silistra to the right, Calarasi to the left. Nobody needs the port on the other side; nobody uses it. And so the entire logistics are duplicated. In the days of communism, which fostered a rhetoric of "fraternity”, the distinction between these two economies was particularly evident. The river frontier was so far removed from the public focus that Bulgaria's biggest penal camp for political offenders was established on an island near Belene. This was the notorious "Island of Forgotten Souls”.

The Danube is a highly symbolic river. For Bulgarians Bulgaria begins at the Danube. For Romanians the Balkans begin at the Danube. Romania considers itself to lie on the eastern periphery of Central Europe. Bulgaria sees itself as a Balkan heartland. It is probably the only country where the word "Balkans” bears nothing but positive connotations and is hence used in official terminology. In Bulgaria the Balkans are an acceptable logo. Romania, on the other hand, is constantly at pains not to be associated with the Balkans at all, as if this could jeopardise its status as a part of Europe. And yet the country has many cultural links with the Balkans, not least in its folklore and cuisine, but above all through the Orthodox religion declared in Byzantium and its mental substrate. Romania's exceptional status is not merely geographic on the two flanks of the Carpathian Mountains – which, as everyone knows, form the eastern border of Central Europe – but also decidedly cultural. In debates about EU membership, Romanian pundits in Brussels believed there was a "Calvinist conspiracy” afoot.

Romania is the only country in south-east Europe to speak a Latin language and the only country under Roman influence to be Christianised by the Eastern Church. In this respect, journalist clichés notwithstanding, it really is a country between East and West, at once mélange and hysteria. Or, as the uncompromising philosopher Emil Cioran put it: "Who needs leprosy when the Fate that roused you to life also placed you in Wallachia?”

In spite of all these cultural ties Romanians primarily regard the Balkans as a threat. The dangers of turkocracy, its latter-day consequences or perhaps simply its negative image are seen lurking at every corner. Writer Vesna Goldsworthy considers the Balkans to be an object of "imaginative colonisation” by the West. Although the Romanian principalities fell within the Osman sphere of influence for many centuries, they did enjoy a special status as self-administered territories required to pay tribute, unlike Balkan countries such as Bulgaria that were administered directly by the Osman Empire.

Even today contacts between Romania and Bulgaria are sparse. There is still only one bridge joining the two countries across the Danube, celebrated in former times as the "Bridge of Friendship” by the Stalinists. It leads from Russe to Giurgiu, and all the goods and passengers travelling on the East Balkan route between Istanbul and Budapest are obliged to pass this way, if we discount the ferries that have plied the Lower Danube since time immemorial. A second bridge has been proposed, but this is above all a European project, and the interest expressed by the two countries directly affected by its construction has proven strikingly meagre.

While few words are lost between the two countries, the competition between them is voluble. Romania is twice the size of Bulgaria and its population is two-and-a-half times as large, and it watches jealously to ensure that Bulgaria does not overtake it in any field whatsoever. Bulgaria, for its part, is eager to rank ahead of the Romanians on anything at all: growth rates, tourist statistics. The headline was almost triumphal in a major Bucharest daily last May, following the publication of a subdued report from Brussels on the accession of the two countries to the European Union in January 2007: "Romania loses with a card from Bulgaria's hand,” it crowed.

Both countries are keen to be recognised by the centre of Europe, the EU. Both have been proud members of NATO since 2004 as well as obedient friends of the United States and its foreign policy. This is typical competitive behaviour on the periphery, vying with each other without actually entering into a competition. The rivalry occasionally takes a comic turn, especially as there are hardly any strains on the relationship, either historical or contemporary. The territorial issue over South Dobrudzha, which rumbled on until the 1940s, was resolved by history. This barren, barely populated terrain carries no symbolism in the annals. In Romania it was officially known as Cadrilater, the square, a term unlikely to fire emotions.

The political legacy which these two countries have carried forward from past centuries is a burden and experienced as such. There was Osman and Soviet rule and between them, from the late 19th century until Sovietisation, an attempt to develop a European order. Those decades, especially the inter-war period from 1918 to 1945, are cited as the point of departure for development today. If Osman and Soviet rule are seen as reasons for stagnation, the age of the nation-state is regarded as the rebirth of the nation in the Modern European spirit, a new dawn. There is a tendency in both countries to glorify the era of the nation-state, happily forgetting that integration into the European market began late and was never fully implemented. Large sections of society remain under the influence of agrarian traditions and adjustment to the Modern age was too frenzied for an urban middle class to take shape. The factors underlying lethargy and corruption cannot all be ascribed to the anti-European stance of Osman rulers or Stalinist terror. Much is due to the pace of top-down modernisation in the years of the nation-state. This also contributed to the power of the state bureaucracy and a spurious formation of elites. Forthcoming membership of the European Union is seen as a second stab at entering the Modern era. NATO and the EU provide not just the framework for this; they should, rather, offer the guarantee that no more empires will impose their blockade on self-defined aspirations.

