Author Archive for Viktor Dimitrov
If it is true that beauty hides in the small details, Bulgarians are the quintessential history hedonists. Did you know that Bulgaria is the only country in Europe which managed to keep its original name for more than 13 centuries? Yes, and the constitution we adopted in 1878 was the second most liberal in Europe after the Belgian one (whatever that means). Facts known to every Bulgarian with some interest in history. Facts that are interesting, curious, yet so small and useless that their relevance is questionable.
Re-burying ancient kings always has an energising effect on society. However, it leaves less space for discourse on far more important issues like reconsidering our immediate past, the 45 years of communist rule or the reason for country’s almost blind loyalty to the Soviet Union. Happily, there are signs of increased interest towards this period - two web-based projects give people the opportunity to share their accounts of communism. The first one has a bit more personal touch, the other one is set out to explore the atrocities of the regime. On the other side of the political spectrum, recently there was an international conference on Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgaria’s first communist leader after the Second World War, who also made it to the cover of Life magazine). Social scientists from all over the world (including Cuba) spend the weekend singing praises to one of the best pupils of Stalin.
The one thing which unites all efforts to explore Bulgaria’s communist past is their total irrelevance for an overwhelming part of the population. Terribly important issues are being disregarded and swept under the rug. A recent opinion poll showed that only 20% of the population thinks it is important to open the files of the communist secret services (a hot issue in media and politics and an opportunity to discredit your political opponent by accusing him of cooperation with the secret services).
Bulgarian society is stuck in blissful ignorance about the really important issues in the country’s hisotry. Whether it is social apathy or the unwillingness to revisit traumatic experiences, people simply can’t be bothered. After all, arguing about whether the first Bulgarian kingdom was founded in 681 or in 679 is a lot easier, isn’t it?
Budapest, “the pearl on the Danube”, is famous for its great architecture, the bridges, gulyas soup, the royal palace and many other things which make Japanese tourists anxiously reach for their cameras. As an insider here, I offer an alternative view of the specifics of the city. Who knows, you might even find this place interesting.
1. Tourists - there are lots of them, predominantly German, American and Japanese. Their favourite pastime is to spend hours stuck in traffic on a sightseeing bus and to walk around town with a map, completely disoriented and clueless. Their life is made difficult by the multitude of Hungarian coins in circulation; the smallest denomination, given the current exchange rate, is equal to 0.0000001 eurocents. Most of the pubs and cafes have a mission to take advantage of the gullible foreigners (Beckett’s, a mock Irish pub is a prime example of this tendency).
2. Vaci utca - the central pedestrian area of Budapest where women look like the characters in the articles of Laura Citron, our correspondent in Moscow. I have to confess that I was a bit mislead in the beginning - these ladies were so open and friendly to me, despite my obvious physical shortcomings. Then these kind and benevolent ladies turned their attention to a greasy, fat, Greek ship-owner with a thick moustache. This hurt me so much that my only choice to escape was to deepen my passion for alcohol.
3. Football - once Budapest was the venue of great football games, including Hungary’s famous 7:1 thumping of England. Budapest is still mad about football - Champs League, World Cup, England, Italy…but today Hungarian football is the country’s best-kept secret. Even football-stats geeks find it difficult to name the reigning champion or cup holder. It is like an underground movement which goes public only on special occasions - like Vaduz (Lichtenstein) beating Ujpest FC (Budapest) 4:0 in the UEFA cup, or yet another defeat of the national team at mighty Malta.
Overall, Budapest is a fun place to be. Just avoid looking like a silly tourist and don’t take anything for granted, especially when women are friendly to you without any particular reason. Last but not least, don’t ask questions about the big football rivalry between Ferencvaros and Ujpest. Don’t ask why - you don’t need to know.
Jasmila Zbanic, a young Bosnian film director, ‘dragged’ me to the cinema on Saturday evening in Budapest to see her new movie Grbavica. To be more accurate, I do have a soft spot for Balkan movies so I couldn’t miss this opportunity. Moreover, it is always a great feeling to be the only person in the cinema who can understand both the Bosnian speech and the Hungarian subtitles.
