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When one thinks of Tolstoy and the indelible mark that his works leave on the soul of the reader, one feels struck both by the magnificent scope of his work and by the vital truth reflected in it. We can read the works of revolutionary democrats, patiently study historical treatises, delve into the subtexts of yellowed archives of the nineteenth century, and finally, with the experience of modernity and the knowledge of historical materialism, understand the meaning of all the events of that time, but a stirring and convincing idea of ​​the dramatic human conflicts in the vast Russian land and its people of the pre-revolutionary era can only be obtained after reading the many thousands of pages of Tolstoy. Objective laws inexorably govern the course of social development. But we can hardly deny that the moral qualities in a people, created by historical conditions and its traditions in the struggle for freedom, accelerate or slow down the action of these laws. Tolstoy, having reached that supreme synthesis between the intellectual and emotional attitude to reality, from which the art of realism is born, manages to reflect with unsurpassed artistic mastery the vital drive and the deep contradictions in the Russian people in the nineteenth century. And it is precisely with this drive and with the already overcome social contradictions, with its experience of the struggle against countless invaders and with its revolutionary traditions that the Russian people today affirm life and lead all of humanity forward, respecting the rights and qualities of all other peoples. Hence arises not only the long-standing universal significance of Tolstoy as an artist and moral personality, but also his very specific contemporary significance in today's urge of the peoples towards liberation from spiritual and economic slavery, towards peace and socialism.

Last year, the first volume of the Brief Literary Encyclopedia appeared - a somewhat limited encyclopedic publication, the creators of which, according to their own words, set themselves the task of "giving, within the limited framework of a brief literary encyclopedia, as complete an idea of ​​the literary process as possible", paying attention not only to the established classical literatures in the history of mankind, but also to the artistic creations of a number of younger peoples. Our literature has also found its place in this publication. Over the past two decades, Soviet Bulgarian studies have achieved considerable success in popularizing our literature in the Soviet Union, as well as in independently developing some problems of our literary history. These successes are enshrined in the works of a number of famous Soviet Bulgarian scholars, such as N. S. Derzhavin, K. N. Derzhavin, D. F. Markov, K. A. Koperzhinsky, V. I. Zlidnev, I. M. Sheptunov, N. I. Kravtsov, as well as by younger scholars, such as G.Ya. Ilina, A.I. Khvatov, G.D. Gachev, etc. Given these significant traditions, it is not surprising that our literature also found a broad and faithful reflection in the "Short Literary Encyclopedia".

SPEECH OF COMRADE TODOR ZHIVKOV AT THE MEETING OF THE POLITBURO OF THE CENTRAL CENTRAL CENTRAL PARTY WITH WORKERS OF THE CULTURAL FRONT, DELIVERED ON APRIL 15, 1963 Dear comrades, At the beginning of April, as Comrade Mitko Grigorov announced in his opening remarks, a meeting lasting several days was held at the Central Committee of the Party with a wide range of representatives of the creative intelligentsia and other workers of the ideological front - the leaderships of the creative unions, the bureaus of the party organizations at the creative unions, the editors-in-chief of the central daily newspapers, the editors-in-chief of newspapers and magazines on issues of literature and art, the leaderships of the ideological institutes, of cinema, theater, radio and television, the secretaries for propaganda and agitation of the district committees of the Party, the members of the ideological commission of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of Ministers. The meeting held a frank discussion on the urgent issues that concern our cultural community, and discussed in detail the work of the creative unions to implement the party decisions, and in particular the decisions of the Eighth Party Congress in the field of literature and art. The meeting of the Central Committee of the Party once again unequivocally confirmed that the vast majority of our creative intelligentsia correctly understands the role and tasks of the ideological front at the current stage in the development of our country and tirelessly and consistently implements the policy of our Party after the April Plenum of the Central Committee and the decisions of the Eighth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party. What comments could arise in connection with this meeting of ours?

