Abstract
The report presents the whole picture of political repressions on literature after the establishment of the Communist regime in Bulgaria – on September 9, 1944, by ideological mechanisms of prohibition or expulsion/pressing of classical authors and works, periodicals, and whole intellectual circles towards the periphery of cultural life. It outlines the dogmatic norms of Socialist realism, imposed as an official artistic method, as well as the severe existential and creative consequences in case of non-observance of its ideological and aesthetic paradigms. The report presents the spiritual resistance, but also the inevitable compromises made by Bulgarian poets and writers in the dramatic conflict between the Communist regime and the literature in the period under review. In this sense, the authority–
literature conflict comes to the fore, pushing the specific artistic issues to the periphery of the cultural space and imposing the ideological stances of Socialist realism as obligatory aesthetic paradigms.
Criticism plays an important role in the narrowing and deforming of the literary field. Losing its identity, it becomes politically institutionalized, turning into a censor that sanctions aesthetic pluralism and creative freedom. This merging of ideology and literature gives birth to the contrasting opposition between free literary criticism – analytically rationalizing the artistic processes, on the one hand, and criticism exercising authority over literature –controlling, sanctioning, and dictatorially imposing an ideological discourse, on the other hand.
Of course, Socialist realism in the late 1980’s was not as dogmatic and repressive as in the first decade of the Communist regime. These transformations in artistic strategies, which are increasingly stepping aside the ideological matrix, cause delayed public repentance or tacit
adjustments to the personal positions of Bulgarian artists. But throughout the period, authors who dared to break the norms of the official artistic method, or to renounce their own creative and existential choices in the 1950’s, became targets of personal and creative repression. The report will present precisely these complex and dramatic processes in Bulgarian literature during this period.