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CONCLUSION The Truth and Objectivity Question in Bulgarian Historical Scholarship In what follows, I will review the concepts of “objectivity” and “truth” in Bulgarian historical scholarship on the basis of my historiographical research and observations. As will be seen, there is a great difference between theoretical-methodological statements and historiographical practice . However, my purpose is not to blame the presumably “objective” historiography for “lack of objectivity” (especially since I do not believe in this ideal), but to see how things stand on particular issues of the “objectivity and truth” complex. Hence the account is somewhat fragmented. The question will also be posed: why were there, until recently, no relativizations of the notion of objectivity? The professionalization of historical scholarship in Bulgaria took place under predominantly German (and partly Russian) influence, imported by Bulgarian historians who studied in those countries and identified with nineteenth-century positivism.1 This explains the adoption of the term “science” (implying rigorous knowledge not unlike the natural sciences), in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon understanding of history writing, where it is part of the humanities and perceived as qualitatively different. Bulgarian “bourgeois” historians were not engaged much in reflection on philosophical and methodological issues of historical knowledge, especially as they had to urgently accumulate a corps of sources and derive facts from them from which to reconstruct the historical course of events (mostly about the state and church). More explicit are some introductory lectures, forewords, and documents of the Historical Society.2 Still, the 1 A general review of positivism in Bulgaria in Mariya Veleva, “Razvitie na istoricheskata nauka v Bŭlgariya sled Osvobozhdenieto” (Development of historical science in Bulgaria after the Liberation), in Sbornik lektsii po sleddiplomna kvalifikatsiya, vol. 6 (Sofia: Sofiiski universitet “Kliment Okhridski,” Istoricheski fakultet, 1983), 74–110, esp. 79–89. 2 See, for example, the introductory lectures of Vasil Zlatarski (at the end of the nineteenth century) in Vasil Zlatarski, Lektsionni kursove na Prof. Vasil Zlatarski (Lecture courses 320 Debating the Past signs of positivism are clearly recognizable in the understanding of historical events as interconnected in a historical “process” (evolutionism), as well as the belief in progress, in (invariable) regularities of development, and the search for determining factors (geographical, political, economic, spiritual-cultural, and psychological). Positivism is also recognizable in the concept of historical scholarship as science, the belief in rigorous methods (e.g., statistical, comparative) for deriving strict “positive” empirical knowledge (based on “facts” and experience, not speculation), the search for cause-effect relations between the phenomena (causality, the “genetic” method), and the notion of historical fact as a thing-like entity. Crowning all this is the idea of “objective truth” to be achieved through correct application of the methodological procedures, but also as a professional and ethical restraint from subjectiveness and bias in assessing the facts and, in a more extreme version, from judgments in general. Bulgarian “bourgeois” historians can be divided into two schools according to education, orientation of research, or the preferred “factors” of historical development. These are the “state-and-law” school (e.g., Vasil Zlatarski and Petŭr Nikov) and the “cultural-historical” school (e.g., Ivan Shishmanov, Boyan Penev, and Mikhail Arnaudov).3 Among their recognized virtues were pedantic attention to the sources and their critical assessment and comparison, conscientious reconstruction of facts, and connecting the facts in historical phenomena and processes. The historians of the second and third generation (in the 1920s and 1930s) were influenced by neo-Kantianism as a later and more sophisticated reflection on the preconditions and the methods of historical knowledge. Most elaborate and sophisticated is the understanding of historical knowledge of the Russian émigré Petr Bicilli (1879–1953), who remained in Bulgaria until the end of his life, working as a professor at Sofia University. Especially sophisticated and far beyond positivism are his ideas on the historiographical synthesis and the possible viewpoints in reconstructing the historical process, and the role of the consciousness of the historian and of his times.4 Closely connected with the positivist concept of historical knowledge as “science” is the notion of its “objectivity” and “truth.” The idea (and of Prof. Vasil Zlatarski), vol. 1 (Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Okhridski,” 1999), 46–60, 65–72. Also the presentation of positivism in Petŭr Nikov, Zadachata na dneshnata bŭlgarska istoriografiya. Vstŭpitelna lektsiya, 25 oktomvri, 1920 (The task of today’s Bulgarian historiography. Introductory lecture, October 25, 1920) (Sofia, 1922). 3 Mariya Veleva, “Razvitie na istoricheskata.” 4 Petr Bicilli, Ochertsi vŭrkhu teoriyata na...

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