The philosophy of the friendship bridge

Last updated 26 July 2026

Intro

Bulgaria and Romania are neighbors who, for most of the last 75 years, didn’t quite knew each other. Separated by the Danube and by borders that discouraged contact even between allied states, the two countries emerged from 1989 with similar economic and political struggles — yet with almost no habit of looking sideways at each other for lessons, solidarity, or partnership. Today both are EU and NATO members, both recently completed Schengen accession, and both sit on the EU’s southeastern frontier facing an unstable Black Sea region. And still, Bulgarian-Romanian relations remain one of the most underreported bilateral relationships in Europe: overshadowed by each country’s fixation on Brussels, Washington, or Moscow, and treated by domestic media as a footnote rather than a live, evolving relationship worth covering in its own right.

The perspective of this philosophy, known as the ‘bridge of friendship’, is that it is precisely this neglect that deserves attention and conceals many other themes. Rather than analysing Bulgaria and Romania solely through the prism of the Western gaze or as pawns in a foreign geopolitical struggle, the blog examines these relations as a testing ground for a different kind of change — one based on direct encounters between citizens, mutual curiosity and a conscious rejection of hegemonic ways of thinking. The site claims to be based on a specific philosophy — the philosophy of the ‘bridge of friendship’, linked to non-hegemonic communication, mutual enrichment and change, and opposition to the national-centric thinking in South-Eastern Europe, which reproduces a certain static identity linked to a traumatic process of socialisation.

This is a pillar page for the friendship bridge philosophy. Here, you can read all the major texts on the philosophy of this site, as well as additional texts that provide greater context and present the philosophy in different geopolitical settings, such as the Middle East and Central Europe.

The essays on the friendship bridge concept

The necessary change in Bulgaria: from static to dynamic identity? 

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Frienship, 6 February 2022, [EN] 🇬🇧

This is actually the foundational essay for the blog’s whole conceptual vocabulary — good one to start with.

Description

This essay by Vladimir Mitev argues that Bulgaria’s political dysfunction stems from the ‘static identities’ inherited from the transition period, and proposes a shift towards ‘dynamic identity’ as a path to modernisation. It is fundamental to the philosophy of the blog because, in Mitev’s own words, it introduces the central conceptual triad—comprising dynamic identity, non-hegemonic relations and the de-escalation of emotional intensity—upon which the entire ‘Bridge of Friendship’ project is built. What makes this article distinctive is the fact that it grounds the abstract theory of identity in the concrete politics of Bulgaria following Boyko Borisov’s administrations — pension reform, the debates on the minimum wage, and relations with Russia and North Macedonia — rather than examining the concepts in the abstract. The article concludes by describing the ‘Bridge of Friendship’ itself as the method through which two potentially polarised identities can transform one another, without either side dominating or losing subjectness vis-a-vis the the other.

Pull quote

“An identity that cannot find anyone to subjugate is in turn hardly subject to hegemonic treatment – it is not static/fixed.”

Life without armour and non-hegemonic foreign policy: a proposal for change in Bulgaria and its region

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Frienship, 6 February 2022, [EN] 🇬🇧

This is the clearest, most fully theorized statement of “dehegemonization” on the blog — Mitev names it explicitly.

Description

This essay argues that Bulgaria’s political dysfunctionality and its peripheral status in the region stem from a hegemonic worldview — the belief that there is only one legitimate norm (for example, pro-European/pro-Western, pro-Russian or purely Bulgarian) to which all others must submit — and proposes as an alternative a non-hegemonic ‘foreign policy’ led by ordinary citizens. This is the most explicit formulation of de-hegemony in the blog: Mitev introduces the term directly, defining the change not as the replacement of one elite circle or one group of ‘proxies’ with others, but as a transformation or weakening of the very underlying logic of domination. In this way, negative phenomena such as gambling, oligarchy and hegemonic interests will be regulated and balanced, rather than forcibly eliminated, which could provoke resistance on their part and lead to deadlock. The article also highlights the need to reduce the intensity of the trauma or experience through which we are socialised, contrasting ‘life as an accumulation of power over existence’ – in which power is amassed through mutual domination, giving rise to cold wars and polarisation – with ‘life as renewal’. According to the essay, a possible path towards de-hegemony lies in forging links with neighbours such as North Macedonia and Romania by unlearning one’s own baggage, which hinders human contact and the internalisation of the experiences of neighbours in the region. For this to happen, we need to lead a ‘life without armour’: non-hegemonic relationships require citizens to draw closer to one another without the protective armour of nationalism, exceptionalism or groupthink. A dynamic identity emerges when there is a genuine, transformative encounter with the other, beyond the walls and armour that nation-centred identities erect around people socialised into one nation or another through the corresponding trauma or static identity.

