The other Balkans: Bringing back to the surface stories of Freedom and Autonomy
Article: Efthymios Chatzitheodorou. Illustration: No bozo
“Our project was intended, among other things, as a general effort to bring out our own narratives, the stories we believe are important to the neighborhood in which we operate.”
The topic of memory was central to the discussion of the self-directed film "Tile" produced by the inhabitants of Fabrika Yfanet, a squat from Salonika. It explores the history of the squat when it was still a factory and the long-lasting strike by the workers against the arbitrariness and cruelty of the bosses. These discussions about the importance of popular history have been taking place all across the Balkans, but came to the forefront at the last Balkan Anarchist Bookfair in Pristina, Kosovo, where hundreds of anarchists from every corner of the Balkans gathered for three days.
From this point onwards, I wanted to talk about the importance of establishing and making known our own narratives. Firstly, because even as an anarchist from Greece it was really interesting to learn about a story from my own locality that I was not aware of. Secondly, having travelled for years in the Balkan countries, I struggled to decipher the reasons why there is so much hatred between the peoples of the region. Where others see nationalistic hatreds and unforgotten homelands, I delighted in discovering the similarities and differences between different geographical regions, as if I were tasting chocolates with different fillings. I felt like I was missing something in all this. Who decides which stories, which versions of events, and which local mythologies are the ones that matter? How and why has it been decided that the Serb hates the Croat, the Greek hates the Bulgarian, the Muslim hates the Christian?
Some will argue that it is the imperialist powers that should take the blame. When the Ottoman Empire was clearly in the process of disintegration and the Russian Empire was trying to expand into the Mediterranean, the Western powers supported the creation of nationalisms in the region in different ways. In areas where a mosaic of peoples and cultures had been living peacefully, suddenly people had to choose opposing camps. As Mark Mazower has written, "In the late 20th century, people talked about the Balkans as if they had always existed. Two hundred years earlier, they had not yet been created".
At the same time, through their creation (and for reasons of self-preservation), the new nation-states themselves became the main agents for the perpetuation of certain narratives. They have now acquired a level of power that means challenging such narratives would be considered sacrilegious.
The issue of memory is not just a matter of state or ideological politics, it is also relevant on an individual level. It is present everywhere in a rapidly changing society, thrown into a constant race towards eternal economic growth, capitalist homogenisation, and the consumerist trap we struggle to escape. Many people seek refuge in older narratives of a life that is supposed to have once been simpler—finding answers in religion, the idea of the nuclear family, traditional gender roles, etc. In other words, the answer to the problems created by the status quo and capitalism is to seek an older status quo; "Reject modernity, embrace tradition".
With all of the above in mind, I spent the next few months looking for different aspects of history; narratives that don't talk about good and bad ethnicities, brave and cowardly, masters and slaves—and I was really impressed with what I found.
I learned about the Bogomils, a Christian sect existing in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 10th century, whose activities and ideas can be seen as a precursor of anarchism in the region. They lived in communities in which each member worked to meet the collective needs, while contributing their property to it. From the writings of the influential priest Cosmas we read that, "The Bogomils teach their followers not to submit to the authorities, to discredit the rich, to hate the emperors, to ridicule the superiors, to insult the rulers, to maintain that God detests those who work for the Emperor, and to persuade the slaves not to work for their masters."
Examples of communities trying to live freely away from the hands of power can be found in various geographies of the region. In Greece, the Agrafa (from Greek "unregistered") mountains, according to oral tradition, are named after the inability of the Ottoman Empire authorities to collect taxes, due to the difficult terrain of the area, and the resistance of the people who inhabit it. For many years, the mountains would become home to rebels and nomads.
From the Macedonian anarchist Peter Gjorgiev Mandzukov, we also learn about the "Anarchist Atlantis", the island of Ada Kalé, which today lies in the depths of the Danube River on the border between Serbia and Romania. The island, since it was left out of the Berlin Treaty of 1878 which used the river to divide the borders, found itself flourishing without political authority. The approximately 4,000 people living on the island at the time continued their lives without a mayor, governor, police or army, prisons and courts. All decisions were made by the general assembly until July of that year, when the Hungarian Army occupied the island. Ada Kalé ended up under thousands of cubic meters of water in 1970, when the giant Iron Gates Dam was built a few kilometres above.
Few people also know about the Strandzha Commune in present-day Bulgaria, where in 1903 there was the first attempt at an autonomous region based on the ideas of anarcho-communism, fifteen years before Makhno's Ukraine, and thirty before Anarchist Spain. Although it lasted only a month before being crushed by the Ottoman army, the people in the Strandzha Commune laid important political foundations, with a primary emphasis on redistributing wealth by creating common stores, and setting up councils for decisions under the control of everyday people.
As if all the above were not enough, I discovered that many national heroes from the region recognised the need for the coexistence of peoples, and, often inspired by socialist or anarchist ideas, imagined the Balkans as a democratic region where communities would organise themselves into federations.
In recent history, the examples where anarchists from the region have attempted to break down the dividing lines that others have put between us are countless, from the anti-war demonstrations at the time of the Yugoslav wars, back to the bookfairs in Pristina.
I noticed that the more I searched, the more stories were waiting to surface; stories beyond nationalist hatreds, sectarianism, generalisations and divisions. Stories that in the region today, anarchists, leftists and activists need to recognise. Firstly, to recognize themselves as a continuation of a very beautiful mosaic of people, movements and traditions, but also to set this history against the dominant memory imposed by nation states, capitalism and patriarchy; in favour of a life of freedom, equality and fraternity.
Efthymios Chatzitheodorou is an activist incluenced by social ecology and the direct democracy tradition. They are a translator for the Greek antiauthoritarian online magazine "aftoleksi".
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