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In Defense of Native Literature: Writers’ Associations, State and the Cult of the Writer in pre-1945 Bulgaria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2018

Irina Gigova
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Abstract

Looking at Bulgarian society and cultural life of the first half of the 1900s, this study scrutinizes a common belief in the high public esteem reserved for poets and writers in eastern Europe. It demonstrates that the creators of literature (and the national arts in general) occupied a precarious position in a society without a sustainable cultural market. The predicament of Bulgarian writers, however, was that of many European literati in early 1900s competing for readers’ attention with a rising mass culture. Placing Bulgarian writers in a broader interwar framework, this article explores the various non-literary strategies they pursued in affirming the public value of national literature. In the process, it suggests that the lore of “the writer as a national hero” was the deliberate work of social actors seeking to correct an unsatisfying reality and not an expression of an organic relationship between nation and writers (and intellectuals more broadly).

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 417 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2018 

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96. TsDA, f. 551, op. 1, a.e. 5, ll. 14, 34–44.

97. NLM, Inv. No. a 1023/82; also Vladimir Polianov, “S flota kûm Balchik,” Literaturen glas, November 6, 1940, 3–4.

98. TsDA, f. 177k, op. 2, a.e. 1517, ll. 37–38.

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109. Drŭndarov et al., Istoriia na sŭiuza, 318–68.; TsDA, f. 551, op. 1, a.e. 1, l. 13–14; ABAN (Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), f. 58k, op. 1, a.e. 147.; TsDA, f. 177k, op. 4, a.e. 572, ll. 75–76.

110. TsDA, f. 177k, op. 4, a.e. 596 and 598.

111. Statistical yearbooks show dramatic increase of the Union's revenues from 26,584 lv in 1936 to 291,386 lv in 1939. In comparison, in 1939 the Club of Bulgarian Women Writers made 34,929 lv, the Association of Children's Writers—19,850 lv and the P.E.N Club—2,057 lv. The 1943 Union budget projected revenue of 725,500 lv. TsDA, f. 551, op. 1, a.e. 5, ll. 94–99.

112. Hristova, Natalia, “‘Sotsialisticheskii realizm΄ i drama bolgarskogo tvortsa (seredina 40-kh–seredina 50-kh godov),” Bulgarian Historical Review 26, 1–2 (1998), 152–78Google Scholar; and Migev, Vladimir, Bŭlgarskite pisateli i politicheskiiat zhivot v Bŭlgariia, 1944–1970 (Sofia, 2001), 9–53Google Scholar.

113. For example, Dimitrova, Nina, Chasŭt na bŭlgarskata inteligentsiia: Bŭlgarskata inteligentsiia v mezhduvoennia periodichen pechat (Sofia, 2010)Google Scholar; and Emil Dimitrov, Pamet, iubilei, kanon.

114. Vasileva, Sŭiuz na druzhestvata; See also Anchova, “Kulturno-profesionalnite,” and Zagorov, Vasil, “Borba za otseliavane: Sistemi za knigorazporstranenie mezhdu dvete svetovni voini,” in Kamenova, Elena, ed., Medii, komunikatsiia, obshtestvo (Sofia, 2009), 93–108Google Scholar. The 1942 statistical yearbook showed artists and actors beating writers in fundraising. In 1939, the 311-member Union of Artists’ Association in Bulgaria reported close to 1.04 million lv in revenues; the Union of Actors (with 354 members) had 1.2m; while the 125 members of the Writers’ Union showed 290,000 lv.

115. For a continent-wide exploration of the 1920s and 1930s, see Martin, The Nazi-Fascist New Order.

116. Berezin distinguishes four variations of state control over cultural producers and cultural products: pluralism, cultural protectionism, state paternalism, and totalitarianism in “The Organization of Political Ideology,” 642.

117. For example, Chary, Frederick B., “The Bulgarian Writers’ Protest of October 1940 Against the Introduction of Anti-Semitic Legislation into the Kingdom of Bulgaria,” East European Quarterly 4, no. 1 (March 1970), 88–93Google Scholar.

118. Haraszti, Miklós, The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism, trans. Katalin, and Landesmann, Stephen (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

119. Gigova, Irina, “The Feeble Charm of National(ist) Communism: Intellectuals and Cultural Politics in Zhivkov's Bulgaria,” in Hashamova, Yana and Dragostinova, Theodora, eds. Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (Budapest, 2016), 151–77Google Scholar.