Pull quote

“That is, change means de-hegemonization.”

Is the post-transition arriving after the Bulgarian protests of late 2025?

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Friendship, 25 December 2025, [EN] 🇬🇧

This is the third and most recent installment in Mitev’s “change trilogy” — it’s actually structured around the pillar page’s own conceptual history, which is a gift for a pillar page.

Description

Written weeks after the fall of Bulgaria’s Zhelyazkov government amid mass protests, this essay is Mitev’s third and most systematic attempt to theorize Bulgarian political change, explicitly tracing it back through his own earlier concepts of dynamic identity and dehegemonization toward a new idea: “post-transition.” It argues that Bulgaria’s dysfunction stems from a society organized around competing “in-groups” and tribal loyalty to “might” rather than universal rights, and that swapping one clique of elites for another — even a more modern one — leaves this underlying structure of mutual domination intact. The essay’s central image, the bridge as “the most Bulgarian way of being-in-the-world,” directly embodies de-intensification: a bridge “moves energy between two banks under conditions of reciprocity and a lack of hegemony,” transforming rather than escalating conflict between political poles. Distinctively for the blog’s philosophy, the piece closes by redefining the enemy not as any political faction (Peevski, Borisov, Radev) but as the impulse to surrender freedom to an in-group or narcissistic leader — locating dehegemonization as an inward, personal discipline before it can become a national or regional one.

Pull quote

“A bridge moves energy between two banks under conditions of reciprocity and a lack of hegemony.”

Additional essays on the friendship bridge

The philosophy of change in Bulgarian-Romanian relations: via bridge of friendship towards dynamic identity

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Friendship, 1 May 2023, [EN] 🇬🇧

This one is more reflective and personal — a stocktaking essay that mechanistically defines “the bridge of friendship” method and extends it beyond Bulgaria-Romania to Iran, making it useful for showing the philosophy’s portability.

Description

Marking eight years of the blog and his new roles at Radio Romania and Radio Bulgaria, Mitev uses this essay to consolidate his working definitions of static versus dynamic identity and to formally define “bridge of friendship” as the method by which two societies exchange experience without either sacrificing its interests to the other. The piece is central to dynamic identity because it states plainly that change is “not a struggle for dominance with the enemy” but a painful inner transformation in which trauma-based static identity dissolves to reveal an authentic self capable of encounter — the clearest programmatic statement of being changed by the other without being captured by it. It also extends dehegemonization and de-intensification beyond the Bulgarian-Romanian axis, invoking Johan Galtung’s concept of positive peace and applying the bridge method experimentally to Bulgaria’s relationship with Iran, a “society of intensity,” to test whether non-escalatory encounter is possible even across highly securitized, high-stakes divides. What makes this essay distinctive as a pillar-page source is its self-reflexive, essayistic register: rather than analyzing Bulgarian politics, it explicitly narrates the blog’s own theory-building process, making it the natural reference point for readers wanting the philosophy stated in the author’s own summarizing terms.

Pull quote

“The change is not to choose Kiril Petkov or Kostadin Kostadinov against the other, but to replace the static identity with a dynamic one.”

The philosophy of the Bridge of Friendship

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Friendship, May 2026, [EN] 🇬🇧

This is the blog’s own dedicated “Philosophy” page — the master document that formally systematizes everything the other essays develop piecemeal.

