The National Discourse of the Bulgarian Communist Party on National Anniversaries and Commemorations (1944–1948)

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Notes

*This paper is based on a chapter in my PhD thesis completed at Kingston University, UK. A concise form of this paper was presented at the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies conference, Cambridge, 1–3 April 2006.

Mevius, Agents of Moscow, 99–100, 191–98.

Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation, 98.

Dimitrov, The Fatherland Front, 14ff.

See, for instance, Chervenkov, Who does the legacy of Botev follow? (02.06.1942), in Radio Station Hristo Botev, vol. 2, 391–93; and idem, Hristo Botev (01.06.1944), ibid., vol. 7, 15. The BCP used to speak in the name of Botev: “Bulgarian people! Botev is speaking to you!” In BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 4, Archival Unit 182 (March 1943), 4; and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 4, Archival Unit 236 (June 1943).

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 4, Archival Unit 178 (February 1943), 1–2.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 4, Archival Unit 182 (March 1943), 4.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 4, Archival Unit 240 (May 1942); and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 4, Archival Unit 202 (1943), 4. See also Chervenkov, Towards the Celebration of the Brothers Cyril and Methodius (21.05.1942), in Radio Station Hristo Botev, vol. 2, 345–47.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15 is referring to the AgitProp. Some of them are related to the organization of solemn celebrations on the occasion of national holidays.

A considerable number of records show evidence of this. See, for instance, BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 531 (1948), 24, on 9 September; BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 102 (1946), 1, on 24 May; and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 169 (1947), 1, on 19 February.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 12 May 1945, 200: “All the Bulgarian people must take part in the ceremony of education”; Rabotnichesko Delo, 4 September 1947, 205: “Activists of the Fatherland Front … must work night and day … to be sure that there is no citizen who has not been excited from the patriotic flame of the victory of the 9th September 1944”; and Rabotnichesko Delo, 30 April 1948, 101: “No Bulgarian citizen, who loves his people and country, must be absent from the 1st May manifestation.”

Bulgarian State Records: Fund 21, Inventory 1, Archival Unit 434, 86, 87, 93–94, 119.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 8 September 1947, 209.

For analytical reports on parades see Otechestven Front, 11 September 1948, 1238 and Rabotnichesko Delo, 8 September 1947, 209, on 9 September; Rabotnichesko Delo, 30 April 1948, 101, on 1 May; and Rabotnichesko Delo, 26 May 1948, 122, on 24 May.

For this issue, see BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 531 (1948), 25, 28, on 9 September.

Otechestven Front, 7 September 1948, 1235.

Otechestven Front, 11 September 1948, 1238.

As Smith (Laclau and Mouffe, 89) points out, in a chain of equivalence, different subject positions could be symbolically located together and, at the same time, preserve their differences.

See BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 531 (1948), 24, on the recommendations of film projection on 9 September; and Rabotnichesko Delo, 2 March 1947, 50, on the performance of the opera “King Igor.”

For the importance of the press see a directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, issued on 14 November 1938, which is cited in Thompson, “Nationalist Propaganda,” 387. It said that “in Marxist-Leninist propaganda, the decisive weapon is the press: magazines, newspapers and pamphlets … The press offers an opportunity to make this or that truth into an immediate possession of all people in society, and it is therefore stronger than oral propaganda.”

Tombs of unknown soldiers imply the paradox of “remembering everyone by remembering no one in particular.” In J. Gillis, “Memory and Identity,” 11. The anonymity and the symbolic character of the “Unknown Soldier” promote the sense that all soldiers of a specific war died for the same purposes, under the same conditions and fighting with the same stimulus for fatherland. On politics about the Unknown Soldier see Gorman, “Resurrecting the Dead,” 307–14. The Bulgarian communists were influenced by the Soviet Union, which after the Second World War encouraged the cult of the dead on a mass scale. See Gillis, “Memory and Identity,” 12.

For details see BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 374 (1949) and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 692 (1949) on Ivan Vazov's centenary; BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 113 (1946) on Ivan Rilski's millennium; and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 531 (1948) on Botev's centenary.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 531 (1948), 45. Likewise, the War School was named “Vasil Levski” on the occasion of the anniversary of Levski's hanging. In Rabotnichesko Delo, 19 February 1945, 130.

Otechestven Front, 11 September 1948, 1238.

The Congress of Berlin considerably reduced the territory of the Bulgarian state and it divided Bulgaria into two parts (the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Principality of Eastern Rumelia).

Kolarov presented this demand before the Peace Conference of Paris in 1946. Bulgaria before the Peace Conference, 16. See also, Bulgaria Claims Western Thrace, 4, 8.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 27 (1945), 7.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 27 (1945).

In 1929 a march against fascism inspired by Botev's memory was dispersed and many students arrested. Grigorov, “The Party's Struggle.”

Rabotnichesko Delo, 21 May 1948, 118; and 2 June 1948, 128.

As Pavlov pointed out in his speech in the Naroden Theatre on 2 June 1945, “Hristo Botev bridges the glorious time of the Renaissance and the Fatherland Front Bulgaria.” In Rabotnichesko Delo, 4 June 1945, 218.

