Crowds and Power in Sofia and Bucharest - II

The Nobel-prize winning author Elias Canetti was born in the Bulgarian city of Russe on the Danube in 1905 and would have had quite a few things to say about the protests in Sofia. Better known ironically (thanks to his own autobiographical efforts) as one of British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch’s many lovers, his “Crowds and Power” (1960) vies with Le Bon’s as the classic treatise on the subject. The book - a  strange mixture of anthropology and social psychology and now, understandably, enjoying a new lease of life - warned of the unpredictable ebb and flow of the crowd. It is, most definitely, not a Marxist take on the subject – for which one should turn to criminologist Matt Clement’s “A People’s History of Riot, Protest and the Law – the Sound of the Crowd” (2016)

Vlad Mitev is a young Bulgarian journalist who also lives in Russe and has a trilingual HYPERLINK "https://movafaq.wordpress.com/category/limba-език-language/english/"Bridge of Friendship blogHYPERLINK "https://movafaq.wordpress.com/category/limba-език-language/english/" which covers political and cultural developments on both sides of that last section of the river Danube. He’s also editor of the Romanian section of "HYPERLINK "https://en.baricada.org/"BaricadaHYPERLINK "https://en.baricada.org/""HYPERLINK "https://en.baricada.org/" , a leftist journal based in Sofia which boasts Bulgarian, Polish and Romanian writers. He and I worked together on an early draft of this piece before deciding to focus on what we each felt we knew best. I’m also grateful for the insights I’ve gained over the years from Daniela, my Romanian companion and conspirator,

Ralf Dahrendorf was a famous German sociologist/UK statesman who wrote in 1990 an extended public letter first published under the title “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” and then expanded as “Reflections on the Revolution of our Time”. In it he made the comment that it would take

·         one or two years to create new institutions of political democracy in the recently liberated countries of central Europe;

·         maybe five to 10 years to reform the economy and make a market economy; and

·         15 to 20 years to create the rule of law.

·         some two generations to create a functioning civil society there.

 

What had in 1989 seemed a bloody Revolution in Romania was later exposed as more of a simple regime change. Personnel and systems remained in place and it was to be 1996 - with the election of Emil Constantinescu as President - before new winds started to challenge the old systems and structures of power. By then the scions of the country's privileged families were being inculcated in the pro-market celebratory doctrines that pass for education in American Business Schools; and the country's (strong) intelligentsia had spent several years quaffing at Friedrich Hayek's fountain.

 

Privatisation was at last allowed to let rip – with the local oligarchs soon becoming indistinguishable from the politicians.

When Bulgaria’s PM Ivan Kostov was asked why crony capitalism was flourishing under his rule, his revealing comments was

 

“Bulgaria is a small country. We are all cousins”

 

Eastern Europe as a whole was offered a deadly deal which has almost destroyed these countries – almost 2 million Bulgarians and Romanians prop up the British and German economies; Bulgaria has the unenviable position of losing its population at a faster rate than any other country in the world - and Romania is not far behind. And the pensioners who are expected to exist on a monthly pension of less than 200 euros a month – when the prices in the shops are at western level.

 

Austrian and Italian companies have taken over the jewels of the Bulgarian and Romanian timber, banking and agribusiness sectors after the massive privatisation which was made a condition of their membership of the EU and NATO.

That last has meant of course militarisation, high expenditures on military procurement and reduced social spending. Bulgaria recently concluded a deal for American fighter aircraft at a cost of 2 billion dollars – placing it at the top of the global table for increased military spending since 2010 – with a 167% increase (Romania is at 150%)

 

The Bulgarian protests

But it is the EC Structural Funds with their hundreds of billions of euros which lie behind the ongoing street protests in Sofia - directed generally against the country's systemic corruption and, specifically, against Prime Minister Borisov (who used to be the bodyguard of first the ex-dictator Zhivkov and then PM King Simeon II) as well as the Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev - whose raid on the offices of popular President Radev in July raised big questions.

Unlike previous street protests in Sofia, this one has attracted wider support – for example from a previous Justice Minister, Hristo Ivanov who launched a mock incursion on the Black Sea home of one of the country’s political oligarchs

 

The incident transformed Ivanov’s image from detached intellectual to maverick politician setting the terms of public debate, and his centre-right Democratic Bulgaria coalition doubled its support in the polls. “This was not simply the PR action of the year but of the decade,” said Petar Cholakov, a political analyst and sociologist from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

 

The two countries separated by the River Danube don't usually have a great deal to do with one another - one is strongly in the EU/Atlantic Alliance camp - the other's 150-year-old ties with Russia still reverberate. But, in recent years, Romania (at least in western eyes) has made significant progress in fighting corruption - measured at least in terms of the number of politicians and ex-Ministers it has managed to put in jail. When Bulgarian activists began to call this out, the power structure tried to defuse the situation by appointing a crony as Prosecutor-General. This is a position which, unlike in Romania, has never been the subject of any reform.

 

Vlad Mitev’s recent Open Democracy article Bulgarian Protests - battle over anti-corruption gives some of the background to the Sofia protests

 

The Romanian anti-corruption formula was popular in Bulgaria until 2017-2018. Romanian anti-corruption had gained its fame under the leadership of the former chief prosecutor of the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) Laura Kövesi, now chief prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

 

As Romanian Chief prosecutor from 2013 to 2018, she presided over numerous arrests of politicians, widely reported in the international press. The “Romanian model of anti-corruption” was lauded in the western media as an exemplary model for delivering justice and building the rule of law. The model of anti-corruption based on a powerful Chief Prosecutor’s office thus came to be seen in Bulgaria as a path towards a European standard of living. The Bulgarian middle class seemed to envy their Romanian counterparts...

 

But a subsequent article by Mitev in “Baricada” laid more emphasis on the class nature evident in the protests – which the western media has totally failed to pick up -

 

It is interesting to note that in the earlier wave of anti-oligarchic protests in Bulgaria in 2013 the protesters were called by media and society “the beautiful and the clever ones”, which was a direct reference to the narcissism of their representatives’ and to the abyss that divides them from the “ugly” and “stupid” masses. Romania has an almost exact notion of the same type: “the beautiful and the free youth”, which gets abbreviated as “Tefelists” (TFL – tineri frumoşi şi liberi – beautiful and free youth).

These are important signals that important parts of the overall population feel distant and maybe even ethically superior to these protesting elites, who in turn believe that it is they who hold the ethical higher ground. And these notions have been used by politicians in a divide and conquer manner.

 

What was imported from Romania was the idea of an unrestrained Chief Prosecutor which suited Bulgaria’s new man Geshev down to the ground – as Mihai Evans explains in a recent Open Democracy article.

 

As the system is currently constituted there are simply no checks and balances that can rein in the conduct of the Bulgarian Prosecutor General, a position which is largely in the political gift of the government. The holder of this office has effective command of the entire judicial system and can stop any investigation, including a hypothetical one against himself. This has resulted in conduct that reached a nadir in a shocking series of events which saw a senior prosecutor murdered after making strongly worded criticisms of the then Prosecutor General. This appalling episode has never been satisfactory cleared up by investigators or the legal system. The family of the murdered man took a case, Kolevi v Bulgaria, to the European Court of Human Rights whose ruling was that Bulgaria must engage in extensive reforms of the prosecutors office.

 

Over a period of more than a decade, largely coinciding with the governments of Borisov, it has failed to do so. As a result, as Radosveta Vassileva, a fellow at University College, London’s Faculty of Law argues: “Bulgaria is permanently torn by scandals regarding non-random distribution of case files, abuses of judges and prosecutors who resist political orders, purposeful destruction of evidence by authorities etc.”. In recent years Bulgaria has been repeatedly convicted of violations of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights for failing to ensure the rights of the accused. The Specialised Court for Organised Crime, a parallel system of courts ostensibly established to combat corruption have failed to convict a single politician (in contrast to Romania where dozens have been imprisoned, including the leader of the ruling Social Democrat Party last year). Legal scholars have accused both countries of failing to provide fair trials.

 

The Sofia protesters’ demand of a reform to the Bulgarian constitution (with the chief prosecutor’s prerogatives being curbed, the political influence over the judicial system curtailed and the judiciary strengthened) certainly suggests a continuing degree of faith in Bulgarian institutions or at least in their capacity to reform and be held accountable.

 

Pre Covid Hopes of “Normality”

"For a normal Romania" was the slogan used by the campaign of the ex-Mayor of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu in last autumn's elections as he fought to retain the Presidency he had surprisingly grabbed in 2015 from the jaws of defeat. The slogan expressed the dreams of many - not least the millions of younger Romanians (and Bulgarians) forced to emigrate in search of that dream.

