Eva Dale  0:00  
From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences with your host, David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work being done by faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. From departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials, mathematics and languages, among many others, the college always has something great happening. Join us to find out what's new now.

David Staley  0:31  
Joining me in the studio today is Theodora Dragostinova, Associate Professor in the Department of History at The Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. Her work focuses on nation building refugee movements and minority politics in Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on the Balkans. She is the author of "Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration Emong the Greeks of Bulgaria", and she has recently co edited the volume "Beyond Mosque, Church and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans". Welcome to Voices, Dr. Dragostinova.

Theodora Dragostinova  1:07  
Thank you. Pleasure being here.

David Staley  1:09  
So, I know you have an interest in the history of the Cold War, and I note that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism. And I wonder if you could sort of begin by giving us your assessment of sort of European or maybe especially Eastern European history in the 30 years hence?

Theodora Dragostinova  1:30  
Thank you. I might start by taking us back 30 years, just to remember 1989, and the joy of the fall of walls, the fall of tyrannical political regimes in Eastern Europe, and people congregating in the squares, in the major capitals of Prague, Budapest, warto, soffia, later on Bucharest, and of course, Berlin, and TV crews from around the world filming, in particular people congregating around the Berlin Wall in the aftermath of its opening. And this, in my opinion, 1989, the Year of Miracles is perhaps one of the most optimistic years of the 20th century, because we had this sense that things are going to get better going forward, we were massively optimistic that this is a new opportunity, not only for us, as Eastern Europeans, and I grew up in what used to be communist Bulgaria. So I was part of this movement, the generation of democracy in 1989. So we believed that this historical moment is going to open up a new global opportunity for us, freedom of movement, freedom of opportunity, freedom to express yourself. So everyone was just hugely optimistic in the aftermath of 1989. And I want to stop for a second and cherish this moment. Because this unforgettable moments don't happen very often in history. As a historian, I think I have appreciation of this rarity of the historical experience. Now, the aftermath of 1989 is a little bit more complex. How exactly that was experienced. And what exactly happened in the various Eastern European contexts is really something that we cannot generalize. And I'm watching very carefully currently, how the commemoration of the end of the Cold War in Europe is evolving throughout the European continent. And what I'm seeing is that there is this focus on the Berlin Wall is the defining moment of 1989. And of course, if you go to the individual countries, there is a lot of different events connected to the specific events within their context. But nevertheless, the European narrative is dominated by Berlin. And I am a little afraid that this is too much of a triumphalist take on 1989 Because it is basically what was on the TV screens. What Western journalism defined as important, what the newly emerging networks at the time basically showed around the clock. And now we are repeating this narrative whereas there are much more complex events happening in the region, which are remaining unnoticed.

David Staley  4:35  
It was an obvious physical symbol, wasn't it? There weren't necessarily walls around Eastern Europe, for instance, that one could see jubilant people jumping on and smashing up.

Theodora Dragostinova  4:44  
That is completely true. However, to me, the defining moment of 1989 was in June, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre of the Chinese government, the big question was, is the Soviet Union going to send the troops in, in aftermath of the free elections in Poland, indeed, yes. And those people who went on the squares to celebrate the victory of solidarity in June of 1989, did not have a clear answer, they could have faced Soviet tanks. And to me, this is the moment when we realized that actually a change might be possible because the tanks did not show up.

David Staley  5:27  
So, we talk about commemorations and how we we sort of understand 1989. I was just reading in The Economist, they did a long story on Germany focus on Germany, especially East Germany, what's changed, if anything, and it was it was complex and somewhat problematic that certainly a lot has changed in East Germany, East Germany certainly benefited from unification. But in some ways East Germany is still lagging behind the West. I mean, there's still all sorts of problems could one make similar observations about Eastern Europe with the understanding, of course, that we can't generalize Eastern Europe.

Theodora Dragostinova  6:01  
That's right, there a variety of situations. And actually, I was reading the most recent Pew Research Institute pause. And it was very reassuring to me to see that across the region. In fact, 30 years later, the majority of people consider the fall of communism as success and see their lives have improved majority of Eastern Europeans. Now there is a difference from country to country. So for example, some of the most optimistic countries include Poland, whereas some of the most pessimistic countries are Bulgaria and Ukraine, and others who are still sort of like in the Soviet post Soviet sphere of influence. But in general, there is a belief that democracy and the free market or positive developments 30 years later, because I don't think you could have said the same thing in the 1990s. During the moment of austerity, even in 2009, when we were celebrating the 20th anniversary, these were overwhelmingly pessimistic evaluations, 30 years later, a generation later, I think the vast majority of Eastern Europeans see this as a positive development. And that is something to really appreciate.