Blagoev, Selected Historical Works, 213–15, considers Botev as a Proudhonian anarchist. See also Natan, “The Ideology of Hristo Botev,” 296–97. Botev, as a symbolic figure, was appropriated by the anarchists as well; the youth anarchist-communist organization was called “Hristo Botev.” BCP Records: Fund 272, Inventory 1, Archival Unit 90 (1946).

Zarev, The Bulgarian Revival, 129.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 2 June 1945, 217; and 21 May 1948, 118.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 2 June 1945, 217.

After his revolutionary organization having been disclosed, Levski was captured by the Ottomans. Then, he was brought to trial and was sentenced to death by hanging in 1873.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 19 February 1945, 130.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 12 February 1945, 124; and 19 February 1945, 130.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 19 February 1945, 130. See also the slogan of the AgitProp “Long Life to the Fatherland Front—the successor of Levski's legacy.”

Rabotnichesko Delo, 12 February 1945, 124; and 19 February 1945, 130. See also Chervenkov's speech where spies and lackeys of pashas in Levski's time are identified with factions around the monarchy and reaction in the early post-war. In Rabotnichesko Delo, 19 February 1946, 36.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 19 February 1945, 130.

Pitasio, “The Bulgarian National Revival and Garibaldi”; and Tzvetkov, A History of the Balkans, vol. 1, 450–51.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 15 May 1945, 202; and 16 May 1945, 203.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 26 May 1948, 122.

Chervenkov, Dimitir Blagoev, 32–34.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 102 (1946), 6.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 36 (1945), 2, 5–6; and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 102 (1946), 7.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 24 May 1948, 121.

In BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 10 (1945), 1, the day of Cyril and Methodius is also called a day of pan-Slav culture.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 36 (1945), 1; and Otechestven Front, 21 May 1946, 523.

Karakostov, Cyril and Methodius, 7.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 4 September 1945, 296; 8 September 1945, 301; and 8 September 1947, 209.

The last adjective of this slogan was not permanent. It could be altered to “prosperous,” “wealthy” and so on. For slogans of the BCP on the subject of 9 September see BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 36 (1945), 7–8.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 36 (1945), 7; Rabotnichesko Delo, 8 September 1945, 301; and 8 September 1947, 209.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 170 (1947), 41; and Rabotnichesko Delo, 4 September 1945, 296.

On the cult of new beginnings see Gillis, “Memory and Identity,” 8.

See, for instance, Rabotnichesko Delo, 3 September 1947, 204. See Amalvi, “Bastille Day,” 133, on a similar concept regarding the link between Bastille Day and the Third Republic.

Recited by Chervenkov in a historical report on the occasion of the national holiday of 9 September as revolutionary forerunners of 9 September. In Rabotnichesko Delo, 9 September 1947, 210.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 170 (1947), 42; and BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 6, Archival Unit 531 (1948), 26–27.

“When the narod was united and firmly rallied round a given national idea, it coped with domestic and foreign enemies,” e.g. the national liberation movement, the resistance movement, and the struggle against the divisive opposition. In Rabotnichesko Delo, 6 September 1947, 207.

This concept was articulated up to the 16th Plenum and the Fifth Congress (July and December 1948, respectively). For more details see Sygkelos, “Nationalism from the Left,” 145–46.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 36 (1945), 7; Rabotnichesko Delo, 10 September 1945, 302; and 8 September 1947, 209.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 8 September 1945, 301.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 3 September 1947, 204. In Rabotnichesko Delo, 11 September 1947, 211, the following excerpt is quoted: “The working people demonstrated its great achievements in terms of productivity, the peasants expressed their pleasure in the collection of harvests and to secure bread, the Narodna army manifested its alertness to safeguard the country's integrity and all the people demonstrated their national pride.”

Rabotnichesko Delo, 8 September 1947, 209.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 3 September 1947, 204; and 4 September 1947, 205.

See, for instance, the title of an article in Rabotnichesko Delo, 6 September 1947, 207: “Third Anniversary of 9th September and One Year from the Establishment of the People's Republic.”

As Dimitrov himself characterized it in one of his speeches; Rabotnichesko Delo, 2 May 1946, 96. For the same topic see also Rabotnichesko Delo, 30 April 1948, 101.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 30 April 1945, 191.

See a photo of it in Rabotnichesko Delo, 27 April 1946, 93.

BCP Records: Fund 1, Inventory 15, Archival Unit 170 (1947), 24, 33–36; Rabotnichesko Delo, 30 April 1946, 30; and 22 April 1948, 94. See also Dimitrov's speech given in the Naroden (national people's) Theatre on 30 April 1946. In Rabotnichesko Delo, 2 May 1946, 96.

Some of the May Day slogans with such content are to be found in the Bulgarian State Records: Fund 28, Inventory 1, Archival Unit 414: “Railway workers, speed up your work for safe and regular transport service” (12); “Implementation of Two Years Plan will reinforce democratic rights and freedoms of the Bulgarian people” (30); “Intellectuals, work for the grandeur of the fatherland and for development of national economy” (32); and “Youth, be shock workers” (35).

Similarly, the shock workers were considered Bulgaria's national pride. Rabotnichesko Delo, 1 May 1948, 102.

Rabotnichesko Delo, 30 April 1948, 101.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yannis Sygkelos

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