 

Street protests in both countries are nothing new - although only in Romania have they succeeded in recent years in toppling governments. A so-called Social Democratic (PSD) government fell in 2015 as a result of a deadly fire in a Bucharest nightclub which exposed the scandalously lax regulations sustained by the greasing of hands.

Another scandal which engulfed Romania last summer started with the murder of a teenager whose terrified phone-call to the police was totally ignored. The revelation of the scale of the collusion between the Secret Service, prosecutors and the Anti-Corruption Agency in the country (a veritable Deep State) eventually led to the collapse of that PSD government as well - and the re-election in the subsequent Presidential election of the slow-witted but polarising Transylvanian Klaus Johannis

 

Bulgaria and Romania may have joined the EU in 2007 after a bit of a hiccup but they both still operate under a judicial cloud in the form of The Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) which subjects each country to an annual check of its legal and judicial health. Neither Bulgaria nor Romania are happy with the continued EU scrutiny but have at least managed to avoid the threat of sanctions which continues to hang over Hungary and Poland. And both countries have, largely, managed post-1989 to escape the right-wing virus to which they were exposed in the interwar period. For that we should all be profoundly grateful.

 

But neither country has been able to shake off the legacy of its past - which is much longer than just the half-century of communist influence. The Ottoman Empire had several centuries to engineer human souls – with the Greek Phanariots being given a measure of licence in Romania to exploit the locals whereas the Bulgarians lived under the direct yoke of the Ottomans.

In that respect, Dahrendorf was a bit optimistic in 1990 in suggesting that it would it take only 20 years to embed the Rule of Law and 2 generations (say 50 years) for civil society to be properly functioning! 

I’ll continue this post later

Crowds in Sofia and Bucharest part I

 Blogging is a pretty solitary affair so it was a real pleasure to get an approach from the man behind Boffy’s Blog and asked if I would be interested in doing the odd guest post on his blog about political events going on in the Balkans. I can, of course, speak only about the 2 countries in which I’ve lived for the past decade and more – Bulgaria and Romania - about which I have occasionally posted. Boffy’s invitation coincided with the start of the street protests in Sofia

In recent weeks, events in Belarus have meant that the world’s attention to the Sofia drama - now into its third month – has slipped down the agenda. Somewhat belatedly, therefore, let me bring my readers up to speed – starting with this introductory summary of my particular interest. My Guest Post will then follow – in two parts….

 

Bulgaria (7 million souls) and Romania (19 million) entered the EU in 2007 - with British stereotypes of the countries covering such images as poisoned umbrellas, cheap plonk, vampires, sea and sand and, more recently, both casual labour and professional skills.

Apart from that, we know little about either country – although some people may have a vague memory of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson arriving in Bucharest in 1941 in the TV series based on Olivia Manning’s brilliant “Fortunes of War - the Balkan Trilogy”. Only a handful of anglo-saxon historians and the occasional writer (such as Kapka Kassabova) offer insights about the two countries

 

Coincidentally, 2007 was the year I returned to a mountain house in the Carpathians after a spell of 8 years in Central Asia – only to go to Sofia to lead a project for training Bulgarian regional officials in the compliance system for EC regulations (in those days the migration was both ways!).

The powers-that-be were obviously sleeping when the bids for the contract were opened that day - because it was an Italian company which slipped through the nets to win the multi-million project. And it was therefore with some difficulty that the team I headed was actually permitted, after some delay, to start its work.

 

But I took both countries so much to my heart that I spent the next decade wintering in Sofia and summering in Romania; and it is from this vantage point that I dare to offer comment on what are actually very complex recent developments in both countries. 

Those interested in knowing more can tap into the two E-books I have written about the countries – 

Bulgarian Realists – getting to know the Bulgarians through their art; and 

Mapping Romania – notes on an unfinished journey

Learning to Learn

For 17 years I was allowed to call myself a “lecturer” which I could have included in my Sceptic’s Glossary as “someone who spouts words”. It was patently a higher status (and rewarded) job than “teacher” who is expected to work with pupils (with at least a year’s full-time training for that task) and to produce results (however questionably measured).

