Surva Winter Carnivals: Challenging the Rural-Urban Divide in the Bulgarian and the European Civil Spheres

Ana Velitchkova, University of Mississippi

Bulgarian Surva carnivals challenge the rural-urban divide characteristic of modernity globally. Based on participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research, I find that Bulgarian Surva carnivals have acted as a type of civil repair, integrating rurality into the national and the European civil spheres during state socialism and after Bulgaria’s democratic transition alike. In both socialist and capitalist visions of development, rurality is commonly disparaged as backward, a space to leave behind, literally and figuratively, in the country’s path to progress. Surva carnivals periodically challenge this negative view of rurality, create rural-urban solidarity, and foster a sense of a unified domestic and European civil sphere inclusive of rurality. State socialism transformed Bulgaria from a predominantly rural society into an industrial one. While rurality was devalued in the national economic sphere, local officials in the town of Pernik elevated the rural new-year carnival Surva, popular in the surrounding region, to a national festival. Pernik’s festival eventually became an international festival only growing in importance after state socialism’s fall. Now, the international festival Surva touts itself as the “biggest” and most “authoritative” masquerade festival in Europe drawing in over 10,000 costumed participants and more spectators from around Bulgaria, Europe, and elsewhere. Surva disrupts Pernik’s and its rural region’s negative image in Bulgarian popular imagination. Pernik’s region has been the butt of countless jokes representing lack of civility and development. Because of Surva, Pernik joined the Federation of European Carnival Cities and became a point of regional and national pride. UNESCO recognized the Surva tradition as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Surva became iconized as an exemplary specimen of rural folklore and as an integral part of Bulgarian national culture. As cultural institutions, Surva carnivals spotlight rural traditions and allow residents of underdeveloped rural communities to join the civil sphere nationally and internationally.

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 Presented in Session 201. Public Life and Democratic Order