A Bulgarian Medium in the Media: Transnational Transitions and Baba Vanga in the Russian Imagination

• In Event: Close Encounters: Seeing and Believing after Socialism in Bulgaria and Beyond

Abstract

This paper explores how a famous and popular Bulgarian psychic or prophet named Baba Vanga (1911-1996) became a noteworthy medium for “truth” in the 21th century Russian imagination. With Bulgarian-Russian transnational ties as context, it traces how belief in Baba Vanga’s abilities and prophecies was propagated by various Russian and Bulgarian witnesses beginning in the socialist period, but most notably after the transition via newspaper articles, books, TV programming, and the internet. It periodizes the ways Vanga secured a place in Russian "truth worlds” drawing upon both science and religion, or a conglomeration of both. The paper looks deeper into the origins and more recent circulation of a purported Vanga prophecy from 1979–namely, that Russia would rise to be ruler of the world, transmitted–not by the Russian government– but in fragmented and mediated ways, a participatory bricolage that uses science and religion to build shared realities across time and space.

Author

• Mary Catherine Neuburger, U of Texas at Austin