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362 Georgeta Nazarska ‘The image of the Orthodox Other was complemented by cartoons that showed religious feasts as places of drunkenness and carousing. Rural churches were depicted as desecrated and closed and those in the cities, as crumbling or converted into hotels and exhibition halls (Fig. 4). Special attention was given to nonbelievers, children, and young people, who drank alcohol, ridiculed the clergy, and were interested only in fashion (Figs 5 and 6). At the end of the 1960s religious personages were sometimes subjected to another propaganda image—that of “ordinary men” who prevented the creation of a strong socialist society. This is why the January church feasts'® were regularly depicted on the pages of newspapers as an obstacle to the implementation of annual plans. The saints (St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, and St. Elias) were typically described as drunks, but the angels as workers in the “factory of the Lord”. Similarly some cartoons of the national saints (St. Cyril and St. Methodius and St. Kliment of Ohrid) appeared completely detached from the religious context and presented a counterpoint to the conformist and consumer behavior of modern Bulgarians at the time. The image of religious people was described as multifaceted. On the one hand, older women and peasants were portrayed. Usually painted by Stoyan Venev, they were presented as an outnumbered community, highly susceptible to retrograde ideas of the rural parish priests. A suggestion of backwardness and ignorance beckoned in their grotesque and ridicule images (Fig. 7). On the other hand, the urban religious people, consisting of “still alive bourgeoisie”, “scum of the country capitalist society” (Fig. 8), and so called zozas and swings (young people susceptible to “harmful Western influence”), were presented in their typical attire and appearance (makeup, hats, jewelry, and crosses) (Fig. 9) (cf: Taylor 2006; see also Angelov, this volume). Finally, the image of foreigners appeared in the 1960s, and those were depicted looking at the icons in their appearance considered as “shameful” by the communists (long hair of men, short skirts for women, sunglasses, etc.) (Fig. 10). The Catholic Others were presented either by using the image of the Pope as a supporter of capitalism and anti-Communism (Fig. 11) or by depicting the Catholic clergy. They were described, like the Orthodox, as greedy, rich, lustful, and “parasitic”, living off their followers (Fig. 12). Bulgarian artists did not have a finished iconographic model for the image of the Catholic clergy, because this topic was very rarely treated prior to 1944. However, they used the established negative stereotypes about Catholics as “non-Bulgarians” and “traitors”. These stereotypes were strengthened in the second half of the twentieth century by Bulgarian fiction and cinema." 5 Tn January are the feasts of Eastern Church Fathers (St. Basil, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom) and of St. John the Baptist, St. Antony, and St. Euthymious. They are traditionally celebrated by people as their name patrons. " In 1945, Dimitar Dimov published his novel Osadeni dushi (‘Doomed Souls’), which strongly criticized the Catholic Church in Spain. In 1975 it was filmed by Valo Radev.
