site.btaBook About Bosilegrad Sparks Outrage in Local Community

The presentation of Ivan Mitic's monograph A Book about Bosilegrad - Notes from the Past provoked violent reactions in the Bosilegrad public. The event took place in mid-November in the ceremonial hall of the Cultural Centre in Bosilegrad, in the Western Outlands. It provoked indignation among the attendees, including teachers, journalists and scholars. Rather than serving as a rallying point around cultural memory, the book's author and content led to fierce arguments and criticism.

The main indignation was provoked by the claim that the population living on the territory of Bosilegrad was not ethnic Bulgarian, but rather Shopi as a separate ethnicity. This statement, according to most of the participants, is manipulative and does not correspond to historical facts. The author was accused of trying to distort the cultural identity of the local population.

Teachers of Bulgarian language, geographers and journalists strongly disagreed with the information, describing it as unprofessional and misleading.

The book also mentions some of the most unpleasant historical events which happened to the people of Bosilegrad, such as the pogrom of Bosilegrad in 1917, when the paramilitary detachment of Kosta Pecanac burned the town. 

For all those who attended the presentation, however, the main aspect of the controversy was related to the financial support given to the author by the Municipality of Bosilegrad and the National Council of the Bulgarian National Minority in Serbia for the book's printing. This caused outrage among those present, who called on the Hristo Botev National Library in Bosilegrad, as the organizer of the presentation, to stop the distribution of the copies.