Page 561 [561]
Representations of the Medieval Past in Socialist Bulgaria
(Khan Asparuh), and Anton Donchev published the series Skazanie za han Aspa¬
ruh (Saga of Khan Asparuh) (Penchev 2012).
While in the historical readings before the forties the story revolved around the
rulers character, later, the tsars were negative characters and only the rulers Simeon
and Ivan Asen II were presented in a positive light (Stoyanov 2002: 42-43),
because under them the First Bulgarian Kingdom and the Second, respectively,
reached a maximum territorial expansion, uniting the Bulgarians in one country.
Such an example is the novel Moyata drevna i mlada rodina (My Ancient and
Young Country’) from 1965. The number of printed copies of historical novels
was increased; for example, the copies of E. Konstantinov’s Moyata drevna i mlada
rodina (‘My Ancient and Young Country’) was 51,000, a significant increase over
the number of historical editions in the interwar period, which ranged from 5,000
to 10,000 (Stoyanov 2002: 40).
The new “look” of the medieval past in the socialist period led to a change in
its visual representations formed through various media. The ideological rethink¬
ing after 1944 affected both the traditional means for visualizing the past, such as
painting and sculpture, and the developing of new ones such as cinema and televi¬
sion. Their functioning in the context of a totalitarian state led to the unification of
messages. In this chapter, I will present some of the trends in the representations of
Bulgarian medieval history during the socialist period from the end of the World
War II until the early 1980s and the changes that occurred then.
During the interwar period, artist Dimitar Gyudzhenov created numerous
paintings with historical subjects devoted exclusively to the medieval Bulgarian
grandeur (Bozhkov 1978). After 1944, the medieval themes lost their predom¬
inance in science and art and it was ten years later when Gyudzhenov created
a painting dedicated to the ruler of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (Jvan Asen IT
detronira Borila (‘Ivan Asen II Dethrones Boril’], 1955). Another ten years passed
before a picture with a storyline from the First Bulgarian Kingdom with the image
of Prince Boris I, the Converter of the Bulgarians (Zsar Boris i pokrastvaneto na
balgarite |"Tsar Boris and the Conversion of the Bulgarians’], 1965) was created
(Angelov 1969). A year later, in 1966, there appeared the picture of Petko Zadgor¬
ski! Krakra Pernishki (Krakra of Pernik’), dedicated to one of the major figures
of the medieval noblemen fighting against the conquerors of the Bulgarian lands.
Similar processes occurred in the development of Bulgarian historical film. Be¬
fore the eighties, there were no films about rulers of the First Bulgarian State. This
was due in part to the fact that the Middle Ages was seen by the socialist ideology
as the era of feudal oppression and exploitation of the working classes. Another
significant factor was the fact that the names of two of the state’s most significant
rulers, Prince Boris and Tsar Simeon, coincided with the names of the last tsars of
the Bulgarian monarchy in the twentieth century. Ideologically, their images in the
! P. Zadgorski was a student from D. Gyudzhenov.
559