In the 1970s a Lecturer had a lot of freedom – in terms of both choice and scale of holidays (3 months’ summer vacation for example)

Initially, I enjoyed that freedom…..although not so much with engineering students who took an understandably dubious attitude to the “liberal studies” programme in which I was initially employed - beautifully skewered in the Wilt series of novels by Tom Sharpe.

The work I particularly enjoyed was that with “mature students” - whether at the “adult education” classes of the Workers’ Educational Association; or in the Open University where I was a part-time tutor in its opening period….

In the 1970s, planning students at the famous Glasgow School of Art also proved to be a captive audience for musings about my practical experience as a reforming politician in a bureaucracy. Those were the days of Norman Dennis…..

I may not have helped them in their examinations – but at least I gave them a foretaste (and forewarning) of the games they would face in their future careers.

But my enjoyment faded as the academic Degree Machine cranked up its requirements and I found myself suddenly having to prepare course structures into which lectures and seminars fitted logically and seamlessly – without any special help being on offer. It was simply assumed that, having learned my subject, I would have the relevant skills to design course programmes, deliver lectures and organise seminars to ensure that students would read the relevant material and get through examinations successfully.

It took universities until the 1990s to wake up and make sure that lecturers were properly trained in these skills.

I had been winging my way for too long to be able to submit to the new requirements; got utterly depressed; and, after 3 years of winter misery, resigned in 1985….

Clearly, most teachers know how to teach kids – although I don’t quite know where the balance of argument currently lies between those who advocate “top-down” learning and those who favour a child-centred approach.

But adult learners clearly need a different approach – one that helps them discover things for themselves…as is expressed so well in this video – “10 things polyglots do differently”. 

It was 2005 before I got the opportunity to learn about the very different world of training adults – first in Kyrgyzstan where I was leader for two years of an EC-funded programme of capacity development for local government; and then in Bulgaria where I also led a programme to help prepare regional staff to comply with the requirements of EU membership.

I learned a lot from both experiences – starting with an intensive attempt to understand the needs of those in charge of the new municipalities of the small central Asian state and to provide relevant support. One of the results was this Roadmap for Local Government in Kyrgyzstan which I very much enjoyed preparing – as you will see from the way I pulled out the metaphor in the title (see the diagram at pages 76-77)

And I was able to use that in the very next project – benefitting from the insights of a Polish trainer in my team to produce one of my best papers - Training that works! How do we build training systems which actually improve the performance of state bodies?

So who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks??

"Bridge of Friendship" interview

I’m “chuffed” at being the focus of a long interview published this week by a young Bulgarian journalist – on a bi-lingual venture called Bridge of Friendship, Vlad Mitev is based in Russe - which boasts the bridge of that name (over the Danube) – and uses his location to write in Bulgarian and Romanian (and often in English) about various aspects of his region. Not only economic (his original focus) but cultural aspects come within his remit. In this cross-border focus, he is quite exceptional… and deserves support.

I had been intrigued by his blog and we had met up earlier in the summer – in Russe – on my way back to Bucharest which is, of course, a mere 60 kms from the Danube and Bulgaria and it was there he sprung on me his idea of an extended interview. Hardly the shy and retiring type, I was only too happy to oblige….

Behind his modest facade, he’s a tough cookie and soon made it clear he would take no diversionary nonsense from me as, inevitably, I tried to move the discussion into more familiar waters…..For Vlad I was merely an intriguing specimen of a Brit who had apparently opted to make his home in both Bulgaria and Romania and he wanted to explore not so much my reasons for this - as my impressions of the two countries and their differences; and any thoughts I might have about the scope for more cooperation… 

One would have to be a bit insensitive to straddle two countries without gaining some impressions – which, of course, always say more about the visitor and his values than the “natives”. And the more countries I have lived in (almost twelve I think) the more fascinated I have become with cultural aspects (in the widest sense). 
It’s not just history and the language which poses a problem at the Danube – it’s the very alphabet! So it’s hardly surprising that people say that people tend to turn their backs to one another at the river. For a few weeks, a couple of years ago, I entertained the thought of helping to develop a cross-border project based on cultural aspects – but simply could not drum up enough interest from my (admittedly limited) networks….. 

The interview gave me full rein for hyperlinks - and a list at the end gives full access to key texts…...