The speech of Dr. Todor Zhivkov before the workers of the cultural front "Communist ideology - a principle of our literature and art" came in time to draw our attention to some disturbing phenomena in the education of our youth, in our cultural life, in our literature and art. That is why it found full approval among our intelligentsia and among the entire working people. This speech is an expression of the special attention with which our Party has always treated the development of artistic culture in our country. Although caused by various harmful phenomena and manifestations in the field of art and literature, it goes far beyond the tasks of just fighting against these phenomena and manifestations. It raises fundamental ideological questions that affect the very essence of our today's literature. Dr. Todor Zhivkov's speech also acquires a programmatic character. Its essence is directed towards the further development of art and literature along the path of socialist realism. And not only of art and literature - it also gives instructions for the development of our literary studies.

At the end of this September, our living memory called us to a meeting with a beloved child of Bulgaria, with a young and modest, close and worthy fighter from the front row of the Bulgarian Communist Party, with the standard-bearer of our revolutionary socialist realist literature, who still holds, as befits him, the banner of its artistic victories. Hristo Smirnenski! Six and a half decades since his birth and four decades since his death have already passed, and the time enclosed in them has no power to reach out to destroy or sprinkle with oblivion the monument of his artistic creativity. Of course, this does not surprise anyone and would not surprise anyone - only what we call perishable and temporary is subject to the irrevocable blows of days and nights. The marble of nature can be destroyed, but nothing can destroy the marble of the soul and heart. Any, even the most massive, material monuments and colonnades can collapse - nothing can knock down monuments made without hands. And the artistic work of Hristo Smirnenski is precisely such a monument made without hands. Because Smirnenski created literature, bloodily connected with the fate of our party and our people, saturated with enormous social content, with the brilliance and power of the communist ideal and at the same time embodying in the most artistic way the most important problems, reflecting the most diverse and broad aspects of reality. He was tasked with launching a new stage in Bulgarian literature and he brilliantly fulfilled it. It should not be forgotten that this task was not easy, that its scale was determined by the era and its solution had and has historical consequences. This is precisely the essence of his innovative poetic work. In the annals of Bulgarian fiction, Smirnenski was that stonemason with a faded blouse, a dark gray cap and a bold look, who could confidently say: ... A road will be paved, friend, here, a new road in these rocks! Such living witnesses as we are, now see how necessary, important and unending this road is. We have been walking on it for years and will walk in the centuries to come, because this is the true and saving path for the literature and art of socialism and communism.

The Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship is multifaceted - in politics, in economics, in culture, including in literature. It, our literary friendship with the Russian people and with the other peoples of the Soviet country, has deep roots and is a peer of the cultural history of our two countries. It is no coincidence that copies of the oldest Bulgarian manuscripts, dating back to the beginning of our writing, are found in a number of Soviet libraries. With affection we read in the ancient "Alphabetical Prayer" - this foundation of all Bulgarian poetry - verses addressed to the entire "Slavic tribe". This common appeal over the centuries rightly acquired a main focus on the largest Slavic people - the Russians, who became the support and foundation of the cultural development of all Slavic and many non-Slavic peoples. When I was in Ukraine in 1959, during the decade of Bulgarian culture, Kiev writers and literary scholars proudly pointed out the places connected in distant historical memory with the Bulgarian writer Grigoriy Tsamblak: we imagine him living among his colleagues from Kiev at the beginning of the fifteenth century, how in meetings with them they spoke the then common literary Slavic language - and yet they knew that he was Bulgarian, and spoke words of praise for the Bulgarian literary work, already famous throughout the world. Five centuries of slavery did not obscure, but strengthened the literary community of our peoples: the names of Botev, Karavelov, Nesho Bonchev and our other revivalists are most closely associated with Russian culture. Both during the six decades of bourgeois Bulgaria and during the two decades of Fatherland Front Bulgaria, this area of ​​cultural and literary friendship accumulated new and new facts and phenomena, and established itself as a law of our literary development. Today, Soviet literature is for us that beacon which illuminates with bright flashes our entire literary life.

and for me, civic poetry is an inseparable part of national poetry, simultaneously party, patriotic, heroic, expressing the excitement of the people in moments of victory or danger, through images of individual heroes or an entire era. Such is the poetry of Botev ("Farewell", "Hadji Dimitar"), of Vazov ("Epic of the Forgotten"), of Mayakovsky ("Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"), where the excitement of the people's soul, the dictates of the time, the struggle for a new life are embedded.