Grappling Above Their Weight Class

The 1970s were big for national anniversary celebrations. The U.S. Bicentennial was in 1976, of course, but two hundred years seemed barely worth mentioning, given that Poland had celebrated its millennium in 1966, Romania commemorated a 2050th anniversary in 1980, and Iran had one-upped everyone in 1971 by putting on a party for the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. But for a girl growing up in Bulgaria in the 1970s, the only anniversary of real importance was “1300 Years Bulgaria,” the expansive commemoration of the 681 CE founding of the medieval Bulgarian state. Although the anniversary itself fell in 1981, the socialist nation began partying in 1977, and it was not just an internal affair. As that girl, Theodora Dragostinova (now a professor of history at Ohio State), shows in her monograph The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene, Bulgaria used this prolonged celebration to develop an “ambitious cultural program ... to showcase Bulgarian culture abroad and thus boost the prestige of their country and establish its presence on the global scene” (2).

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