The movie is about the difficulties of a Bosnian woman and her daugher a decade after the end of the war that tore Yugoslavia apart. I would recommend it to all of you who think that the Dayton Accord closed the whole issue: the scars are still there and it will take generations before the psychical wounds are healed.
People forget so easily - occupied with their work, family, holidays, a football team that never wins, it is easy to ignore the hardship of others whom they don’t even know. Once it is off the media, it is as if it has never happened. It is good to have young, creative minds like Jasmila, who are not letting Bosnia fade to irrelevance. Moreover, the movie won the golden bear at Berlinale. Everybody heading to the nearest cinema, eh?
It all went wrong on Friday evening: the party at Holdudvar got out of control so the only way to survive the weekend was to go to the countryside and avoid friends who could get you out for another round of utter madness. Ildiko, our favourite waitress at Caledonia told us that on Saturday they would dress up as ABBA and follow the Eurovision together in the pub. Thus, one more reason to get out of town as soon as possible.
What you try to avoid something really hard is usually imposed on you one way or another, so there I am in front of the telly, sipping quietly some white wine and bang – it’s the Eurovision. An event which should be banned for the sole reason of taking ABBA out of obscurity, if being utterly rubbish itself was not enough. I got stuck and I watched it and I felt there was something shockingly similar between this boring and tedious show and the state of affairs in modern Europe.
First, it was obvious that the English are not taking the whole contest seriously, there is no other way to explain why they were represented by a cheesy anachronism of the 80’s at its worst. Second, the French came up with top quality stuff but the Euro-audience was too stupid to understand that. Third, the whole show lacked creativity – we saw the Moldavian Evanescence, Armenia’s Tom Jones, Greece’s and Turkey’s own Ricky Martin’s (funnily enough, both songs were about ‘shaking it up’ or something), and if Germany and Sweden took it one step further they could have been accused of plagiarism. This is the Europe we know – the English are ignoring it, we can’t hide the anti-French sentiments, and there is not enough true originality of thought and innovation (although I need to admit that the cucumber-related EU regulations are bringing in something fresh). On top of that, the attempt to inspire an all-European emotion, as if something really great was happening, was absolutely pathetic. Solidarity was present only on a regional level when people systematically voted for their neighbours or allies.
Thankfully, underneath the artificial and rotten surface of Eurovision, European music culture might be really fascinating and valuable. Sunday night I went to Beshodrom’s gig in Budapest – top-quality stuff, interpretation of roma musical traditions that blew my head off. Applying the above analogy, it might turn out that if we disregard the junk they are trying to sell us as true-European, we have lots of things we can be happy about.
Of course, a few words about what was good at the Eurovision: Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia’s contribution was not bad at all - doing something cool and modern based on your own tradition is fine. Hungary’s pet, Magdi Ruzsa insisted on wearing jeans and a simple t-shirt, explaining that she wants to be evaluated solely based on her voice.
May has always been a very special month to me: the trees are blooming, everything is green and it brings the denouement of one more football season (except in Scotland, where the championship is practically over by February-March). It is a watershed – we look behind 8-9 months of excitement and thrill, and we look forward to the utterly dull time until the new season starts. Some people struggle through this tedious football-less time by watching women’s under-17 world cup or intertoto cup. Or if you are Hungarian, you would probably delude yourself and believe that waterpolo and decathlon are perfect substitutes of football. Some would use the enormous amount of free time to go to art galleries or some wee island in the sun, hiding the fact that life does not make sense without football. However, others like myself increase drastically alcohol consumption to put some content in those long and boring months.
