The Alphabet of Discord

Nationalism feeds on national myths (Đerić 2005), on ideas about a supposed historical continuity of identity that has remained unchanged in its essence over the centuries despite foreign domination and the multiple influences to which it has been exposed. The Balkan countries have invested a great deal in the (re)construction of specific narratives of their national history: no country in the region is an exception. National myths are largely tied to historical figures of great “mythopoetic” importance and to cultural elements of the greatest possible prestige, often claimed by several nations, in an exclusivist logic that is a fundamental feature of nationalism itself. In this context, it easily follows that the very idea of minority is problematic, as it can jeopardize the history and image of the nation as it has been propagated and conveyed since the beginning of the country’s new post-imperial (or post-socialist) history.1

In this context, the decline of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires can be put in relation with the development of the ideal of the nation-state in Western Europe, compared to which these state entities appeared anachronistic. Indeed, the “heterogeneous” legacy of the post-imperial states was largely incompatible with the ethno-linguistic model of the nation-state, as they were multiethnic, multi-linguistic and often even multi-confessional territories (Dogo 1999: 10-15). The only type of identity that took its place was instead a nationalism based on the centralizing model of national unification of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, in which the diversity of identities found no room for legitimization (Hobsbawm 1997: 16).

1.2 The role of writing and of the “Other” in the national discourse

In the process of “positive identification” taking place in the countries of the region, consisting in selecting and highlighting all those cultural features that are perceived as prestigious and characteristic of the national community, the alphabet has proved to be a fundamental element. This is by virtue of the prestige it embodies in the eyes of an internal public that recognizes in it a history of continuity and distinction. Identification, however, is not possible without its negative aspect: the process of national self-definition has always been a process of differentiation from other nations, especially neighboring ones. In this respect, it is particularly relevant to analyze the attitudes propagated by national rhetoric towards the writing systems of the “Others.” Indeed, in order to create its own identity, each nation had to create its “antitype” from which to distinguish itself, since it is not enough to affirm who one is; it is equally important to define who one is not (Bugarski, 2009b: 106).

The relevance of the self-representational dynamics goes far beyond individual, social or cultural practices and acquires power at the political level, as these practices influence decision-making processes, the formation of public opinion, and hence the orientation of political parties themselves. Since nationalism presents itself as a “relational” ideology (Ivanov 2007: 2), it must be understood through the analysis of its context in the broadest sense, externally and internally, synchronically and diachronically. Discourses of identity in the region are still shaped by a specific notion of “foreignness” and, consequently, national rhetoric about the autochthonous writing systems has an impact on the construction of the image of the Other and on the role attributed to it as a possible obstacle in achieving a homogeneous vision of the nation. This factor also explains the interest in focusing on the search for origins, i.e. the ethnogenesis of the national people (Todorova 1996: 71), exploring the national past and distinguishing it as much as possible from that of the Other by insisting on certain features of symbolic differentiation.

The national writing tradition is sometimes used as genealogical “proof” when affirming the antiquity and continuity of the nation: historical facts that might undermine these ideals are thus downplayed or made part of a precise rhetoric of salvation, in a kind of teleological vision according to which the nation continued to fortify itself under the foreign yoke. Unsurprisingly, in the Balkan context, the countries that tend to glorify their linguistic and writing heritage are the same ones that somehow try to hide their contradictory relationship with part of their history, especially their minority communities. In the post-socialist context, EU candidate countries such as Croatia and Bulgaria were strongly pressured to adopt “Western” standards of multiculturalism and minority rights (Kymlicka 2002: 2-3). The interesting fact is that the history of these countries was permeated by conditions of multilingualism, multigraphism and the coexistence of different ethnicities and religions: certainly, the historical interreligious and intercultural experience of Balkan countries like Bulgaria and Croatia is much more remarkable than that of more “mono-ethnic” and religiously homogeneous states like France or others in Western Europe.

