How is Bulgarian identity preserved in multicultural environment of South Slavs

Bulgarians living in Croatia are a small but close-knit community. They insist that Bulgarian culture and language be part of the lives of the younger generations, regardless of whether they grow up in entirely Bulgarian families or are from mixed marriages. This is what Iglika Kasabova, head of the Bulgarian Sunday School "Ivan Vazov" in Zagreb, says. During the current school year, 38 children are studying there.

"The school serves not only Croatia, but also the region. In addition to the capital Zagreb, we also have children from the coastal part of Croatia - the cities of Šibenik, Split, Dubrovnik, Rijeka, as well as from Ljubljana in Slovenia and Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina."

The main core of the Bulgarian community in Croatia is made up of the descendants of the so-called old emigrants, most of them gardeners. The situation for the first emigrants from Bulgaria was such that they could not actively practice their language – to speak Bulgarian and write in Cyrillic. However, they still have Bulgarian self-awareness and are extremely active in community events.

"People from the more recent immigration, to which I belong, have mostly ended up in Croatia by chance," Iglika continues her story. "For example, I came because my husband received a temporary assignment in a Bulgarian company that expanded its business in Croatia. We stayed, supposedly temporarily, for a year or two, but here we are now, 10 years later. Our son completed his entire secondary education in Croatia and is now a student, and our daughters, aged 9 and 12, were born in Bulgaria but they have been living in Croatia their entire conscious lives."

The need to educate their children in their native Bulgarian language also provoked Bulgarians in Croatia to establish a Bulgarian Sunday school in Zagreb.

"With the support of the Bulgarian Embassy and with the Croatian-Bulgarian Association as a beneficiary, we opened the Bulgarian Sunday School seven school years ago," Iglika Kasabova says. "Of course, good news spreads quickly. Our colleagues and friends from Slovenia decided that they didn't have enough children to open a school yet and we gave them the opportunity to study with us remotely. In fact, after the Covid pandemic, we became specialists in this blended form of education."

Some of the students are bilingual and trilingual, i.e. they speak Croatian, Bulgarian, and another language. The problems in their education are similar to those in other Bulgarian Sunday schools abroad, Iglika Kasabova says and adds:

"For our children abroad, the leading thing is the foreign school, respectively - their first language is English, German or French. The second language is Bulgarian, and the third - the language of the country they live in. Another part of the children are from mixed marriages between Croats and Bulgarians, respectively, the dominant language is Croatian. Writing in Cyrillic is a challenge for them and this is what they have in common. This requires patience. The process is slow, they start reading and writing fluently only in the second or third grade. And from there we need to catch up on everything we have missed. We emphasize a lot on the desire to learn, on motivation. If we lose motivation in children, the motivation of parents also decreases. The Bulgarian school is an additional commitment for both children and parents."

Are historical facts about Bulgarian-Croatian relations studied in class?

"We always draw parallels and this is inevitable. We try to show what we have in common, what the points of contact between the different Slavic peoples in a historical and contemporary context are. We have a very strong minority community in Croatia and we organize many activities together. Every year in September there are Days of National Minorities. This event brings together a colourful group of cultures – Serbs, Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Montenegrins, Bosnians and others. We are famous in Croatia for our folk costumes and for the food that we gladly prepare for our guests and friends."

When we talk about Croatians, they have been showing interest in our country and are especially excited about folklore and tourism, Iglika tells us.

"I was invited to the Gornjogradska Gimnazija (Upper Town Gymnasium) in Zagreb on the occasion of March 1st, to celebrate the day of the martenitsa and to tell where it comes from and what message the weaving of the white and red thread brings. There was great interest from high school students - more than 40 children participated in this workshop. We wove martenitsa, they were interested, took pictures and a large part of these children were preparing to go to a Bulgarian school under the Erasmus program.

We should note that in the school we have a Bulgarian classroom. After the earthquake a few years ago in Zagreb, the Bulgarian government made a donation to this school. It is historically connected to us, the Bulgarians. After the Liberation, Bulgarian students studied in Zagreb with scholarship by Josip Strossmayer. He invested in them so that they could come and study in Zagreb. Among them are many famous scientists - physicists, mathematicians, meteorologists, hydrologists. I hope that these historical ties will strengthen the modern ones. There is also interest in tourism in Bulgaria - to the Black Sea coast in the summer months, to the cultural heritage of Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo, Sofia. For some Croats we are strange and exotic, but we are certainly pleasant to them, because after all we are Slavs, we have many common habits, a common view of the world. And let's not forget that we also have more and more mixed marriages - between Croats and Bulgarians..."