This season has contributed a l ot to the continuous process of developing my personality. Last year August – Levski Sofia had just got into the Champions League for the first time in history. If you support the Real Madrids and Juventuses, you wouldn’t understand how it feels when the climax of the season comes a bit too early. Nevertheless, I shed a tear as our boys in blue came out on the pitch at Nou Camp under the soothing Champions League anthem, then watching utterly average players like young Zhivko Milanov taking on Ronaldinho. Moments like this make you realise that football is a lot more than a simple matter of life and death. Yes, we lost all 6 games against Chelski, Werder and Barcelona, but who cares? We were there, we saw it, we kind of liked it, and we scored one goal which made me a lot happier than beating CSKA, our fiercest rival. Or more accurately, our used-to-be-fiercest rival – the big derby of Bulgarian football has gradually slipped into total irrelevance. It has ceased to be a challenge, nobody cares anymore about the millions of reasons why CSKA lost once again. I have heard that so many times now – the ref’s myopia, the pitch, the sun, the situation in Chechnya, the axial tilt – everything boils down to CSKA being robbed and that they are the moral champions. Routine is boring, and I realised this year that beating CSKA is simply not fun anymore. It is hard to absorb a massive paradigm shift like this and I am still struggling to make sense of the whole situation.
Levski will most likely win the championship title this year but the real thing is sneaking into the Champs League once again. The odds are against us but who cares? At this point I don’t see a reason why not to beat Milan or Liverpool, let alone mediocre and completely uninspiring teams like Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. And if we don’t, we go back to our old state of affairs – it is a rainy Sunday evening, let’s all 2,000 fellow football fans on the stadium try to enjoy the completely pointless game against Rodopa Smolyan where we are up 4:0 at half-time and then the guys can’t be bothered to run for the rest of the game. This is the inbred pointlessness of being too good at home but not good enough to establish yourself on a higher level.
Viviane Reding is my hero. She takes decisive steps to promote fair and market-oriented rules in telecommunications, a sector which has always been a favourite playground for greedy monopolists and national champions. Slashing roaming charges is a brave step towards librealisation and it is a matter of principle – these fees simply contradict the idea of a common EU market. In Europe, the total revenue from roaming charges is EUR 8.5 billion, so such a massive cut means a lot. Telecom operators will be unhappy but they will survive, don’t worry about them. Will they attempt to compensate that by increasing prices domestically? In theory that should not work, after all, prices are set by supply and demand, aren’t they?
How would this affect Central and Eastern Europe? Given that roaming does not contribute so much to mobile operators’ revenues, the effect should not be too dramatic. In fact, what telecoms in the region should fear a lot more is Viviane’s next target – the push for liberalisation of the whole industry.
Today, most telecom markets in the region are characterised by low competition, high prices and inadequate services in terms of quality and sophistication. Usually you have the former state-owned fixed-voice operator privatised by a strategic investor from Western Europe. EU rules are in place and promote competition on paper, but technical and regulatory issues make it unthinkable for alternative operators to challenge the monopoly of the incumbent operator (with the possible exception of Croatia). Mobile penetration is pretty high, often above the EU average, but due to the lower living standards revenue per client has enormous growth potential. More and more people use broadband internet and have access to services like Skype and GoogleTalk. Given the background of CEE countries, what is the likely outcome of Viviane’s battle against the greedy telecoms?
Mobile operators in the region will not suffer much. Roaming charges have pretty much been a limiting factor for price-sensitive Central and Eastern Europeans to use their cellphones abroad. Thus, more minutes out will somewhat compensate the lost revenues of mobile operators. Further liberalisation is not really such an issue in the mobile segment because it is already fairly liberal in most countries. Only number portability might be an issue, as we see in some countries (take the example of Bulgaria, where the biggest mobile operator is trying in all possible ways to delay the process – they will be the big losers from number portability) but gradually it will be resolved, EU rules are clear about that.
The big losers will be incumbent fixed-voice operators. They will completely lose international traffic revenues because many people will be happy to use their cellphones abroad now that roaming charges are lower. However, large portion of this revenue source has already been exhausted with the advent of VoIP and other technologies – try to remember the last time you picked up your landline phone at home and dialled an international number. So, Viviane’s push for further liberalisation is much more of a threat. Incumbents will face decreasing revenues in the future as a result of increased competition in the segment and by losing clients to mobile operators. Fixed operators adapt by diversifying their sources of income – mainly by aggressively pushing ADSL roll-out and alternative technologies, such as IP TV.