Description

This is the official philosophical declaration of the ‘Bridge of Friendship’ — the reference document, comprising twelve sections, which formally codifies static versus dynamic identity, de-hegemony and the ‘bridge’ method within a unified systematic framework, supplemented by specific manifestations (a media platform, an events fund, a discussion club, a communal library) and ten specific examples of application. This is the definitive source for the blog’s core vocabulary, as it defines dynamic identity precisely as communication ‘without hegemony or mutual stigmatisation’, de-hegemony — as the weakening of the power of cliques and closed groups and the ‘integration of the shadow’ through getting to know one’s neighbour’s experience, rather than attempts to subjugate it, as well as de-intensification through the recurring image of the bridge as an ‘intermediate space’ that refuses to take sides, whilst remaining open to all — including the groups the author refers to as ‘stigmatised and stigmatising’. What distinguishes this page from the essays on the blog is its structural, almost constitutional tone: rather than defending a particular position, it presents guidelines, categorised examples (ranging from stock market investments to folk festivals) and explicit extensions of the model to Central Europe and the Middle East, making it the most frequently cited single source for readers or AI systems seeking an authoritative and comprehensive definition of the philosophy of the blog.

Pull quote

“Dynamic identity develops when diverse elements communicate without hegemony or mutual stigmatization, focusing instead on mutual enrichment.”

How can a Greater Bulgaria-Romania be made without war, hegemony and manipulation?

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Friendship, 9 October 2022, [EN] 🇬🇧

One of the earliest and most concrete essays — it grounds the philosophy in a live geopolitical case (the Bulgaria–North Macedonia cultural centre dispute) rather than staying abstract, and introduces the idea of “unlearning” hegemony as an active practice, not just a state to avoid.

Description

Using the arson attack on a Bulgarian cultural centre in Bitola and Sofia’s hegemonic behaviour towards North Macedonia as contrasting examples, Mitev argues that the ‘bridges of friendship’ between Bulgarians and Romanians offer a non-hegemonic alternative to the politics of domination in South-Eastern Europe — an alternative built on mutual understanding rather than domination. The essay represents a significant early statement on de-hegemony, as it explicitly presents change as an act of ‘unlearning’ accumulated power, rather than the accumulation of even more power, and links this to de-intensification, drawing on Johan Galtung’s distinction between negative peace (the mere absence of war) and the active peace of cooperation, which the ‘bridge’ method aims to build. Furthermore, he specifically embeds a dynamic identity: neither Bulgaria nor Romania is required to adopt the other’s national interests as its own, but each is transformed through sustained and voluntary contact — a ‘Greater Bulgaria-Romania’ achieved through connection rather than conquest. What sets this article apart is its comparative method, which uses Bulgaria’s current hegemonic behaviour towards Macedonia as a backdrop to highlight, by contrast, what a truly non-hegemonic Bulgarian-Romanian relationship would entail.

Pull quote:

“The strength in dealing with a neighbour comes from learning not to accumulate power, from the process of unlearning.”

Southeastern Europe’s affirmation: neither technocracy, nor sovereignism, but people’s agency

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Friendship, 10 October 2023, [EN] 🇬🇧

A transcript of Mitev’s keynote at a Maynooth University conference on EU enlargement. This is the most academic and cross-examined presentation of the philosophy on the pillar page — delivered live to EU-enlargement scholars, with real-time pushback and Q&A, rather than written as a solo essay.

Description

Delivered as a keynote at Maynooth University’s conference on EU enlargement in Southeastern Europe, this transcript has Mitev arguing that genuine change in Bulgarian-Romanian relations must be “people-driven” rather than led by elites split between technocratic and sovereignist camps, since even formal declarations of partnership between the two governments go unimplemented at the administrative level. It grounds dehegemonization in very concrete failures — a Danube border unrenegotiated since 1908, a stalled ferry and bridge project between Ruse and Giurgiu — arguing that elite “obsession with not losing” blocks the compromise ordinary cooperation requires, while dynamic identity offers a way past this stalemate by cultivating trust and interaction at the level of citizens rather than states. The talk also gives the clearest statement yet of de-intensification as strategy, with Mitev proposing that regions “switch off” long-standing national contradictions for a period to allow growth, rather than staying trapped at the same level of conflict, and citing scholar Hanno Burmeister’s concept of “unlearning” to describe how accumulated distrust must be actively unlearned rather than just set aside. What makes this piece distinctive on the pillar page is its unfiltered, live-Q&A format — audience members, fellow panelists, and the moderator directly probe and react to Mitev’s claims in real time, giving outside academic scrutiny to the bridge philosophy that the blog’s own essays don’t provide.

Pull quote

“We grow in peace. We don’t grow in war.”

