Vasil Kolevski

"RLF" - Workers' Literary Front. I leaf through the yellowed pages of this veteran with excitement. Here every slogan, every article, every verse and story is colored by the flame of the class struggle. The end of 1929. The wound from the September Uprising, from the pogroms in 1925 is still alive. The headscarves of the thousands of mothers, wives and sisters of the murdered are black. Even blacker is the blackness of fascism, hanging over the entire country. But the people who survived the five centuries of Turkish slavery, the people who fought with black bullets against the Sultan's empire, the people who refused to kill their brothers at the front and sprinkled Vladaya with their blood, the people who, in the name of communism, rose up in the first anti-fascist uprising in the world - this people is awake. It is gathering strength for a new struggle, for the last decisive battle. It is enough to felt the first breath of the rising revolutionary wave in our country and abroad, to erect a camp, to rise from the fire like the legendary bird, the ranks of the fighters. And again the fiery banner is raised and taken off. The Bulgarian working class, the working peasantry and the progressive intelligentsia are writing new glorious pages in their heroic history. An important place in the fierce ideological struggle, and especially on the literary front during this period, is occupied by the newspaper "RLF", which was published from December 1929 to June 1934 in the conditions of the bourgeois fascist state, of the dominant bourgeois, fascistizing culture, in it openly and boldly proceeded to organize and unite the progressive artistic intelligentsia in the name of communism. Of course, even before "RLF" in general political and special publications the party defended Marxist understandings of literature and art, fought for affirmation and development of the seeds of socialist culture. However, never during the period of capitalism and fascism was this struggle waged so openly, so massively, offensively and effectively as in the "RLF". For this, of course, the accumulated experience and revolutionary traditions of the past played a significant role. After all, among revolutionary democrats such as Rakovski, Botev, Karavelov and others, literature and art were an integral part of the common struggle for the liberation of the people! These traditions, in the conditions of capitalist society, were continued by Blagoev, Kirkov, Polyanov.

The Soviet Union is the country where the proletarian revolution first triumphed. With the successful construction of socialism in it, the cherished dream of humanity was realized - the construction of a classless society. A guiding star, a model and an example - this is what the country of the Soviets represents for the oppressed and exploited masses of the whole world! One of the main tasks facing the proletarian and anti-fascist press of the 1930s - to show the truth about the USSR, to propagate its successes - was also subordinated to the special task of the "RLF" - to inform its readers about the cultural development of the USSR and, in particular, about the successes of Soviet literature. The newspaper organized the first survey of its kind in our country about Soviet cinema, dedicated two special issues to Soviet books.

There are writers who play a major role in public and literary life, but remain alien to the "noisy fame". Their activity resembles those deep water currents that change the climate, enable flowers and trees to grow in distant northern countries, while they themselves are inconspicuous, invisible, unknown. Such a creator in our communist anti-fascist literature is Nikolay Khrelkov. His charm as a person and a poet, his role as a communist-teacher are perfectly understood by those who had the opportunity to be in personal contact with the writer, to be friends with him, to experience his beneficial influence. "Visiting Khrelkov - shared the heroine of the RMS Lilyana Dimitrova - is a holiday for me. He seems to be a person from another world." Many writers such as Goncho Belev, Lyudmil Stoyanov, etc. To a large extent, they grew up as socialist realist artists, taking the decisive step from the general democratic anti-fascist positions to the positions of Marxism-Leninism thanks to the personal friendship and the influence that Nikolay Khrelkov had on them.

There are hardly any brighter and more convincing arguments for revealing the essence of the issues under consideration about tradition and innovation than the problem of ideology in literature and art. Unfortunately, when talking about tradition and innovation, the emphasis is usually placed on the secondary, on the derivative, on issues of artistic form, even more limitedly - on the means of expression, and much less is revealed about the essence, change and development of the ideological content in art, which to a large extent determines the artistic form, means of expression, techniques, etc.

One of the most striking manifestations of the struggle of Bulgarian writers against capitalism and fascism is the founding and activity of the Union of Labor Writers. Labor writers! Today this concept is almost forgotten. It is connected with a certain period of political and literary development in Bulgaria - the beginning of the 1930s. This is a period of great revolutionary upsurge of the masses, a time when the clash between the exploited and the exploiters acquired such a sharp character that many expected it to end with an open armed conflict, with the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship. This is the time when, despite terror and violence, despite special laws for the protection of the state, the red communes reappeared in the country - the workers in a number of cities and villages won the elections and seized local power. Even Sofia, the capital of bourgeois-fascist Bulgaria, was captured! The initiative to create a unified anti-fascist union - the Union of Labor Writers - belongs to the proletarian writers, grouped around the newspaper "Workers' Literary Front". Already with the establishment of the Union - February 1932 - a decision was made to publish a special organ - the Front of Labor Writers", the first issue of which was published in June 1932. An important part of the activities of the Union of Labor Writers and its organ "Front" was occupied by problems of the Soviet Union and Soviet literature. This problem already occupies one of the central places in the draft platform of the Union. In point 3, the main task of the union was defined as: "Protection of Soviet culture and the USSR, against the preparing anti-Soviet war". The words with which the project ends are remarkable: Long live the USSR - the true fatherland of the workers and toilers of the whole world and the hearth of culture". Proletarian today and the universal tomorrow This attitude of writers, of the toilers in our country towards the Soviet Bulgarian Proletarian Union is the result of the deep traditions of the Bulgarian Communist Party of loyalty and devotion to internationalism, to the liberation cause of the proletariat. The Soviet Union is the country where the socialist revolution first won, it became the vanguard of all humanity in the struggle for the destruction of the hateful exploitative society, for the triumph of the communist ideal. This is why the USSR is the fatherland of all toilers of the whole world, it must be protected like the apple of the eye. The Soviet people are tracing the path to the future in all areas of life and their experience is a lesson and an example for all. In this spirit, the Bulgarian Communist Party has been educating its members and the entire working Bulgarian people for decades. people.

"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

The creative path of Smirnensky, his development, his method have been directly or indirectly considered by almost everyone who has written about the great writer. And if this problem again attracts our attention, the reason for this is its relevance. Overcoming past artistic trends, schools and methods and mastering and developing the method of socialist realism - this is the main content of the literary process in our country for the quarter-century free development of our national literature. The problem of overcoming the worldview and creative limitations of the writers critical realists, modernists, etc. and their transition to the positions of socialist realism - this is the epochal task in the development of world literature; a task whose solution depends on the outcome of the great duel between labor and capital, between bourgeois and socialist ideology.

At the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party in December 1948, a decision was made to build the foundations of a socialist society in Bulgaria. The cherished dream of the Bulgarian people was realized - in the homeland of Botev and Levski, of Blagoev and Dimitrov, the construction of socialism began. For the first time in its historical development, the working Bulgarian people freely deployed their forces and capabilities, their creative talent, because, as Lenin predicted, "only with socialism will the rapid, real, truly mass, with the participation of the majority of the population, and then of the entire population, begin a rapid, real, truly mass movement forward in all areas of public and private life". The heroic labor march of the people was led by the Bulgarian Communist Party, headed by its experienced helmsman, the legendary hero of Leipzig Georgi Dimitrov. His personality, his life and struggle path increasingly awakened the creative inspiration of writers. In October 1947, B. Bozhilov published one of the most poetic works about Dimitrov: