Ivan Hadjiyski's Anti-Colonial Marxism

A View from Europe's Semi-Periphery

Abstract

This text seeks to make a contribution to a more robust conversation between decolonial and critical theory, by exploring the work of one of Eastern Europe's least known yet most creative radical intellectuals, Bulgarian anti-colonial Marxist Ivan Hadjiyski. Killed by Nazis on the Eastern front in 1944, Hadjiyski was a major interlocutor in intellectual and political debates around racism, capitalist accumulation, and the differentia specifica of Bulgaria/the Balkans in the 1930s and early 1940s. After situating Hadjiyski’s life and work in its context of the interwar and World War II periods, the article explores in some detail his early and arguably most popular text titled "Optimistichna teoriya za nashia narod" ("An Optimistic Theory About Our People"), first published in 1938. More specifically, the text zones in on two prongs of Hadjiyski's critical argument. The first one examines Hadjiyski’s effort to resignify the meaning of the "Bulgarian people," in the context of rising nationalism and fascism. The second places Western capitalist modernity under critical scrutiny, in light of its "underside" of colonial violence and predation, and sets it apart from Eastern European modes of primitive accumulation. The article argues that Hadjiyski's piece represents a genuine contribution to both critical and decolonial thought from the perspective of Eastern Europe, and continues to have important lessons for us in our present moment.