Miscellaneous

The Trump 2.0 times as seen from a Bulgarian-Romanian perspective: while borders and divisions in the West are rising, in the EU’s Southeast the logic of the center is being affirmed

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Friendship, 7 February 2025, [EN] 🇬🇧

This one is distinctive on the pillar page because it’s a live speech transcript reacting to a real-time geopolitical shock, showing the philosophy applied to breaking news rather than developed in an essay.

Description

Delivered as a keynote at the Romanian Embassy in Sofia, this piece argues that while Trump-era polarization is fracturing borders and solidarity across the West, Bulgaria and Romania are moving in the opposite direction — dismantling internal borders and building political coalitions that bridge rather than deepen divisions. It applies de-intensification directly to a live geopolitical shock: rather than reading Trump 2.0 as a crisis demanding a defensive or escalatory response, Mitev reframes it optimistically, arguing that the region’s own logic of falling borders and coalition-building offers a more resilient, non-hegemonic model of politics than the West’s rising fragmentation. It also reasserts dynamic identity’s core claim about agency — that “the enemy of positive change is actually who we are,” not some external hegemon like “Putin” or “Soros” — locating responsibility for transformation inside the community rather than in resistance to an outside force. What makes this piece distinctive is its format and moment: a real-time transcript of Mitev applying the blog’s philosophy live, in a diplomatic setting, to an unfolding international crisis rather than in retrospective essay form.

Pull quote

“The enemy of positive change is actually who we are, our limitations, our lack of imagination.”

The Bridge of Friendship – an inspirational platform for Bulgarians and Romanians

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Frienship, 6 February 2022, [EN] 🇬🇧

A useful entry because it’s an accessible, plain-language interview format (rather than an essay), and it’s the piece that most directly extends the philosophy toward a possible future Bulgarian-Macedonian application.

Description

In this Radio Darik interview, Vladimir Mitev explains the Bridge of Friendship’s philosophy in conversational terms, describing his blog as a space where Bulgarian, Romanian, and other elements “communicate with each other and enrich each other” without hegemony, and speculates that a similar model could someday extend to Bulgarian-Macedonian relations if North Macedonia advances toward EU membership. The interview is valuable for dynamic identity because Mitev frames national self-knowledge as incomplete without the neighbor’s experience — he specifically credits “ambiguity,” a trait he sees as distinctively Bulgarian, as something Romania could benefit from absorbing, framing intercultural exchange as mutual enrichment rather than one-way instruction. It also reinforces dehegemonization at the interpersonal level, with Mitev rejecting the framing of Bulgaria and Romania as competitors on EU accession metrics like Schengen or the eurozone, insisting instead that the two countries form a “package” whose citizens should get to know one another rather than compare themselves unfavorably. What makes this piece distinctive is its accessible, Q&A radio format and its explicit gesture toward extending the bridge model to the historically fraught Bulgarian-Macedonian relationship, making it a natural bridge (so to speak) to the philosophy’s aspirational, forward-looking edge.

Pull quote

“We look at our own point of view a lot. We are very nationally centered.”

The friendship bridge concept beyond Southeastern Europe: Iran

What is the Persian Bridge of Friendship?

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Frienship, 2 December 2023, [EN] 🇬🇧

This is the most sustained test of de-intensification under real pressure — applying the bridge philosophy to Iran during active war, where neutrality itself becomes an act of resistance to escalation.

Description

Written as Israel-Hamas hostilities were spreading fears of wider Middle East escalation, this essay explains why Vladimir Mitev founded the Persian Bridge of Friendship and argues that engaging with Iran requires refusing the pressure to pick a side — neither the government nor its opponents, neither pro- nor anti-Iran geopolitical blocs — and instead building a “neutral territory” where dialogue and change can occur. It is the blog philosophy’s most demanding application of de-intensification, since Mitev explicitly resists a journalist’s demand that he declare himself “with the people of Iran” against the government, insisting there are different tendencies among the people and different groups within the regime and both poles are not monolithic. He claims that there must be a more complex and in-between position defined by curiosity and change rather than by loyalty to either pole. The piece also extends dynamic identity into deeply personal territory, with Mitev describing his own “Iranian trauma” — years of studying a subject that made him a social outsider in Bulgaria — as the wound that paradoxically qualifies him to build this particular bridge, since he has lived the isolation of refusing to be domesticated by either side of a polarized conflict. What makes this piece distinctive on the pillar page is its test-case status: unlike the Bulgarian-Romanian context, Iran offers no shared EU framework or peaceful precedent, making this the philosophy’s most stress-tested and highest-stakes application.