There is little interest, on the other hand, in digging up the totalitarian past. The communist system was strikingly well anchored in both countries, by the repression under Stalinism, by collaboration and above all its fusion with nationalist rhetoric. Attitudes to the Soviet Union, however, were very different. Whereas Romanian nationalism, for reasons of cultural history, was anti-Soviet and anti-Russian in posture, its Bulgarian counterpart was anti-Turkish, and levelled above all against the large Turkish minority, so much so that in 1986 people were forced to take Bulgarian versions of their own name and large numbers were driven out of the country in the late eighties. A powerful Turk means a wretched Bulgarian, says a proverb.

In both countries the domestic nomenclatura weathered the deep crisis in so-called "real” socialism by absorbing nationalism. While Romania turned maverick early – and in spectacular fashion in 1968 by condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia - Bulgaria remained intensely loyal, and by comparison with other countries of Eastern Europe one might say obsequious. The Romanians looked upon this neighbour as a kind of unofficial Soviet republic. Of the many rumours about Bulgaria that circulated in Romania, the most pernicious was no doubt the one about the TV channel in Sofia that broadcast in Russian. It was one of those rumours that could equally have been invented by the populace or Ceausescu's secret service, the Securitate. The worse food supplies became in Romania, the greater the need felt by the regime to warn against the Russian threat. The national communists were seeking to draw their own leverage from commonly felt emotions and grievances that had evolved over time. In the mid-eighties, however, people were so desperate that they would tell each other the latest stories about excellent provisions in Bulgaria. With a bit of luck you could sometimes pick up Bulgarian red wine or tinned fish of the Sozopol brand when in Bucharest, or even a jazz LP from Sofia. Many residents of Bucharest actually began learning Bulgarian in order to watch Bulgarian television. In the minds of Romanians at this time, the map of the country could be divided into four regions: the south-west, where you could watch Yugoslavian television, the west, where you could watch in Hungarian, the south for Bulgarian and the rest of the country which received Ceausescu TV.

Officially, ranks were cautiously closed just before the end. Both countries were unenthusiastic about Gorbachov and his perestroika. Both Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and Bulgaria's absolute ruler Todor Zhivkov rejected it, but neither spoke out against it in public. Ceausescu ignored the reforms, Zhivkov welcomed them, though not intending to follow words with deeds. Both were overtaken by events in 1989.

Will admission to the EU result in more communication between the two countries, in more interests being recognised as shared? One should have no illusions on the economic front. For the EU, too, this will be an experiment. Never have the economic output and per capita income of new members been so far removed from the EU average. It remains to be seen how these two economies, and hence their social systems, cope with adapting to the EU market. Institutional structures are still by and large rickety and some of the reforms that were needed have been forced through simply to fulfil entry conditions. However, opening up to investments from core EU countries will compensate initially for many of the problems, or at least conceal them. In social terms, the accession of these two countries raises the Roma issue again. The EU is already having to address the integration of this section of the population following the membership of Hungary and Slovakia. The problem will become larger, although not more serious, even if the telegenic nature of the theme places it in the public limelight.

In admitting these two countries the EU is taking a step across the eastern frontier of central Europe, but also creating an overland link with Greece. For these two peoples with Orthodox backgrounds, this opens the border to the Aegean and Mount Athos. The chain of monasteries from Romanian Moldavia to the Bulgarian Rila Mountains and Rozhen near Melnik will be restored to its historical endpoint, to normality. The Orthodox faith, which failed politically long ago, will regain its spiritual stage at least partially. Europe is developing its Byzantine front. Whether this reaps any rewards, and what those may be, remains an open question. By the same token the EU has reached the Black Sea and will become a regional player as an immediate neighbour of Turkey and Ukraine.

In geopolitical terms this pivot that has been laid towards Greece and the Turkish border will provoke an openness to new themes. Laying the pivot will bring the unruly Western Balkans inside the map of the European Union, with Romania and Bulgaria showcased as examples of stability to the countries there. One the other flank, the Black Sea frees the line of sight to Asia Minor and the Caucasus – new hotbeds of unrest.

Further articles on the subject » EU Enlargement / Neighbourhood Policy, » South East Europe, » Romania, » Bulgaria
More from the press review on the subject » EU Enlargement / Neighbourhood Policy, » South East Europe, » Romania, » Bulgaria