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Valentina Vaseva
And this is the image of the late leader Stalin, built by the famous Soviet writer
Mikhail Sholokhov and published in the newspaper Rabotnichesko Delo (Sholok¬
hov 1953: 2):
The uniform of the Generalissimo and the red silk drapery of the coffin contrast
the snow pallor of this familiar ... face. His greying mustache and the crown
of his rippling hair looks like an early autumn frost. The stiffed by the coldness
of death eyelids are hiding the eyes that penetrated so far into the future. The
mighty hands of the leader and soldier, which never knew trembling, which lay
on the wheel of history, are now still in their last rest.
The photographic images of the deceased in the coffin displayed in a hall of
reverence published in the press also show significant similarities with the funerals
of Georgi Dimitrov and Joseph Stalin. In the foreground, the retouched photos
show the deceased in a draped opened coffin (Fig. 1). The hands are relaxed, but
not crossed on his chest as in a Christian burial, flowers and wreaths can be seen
laid alongside the casket where the most important people in the country are lined
up for a group picture. Although placed in the foreground, Stalin’s casket has been
further enlarged to emphasize his greatness and his higher place in the political
hierarchy above all other members of the Central Committee of the Party. Military
guards and guards of honour can be often seen in the frame, passing through the
streets of the funeral procession. The presence of military elements at the funerals
of the communist leaders can be explained by the fact that said leaders were also
acting as supreme commanders of the army. The cinematography of this period
seeks to show the multitude of the bereaved, the huge masses of people who came
to pay homage to the deceased, contrasting to what photographs of the funerals
aimed for, namely depicting the bidding of farewell to the leader by shrouding it in
propagandistic intimacy, through capturing expressions of adoration of important
figures of the time during the funerals.
The very environment in which the burial ceremony takes place is also de¬
scribed in detail in word and image. The huge funeral portraits; the decorated
ceremonial halls; the funeral procession with military lafettes (cannon racks), on
which the closed coffin was placed, pulled by military horses; the rally in front of
the mournfully decorated mausoleum—these are all elements of the funeral cer¬
emonies, the image of which was being sculpted with details from the mass media
through speech and photography.
In 1949, a large creative team in Bulgaria was commissioned to shoot a docu¬
mentary on the death of Georgi Dimitrov. The premiere of the black and white
film He Does Not Die was in September 1949. It was created by B. Grezhov and
R. Grigorov, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, and V. Bakardjiev,
G. Durov, V. Holiolchev, K. Kisyov, St. Petrov, Zh. Rusev, Y. Shahov, and D. Tre¬
nev, who operated the cameras. These cameramen worked for the “Bulgarian deed”