Soviet Literature in "Art and Criticism"

"Art and Criticism" is one of the few progressive publications that continued to be published even during the most difficult years of fascist terror in our country - during the Second World War, when Bulgaria was turned into a bridgehead for the Hitlerites, when the fighting anti-fascist forces defended the honor and freedom of the Bulgarian people with arms in hand. The editor of the magazine is Georgi Tsanev, a critic who brilliantly began his literary activity in the publications of the party and the Komsomol in the 1920s with the affirmation and passionate defense of the poetry of Smirnensky and of young Soviet literature. Later he fell into the nets of "Zlatorog" and for a whole decade the evil Torogshtina stifled his voice, killed his talent. The critic himself felt that this atmosphere was ruining him as a person and a creator and in the mid-1930s he sought to break with the magazine "Zlatorog". The first step was taken with the publication of "LIK". But Tsanev dreams of a magazine that would stand on anti-fascist positions, a magazine that, on the basis of high artistic achievements (a question that "Zlatorog" has always speculated on), would unite progressive and democratic writers. "Since the end of 1935," writes Tsanev, "I had planned to organize the publication of a literary magazine, the contributors of which would be anti-fascist writers. After long efforts and repeated attempts to obtain permission, this idea was able to be realized: in early 1938, "Art and Criticism" began to be published under my editorship and with the close participation of Hristo Radevski, Georgi Karaslavov, Iliya Beshkov, Lyubomir Pipkov, Orlin Vassilev, Georgi Raichev, Blenika, the young Pavel Vezhinov, Valery Petrov, Bogomil Raynov and other progressive writers."1