Again, Viviane Reding is cool – she acts out of principle and in order to promote fair market competition. In Central and Eastern Europe the changes brought about by her efforts will only act as a catalyst of a process which has already started. The telecom market will change dramatically – fixed-voice operators will fade away and communication will gradually become cheaper as technology is getting more and more sophisticated. The speed with which things will change matters a lot though – if a telecom is obstinate enough, it can delay the implementation of certain decisions for years and in this time they can make enormous money to justify all of their efforts. If you are unfortunate enough (textbook case for being absolutely under the rule of your incumbent telecom: Macedonia), lack of adequate communications at a decent price can delay economic growth for years. So, thank you, Viv.
You might have noticed that one of our correspondents in Brussels has very positive feelings about Balkan music – he has been to Esma Redzepova’s gig in Brussels, and followed Goran Bregovic to Barcelona with sheer enthusiasm. He said that the concerts were sold out and everybody loved the performances, which is really cool. In general, my view is that music and other forms of art are among the best ways to promote a positive cultural image, needed by all Balkan countries. People gradually realise that we can’t be that bad – after all, music is a form of expression typical to artsy guys with no bad intentions whatsoever (with the obvious exceptions of Sid Vicious and the rockstar-in-a-hotel phenomenon, of course). Anyway, that is not exactly what I was trying to say. Last night I was sitting on my couch, compiling a long Winamp playlist with my favourite music from Bulgaria and other Balkan countries. I realised that much of this music is absolutely brilliant and the fact that they haven’t made tons of money is only due to the fact that they are shooting for a distinctly niche market and the fact that they never sell anything outside the region. Why is that? Honestly, I don’t really care. What matters is that this music is great. Esma, Bregovic and all the ethno stuff are not bad but let’s see what other interesting things can be found on my playlist.
Bulgaria. Babyface Clan were a real hit in the end of the 90s, mixing electro and alternative. The leader, Nasso Ruskov was a bit obsessed about the idea to move to London and form a band there so they are now all but a fond memory from my teenage years. Today is the big day though – Babyface Clan are having a reunion concert in Sofia, and I am so so rry I can’t be there. Wickeda made a big name by fusing ska and urban reality from Sofia. One of the all time favourite songs is about the most romantic story ever – a guy meets the love of his life on the bus, and ‘Mariana, I love you so much!’. We all love Mariana and we always hope to meet her on the bus to the outskirts of Sofia. My playlist also includes Animacionerite – surreal lyrics, computer-programmed music and space suits on stage – I have never figured out why, but intuitively I feel it is top-quality. I am not going to talk about Gravity Co because they made it big on the MTV.
Across the Danube, in Romania we find some real jems of modern music, and it is not the disgusting O-Zone that took over Europe a few summers ago. We are talking about the magnificent Sukar Groove Collective: three gypsy guys, Tamango, Napoleon and Clasic, part-time singers and full-time dancing bear owners, backed by Drum & Bass. If sometimes you ask yourself whether the gypsy niche in music will ever be exhausted, the answer is ‘NO’. Maybe Boban Markovic and Goran Bregovic have got a bit boring by now, so innovation is more than welcome.
We now take a left turn and end up in Belgrade, the hotbed of Balkan rock, punk, ska, with huge traditions long before we got rid of the iron curtain. Yugoslavia fell apart but its greatest bands are still alive and kicking. You might say whatever you want about ethnic tension but it is made to look irrelevant and obscure by Bijelo Dugme, Babe, Azra, Rokeri s Moravu, Ladno Pivo and many others. And it is very funny when someone like me who has never spent more than 2 hours in Belgrade gets emotional on songs about the city’s streets, a bit wet after a morning drizzle. Take the highway from Belgrade to Skopje and meet another all-Yugoslavian favourite – Leb i Sol. It turns out that Macedonian folklore, electric guitars and jazz can be a very good combination.
