Galin Georgiev, ethnologist
The Minister also took part in the official opening ceremony of the branch of the Angel Kynchev Rusen University (Bulgaria) in Taraclia.
The celebration began with a procession of pupils, students and teachers of the city’s educational institutions from St. George’s Church to the Metropolitan Grigor Tsamblak University building. This centuries-old Bulgarian tradition symbolically demonstrates the path of the Bulgarian alphabet from religion to literature.
And on Sunday at the Bulgarian library named after Hristo Botev in Chisinau was held the presentation of the book of historian and doctor in ethnography, employee of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Galin Georgiev “Bessarabian Bulgarians. Memory, Traditions, Identity”. It is a scientific work of almost 500 pages, accompanied by photos and descriptions of the author’s meetings with representatives of the Bulgarian diaspora in Moldova and Ukraine.
The meeting was organized by the Society of Bulgarianists of Moldova and their partners – the Bulgarian society “Rodoliubets”, which maintains cultural and educational ties with the Bessarabian and Tavrian Bulgarians of Moldova and Ukraine. Galin Georgiev is the chairman of the organization “Rodoliubets”.
“This book is a view of a man from the metropolis on the history and fate of Bulgarians, who have been compactly living in Moldova and Ukraine for more than two centuries,” says Galin Georgiev. – Language environment and peculiarities of political regimes, as well as socio-economic and cultural realities separate the modern descendants of Bulgarian migrants from the Bulgarians living in modern Bulgaria. Therefore, it was interesting and important for me as a scholar to show how our diaspora here developed and adapted to the new conditions, what of the culture of the migrants has been preserved and to what extent they identify themselves with Bulgaria”.
