Oldal 563 [563]
OCR
Representations of the Medieval Past in Socialist Bulgaria tion and memorialization. Sculptures, busts, and monuments of medieval rulers and high priests appeared in Bulgarian cities during the first half of the twentieth century. One example is the statue of Patriarch Evtimiy in Sofia (1939, sculptor M. Markov) (Ivanova 1978: 92). However, medieval images were missing from the monumental sculptural complexes in the first decades of socialist Bulgaria, a period of a massive construction of monuments of participants in the antifascist and partisan movements. Only in the seventies did sculptures of medieval figures begin to appear. For instance, a monument Kamennata strazha na Ivaylo (‘Stone Guardians of Ivaylo’) was erected near Kotel (1972, sculptor Lyuben Dimitrov) dedicated to the victory of Tsar Ivaylo over the Emperor Mihail in 1279. Nowadays, this monument is perceived by some people to be a representation of Khan Krum in honour of his victory over Emperor Nikephoros. In 1976, a statue of Kliment Ohridski (sculptor Ivan Kolev, architect L. Lozanov) was built in Preslav and a monument to the creators of the Slavic alphabet, Cyril and Methodius, was built in Sofia in front of the National Library (sculptor V. Ginovski) (Ivanova 1978: 228, 335). In Kavarna, a monument to the local ruler-despot Dobrotitsa was erected in 1977, and a year later a statue of Patriarch Evtimiy (sculptor Boris Gondov, architect Dimitar Krastev) was erected in Veliko Tarnovo (Fig. 1). The boom in monumental representation of medieval Bulgaria was associated with the 1,300-year anniversary of the founding of the state. The large-scale celebration of the anniversary was accompanied by a distinct historicisation of the official culture (Elenkov 2009a: 554). Preparations for the celebration began in 1976 with the decision of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Elenkov 2008: 359). Special attention was paid to the region of the medieval Bulgarian capitals of Pliska and Preslav and to the regional centre, Shumen. The year 1977 gave birth to the idea of building a memorial complex named Sazdateli na balgarskata darzhava (‘Founders of the Bulgarian State’) above the town of Shumen (Fig. 2). The complex was built between 1979 and 1981 and was designed by the sculptors Krum Damianov and Ivan Slavov and the architects Georgi Gechev and Blagoy Atanasov. Twenty-one sculptures presented the historical development of the First Bulgarian State. Here were the figures of the founder, Khan Asparuh, and his successors—the khans Tervel, Krum, and Omurtag. Emphasis was placed on the Golden Age, during the reign of Tsar Simeon in the tenth century, and the development of writing. It depicted runic, Glagolitic and Cyrillic characters. The anniversary was an occasion to build monuments related to the medieval past in a number of settlements in Bulgaria. The monument 1300 godini Balgaria (‘1,300 Years of Bulgaria’) from 1981 by sculptor Valentin Starchev, was built in front of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. Buildings honouring the 1,300year anniversary were the memorial to Khan Asparuh in Dobrich (1981, sculptor Velichko Minekov, architect Ivan Nikolov) and the monument Samuilovite voini (‘Samuil’s Warriors’) in Sofia (1981, sculptor Lyubomir Dalchev), the monument 561
