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PARTISAN REVIEW
Kosta dedicated hi s "Second Capriccio" to our a rgumen t. His
vision went to the heart of our situa tion : he saw us as ba ts dreaming of
the dawn while they cross paths in the darkness, givin g vo ice to
screams beyond the h earing range o f human bein gs. T ha t is how it
was.
And then suddenl y the whole thing went to pieces. On April 15,
1963- seven years after he was brought to th e politica l stage by " the
Thaw" -the Secretary General of the BCP,
T.
Zhivkov, deli vered hi s
speech against it. The speech was published under the titl e "Commu–
ni st Ideology-the High est Principl e of our Litera ture and Arts," and
the first example o f " rottenness" cited in it was a poem of min e that the
L ileralurn i N ovini
h ad published two years earlier. Publica ti on of
L ileralurn i Novini
was stopped . T h e entire edi torial staff of
M ladezh
was sacked. And that was tha t.
After being taken to task, everyone cited in Zhikhov's speech was
instructed as to his positive aspects: i. e., he was shown wha t path he
should fo ll ow if he wanted peace a l1d the good life. Vassil Popov, for
instance, was a very dili gent fell ow, the Secretary General said : he
studi ed foreign languages, against whi ch the Party had no thing. At the
time all this seemed ridiculous, and we laugh ed a t it; but soon enough
it was developed into a n ew tacti c which finished u s.
Vlado Svintill a was the first to sense the danger, and he arti cul ated
it in the popular literary cafe call ed "The Bamboo" the day after the
speech was published. "Socialist culture," he sa id, " is built by shifting
everyone to a fi eld about whi ch he knows no thing, and cares less!" I
have tha t sermon of hi s recorded in my litera ry di ari es: "N. Bukov," he
told us , "has already put aside hi s o il paintin g and started writing
poe try. And Vassil Popov is going into lingui sti cs! " "And you,
Vlado ?" someone asked . " I am starting to write on the hi story of the
arts, let us say." "Why?" "Because I don 't understand an y o f it, and
don 't care about it, and I sh all no t suffer from an y imbecility that
mi ght befall the Fine Arts, or an y harm tha t might even be infli cted on
them by my own writings. I know and care for litera ture, but I won 't be
there to suffer anymore, no ma tter wha t happens to it. "
Over the past ten years or so thi s idea of shiftin g peopl e from one
a rea to another has developed into a refined mechani sm fo r the
manipul a tion of di ssenters among the Bulgarian humani sti c intelli–
gentsia. In addition , it enables offi cia ls to avo id crea ting martyrs,
whi ch mi ght happen in the case o f the open sup press ion o f ideas. T he
