A Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
cytuj
pobierz pliki
RIS BIB ENDNOTEChoose format
RIS BIB ENDNOTEA Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
Publication date: 31.05.2023
The Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture. New Series, 2023, 17 (1/2023), pp. 85 - 100
https://doi.org/10.4467/24506249PJ.23.006.18999Authors
A Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
State Socialism aimed to create a utopian atheist society, where religion was supposed to become superfluous and therefore disappear. Despite the strong anti-religious campaign in 1950s’ and 1960s’ socialist Bulgaria, religion did not vanish but remained in the periphery of public and private life. That applied not only to traditional orthodox Christianity but also to different Theosophy-based groups and ideas, which became influential in the policy of the cultural minister of the 1970s Lyudmila Zhivkova. Her large scaled international cultural projects and the lively bilateral relations with India, Nepal and Sri Lanka not only aimed at increasing the country’s diplomatic prestige but also at popularising Zhivkova’s esoteric conception of national and personal development for which I introduce the term “esoteric nationalism”. Further discussing Bulgaria’s active participation at the general assembly of the United Nations in 1979, this paper will argue that non-hegemonic religious ideas were not always considered hostile by the Eastern European totalitarian authorities. Moreover, the Bulgarian case exemplifies the potential which an esoteric-socialist symbiosis had nationally and internationally.
Central State Archives of the Republic of Bulgaria
– holding 288B, inventory 1, file 7.
– holding 288B, inventory 1, file 118.
– holding 288B, inventory 1, file 269.
– holding 405, inventory 9, file 591.
– holding 405, inventory 9, file 619.
Primary Sources
Fol, Alexander. 1986. The Thracian Orphism. Sofia: University Publishing House “St. Kli- ment Ohridski”.
Georgiev, Velichko. 1986. The Freemasonry in Bulgaria: Penetration, Organization, Devel- opment and Impact Until the Mid1930s. Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo.
International Foundation Lyudmila Zhivkova, ed. 1982. Her many Worlds. Oxford: Perga- mon Press.
Shaposhnikova, Lyudmila. 2002. „Людмила Живкова ‒ государственный деятель и подвижник” [„Lyudmila Zhivkova ‒ Stateswoman and Activist”]. Kultura i Vre- mya (Culture and Time) 2, no. 1: 100-117.
Zhivkova, Lyudmila. 1981. According to The Laws of Beauty. Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner Publishing Co.
Websites
“Bulgarian Yoga Federation”. https://yoga-bf.com. Accessed: 10.11.2022. “Kalakshetra Art Center”. https://kalakshetra.in/. Accessed: 10.11.2022.
“Ramakrishna Mission”. https://belurmath.org/about-us/.. Accessed: 10.11.2022.
Secondary Literature
Dragostinova, Theodora. 2018. “The East in the West: Bulgarian culture in the United States of America during the global 1970s”. Journal of Contemporary History 53 (1): 212–239.
———. 2021. The Cold War From the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene. Ithaca‒London: Cornell University Press.
Dragostinova, Theodora and Malgorzata Fidelis. 2018. “Beyond the iron curtain: Eastern Eu- rope and the Global Cold War”. Slavic Review 77 (3): 577–587.
Faivre, Antoine. 1994. Access to Western Esotericism, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, Studies in Western Esotericism II. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ivanova, Veneta. 2017. Occult Communism: Culture, Science and Spirituality in Late Socialist Bulgaria. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Nazarska, Georgeta. 2020. “‘The Sacred Mountain’ in the sacred geography of Sofia: Practic- es of esoteric societies in the first half of the 20th century,” The Balkans 9 (1): 75–92.
Peteri, György. 2013. “Nylon curtain – transnational and transsystemic tendencies in the cultural life of state socialist Russia and the East-Central Europe.” Slavonica 10 (2): 113–124.
Vitanova-Kerber, Viktoria. 2021. “From Sofia’s salons to the mountain ranges of Kozhuh. Social and functional dimensions of esotericism in late socialist Bulgaria.” Baltic Worlds XIV (4): 56–67.
Information: The Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture. New Series, 2023, 17 (1/2023), pp. 85 - 100
Article type: Original article
Titles:
A Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
A Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
University of Fribourg, Avenue de l'Europe 20, 1700 Fribourg, Szwitzerland
Published at: 31.05.2023
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY
Percentage share of authors:
Article corrections:
-Publication languages:
EnglishView count: 447
Number of downloads: 245