Nationalism is certainly a phenomenon determined and shaped by political, economic and social factors, but it would be naive to overlook another fundamental factor, namely its social psychological component (Druckman 1994: 44): in fact, it is also experienced concretely and reiterated metaphorically on many occasions. This means that the individual is also involved in practices of weaving the symbolic imagery associated with collective identity. The nation is hence shaped by the interaction between different levels of power, in a kind of continuous negotiation between the discourses of elites and the responses of the majority, as well as the possible reappropriations of the former by a minority (see Smith 2009: 19). Individuals in a given national community carry and maintain feelings, beliefs and attitudes towards their own nation: these subjective factors in turn influence the value they ascribe to other nations, which may be seen as more or less related and close to their own, or even as threatening actors, or as enemies.

The emotional, social psychological aspects of nationalism largely explain the emergence of stereotypes, which are understood as widespread and shared representations of self and other, and are functional for the maintenance of a certain identitarian “status quo” (Druckman 1994: 50). Often, the group perceived as different from the majority remains trapped in a fixed, even anachronistic representational category; in the Balkans, we find many examples of the use of labels referring to the prejudices and conceptual categories of the past: the adjective “Turkish” as pejorative (cf. Jezernik 2010), “Chetnik” or “Ustasha,” etc. This process is linked to continuous practices of “re-actualization” of specific values from a more or less distant past, which are functional to the construction and maintenance of the national image. With regard to understanding this phenomenon, it is particularly relevant to analyze the experience of a nation on a diachronic level and to look for analogies or differences in relation to situations from another, more or less distant, temporal context.

1.3 Methodological considerations: sources and approaches

Since this book focuses on issues of ideology and writing systems in the context of national identity construction, I intend to treat a number of different and heterogeneous textualities as objects of analysis. Although most of the examples I refer to are texts published by scholars and intellectuals who exercised some authority in the cultural discourse of their time, excerpts from literary works, as well as more widely disseminated media in the form of journalistic articles, are also considered. In addition, important official legal documents, state decrees, constitutional laws, and, albeit in a minimal way, the public space of “inscription,” in the form of the “linguistic landscape” of official public signage, are taken into account.

My assumption is that the circulation of discourses relating to writing systems takes place at three quite distinct levels of operativity. The first is embodied by the primary source, that is, the official and bureaucratic structure that produces laws and public declarations on matters of writing, and is therefore the most original level and the one closest to the source of ideology, that is, power. At the second level, that of cultural dissemination, to which most of this book is devoted, we find the texts and monuments produced by exponents of the cultural intelligentsia and by public and cultural institutions: academies of science and language, eminent writers and artists, and to some extent the media. It is extremely useful to examine the role of these actors in proposing a particular image of the nation that is consistent (or not) with that of the official rhetoric. Finally, the third level coincides with the socio-anthropological dimension, which refers to the attitudes cultivated by the wider public towards the national discourse, implying a possibility of re-appropriation that is to some extent subjective.

In this book there are only very brief references to the properly subjective aspect of the question, while much more space is devoted to examining the role of popular culture in propagating certain identity messages associated with the alphabet, that is, the question of the transformation of discourse from official to popular. This component of the analysis is considered fundamental in demonstrating how the so-called “operative level” (Malešević 2002: 74-75) of ideology is propagated through a much more effective and direct discourse and language than the primary, official one. Therefore, the level of ordinary and (seemingly) spontaneous practice, a context that might seem detached from the first two, actually represents the most obvious and evident reflection of the penetration of official discourse into the daily life of large segments of the population (Malešević 2013: 120-154).

The main inspiration for the development of this research was provided by the illuminating insights offered by the field of the anthropology of writing as practiced by its most eminent representative, Giorgio Raimondo Cardona (1943-1988).2 This branch of anthropology is the one that has so far paid more attention than any other to the symbolic, cultural and ideological aspect of writing systems (especially in: Cardona 1982, 1986, 2009 [1981], 2009a). It assumes that writing systems represent much more than a simple representation of sounds, bearing a fundamental symbolic dimension that is often underestimated, and which enables them to “emancipate themselves” from their linguistic context.3

Writing is understood as both a cultural and a social practice: written texts are central to culture conceived in the broad sense, which in turn is closely linked to society (Cardona 2009a: 64ff). The alphabet also proves to be a privileged site of symbolic production, becoming an effective means of reminding people who they are at the national collective level: in the Bulgarian and Croatian cases, as we shall see, this is fully expressed and linked to modern ideologies of state legitimacy. In the dissemination of identitarian rhetoric, the symbolic aspect of the alphabet plays an important role, stimulating national consciousness and internal cohesion through the use of elements such as writing, which is conceived as an “identity and symbolic marker” (cf. Malešević 2004: 26). Intellectuals, legitimized by the political sphere (cf. Smith 2009: 84-86), can indeed make certain textualities and messages decisive in propagating certain forms of ideologies: in the cases analyzed in this book, they correspond to “script ideologies.”

To understand how writing and written texts are produced and used by different actors in different contexts, we need to examine the values, beliefs and behaviors associated with different forms of writing (Barton & Papen 2010: 9).4 For this reason, an important focus is placed on those who hold power over writing culture and on the ways in which they engage in broader identity practices by perpetuating specific national ideological discourses and visions about the nature of writing in a certain alphabet. Writing is linked to the ethnic question in a variety of ways and represents a space through which particular symbols are spread. Often, the “autochthonous” writing system represents one of these symbols and hence becomes doubly crucial in the so-called process of the “symbolic cultivation” of identity (Smith 2009: 48-49). The written word also determines the awareness of past times and is thus seen as equivalent to history, to the collective memory of society (cf. Assman 2011).

Writing has been skillfully selected and brought into the collective consciousness through a narrative in which the motifs of historical memory are often transformed into ideological elements aimed at legitimizing the existence of a specific national identity as well as a kind of “political imagination” (see again Assman 2011: 111 ff.). Memory itself is exercised on a collective level through a process of symbolic cultivation; in the cases we will analyze, this corresponds to a “rhetoric of the alphabet” that feeds the collective consciousness and promotes the internal cohesion of the national community. In fact, the Bulgarians, but often also the Croats, claim to have become historically a nation only after the creation or adoption of their alphabet. The national historiographies of the countries of the region have thus contributed to revive a particular version of their history, focusing on very ancient times and making them the metaphor of a kind of exemplary “golden age” to be invoked in the era of national “rebirth” (Mishkova 2015: 271).

When dealing with issues related to writing systems, it is not possible to disentangle the latter from their most natural context, that of the language they convey. However, as has been pointed out (Sebba 2009: 35), sociolinguistics has not paid special attention to writing systems so far,5 even though “writing systems have obvious connections with subjects of great sociolinguistic interest, like identity and ethnicity” (ibid.). As far as the sociolinguistic aspect of alphabets in the Balkans is concerned, scholars such as Ranko Bugarski (1997) and Robert D. Greenberg (2004) are important exceptions; they have shown the importance of issues of language and the alphabet in collective representations in the years before the collapse of Yugoslavia, during the conflict, and, later, in the process of the affirmation of the new nation-states that emerged from the war.

1.4 Semiotic and relational aspects of alphabets and nationalism

If we intend to consider writing systems as symbols of ethnic (and/or national) identity, we must necessarily note that symbols do not exist in themselves: rather, they represent “meanings” according to specific needs and intentions and for a particular audience. Culture, conceived in the form of “webs of significance” (Geertz 1988: 11 [1973]), reveals itself in its essentially semiotic nature. Consequently, it can only be understood through an interpretive analysis that searches for the meanings it expresses for those who “inhabit” it. By applying this theory of a semiotic nature to the phenomena of the ideologization of alphabets, I attempt to understand the meaning that the various writing systems embody for their respective societies. Ideology itself, conceived according to the Geertzian theory, is but one cultural system with its own specific language to analyze.

