Abstract
The issue of prostitution, of liberated sexuality, which was also related to the chaotic life of urban centers, was experiences of the interwar period for the state, which proved threatening to the growth of a working and disciplined population. Prostitution, prostitute, sexuality, apart from not being related to the institution of the family, was considered a threat to moral, ethical standards, which endangered the very existence of Greek and Bulgarian society, as shown by the study of the case of Rhodope 1936-1944. The new weak nation states of Greece and Bulgaria that sprang up from the empires based their survival on national sentiment, or rather on nationalism, on the attempt or rather efforts to forge a strong relationship between state and people. The hegemonic discourse was interested in its prevalence as the strongest over the weak and the powerless, the effeminate. Thus, the leaders promised to ensure the rule of law, to ensure the functioning of law and moral rules, while th ...
The issue of prostitution, of liberated sexuality, which was also related to the chaotic life of urban centers, was experiences of the interwar period for the state, which proved threatening to the growth of a working and disciplined population. Prostitution, prostitute, sexuality, apart from not being related to the institution of the family, was considered a threat to moral, ethical standards, which endangered the very existence of Greek and Bulgarian society, as shown by the study of the case of Rhodope 1936-1944. The new weak nation states of Greece and Bulgaria that sprang up from the empires based their survival on national sentiment, or rather on nationalism, on the attempt or rather efforts to forge a strong relationship between state and people. The hegemonic discourse was interested in its prevalence as the strongest over the weak and the powerless, the effeminate. Thus, the leaders promised to ensure the rule of law, to ensure the functioning of law and moral rules, while their main purpose was to control and counter any possible resistance, especially in a region that remained "sensitive" since the beginning of Balkan modernity. Female prostitution in the area and period under consideration was instrumentalized for the national constitution and construction of the national bourgeois state by including in it a space that hid the dreams and ambitions of the hegemonic discourse of Metaxas and Boris III, while it was related to national visions, such as the Great Idea of Bulgaria. The prostitution and female delinquency in Rhodope in 1936-1940 and 1941-1944 was also related to the desired female model that the bearers of the patriarchal discourse of power wanted to shape in this era and in this region. Acceptable and legitimate was considered only whatever would aim at reproduction and served pursued state policy objectives. In addition to prostitutes, the restriction was placed on the libertine spirit, which has the ability to envisage, to emancipate, to experience sexual pleasure without family commitments, restrictions on procreation and the feeling of sexual romanticism, which becomes dangerous for the collapse of all kinds of restrictions and the overcoming of "fences" at the risk of questioning, disobedience, indiscipline. Consequently, the prostitute, sexual freedom, the libertine spirit were associated with transgression, were considered dangerous and threats to the construction of the bourgeois state, while the disease associated with sexuality, syphilis, was treated and persecuted as the disease that would eat away the foundations for the creation of a healthy nation. In the peculiar region of Rhodope, modernization efforts were based on policies concerning populations, or rather population diversity, with surveillance and control tactics, with regimes and administrations of a centralized nature, during both Greek and Bulgarian administration. The political impasse and the decadent bourgeois world of the interwar period of the '30s favored the emergence of influential figures-leaders and a regime that combined the institution of the King and the Dictatorship, which tried to ensure its existence with a paternalistic discourse, with policing, with local authorities, with policies that promoted the success of the functioning of the rule of law through the propaganda press. The press became an instrument of state policy and extolled its modernizing projects and social policy, with constructions of ideal female roles that would serve the needs of the strict patriarchal society of a policed nation—and under Greek and Bulgarian administration/Bulgarian occupation de facto—through norms and laws on sexuality, through medicalized speech, suppression of sexual life, exclusion of prostitutes and prostitution. As for the policy implemented on the border with the minority Pomak population, the Metaxa policy of the Greek administration and the Bulgarian administration, in order to ensure social tranquility made them a "dividing line", manned by army and police stations, embodying the dominant authoritarian discourse with the gendarme, the soldier, legitimizing their right to sovereignty in the name of a morality, which included venereal morality and its imposition, justified oppression or even violence. Prostitution was associated with the relaxation of morals and the crises of the pre-war period, the economic conditions of the interwar period and the specific region with the low economic level and refugee population, poverty, unemployment. However, despite the outbreaks of syphilis patients, information on the issue of prostitution emerges through silence. Even the press of the time on aphrodisiac life spoke in silence or indirectly, precisely because these issues relate to private and internal life. The concerns and challenges associated with the unequal integration of the region into the global capitalist economy and the parallel processes of socio-economic transformation at local and regional level were increasingly expressed in the language of nationalism and defused into xenophobic attacks against religious or ethnic minorities. Behind the message "order and culture", ethnic nationalism emerged and imposed itself as a hegemonic ideology and legitimizing framework for its practice.
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