Concept of the past in works by Petar Mutafchiev and Yanko Yanev

The article is based on the analysis of articles authored, respectively, by Petar Mutafchiev and Yanko Yanev which appeared in the Bulgarian press in the years 1925-1940. In the present paper the authoress tries to reconstruct the concepts of the past that emerge from the texts under analysis. Although the two authors were contemporaries, they represent views of history that are noticeably different. The concept of the past that emerges from Mutafchiev's texts suggests a synthetic approach, where the researcher's attitude vis-a-vis the subject of his research has been clearly defined. Here the subject of research is constituted by a precisely defined past (history), and the researcher is a historian and a philosopher of history at the same time. In Yanev's concept of the past, the researcher's standpoint is that of a philosopher of culture. Yanev's concept of the past, while not referring to any specific historic events, is coherent thanks to the introduction of precise categories of the motherland and national spirit. Irrespective of their individual perspectives, both authors consider history as an integral part of the national tradition that facilitates better understanding of contemporary cultural processes. They made an attempt to define terms such as: history, nation, motherland. By referring to the past, they also made an indirect contribution to the definition of Bulgaria's national identity and to the redefining of the country's place on the cultural and geopolitical map of Europe.