Hence, in order to reconstruct a “framework of meaning” (in the semiotic sense; see Lotman 1985) for the societies in question, I insist on the need to take into account a plurality of contexts: national, socio-cultural, political (and geopolitical), international, as well as minority and even individual ones. The meaning of a given phenomenon can be deduced from the way it is positioned “systemically” (cf. Bateson 1977 [1972]) in relation to other semiotic objects: the (symbolic) meaning of certain events, phenomena and cultural elements thus corresponds to the position they occupy in the structure of their societies.

In this process, it should be noted how the historiographies of the Balkans turn out to be “still predominantly traditionalist and nationalist” (Daskalov & Vezenkov 2015: 1), perpetuating narratives that tend to overlook the contribution and role of neighboring countries in their history and cultural development, in a perspective we might define as “anti-contextual.” For this reason, I have attempted to take a completely opposite perspective in this work, trying to combine as many elements as possible in an overall view to define the complex historical and cultural context of interest.

Indeed, I believe that on a methodological level it is essential to approach the history of Southeast Europe from a relational point of view, since much of this territory has followed a common historical pattern of development. It would be unnatural and counterproductive to isolate particular countries, nations or ethnic groups in the process of analysis: what is needed, therefore, is a contextual or “ecological” approach (cf. Barth 1969: 19), which can also bring advantages when applied at the linguistic level.6 As has been remarked: “[i]t is only possible to understand the South Slav lands by paying attention to the context within which they are situated. The trajectory of their development needs to be explained in relation to wider processes, involving neighbouring states, the Mediterranean region, the continent of Europe as a whole and indeed the world” (Allcock 2000: 13).

1 In relation to this, it is interesting to note the following: “In fact, minority nationalism in the Balkans is perceived solely as exclusive majority nationalism in an embryonic stage” (Ivanov 2007).

2 He also developed the fields of sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistics in Italy.

3 There is also the field of the so-called “ethnography of writing,” which is closely related to the anthropology of writing. See, for example, Mancini & Turchetta 2014.

4 Certainly, even in countries using the Latin alphabet, there can be cases of disputes involving the spelling of the language. An important case is the opposition to the proposals in the 1990s concerning the modification of certain letters of the German alphabet (cf. Johnson 2005: 1-6). Furthermore, as far as Turkey is concerned, we can recall the value assumed by the three forbidden letters of the Kurdish alphabet in recent years in conjunction with the struggle for recognition of the Kurdish cultural identity in the country. Basically, it can be seen that, in a way similar to alphabetical changes, spelling reforms are not easily accepted, especially in the context of communities using highly standardized languages (cf. Gundersen 1977). However, spelling debates are generally quite different from script debates, where much more is at stake, with far more significant implications.

5 One of the most important exceptions is Fishman 1977, a collection of studies devoted to various cases of alphabetical and orthographic reforms in languages from different parts of the world.

6 For example, in the consideration of the so-called “Balkan Sprachbund.”

SECTION I ALPHABETIC DISPUTES OF THE 1920s AND 1930s IN BULGARIA

2. THE RECEPTION OF THE ABECEDAR PRIMER (1925) IN BULGARIA

2.1 Issues related to the adoption of new writing systems

In the aftermath of the First World War and of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, the Balkans still stood out as a region characterized by high levels of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and “graphic” diversity. If we consider the number of scripts present in the peninsula at that time, we find almost ten different writing systems in use: Serbian and Bulgarian Cyrillic, Greek, Latin, bosančica, Arabic characters modified to write the Turkish, Bosnian, Albanian and Greek languages, traces of the Glagolitic alphabet, Hebrew characters to write the Judeo-Spanish language and Yiddish, and Armenian characters used by the Armenian minorities (cf. Zakhos-Papazahariou 1972: 146, Parmeggiani Dri 2004: 12). This phenomenon was not to be found in any region of Western Europe but was comparable to the situation in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe and must therefore be viewed as a feature of a highly diverse post-imperial world, for whose comprehension the conceptual tools derived from the history of the Western world reveal themselves often insufficient (Barkery 1997: 100).

