Oldal 560 [560]
OCR
558 Evgenia Iroeva The same ideological trends can be observed in the history books from the period after World War II, where Tsar Simeon’s rule was evaluated negatively with an emphasis on feudalism and the conquest wars. Bulgaria during the Asen dynasty was used as a positive example of the liberation of Bulgarians, and it was with Asen’s dynasty and the Second Bulgarian Kingdom that the nationalistic tendency continued after 1944 (Hranova 2011b: 246-247). The textbooks emphasized the key role of the Slavs in the formation of the Bulgarian state. In the Stalinist period, schoolchildren were taught that the Slavs on the Balkans had their own state, and that the Bulgarian Khan Asparuh only helped and united them (Ibid.: 248-249). In 1966, the Ninth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party assigned the task of writing a new multivolume Istoria na Balgaria (History of Bulgaria‘) and a decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Party from May 1968 outlined its basic underlying principles (Elenkov 2008: 372-373). The second volume of the new multivolume History of Bulgaria, dedicated to the First Bulgarian State, however, was published as late as the Jubilee year 1981, marking the 1,300year anniversary of the formation of the Bulgarian state. A boom in the interest in ancient Bulgarian history and heritage was noticed from the 1960s onwards (Doynov 2009: 581). In the late sixties and early seventies, governmental decisions launched national programmes for archaeological research and conservation of the medieval Bulgarian capitals of Pliska, Preslav, and Veliko Tarnovo (Elenkov 2009b: 627). As a result, they gradually became popular tourist sites that had an impact on public notions about the medieval past of Bulgarians. The sociopolitical context in socialist Bulgaria determined the development of the Bulgarian historical novel. In the interwar period, the Karapetrov brothers’ popular series of historical novels Drevna Balgaria (‘Ancient Bulgaria) was edited with the support of state institutions (Hranova 2011a: 234-235). In the same period, Fani Popova-Mutafova wrote historical novels devoted to the rulers of the Asen dynasty. Subsequently, she was persecuted by the communist authorities and rehabilitated in the sixties, when she reissued the novels with some corrections (Ibid.: 247-292). A number of novels featuring medieval stories were published during the socialist period. The first of them represented the era of the Asen dynasty: Probuzhdane (‘Awakening’) by Anton Donchev and Dimitar Mantov (1956), set in the time of Tsars Asen and Petar; Kaloyan—tsar na balgarite (“Kaloyan—Tsar of the Bulgarians) by Dimitar Mantov (1958); and van Asen—xsar i avtokrat (‘Ivan Asen—Tsar and Autocrat’) by Dimitar Mantov (1960). The historical novels published in the sixties addressed key periods from the development of the First Bulgarian State. More and more historical novels were published in the following years, diversifying the presented historical periods and ruling figures. Literary works were dedicated also to the celebrations of the 1,300-year anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian state. For example, Vera Mutafchieva wrote the novel Predskazano ot Pagane (‘Foretold by Pagane’), which served as a basis for the screenplay Han Asparuh