Earlier in the year I tried to celebrate the principle of bridge building – across the boundaries which divide groups – not just nations – but classes, intellectual disciplines and professions. At an early age, I found myself a lot in “no-man’s land” operating a fairly solitary role but, ultimately, one which offered me exciting new perspectives. But it was, apparently, a central European saying that “the problem with bridges is that horses shit on them in peacetime and they are the first thing to be blown up in times of war”

But Vlad’s efforts on Bridge of Friendship deserve everyone’s admiration – and support 

Wood, Wine and....Canetti

Sofia detained us for a week and we decided to have a leisurely return (to Bucharest) taking the middle of the three routes which sprout east from Sofia – the quietest and probably most scenic which skirts the edge of the Stara Planina (otherwise known as Blue Mountains).

I had forgotten that this is the road which offers access to the beautiful 19^th century village of Koprovichitsa (which played such an important role in the 1870s uprising against the Turks) and had no hesitation in veering right to see it again…..my third visit in the past few years….(the first had been in winter; the second in autumn 2013) .The wood carvings on the doors and ceilings remind me of what an art form wood can be......RIP Bogdan......and I realise, rather belatedly, that the superbly carved pulpit is an unusual feature of these older Bulgarian churches – features which are not normally seen in Orthodox churches. The friendly priest who waved us (inc the cat) into the church stressed the ecumenical nature of the congregation in those days….….
Dare I wonder that the sermons possibly played a role in the 19^th century liberation??????

Karlovo and Kazanluk were on the schedule – the first to check whether any traces were left of the peaceful courtyards of the 1930s which Nicola Tanev painted so evocatively; Kazanluk, the heart of the rose valley, for possibly another visit to the municipal gallery which keeps the heart of the Bulgarian painting beating. More than 100 well-known artists grew up in this small town……

We spotted only a couple of remnants of former architectural splendours in Karlovo - and a sign for the Chateau Copsa winery soon had me distracted from thoughts of art galleries…..

Standing alone in the vineyards stretching to the horizon with the Blue Mountains towering above, the Chateau is a tastefully-created and designed modern building which offers not only wine-tasting and meals but accommodation and sauna….Two superb whites and two great roses were soon trickling down our throats – tempered with chunks of cheeses, walnuts and dried plums…..all for 6 euros apiece……one of the most delightful lunches we’ve had in some time………

And there was still a couple of hundred kilometres to go before we reached our evening destination – Russe – over the mountains to Veliko Tarnovo and then the final 100 kms….most of it by now thoroughly familiar.

We pulled in just after 18.00 to the fascinating Luliaka Hotel plum on the Danube but just within Russe’s boundaries. 

It’s rare for a hotel to attract my loyalty but I so loved the layout, atmosphere and quiet beauty of the site that I quickly booked a second night…… Their meals and house rose (from their own winery) were an added attraction which will draw me whenever I feel I need a restover on my way back from Sofia…..

And Russe has so many attractions – particularly, for us, the early 20^th century buildings….I had been looking for the Canetti family house – which the Nobel prizewinner describes in the first part of his memoirs and came across it completely by accident…..pausing to photo parts of the facade and only realising when I was inside that what seemed to be an arts complex was in fact the Canetti Foundation… hosting these days something called a “Process-Space Art Festival” (this is the statue the municipality recently erected to him at the entrance to his street)

Canetti actually lived in Russe for only a few years before his family migrated to Austria and he subsequently spent most of his life in London and Zurich.

His “Crowds and Power” was one of many books written by central Europeans which made an impact on me at University and I recently enjoyed his “kiss and tell” Party in the Blitz which complements his more famous trilogy of memoirs. Clive James does a demolition job on the man here.

A more sympathetic treatment of someone who typified that genre of central European polymath we have sadly lost is The Worlds of Elias Canetti – centenary essays (2005)

Our second evening we were treated to one of the most spectacular thunderstorms….

On resilience; and wines and painters from Pazardzhik

So much happening – the continuing human and political crisis of the ongoing wave of immigration to Europe’s shores; the Panama Papers and its political fallout in Britain – not least on the Brexit vote; the last remnants of the steel industry being sacrificed in Britain to the neo-liberal God…..and all I  do is wallaw in self-pity from the facial discomfort of the past 2 months!!

I know our various worlds have always been governed by cycles of gloom and bravado but, somehow, in the past half-century, social “expectations” seem to have experienced a tectonic shift – such as to have made us incapable of dealing with a world that is in decline….

A few years back, there was extensive talk of “resilience” – the social capacity to deal effectively with crises….why some communities seem to have this….and others don’t. Sad that this concept seems to have gone the way of all fads…Or is it perhaps that we have simply become overwhelmed with the notion of “Crisis”???

Bulgaria is a society which, at first sight, seems to have avoided the temptations of debt-driven modernisation….even in Sofia most people eke out a living – and one-person businesses seem to be the norm. A wine-tasting in young Asen’s little Vina Orrenda (at the Russian Monument) offers a real social occasion in such a modest society and I was glad to have made the trip last Thursday. Not just for the excellent taste of the Riverside range of wines being offered by the Manistira winery (3 whites; a Rose; and 2 Mavruds) but for the easy conversation which flowed between us. The left part of my face is still semi-frozen and I therefore have problems tasting – but I coped manfully!

It was the first time I had attended a group wine-tasting – and I appreciated the ceremonial aspects as Asen and a young lady first introduced the winery and the wines and Asen then poured us our respective samples…

It was also nice to be approached by one guest and be asked for my opinion on the wines….and to have the chance to speak to the 2 young ladies representing the winery (who remembered me apparently from the November wine-tasting!). It's in a village near Pazardzhik and I suggested they might put Pazardzhik’s most famous painter on one of their etiquettes – Stoian Vassilev. He was a prolific painter (the local museum is reputed to have some 5000 of his paintings and sketches). I have 4 of his - the first being very untypical. The second is more typical of his style......

How Sofia opened Robert Conquest's Eyes

Robert Conquest – who died last month at the age of 98 – was the best known British investigator in the post-war period of the true scale of the communist tyranny.  During the 1960s he edited eight volumes of work including “Common Sense About Russia” (1960), “The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities” (1960) and “Power and Policy in the USSR” (1961). His other early works on the Soviet Union included “Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair” (1961) and “Russia After Khrushchev” (1965) published in the United States republished as The Contemporary Soviet Union Series by Frederick Praeger, whose U.S. company published, in addition to works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Milovan Đilas and a number of books on communism.

Many of us saw him overly fixated on Soviet atrocities - but the opening of soviet records after 1990 proved him correct. 

I learned several new things from the obituaries and tributes of recent weeks. First that he was a poet and close friend of Kingsley Amis – with a strong line in doggerel.  

But the most important insight was that his revulsion against Soviet tyranny stemmed from his personally witnessing the Communist takeover of Bulgaria in 1944 – an event which I have written about here. In 1944, Conquest was posted to Bulgaria as a liaison officer to the Bulgarian forces fighting under Soviet command, attached to the Third Ukrainian Front, and then to the Allied Control Commission. There, he met Tatiana Mihailova, who later became his second wife. At the end of the war, he joined the Foreign Office, returning to the British Legation in Sofia. Witnessing first-hand the communist takeover in Bulgaria, he became completely disillusioned with communist ideas. He left Bulgaria in 1948, helping Tatiana escape the new regime. Back in London, he divorced his first wife and married Tatiana.

The third fascinating fact is that, on the war’s end, he actually joined the Labour Party’s International Bureau – working therefore with Dennis Healey (who sadly died about 10 days after I drafted this - at the ripe old age of 98). Conquest then joined the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), a unit created by the Labour government to "collect and summarize reliable information about Soviet and communist misdoings, to disseminate it to friendly journalists, politicians, and trade unionists, and to support, financially and otherwise, anticommunist publications."

You can read more about his life here. He is an obvious candidate for the next entry in the blog Britain is no country for old men

A Chance Encounter

It was typical that the very day I was hoping to put my new E-book on Bulgaria online. I stumbled on yet another great but neglected Bulgarian painter….And all thanks to family, friendship and drink!

My eldest daughter will visit me (with her husband) for the first time in a week and I therefore had to find a bed settee. A visit to IKEA soon produced the goods - which lay in pieces in the spare room for a week or so…. My friend Yovo promised to came to the rescue on Wednesday – and I duly set off to the nearby CasaVino to ensure he was properly recompensed for what proved to be 2 hours of work….

As I hit the park, I decided to see if the Vaska Emanouilova gallery had anything new to show and was quite stunned by what I found – an exhibition of the work of Iakim Banchev (1884-1967)  – a magnificent portraitist and landscape artist who captures, for me, the essence of Bulgarian art and society in the first half of the 20^th Century

Admitted 1903 to the National School of Drawing in the studio painting of Ivan Markvichka and Ivan Angelov, he was part of the student flow to the Art Academy in Dresden, where he stays until March 1904. Then he goes to Turin - where he graduates and stays for five years. In 1905 he takes part in an exhibition with his work "Nude" and received First Prize (the picture is located in the Turin Museum).

