Dimitriy Chakir, Iserliya village priest: life, work and identification specifics

Abstract

In this article, on the basis of various sources, including archival material, highlights the life and work of Gagauz religious figure of the 19th – early 20th centuries, D. Chakir, all his life served in a Bulgarian village. He did a lot not only for the religious, moral and cultural development of the Bulgarians and Gagauz, but in General for the development of education in Bessarabia. According to the author, for a long period of inattention to the person and work of Dimitri Chakir on the part of Gagauzov largely due to the complexity of explaining the peculiarities of his ethnic identity, namely, that he absented himself and the whole name Chakir to the Slavic race. In this regard, the author has attempted to explain the causes of this phenomenon.
As a result of the study, the author concludes that for the nineteenth-century Bessarabian Gagauz the definition Bulgarians was derived from the name of the former country of their residence – Bulgaria. Such a clear focus on the Bulgarian origin, presented in the article of D. Chakir, to a certain extent is a reflection of the official point of view on the origin of the Gagauz, specific to the Russian administration. In addition, he served his entire life in Bulgarian parishes; communicated with parishioners and delivered sermons in Bulgarian language. He perceived this environment as akin and experienced the powerful impact of Bulgarian identity.
The author draws attention to the next important factor. Exactly at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries the processes of transformation in the area of self-awareness of the Gagauz people were rapidly proceeding. And Dimitri Chakir had a chance to live and write his essays when the processes in the field of Gagauz identity were not yet transformed from quantity to quality. However, with his work on the ancestry Chakirov also contributed to the strengthening of the Gagauz identity, including M. Chakir himself.