David Staley  7:19  
I know, part of your research involves the study of nationalism. And of course, we talk a lot today about rising nationalism in Europe observations here. 

Theodora Dragostinova  7:29  
So, it's difficult for me to actually make an observation on the current situation, because again, there are differences in context. But when I first started doing my research and deciding actually on what my dissertation topic would be, I really wanted to tackle the grassroots dynamics of nationalism. What makes people actively involved in nationalist projects? Because ultimately, nationalism is ideology is something that political elites have the news they mobilize for their own political goals. But the critical question is, would people believe the message would people enlist behind nationalist projects, would they participate in extremist politics. And I was very reassured when I was doing my research on minority politics in the Balkans in the 20th century, to see that the vast majority of people remain nationally, indifferent, indifferent to nationalist appeals. And it is basically a handful of activists, usually people who I call professional nationalists, who participate in nationalist demonstrations. And here to me, what that means is the critical role of leadership, who we elect in office, who we choose to allow to lead us politically is critically important in how nationalism is going to get mobilized behind nationalist projects

David Staley  9:05  
And it maybe be useful to define nationalism. What do we mean by nationalism here in this context, is it more than just love of nation and when we say nationalism, what makes for extreme nationalism? 

Theodora Dragostinova  9:17  
So, nationalism, to me is a broad term that means allegiance to the nation and national identity. But I see really nationalism as a spectrum. Because you might be talking about patriotism is something that is more of a cultural affinity, pride in history, pride in the accomplishments of your country and your fellow country citizens. But then if you go on the other side of the spectrum, you might see basically chauvinism. And I think that nationalism is something that could be mobilized in one way or the other. I think that there are positive aspects of patriotism that bring people together. And I think they're also the ugly manifestations. Half shopping ism and nationalism in extreme nationalism, that could divide up societies. And I think this is again, a matter of political choice.

David Staley  10:10  
You had mentioned earlier, you have a personal stake, I suppose, in 1989 and the events around that. And I wonder what sort of influence did 1989 have on you personally and professionally?

Theodora Dragostinova  10:21  
That's a great question. Because I was on the squares in Sofia, chanting, I was actually in high school in my junior in high school, when the changes occurred in Bulgarian society, the greatest influence 1989 head on my life was allowing me the opportunity to travel abroad, study abroad and pursue a career that was not predetermined by a random political choice of a political regime who may not have allowed me to do what I wanted to do. So for my entire generation 1989 basically allowed us to pursue our dreams. Now, often, we face disappointments, I don't want to completely idolize that moment, because for many people, that was also a moment of struggle, the 1990s were extremely harsh throughout Eastern Europe, because people were basically lost, their world had fallen apart, and nothing was offered for them as an alternative, you had to build it up.

David Staley  11:20  
In what ways, lost in what ways? What was happening in the 90s? 

Theodora Dragostinova  11:25  
Well, so imagine my mother and my father, a pediatrician, an engineer well into their careers in their early 40s, in their most successful years, and suddenly the political system changes and you are told you have to start from scratch. You can imagine a society which did not understand private enterprise, and you are told you can go open up a private office, how do you do this? Do you want to do it? What's happening with your pension? Are you going to have security in your old days? Or do you have to start from scratch at 45? So for many people, that was a very disturbing thought they had no clarity what is going to happen with their lives. And we did see throughout the 2000s, sort of nostalgia of communism, reappear in Eastern European societies. And it wasn't necessarily nostalgia for the political order. But it was nostalgia for this sense of social security, of knowing that your life is going to develop in a certain way that people were really feeling that their lives had been shattered because of the changes.

David Staley  12:29  
And you talked about the opportunity to travel, and I think that that describes your own path, yes?

Theodora Dragostinova  12:33  
Absolutely, because many of my friends went to study in the West, we all wanted to go to the West. This is what was the big aspiration after having grown up behind the iron curtain in quotation marks. So many of my friends ended up either in the United States or Western Europe. And I first went to the University of Athens in Greece, where I studied history and archaeology. And then I came to the United States in the late 1990s, to pursue a PhD in Balkan history with one of the premier specialists in the subject, Professor Maria Todorova. So I feel very blessed by that opportunity. But I also feel appreciation that some of my friends were unable to achieve that and not because they were inferior in any intellectual or professional way. But because I was tremendously lucky, all of these things to come together for me in this particular moment.

