Книжка-5

1967 Booklet 5 Contents

The Great October Revolution not only changed the public consciousness, thinking and spirituality of millions of people in the world, but also created for them a clear and precise answer to the agonizing question of a way out of capitalist slavery. The victory of October became a worldview, a significant page in history, a complete system of ideas and feelings, of perception of life phenomena.

I think this is one of the most complex topics for any citizen who is actively involved in public affairs. This is all the more complex for a writer who is convinced of the civic mission of literature. Because the explosion of the October Socialist Revolution not only swept away the entire gloomy tsarist-landlord edifice of the blackest injustice and police brutality in Russia, but caused a wide detonation throughout the globe. It changed the course of history on our planet. And this shock was felt especially strongly in countries like ours, where there have always been social unrest and where the people take an active part in the political life of the country. The socialist movement in Bulgaria had already established itself as a political factor long before the October Revolution, and this had an impact on our entire national culture.

The great revolutions have carried on their banner: Freedom and Equality! The S in the rim is also expressed as a spiritual principle. In the impenetrable darkness of slavery and oppression, freedom has acted as the main driving force. Equality, although more attainable, has marched in the footsteps of freedom. We will not speak of brotherhood, because it, suppressed between the two concepts, is a consequence - either attainable or not! ... The centuries will have to establish it!

In our family tree, modest figures of master blacksmiths, pipers and carpenters stand out. Among them is my father - Tsanyo Neykov - a respected and time-honored woodcarver (marangozin). He died in 1956 as a deserved artist of the republic. Many things changed in their lives: they were often full and hungry, they were respected and humiliated, loved and hated, they lost and gained property, but only their love for grandfather Ivan remained unchanged. At that time, there were no permanent Turks in the Tryavna region, because the villages guarded the mountain passes and the people felt somehow like in their "gubernia": more independent and freer. And therefore, without hindrance, they confessed among themselves their holy love and trust in Russia and in everything Russian.

I was very young when I heard the October Revolution and Lenin's name mentioned. It was at the end of World War I. I heard that things were not going well for us at the front, and in our village the number of widows was increasing. A week would pass and a cry would be heard from some house. Grandma, dejected and despondent, would begin to cross herself - she had three sons who were soldiers - and grandfather would look down on her and, as dry and witty as he was, would snarl through his teeth: - And pray to your God - all that. War, a human slaughter.... Whoever conceived it, his mother's fault. Hunger was roaming the poor houses, hungry throats were hard to fill, and the mayor and the secretary-tax collector would go around the neighborhoods and requisition any draft animals they could find.

We cannot imagine or understand the modern world, as well as any major event in the life of nations for half a century, without the ideas, consequences and influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Even less can we imagine the future of humanity without the beginning of that development which it laid and which proved its undeniable vitality in the most severe trials. The great historical change, which has become the everyday life of hundreds of millions of people and a vital goal for hundreds of millions more, refuted with equal force both the gloomy forecasts and the hasty gloating of the apologists of capitalism and inspired great hope in the hearts of all the oppressed and exploited in the world.

I was not destined to choose the political direction of my life myself. At the end of the First World War, my father, a rebel soldier, returned from the front with the self-confidence of a Bolshevik. He created a party group in his village, participated in the September Uprising in the Harmanli region, and in 1925, already a settler in the city, became a member of the local military party organization. When I was two months old, my father was arrested (the April events), thrown into the barracks well, beaten with flails until his right femur was exposed (it was still covered only with a thin, crusty skin) and sentenced (with the confiscation of all his meager property). Similar things happened to him later, when I was older. By then I had already experienced them personally. There were hard days at home, hard years, and evenings when I heard Mom scold Dad: "If you wanted to fix the world, why did you get married, why did we have children!" "Come on, Dad," Dad would answer in the dark, "we'll fix this world and I'll take you to Moscow to see her!"

The October Revolution is not just a picturesque moment in the turbulent history of mankind. With a certain set of actions, thoughts and attitudes, it radically changed the entire worldview of the man of our time. What it accomplished once again confirmed the basic principle: one moves forward by rejecting what is obsolete, by perceiving the past through new perspectives: moral, political and artistic. With its grandiose innovation, the October Revolution erased the "greatness" of the ideas, philosophical views and moral theses proclaimed by the bourgeois revolutions that preceded it. With the brightness and fury of lightning, it illuminated the backward content of philosophical concepts, layered, processed and systematized for almost a century and a half.

The long-standing exceptional interest shown in our country in Soviet literary studies is beyond doubt. For the representatives of Marxism in the previous few decades it has been so obvious that it would be possible to point out to Dali at least one question of a methodological nature that concerned them and which had not previously been discussed in Soviet literary life. This is so easily explained that it is enough to simply recall it.

We are talking about the first decade after the victory of the October Revolution. Because, if it is a question of its influence at all - with all the new things that it brought to social and cultural life - this influence continues in our country, as everywhere in the world, to this day. But, it seems to me, the most interesting, historically innovative is the impact that the October Revolution - as an epochal phenomenon, as the beginning of a new era in the history of mankind - had on us in the first years after its triumph. It was then that the new ideas and solutions to problems that it suggested to Bulgarian literature, the new impulses with which it strengthened its development in the moment after the First World War - a moment of crisis and the search for new paths for artistic activity - had a turning point.

