Bulgarian elite had to invent, elaborate and underpin a myth of common ancestry and made this pedigree putative for the sense of ethnic identification.


Nevertheless, during the Stambolov’s government some different interpretations appeared about the Bulgarian “blood” and the qualities and temper that this “blood” had determined. Although still isolated and not turning into an elaborated and coherent discourse about the Bulgarian “ancestors” they marked crucial and fundamental rupture with the prevailing paradigm of the “pure Bulgarian blood” imagined as a “Slavic one” within the Bulgarian nineteenth century context.


Moreover, in that period some Bulgarian politicians and journalists tried to find an escape from the idea of Slavicdom. In this regard they evoked the origin of Asparuh's Bulgars and underlined it with its different versions – Tartar,56 Fin, or Turkic.57 This was often made with typical racial language that spoke about Bulgarian “talent”, “innate instinct”, and “gift” that were depicted as qualities inherited by “our ancestors” represented as Asparuh’s Bulgars.In this context it was confessed that “in our veins there is certain Tartar blood” and this “blood” was depicted as a determinant of the military qualities of the Bulgarians in comparision with the Serbs.58.

In fact, the other elements of Bulgarian descent coming from Old Bulgars were seen as something that situated contemporary Bulgarians higher than the “Pure Slavs” as were regarded Poles and Serbs.

Click the link:

HONEST BULGAR

Unfortunately this is only a short version of the initial version I read when I made the quotes.