In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7. Mentalities If one were to agree with Jacques Le Goff that “mentality is the story of tardiness in history,”90 then the Bulgarian Social Democrats were up against a mental world that proved to be rather resilient. They not only had to face the fact that what they understood capitalism to be was not developing at the expected rate. They had to cope with the even more painful realization that the parts of the population exposed to it stuck to their own pre-capitalistic understanding of professional ethos, social status and social harmony. In fact, the Bulgarian lands within the Ottoman dominion had experienced a different kind of economic growth from approximately the 1820s to the 1880s. The proto-industrial development of artisan manufacture producing primarily woolen cloth, braid, shoes and ironware for the Ottoman market and the Sultans’s new standing army had provided an impetus for the growth and expansion of the local manufacturing industry base on a much greater scale than in the rest of the Balkan lands.91 This process was interrupted with the detachment of Bulgaria from the Ottoman economic and jurisdictional realm after the liberation. As regards the conditions prevalent in the beginning of the 1890s, Bozveliev provides a telling testimony: At that time there were very few factory workers, because the factories could be counted in the fingers of a hand … And the hired craftsmen— the apprentices—they lived with their own guild psychology [esnafska psikhologiia ], carrying still the strong hope and conviction that their situation was temporary, transitional and that as soon as they learned their trade, they would become independent masters. In almost all of them simmered the dream of an independent shop or workshop with one or two apprentices around them. Despite the fact that in the majority of the cases this dream was smashed by the realities of life, the attempts to move in this direction did not cease. This was also the reason why whenever some kind of working association emerged, it soon collapsed, since the most proliferating workers in this organization, who were simultaneously also its leaders, were the first ones to dissert it in order to try their chances with an independent livelihood.92 202 IV. Caught up in the Contradictions of Modernity The workers in this [field of] production [i.e., the crafts] were still far removed from the psychology of the factory workers. They lived with the dream of becoming independent one day, a condition which some of them actually achieved. They considered their hired labor as something transitional, a temporal condition. As regards their master [gospodar], who worked alongside them, they did not look at him as an enemy or an exploiter, but as a teacher, as a master workman [maistor], who would “give them the profession, which meant bread in their hands.” Due to this labor psychology there were no big conflicts between master workman and worker. The centuries-old tradition in the handcrafts had made the worker modest, compliant, and ready for an easy agreement. The worker always thought that as an independent master workman of tomorrow, he would find himself in the same situation as his “master” of today, and he himself would have conflicts with the workers. Class-consciousness among workers could hardly develop under such conditions, because a clear demarcation line between master and hired laborer did not yet exist.93 The socialist discourse emphasized the necessity for frugality, prudence and fairness. Its appeal rested on a moral imperative for justice. To speak of justice in a socialist discourse was stating the obvious, of course. The sense and contents, however, of this morality tale were not solemnly created by the Socialists. Rather, they appropriated a social sense of justice, as already existing mentality, as a “habitus,” integrating and harmonizing it with the socialist value system. In other words, the Socialists did not have to construct a feeling of injustice. This feeling was already present and related to changes in the social structure, which were perceived as destroying the “harmony” and the “equality” of a previous era. Here the rhetoric of the Socialists best demonstrated its populist qualities. It was particularly manifested in issues related to excessive privileges of state employees and the topic of unequal taxation . The reduction of the salaries of civil servants and the abolition of the law that guaranteed civil servants state pensions were among the principal socialist demands. As Gabrovski, in his speech in the 9th Regular National Assembly, explained: This law is...

Share