He returned to his native Lovech, bringing with him his paintings from his workshops in the academies - a few of which were purchased in the early 50s by Sofia City Gallery,

He works as a military artist in the Balkan Wars and creates dozens of large-scale canvasses immortalising the horror of war (now part of the collection of the Museum of Military History in Sofia).
But he wasn’t able to break into the official art world and headed across the Atlantic hoping to find work as an architect. In summer 1923 he settled in Manhattan – but his hopes to find work as an architect quickly evaporated and he was forced to go back to his painting from which he earned enough money to return to his beloved Mina.

Financial difficulties forced him to leave again and, from July 1927 to July 1933, the Banchev family lived in the US but saved enough from portraits to allow them to return to BG and buy in Sofia a property at 5a "August 11" St where he designed his own studio on the top floor .
In the remaining three decades of life he worked in the pharmaceutical office of his brother Ivan. After Sept 1944 he withdraws from the artistic partly because of the change in tastes but mostly because of his bad bourgeois past.

Despite attempts after the political changes in the country to adapt and to participate in exhibitions, his works are never admitted. “As a kind of reward for his modest nature, UBA accepts one work in 1949 but doesn’t display it. He sank into the solitude of his own studio, where he painted and then destroyed the works to avoid trouble - Sometimes doing portraits on order for a ministerial office with pictures of Botev, Levski Georgi Dimitrov. Portraits not signed. Jakim Banchev meets death on the doorstep of his home on January 19, 1967”.

Here’s a brief TV programme on the exhibition which runs at the Emanouiliva Gallery until the end of the month. 

In the mists of Bulgaria's past

Bulgaria has a long and proud history – reaching back 1300 years. Sofia is Europe’s second oldest capital…..Tribes and foreign armies have ravaged its territory for thousands of years…..

The Isihia music group gives us a haunting ensemble here of painting and music to help fix that reality in our minds.

And a 1980s film about the nation’s first ruler - Han Asparuh is a stirring 2 hour view (with sub-titles) which also makes us aware of the emptiness of Holywood epics……

Initially I could find only one history book but am now beginning to develop the beginnings of a serious library….of which three books are the mainstay -
-  “The Rose of the Balkans – a short history of Bulgaria” by Ivan Iltchev (Colibri 2005) – a delightful read (with good graphics) by the Dean of Sofia University who has also produced several other books on modern Bulgarian history
- Short History of Modern Bulgaria  RJ Crampton (1987)
- Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria Raymon Detrez (the Scarecrow Press 2006) – an amazing find (thanks to The National Library of Scotland). 900 pages of information (of which no less than 100 pages are a bibliography of books and articles available in the English language!!) All freely downloadable!!

One of the main Sofia thoroughfares is Stamboulski St which I had assumed was a reference to Istanbul (if I had given half a thought to the Ottoman Empire, I should have known better!!).

In fact it refers to one of Bulgaria’s most prominent 20th Century politicians whose massive statue towers over the entrance to the Opera House - 

One book clearly worth reading on him is Peasants in power: Alexander Stamboliski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, 1899-1923  by John Bell (1977) which a review summarized usefully thus -

The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU) was a left-populist political party based in the rural areas of Bulgaria. They briefly held power from 1919 to 1923, under the charismatic leadership of Alexander Stamboliski. In 1923, the BANU government was overthrown by a military coup. Stamboliski was arrested and tortured to death.
Bulgarian politics almost a century ago may seem like a somewhat obscure and esoteric subject (unless you are Bulgarian!), but the history of the BANU have broader implications. During the 20th century, modernization have essentially only taken two paths: capitalist modernization or socialist modernization. The latter path eventually proved unviable, unless one counts present-day China as still being socialist. Stamboliski and the BANU attempted a third way to modernization: a path based on neither the bourgeoisie nor "the working class" (actually a socialist state bureaucracy), but rather on the peasantry. They attempted to turn Bulgaria into some kind of non-capitalist, non-socialist system based on peasant private property and cooperatives. The ultimate goal of the BANU was to replace parliamentary democracy with an "estatist" organization based on the professional organizations of peasants, artisans and workers. ("Estatist" as in based on estates.) Apparently, this was a vaguely left-wing version of corporatism.