Pull quote

“If we are looking for an abstraction, whose side to take, it should be the side of change.”

The Persian Bridge of Friendship as a project for change

Vladimir Mitev, The Bridge of Frienship, 19 January 2025, [EN] 🇬🇧

This is the sequel program essay, and it’s the most explicit statement yet of dehegemonization applied to a media project’s own editorial method — it names the failure mode of Bulgarian-Iranian discourse and proposes the bridge as its cure.

Description

The second programmatic essay for the Persian Bridge of Friendship, this piece diagnoses Bulgarian discourse on Iran as shallow, gatekept by a small circle of self-styled “experts,” and stuck at a “pro-gymnasium level” of clichés, then proposes deeper, non-hegemonic engagement as the remedy. It sharpens dehegemonization into an explicit editorial stance: when readers demand Mitev declare himself “with the government or the people of Iran,” he insists the honest answer is to be “with change” itself, refusing to treat the forces of good and evil in Iranian society as a single bloc that must be supported or opposed. The essay also extends dynamic identity into a theory of trauma as a resource, arguing that his own two-decade “Iranian trauma” — the suspicion and isolation of studying a maximally distrusted subject — is not only a wound to be cured but raw material for a more complex, less national-centric identity, modeled concretely through his friendships with Iranians holding opposed political views. Distinctively, the piece closes on an almost utopian universalist claim: that dynamic identity only achieves “real validity” if it can extend to all of humanity, positioning the bridge method as a response to a world where even powerful states remain narrowly self-interested.

Pull quote

“Rather than fighting a constant battle over whose proxy to be, we need to outgrow our primordial dependency.”

The friendship bridge beyond Southeastern Europe: Central Europe

Declaration of mission, philosophy, and values of the media platform Cross-border Talks (CbT)

This is a formal mission declaration rather than an essay — a useful pillar-page entry because it shows the philosophy institutionalized into a multi-language editorial charter, extending it from the Bulgarian-Romanian axis to Poland, Czechia, and the wider Central/Southeastern European region.

Description

This is the founding mission statement of Cross-Border Talks, a five-language progressive media platform co-run by Vladimir Mitev, Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat, and Veronika Sušová-Salminen, which formally extends the “Bridge of Friendship” philosophy of static versus dynamic identity beyond Bulgaria and Romania into Poland, Czechia, and the broader region. It sharpens dehegemonization into explicit editorial policy, naming stigmatizing political labels like “sorosoid” and “vatnik” as tools that “stiffen thought” and block social cohesion, and committing the outlet to treating all political currents, including the far-right, as legitimate objects of understanding rather than moral condemnation only. The declaration also operationalizes de-intensification through its “horizontal synchronization” method — covering protests or social struggles in one country by translating them into the experience of another, rather than filtering news through zero-sum national rivalry — and rejects the “small brother of a big brother” subcontractor logic in which peripheral states become pawns of external powers. What makes this document distinctive on the pillar page is its institutional, almost constitutional register: unlike Mitev’s essays, this is a formal charter with named co-editors, concrete journalistic methods, and language commitments, showing the philosophy scaled into durable, multi-national media infrastructure rather than argued as an idea.

Pull quote

“Change is not a battle against an external enemy, but an internal transformation.”

Closing remarks

This philosophy is being tested in real time. The war in Ukraine has pushed the EU toward rearmament and a harder security posture along its eastern and southeastern flank, placing Bulgaria and Romania — both Black Sea states, both NATO members bordering the conflict’s shadow — at the front of decisions about militarization that neither country’s public was given much say in shaping. The completion of Schengen integration has removed a decades-old border irritant between the two, but it has not automatically produced deeper mutual knowledge or solidarity; institutional integration and genuine dynamic identity remain separate achievements. Meanwhile, economic pressures — inflation, energy costs, labor migration westward, and each country’s uneven convergence with EU income levels — continue to strain the sense that Bulgaria and Romania are, in Mitev’s words, a shared “package” rather than rivals measured against each other. In this moment, the temptation toward static identity and defensive, us-versus-them thinking is real. The Bridge of Friendship’s wager is that the opposite response — deeper bridge-building, not deeper armor — is what will actually make the region more resilient.