Васил

In the history of Bulgarian literature, Vasil Drumev occupies a certain place not only as a fiction writer and playwright, but also with his versatile critical activity. His literary-critical, cultural-historical and other articles create for him a name of a gifted and educated man of letters, who worked with love and understanding for the development of national literature, science, culture. He is one of the few Renaissance writers who received a relatively more systematic education and had the opportunity to study the literatures of other nations for a longer period. Thus, the natural talent of the author of the first Bulgarian novel, the aspiration that possessed him since adolescence and to serve the spiritual revival of his people with his pen find favorable conditions for maturation and development. And if the talented writer had not changed his calling precisely in the heyday of his creative powers, if he had not accepted the spiritual dignity, he would undoubtedly have enriched our national artistic and theoretical-critical thought to a much higher degree.

At two consecutive meetings, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences discussed and accepted for publication Vasil Kolevski's work "The Pathos of October", dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. In his review, Angel Todorov emphasized the importance of the topic, gave a positive assessment of the work and concluded that the influence of Soviet literature on Bulgarian is a profound regularity for the activation and development of our entire culture and literature. From this position, the author also considers the issue of the reflection and reception of Soviet literature in Bulgarian progressive periodicals from 1917 to 1944. Angel Todorov made a brief overview of the material presented in the book, emphasized its breadth, systematization and assessment from a modern scientific point of view. He characterized the study as seriously and competently written. He also made some critical remarks.

I do not hesitate in the title and in the following lines to qualify Vasil Kolevski's book "The Pathos of October (Soviet Literature in the Bulgarian Proletarian and Anti-Fascist Literary Press 1917-1943)" in this way, because the work done by the author, dedicated to an important issue of literary relations between the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, whatever its shortcomings, is at a scientific level and testifies to a certain knowledge of the material and problems, to a conscientious and close attitude to a not so easy task. During the bourgeois-fascist dictatorship in our country, the proletarian and anti-fascist literary press was almost the only place where Soviet literary-theoretical and aesthetic thought and the artistic and literary production of Soviet writers could be presented and evaluated more fully or more mutilatedly - depending on the behavior of the censorship - and where at the same time their influence on our communist literary thought and practice found expression. Therefore, it is quite natural, when developing the topic of Soviet literature in Bulgaria, that the researcher's attention should be directed primarily to progressive newspapers and magazines.