If you mix everything together, you get the magnificent Balkan Horses – ethno-jazz performed by people from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Croatia. Now this is real stereotype-demolition for those who have invented or use the cool word “balkanizacija”, meaning basically that people in this region have a certain tendency to split into smaller and smaller pieces until they are alone and hate everybody. And the music is absolutely brilliant, you should check it out. Also, if you have the chance to go to see Babyface Clan tonight, don’t sit here reading silly blogs but go and get yourself a ticket.
Communist economies collapsed in Europe decades ago, leaving behind poverty, unemployment and instability. You would think this should terminate Marxist leaning, at least in Eastern Europe, where disintegration had the most disastrous effects. You would also think that policy-makers and voters would be rational and dismiss the economic system from which they inherited misery and pain. Well, think again: they are still there, steering wisely our countries and making decisions about our laws, wages and pensions. In a series of articles titled Capitalists With A Comrade’s Face, nEUrosis will introduce the latest stars of populist and incompetent economic policy. We will reveal the key players in the process, the self-proclaimed reformed socialists in Central and Eastern Europe and their counterparts in Western Europe. (The title is borrowed from one of the seminal works on the transition process written in the 90’s).
Emilia Maslarova is a veteran among her peers in Bulgaria. Her first stint as minister of labour and social policy was in the beginning of the transition. Unfortunately it was not really successful: she had to go as the Socialist government painfully resigned after failing completely, following the disastrous crisis in the winter of 90/91. After almost 15 quiet years she returned to her favourite ministry wiser, more mature, supposedly with a clearer vision of how the labour market should work. It will take time until we see whether her innovative policies work or not - important developments do not happen overnight. However, one of her easily discernible achievements is that now Bulgarian economists talk about the ‘Maslarova risk’ for the country’s macroeconomic stability. The risk itself means that if Emilia’s policies are fully implemented, probably we will have to close down the country.
Like the Fairy Godmother, Emilia Maslarova is always there to help out the poor and wretched, this time by fighting against the wage-caps in insolvent state companies. Thankfully the proposal was rejected after furious debates (in which Emilia was fully supported by the minister of economy who is, just for the record, a physicist, apparently with some interest in economics as well). She lost the battle but she refused to lose the war: her next target were educated workers from abroad, which Bulgaria badly needs as the shortage of skilled labour gets more and more severe. Why, she argued, should we let in Macedonian or Moldavian IT guys when our unemployed are just as good? Being completely fact-based, she pointed out that 32% of the unemployed have finished high-school, implying that they are fully qualified workers and the fact they are jobless is a result of unlucky circumstances, structural unemployment does not exist, I repeat, DOES NOT exist.
Although Emilia likes to play around with lots of different things, her favourite toy is the pension fund. She does not find anything disturbing in the fact that, let’s say USA, where there is a positive demographic trend unlike in Bulgaria, the reserves in the pay-as-you-go system will be enough only for the next 30-40 years. No such thing can happen in Bulgaria though, we only need people to stop evading social security taxes, says good old Emilia, forgetful of why they would do that in the first place. People act rationally even if they do not fully realise that, and their refusal to contribute to a botched pension fund is a result of the fact that, as it is, the system is simply not sustainable and they will end up losing money. Maslarova’s set of reforms is based on four pillars: increase retirement spending’s share of GDP, decrease tax evasion, increase retirement age and letting people ‘buy’ an early retirement. The first pillar is simple: spend more now, pay later; in economics it is called ‘Ricardian Doctrine’ – I am not going to dwell upon whether it is fair to the younger generation to burden it with enormous taxes and debt in the future. The second pillar: let’s hope Emilia will be able to deny economic logic this time. The third and the fourth pillar are cancelling out each other.
In politics it is important to have an impact on your country and Emilia Maslarova certainly does so. My only hope is that it would not take long until Bulgaria is declared Maslarova risk-free.