What makes the BANU interesting, is precisely that their commitment to the peasantry wasn't a call for anti-modernism or Throne and Altar conservative politics. Stamboliski was a freethinker who had studied Darwin, Renan and Bernstein. He opposed both the Bulgarian monarchy, the military and the nationalist wars of expansion carried out by a number of Bulgarian governments. He wanted modernization, but a modernization that would benefit the peasantry rather than squeeze them in the usual fashion.

Stamboliski believed that private property was legitimate as long as it was acquired through individual or family labour. He therefore opposed big landowners and called for a far-reaching land reform. In power, Stamboliski used the power of the state to carry out a radical redistribution of land. The BANU also encouraged the creation of cooperatives in agriculture, fishing and forestry. The Bulgarian government established a virtual monopoly on foreign trade in grain and tobacco, which led to the peasants getting higher prices for their products. A system of virtual rent controls was instituted to ease the burdens of the homeless after World War One. The government also set up a compulsory labour service to mobilize workers and peasants to build new roads, clean the streets of the towns, etc.

What this shows, of course, is that the idea of a radical redistribution of property without using the power of the state, is utopian. No matter whether the goal is to abolish private property, or merely to redistribute it, the power of the state is necessary. (The only exception would be a situation of general societal breakdown, at which point the local communities would presumably help themselves to whatever part of "big business" happens to be in their backyard.)
Another thing that intrigued me when reading "Peasants in power" was the peaceful foreign policy advocated by the BANU. As already indicated, Stamboliski absolutely opposed the foreign expansionism of the previous Bulgarian governments and their bizarre allies, the terrorist organization IMRO. Opposing the tide of Greater Bulgarian nationalism against Turks, Greeks, Serbs and Rumanians must have been difficult, but Stamboliski stood his ground. Eventually the BANU got the support of a plurality of the Bulgarian voters, who were sick and tired of all the loosing wars. In power, Stamboliski called for a Balkan federation and sought rapprochement with Yugoslavia, the traditional enemy of Bulgaria in all things Balkan.

Eventually, Stamboliski and his radical populist regime were overthrown by a bloody right wing coup. That the traditional circles in Bulgaria opposed the BANU is hardly surprising. To them, the BANU was "Bolshevist". The IMRO, a Macedonian terrorist organization with a substantial following in Bulgaria, also opposed the BANU and assassinated several of its ministers already before the coup. The IMRO wanted Bulgaria to attack the Serbs or the Greeks (or both!) in order to regain all of Macedonia for a Greater Bulgaria, a bizarre but typically nationalist project. Russian White Guards (stationed in Bulgaria at the prodding of the Allies) had been implicated in an earlier coup attempt, and resented Stamboliski's thaw with the Soviet Union.

Tragically, the BANU was also opposed by the other left-wing parties. The Broad Socialists (Social Democrats) opposed the BANU. So did the Communist Party, which viewed the conflicts between Stamboliski and the right-wing as an internal "bourgeois" conflict. Only after the overthrow and murder of Stamboliski did the Communists enter an alliance with the BANU, but their joint uprising against the new regime failed completely, and brutal repression followed.
For rather obvious reasons, nobody can tell how world history would have looked like, had a "Green" path to modernization been chosen, rather than the "Blue" or "Red" paths actually followed, or if such a path is even feasible. Still, "Peasants in power" is an interesting and fascinating read about a little known episode in that world history...

Other English language books on Bulgaria clearly worth reading are -

- Debating the Past: Modern Bulgarian History: From Stambolov to Zhivkov; Roumen Daskalov (2011)

- Crown of Thorns; the reign of Boris III of Bulgaria 1918-1943 (1987)

- Stefan Stambolov and the emergence of the Bulgarian nation (1993)

- Who Owns the Past?: The Politics of Time in a 'model' Bulgarian Village; Deema Kaneff  (2006)

- The Iron Fist ;– inside the archives of the Bulgarian Secret Police Alex Dmitrova (2007)

- Voices from the Gulag – life and death in communist Bulgaria (1999) looks in harrowing detail at this period of Bulgaria’s history

- Papers of the American Research Center in Sofia (2014); a very impressive collection of monographs on different aspects of Balkan history eg about commerce between Brasov and Vidin in the 15th century!!