Eva Dale  13:34  
Did you know that 23 programs in the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences are nationally ranked as top 25 programs with more than 10 of them in the top 10? That's why we say the College of Arts and Sciences is the intellectual and academic core of the Ohio State University. Learn more about the college at artsandsciences.osu.edu.

David Staley  13:59  
So I note that you lead the Migration, Mobility and Immobility Project, and first of all, tell us a little bit about this project, its aim, its scope.

Theodora Dragostinova  14:08  
Thank you so much. I was really observing very closely events in Europe in 2015, when the so called migrant crisis erupted, when predominantly Syrian refugees started showing up on the shores of Greece having crossed from Turkey, and when close to a million people basically tried to reach Germany throughout that year, to claim asylum status because they were living in desperation in Turkey, and there was no path forward for them. I just felt I had to do something to express my own professional and personal angst. I had to do something a to channel my personal anxiety that I was not able to help these people because I I did not see this problem coming. I was in Munich the previous summer. And I could not imagine that the Munich train station would be crowded by refugees three months later. Why? Why could you not imagine that, because at that point, the Europeans were actually preoccupied with the Greek financial crisis. And that episode had already shattered the bonds of European solidarity. Because many in Europe, we're seeing the European Union is being bossy and irresponsible, trying to push a marginal player in the European Union, you know, to a brink of collapse. So this was the big conversations in the summer of 2015. And then when the refugees started showing up, I think that most Europeans are unprepared. And because the first country of entry was actually Greece, that marginalized country in the European imagination for many Europeans, debt remained the marginal problem until the refugee started showing up in Berlin, until they started trying to cross over the channel in Calais in France, until more and more people started, you know, crossing the Mediterranean to go to Spain, France, and Italy, in particular. And this is when in 2015, everyone was talking about the crisis in Europe. When if you look at the question, historically, is this a crisis? What is a crisis Europe have known larger crisis in Europe have dealt with larger crisis successfully, including refugee crisis? So don't return to your question at that moment, a few of us here, a few faculty members at Ohio State felt that we had to do something. And we didn't want to only talk about Europe because we were starting to realize that migration is emerging as a key global challenge, not only for the European context, but also obviously in the United States, but also globally. So a few of us started brainstorming what we can do. And we put together first something known as the Global Mobility Project, in which faculty members from history, Slavic, anthropology, and theater, were trying to brainstorm how exactly the arts and humanities could contribute to conversations about global migration in mobility. Because while it's important to realize the structure of factors that determine whether people are going to be on the move, if you don't look at the personal experiences of individuals and communities, my strong belief is that you don't understand and you cannot understand what exactly the dynamics of migration.

David Staley  17:51  
And what are those dynamics, what have you discovered?

Theodora Dragostinova  17:55  
It is very contextual, it is very culturally determined. It is also determined largely by chance. And I know that in social science, perhaps there are ways to deal with chances a variable, but here in the arts and humanities imagination, the human factor, the chance is at the center. And what we were also trying to tackle is how the arts in particular can help us add nuance, to crude understandings of migration as invasion, migration, as flood. Politicians tend to talk about human mobility is people flooding particular regions, as caravans marching through territories, as invasions, swamping countries. And this is rhetoric, that is not only good, but it's also irresponsible, but most importantly, does not reflect the reality on the ground. Why would a person decide to expose his or her family to such dangers, is something that you can only understand through qualitative analysis of the individual experience of immigration?

David Staley  19:14  
So you had mentioned that mobility and migration is a global phenomenon, not just simply a European one. And I wonder, why is that, I mean, we can point to a proximate cause in Europe, Syria, for instance, and given the fact that you said this is this is contextual, is there a larger global force that's moving mobility? 

Theodora Dragostinova  19:35  
Of course it is. But the thing is that we cannot pick and choose if we are going to embrace globalization as one of the defining moments of modernity. And of course, there is a lot of debate in the scholarship, what is globalization and when do you date it from? I personally accept that we can see the speeding up of contemporary global data omics from the 1970s on, which include, for example, global economic integration. But if you are going to embrace globalization as a positive phenomenon, you have to think about the ramifications which, of course, is going to include people also choosing to be mobile.

David Staley  20:19  
Not just goods, not just information, but it's human beings, it's people. 