The ideas of socialism were reflected in literature long before the Great October Revolution. Their general character, social sources, and forms of influence on artistic creativity were not only diverse, but often heterogeneous. If we talk about the literature of the 19th century, socialist ideas received one or another expression in the works of Heine and G. Weert, of Hugo and Potier, Herzen and Chernyshevsky, Shchedrin and L. Tolstoy. A little later, these ideas attracted the deep attention of R. Rolland, A. France, W. Morris, B. Shaw, and many other writers. At the end of the century, at the beginning of his creative activity (1895), Romain Rolland confidently expressed the thought of the historical purpose of socialism. "If there is still - he wrote in his diary - hope to avoid the destruction that threatens present-day Europe, its society, and its art, then this hope lies in socialism." Rolland's conviction was not an isolated phenomenon - other artists of the word have expressed similar thoughts.

The problems of the development and prospects of contemporary literature, of socialist realism, of its genesis and its general laws, of the national peculiarities of individual literatures, of their connections and interactions are acquiring extremely important significance. They are in the center of attention of writers from socialist countries, as well as of Marxist literary critics from capitalist countries. Many studies have appeared of both a general theoretical and a concrete-historical nature. Reactionary bourgeois writers are increasingly forced to turn to these problems.

G. Dimitrov's statements about literature and art, his assessments of cultural manifestations in our artistic life are not accidental and isolated. They are determined by the great importance, role and specific social function of art. G. Dimitrov is characterized by a subtle sense of the historical originality of artistic phenomena. Therefore, he always turns to the problems that have arisen with the greatest acuteness from the course and development of society. For example: his thoughts on the superintendent, illuminated in the report of the VII Congress of the Comintern, are an example of a creative concrete-historical approach. And this undoubtedly had a particularly important significance not only for the correct direction in the party policy on this issue, but also became a broad platform for the unification of honest talents throughout the world in defense of culture against the barbarism of fascism and the falsification of the heritage.

One of the first translators of Soviet literature in our country, from the time of its penetration in the 1920s, was Nikolai Khrelkov. A close friend of G. Milev, Khrelkov collaborated in his magazines, Libra (1919-1922) and Flame (1924-1925), mainly with articles and translations from Russian Soviet poetry. This activity of N. Khrelkov, which at that period completely absorbed the attention of our poet, was not appreciated in its merits - it was either ignored or considered as part of his fascination with the Russian symbolists. In fact, the author of Midnight Congress, like Geo Milev, turned his gaze to the young Soviet art. It attracted him with its revolutionary call, with its ideas and innovation.

This tremor was a single one, but strong enough to shake the entire planet. Extraordinary. And inimitable, because it was the first. . . Prepared by the entire development of humanity, it fertilized it so that the dawn would be born - no, but the sun of the great world hope. Until recently, it was a "utopia," a "wandering ghost" that panicked popes and emperors, kings and policemen, kings and magnates feared. They are still afraid now. And that is why they entered and continue to enter into a sacred alliance to fight against this great hope, transformed by the Bolsheviks into an invincible force... But despite all the crusades against it, despite the elite armies of that Europe that sent them to the East, despite all the spells and anathemas, today, as never before, the unquenchable fires of October burn brighter, and the ideas of Marx and Lenin march victoriously even over that world that longed to embrace their banner.

The October Revolution, which shook the entire world and caused radical changes in the socio-political life of a number of countries, also pushed the spiritual development of the peoples onto a new path. For the Bulgarian people it played a fateful role, largely determining their further economic and cultural development. It is enough to glance at the Bulgarian literature of those revolutionary years to feel the irresistible power of the new spiritual engines of our national consciousness, created by the Russian Revolution. After 1917, the entire cultural and literary life in Bulgaria radically changed, the people and the homeland again invaded the works of literature, the worldview of the Bulgarian writer changed, a qualitatively new literature of socialist realism was created, the democratic-realist principle in the work of almost all significant artists strengthened... These processes are very deep and complex, they affect different artists to varying degrees and become accessible and understandable only through direct acquaintance with the works of art born directly or indirectly from the Great October. In this regard, the newly published fiction collection "October" is a significant contribution. It illustrates the basic, irrefutable process of a deep ideological and aesthetic transformation in Bulgarian literature and the revival of its revolutionary traditions. This collection is published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, edited by Zdravko Srebrov, Yordan Radichkov, Kamen Kalchev, Neviana Stefanova and Rozalia Lykova, and contains one work each by thirty-seven prominent Bulgarian fiction writers.

A fiftieth anniversary requires a review. We look for it in all publications dedicated to the October Revolution. The collection "October and Bulgarian Literature" contains articles, memoirs, and studies that were not prepared specifically for the solemn occasion, but have been printed before. Collected now, these materials recall the excitement of five decades ago and, at the same time, are proof of the enduring interest of our writers in October and Soviet literature. They mark the directions in which scientific research thought moves, concerned with the great problem of Bulgarian-Soviet literary relations.

Soviet folklore studies have accumulated rich research material. The vast land of the victorious October has revealed interesting aspects of the spiritual culture of a number of nationalities and tribes, which have shed new light on folk poetic creativity. The numerous works published with folklore materials and monographic studies have greatly facilitated the theoretical studies of Soviet scientists, enriched their knowledge and ideas about the origin, character and essence of folklore. Recently, several works on the aesthetics of folklore have also appeared.

In the history of literature, the period of Romanticism occupies an important place as a specific artistic method for reflecting reality. In literary theory, disputes are still being conducted to this day, studies are being conducted on the characteristic features and romantic forms of reflection and artistic generalization. This emphasized interest in Romanticism stems from the fact that it covers an interesting period in the development of public thought, where the views, dreams and aspirations of progressive people for the transformation of the world, for national liberation from centuries-old oppression intersect, a period that reflected both on the economy and on philosophy and all branches of art - literature, painting, music. In recent years, interesting monographs on Romanticism and its artistic method have appeared in Soviet literary theory by researchers such as Elistratova, Reizov, Sarinyan, etc. Among them is the work of the Armenian scholar S. Sarinyan - "Armenian Romanticism".