TY - JOUR
TI - A Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
AU - Vitanova-Kerber, Viktoria
TI - A Symbiosis of Religious Affections and State Socialism: Bulgaria’s Foreign Cultural Policy of the late 1970s
AB - 
	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.
VL - 2023
IS - 17 (1/2023)
PY - 2023
SN - 2450-2561
C1 - 2450-6249
SP - 85
EP - 100
DO - 10.4467/24506249PJ.23.006.18999
UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/pjacns/article/a-symbiosis-of-religious-affections-and-state-socialism-bulgarias-foreign-cultural-policy-of-the-late-1970s
KW - late socialism
KW - religion and politics
KW - Eastern Europe
KW - esotericism
KW - Bulgaria