Ideological dimensions of the “Balkan Family Pattern” in the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

This article deals with family ideology and family ritual processes in the Central part of the Balkans, in the mountainous part of the Bulgarian–Serbian border areas, during the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Celebration rituals, dedicated to the patron saints of family-kin households (Serbian slava and Bulgarian sluzhba), have been described as an “ideology of patriarchalism” in ethnological and historical literature, based on the cult of predecessors. Ethnographical research in this region has shown the prominent social functions of the ritual cycle that built cohesion in the family-kin community, rather than archaism. Based on historical and ethnological data, and on ethnographic fieldwork in Western Bulgaria and Eastern Serbia, this contribution shows how the Orthodox cycle of celebrations and rituals was practiced in a family-kin environment during the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis focuses on how family rituals built family ideology, which kept its integrative functions even during the decades of socialism.

Keywords::

• family ideology
• multiple family household
• saint-patron feast
• slava
• Central Balkans

Notes

^1. The majority of the villages of the Bulgarian–Serbian borderland were depopulated in the second half of the twentieth century as a result of the mass migration towards the big cities. My research covered three villages in the district of Timok in Serbia and five villages in the district of Trăn in Bulgaria. I conducted interviews with five elderly respondents (one man and four women) from the village of Nasalevtsi, and five respondents (three men and two women) of different generations from the village of Ošljane.

^2. In his day Jovan Cvijić delineated the outline of the so-called “Patriarchal Civilisation” in the Balkans, the marker of which (along with patrilineality and pastoralism) is the family feast slava. According to a number of contemporary researchers from the “Balkan family” project, the work by Cvijić was “pioneering” in the study of patriarchal social structures in the Balkans (Halpern et al., 1996, p. 429).

^3. Existing analytical research of the patron saint feasts in families and kin groups, such as that by David Rheubottom (Rheubottom, 1976) on Skopska Crna Gora in Macedonia can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

^4. According to the first official census in the Principality of Bulgaria conducted in 1888, the size of the households in the village of Nasalevtsi was as follows: 27 households consisted of more than 10 people, 18 households had five to 10 members, 10 households consisted of one to five people and only one consisted of one person. The second census conducted in 1893 shows a similar picture: 28 households with more than 10 members, 21 households with five to 10 members, 12 households with one to five members and two one-man households; or 531 inhabitants distributed in 63 households in total (Резултати от преброяване на населението в Княжество България на 1 януарий 1893. Кн. XIX. Трънский окръг. София, 1893/ [Results from the census of population in the Kingdom of Bulgaria on 1 of January 1893]).

^5. Respondent Lenka Peycheva, born 1919 in Nasalevtsi village, of the Tsonkini kin.

^6. All quoted dates for Christian celebrations in Bulgaria are in accordance with the so-called Revised Julian calendar (so-called “new style”), adopted by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church at the end of 1969 and coinciding with the Gregorian calendar in cases when there are fixed dates for the festivals.

^7. These are also the main celebrations for worshipping a home svetăc in other villages in the Trăn region (for Vukan and Staychovtsi, cf. description of Rayna Pesheva in the Archive of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum, № 450-II, п. 2, c.138, 142).

^8. Cf. Archive of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum, № 450-II, п. 2, c.142.

^9. Respondent Milko Simov, born 1924 in Nasalevtsi, from the Madzhgarovi kin. Author's recording in 1997.

^10. All quoted dates of Christian celebrations in Serbia are according to the Julian calendar, officially adopted by the Serbian Orthodox Church (so called ‘old style’).

^11. Records by the renowned Bulgarian ethnographer Tatyana Koleva (cf. Archive of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum, № 452-II, c. 23).

^12. Fieldwork research in the villages of Stakevtsi, Prauzhda and Krachimir in Bulgaria and in Ošljane village in Serbia was conducted in 2001 together with my colleague from Serbia Dejan Krstić (cf. Archive of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum, № 573-III).

^13. The joining of a non-related family at the feast near a family/kin cross (zapis) was done by personal zavet, i.e. by pledging.