Theodora Dragostinova  20:23  
That's correct. And you cannot choose to have open borders in one context, and you cannot choose to ask societies in certain global corners to open up their societies for your ideas, your goods and your people, and then close off your borders for other people, others goods and others ideas. If we really are serious about the global world, and if we value a global world, we are going to have to understand that people are going to be on the move. 

David Staley  20:53  
Tell me about some of the events tied to the Migration, Mobility and Immobility Project.

Theodora Dragostinova  20:58  
So let me just return a little bit back to tell you that after we started the Global Mobility Project, two years later, we decided to add another word to the description of the project. So we went to migration, mobility and immobility, mobility. And the word immobility is really critical here, because we have to pause for a second to think that very often, mobility happens through a mobility or because of immobility. In other words, if we imagine people fleeing conflicts on the move, very often, they spent a large amount of time in places such as detention centers, very often people actually try to flee conditions of immobility, that is conditions of isolation, of lack of opportunity, of political oppression that keeps them in one place. So we decided to add this concept to our examination of mobility in tandem with immobility. And some of the results of this exploration was our determination. To tackle the questions. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we really wanted to take a holistic view on how exactly the arts and humanities as a whole could help us understand those dynamics. So in the course of the last two years, we have been organizing a variety of events, musical events, dance performances, film screenings, a lot of teaching collaborations in which we bring our students together students from several different classes, we bring them together to talk about these issues across disciplines because we feel that these are conversations that cannot be defined to one discipline. And our efforts culminated just last October, October of 2019, in a week long event, moving subjects, migration, mobility and immobility week at Ohio State, during which more than 2000 faculty members, students and community partners participated in performances, in talks in teaching clusters in community events, trying to channel our creative and intellectual energy. In this critical question, can we as a society succeed, if we don't recognize the diversity of our members, if we don't embrace it?

David Staley  23:51  
Tell us what's next for your research projects you're working on now or projects that you're imagining. 

Theodora Dragostinova  23:58  
So, I'm currently completing a book on the global Cold War, and particularly Koecher, in the global Cold War. Tell us about this work? Yes, I have decided to call the book The Cold War from the margins, because I'm looking at the Global Cold War cultural scene from the perspective of a small state Bulgaria, and its interactions with a variety of actors in the West, in the East and in the third world. And what I want to show in this book, is that even small states, actors on the margins, peripheral actors have autonomy, and often have the ability to shape actively their own global role. Culture, in fact, could be a very helpful tool for small states to do that, in what ways so I'm looking at communist Bulgaria's cultural extravaganza in the 1970s When the communist regime in the duration of five years sponsored over 35,000 cultural events across the world, this is a staggering number. It's very large, it's that we, as a people working in a public institution can appreciate what energy it takes to stage so many different cultural events. And the purpose of this extravaganza, and I call it that, because exactly what it was, it was really to project a new image for the country globally, and to alter global opinion, you know, visa vie, the communist regime. Now, there are many things we have to understand here, that this was the aspiration of communist elites to shape their particular image. So that is important to know as a context. But ultimately, what appeared through my research is that Koecher allowed Bulgaria for example, independence from the Soviet Union. It allowed Bulgaria to foster its own relations with actors such as Mexico, India, Nigeria, so they were very active Bulgarian cultural programs in these three countries. And you don't necessarily think it's a small state, such as Bulgaria, as the country that built the National Theatre in Lagos, Nigeria, which is one of the iconic buildings in downtown Lagos. But it was during this time period, when a small socialist state was able to project its own image to the world and accomplish some tangible results.

David Staley  26:42  
What are the kinds of cultural projects like this? You mentioned India, for instance, Mexico, what was... what was Bulgaria doing in these states?

Theodora Dragostinova  26:49  
Mostly large, prestigious exhibitions of historical and archaeological and traditional culture artifacts, but also concerts of classical music, folk music, also various exhibitions. And often these exhibitions are actually modern art. So talks, book readings, film showings. Actually, what we do today here is arts and humanities faculty as well. We often try to organize events such as that. And one of the morals of this story, to me personally, as someone who is working currently in the United States, is that actually the availability of funding is critically important in this story. And actually, the availability of public funding and state funding for cultural projects makes a difference.

David Staley  27:45  
Theodora Dragostinova. Thank you.

Theodora Dragostinova  27:47  
Thank you. It has been a pleasure.

Eva Dale  27:50  
Voices from the Arts and Sciences is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Technology Services studio. sound engineering by Paul cote Heimer. Produced by Doug dangler. I'm Eva Dale

Transcribed by https://otter.ai