The composite cultural and linguistic character of the region has been considered by some as an obstacle to harmonious development and progress (May 2013: 24). The nineteenth-century liberal John Stuart Mill, for example, stated in 1861 that “[f]ree institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities (…) especially if they read and speak different languages (...) The boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities” (cit. in Edwards 2009: 189). Mill’s opinion appears to have been largely undermined by a Western Eurocentric vision, based on a concept of the nation-state that has become more and more dominant since the 19th century. It could also be interpreted as the symptom of a sort of “orientophobia”1 which applies reductionist criteria to the idea of civilization and to a certain extent fulfills the interests of domination. In fact, it is much easier to exercise political or even just “conceptual” control over a part of the world when it presents itself as linguistically, ethnically and confessionally homogeneous, and not jeopardized, as in the Balkans, by “[s]cores of tongues, dialects and religions,” which determined a kind of “handicap of heterogeneity,” as one observer affirmed (Roucek cit. in Bardos 2013: 27).

Unfortunately, the influence exerted on the socio-political development of the Balkan countries by this view of heterogeneity as an unwelcome “imperial remnant,” capable of hindering the implementation of modern state structures, was immense (see, for example, Todorova 1996: 45-77). The peoples of the region, in fact, “internalized not only the geopolitical split between Western and Eastern Europe, but also the split between Europe and the Orient” (Bjelić 2011: 12). Becoming Westerners implied adopting both the values of the West and the stereotypes it nurtures of the East (ibid., 14). Predictably, this attitude produced various phenomena of “identity short-circuiting,” characterized by persistent internal negations, suppressions and conflicts.

In this respect, it is interesting to note the influence of these Western-influenced concepts of identity on the development of alphabet ideologies. A paradigmatic case is that of Romania and its transition to the Latin alphabet after centuries of using the Cyrillic alphabet in the second half of the nineteenth century (cf. Lörinzci 1982). This was indeed a deliberate act of “rapprochement” with the European and Western world, probably also dictated by the hope of gaining important cultural advantages, and a more favorable recognition on the part of the “Significant Others”2 of the West.

In this context, consideration of the proposals to adopt alternative writing systems is an essential part of the analysis of alphabet ideologies. With regard to the languages of Southeast Europe, between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the adoption of new writing systems played a major role in the history and development of many states in the region, such as Romania (in the 1860s), Albania (1909) and Turkey (1928). The affirmation of a certain relationship of independence between writing and language (Wellish 1978: 41-44) set an important and momentous precedent: a language that had appeared in a particular alphabet could begin to be written at any time using another writing system, one that definitively replaced the previous one.

Against this background, the publication in 1925 of the so-called Abecedar, a didactic text intended for the Slavic-speaking population of Aegean Macedonia, led to a lively dispute involving Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks, as well as members of the League of Nations. At the heart of the controversy was the fact that the text had been written in Latin rather than Cyrillic characters. The dispute over the Abecedar was the first opportunity in independent Bulgaria to discuss the question of whether or not to accept an alternative writing system for the national language. In this country, the condemnation of the Latin alphabet was accompanied by a passionate defense of Cyrillic. The testimonies of authoritative Bulgarian scholars of the time, such as Ivan Shishmanov and Lyubomir Miletich, who actively participated in the debate on the Abecedar, prove that the Cyrillic alphabet was seen by Bulgarian society as an indispensable element of the national identity, playing a pre-eminent role in the collective self-representation practices of the post-war and post-imperial (Ottoman) period. The traditional writing system, which joined the delicate political debate related to the “Macedonian question,” was explicitly made part of a discourse about the country’s national and historical identity, imbued with strong symbolic cultural contents and values.