* * * Annual report meeting of the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

On January 4 of this year, an expanded meeting of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was held, at which the scientific work carried out in 1961 was reported. In the report, delivered by the director of the Institute, Corresponding Member G. Tsanev, both the scientific-organizational and scientific-research activities of the institute were thoroughly examined, the achievements and weaknesses of the institute staff in fulfilling the tasks on the scientific plan were indicated. Now, after the historic decisions of the XXII Congress of the CPSU and the November Plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, the rapporteur pointed out, conditions have been created for a complete overcoming of dogmatism and citationism, for creative discussions on issues of literary theory, history and criticism based on Marxist-Leninist teachings. The creative discussions and disputes, always conducted in a communist party spirit, will help clarify many problems, will raise our literary studies to a higher level, will help create highly artistic socialist-realist literature. Mr. Tsanev consistently addressed the individual tasks of the annual plan. During the year, work continued on the four-volume history of Bulgarian literature. The first volume - Old Bulgarian Literature - discussed back in 1960, has already been finally edited and prepared for publication. It will be published by the end of the current year. Volume two - Renaissance Literature - was to be discussed by the end of 1961. Unfortunately, one of the members of the author team did not fulfill the obligations undertaken in a timely manner and another author had to be sought to write these chapters. The volume will be finally completed by March and its discussion will begin immediately - first by the author's team, and in June it will be put up for wide discussion in order to be published by the end of the year. Most of the chapters of volume three have also been written, which will also be discussed by the end of the current year. Work is also underway on volume four. During the year, a significant part of the contributors have worked on individual topics related to the development of Bulgarian literature in its various periods, on the connections of our literature with the literatures of other peoples, on individual writers and literary phenomena, as well as on more general or more special theoretical questions. The development of topics affecting the development of our literature from its inception to the present day helps to one degree or another to clarify the nature of the literary process, to reveal the ideological and artistic wealth of individual creators, and to use them to create new, full-fledged socialist-realist works.