NUEVOS MATERIALES, SUS ORÍGENES

At first glance, the peasant woman standing at the Soviet soldier’s right shoulder, in the central sculptural group of the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, has more in common with Rodina Mat’, [Mother Russia] from Soviet poster art, than with the elaborately folk costumed beauties which graced the political art and sculpture of the previous three decades. Her identity as a member of the agrarian proletariat is clearly expressed in the short kerchief in her hair and the simple cut of her dress. On the other hand, the child in her arms proclaims her motherhood and symbolic connection to Maĭka

Bŭlgariia and is reminiscent of memorial sculptures constructed during the war. The

peasant woman’s Bulgarian-ness is delicately suggested by the faint hint of the sukman

298 Aman, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe During the Stalin Era, 68. Aman goes on to aver that in the Bloc the Czechs and Hungarians were the most resistant to Socialist Realism and that generally, “ In the people’s democracies […] Socialist Realism was something extraneous, looked on as part of an imminent threat, the threat to national sovereignty.” (73)

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on her bodice, almost as if the sculptors were trying to imagine what a peasant who was both modern and Bulgarian might look like. 299

The image of the idealized Bulgarian peasant woman was not new to the postwar period. Chapter 2 discussed the emergence, in the interwar press, of the positive female image of the Bulgarian khubavitsa [beauty], as opposed to the negative male image of the

selianin [peasant]. Unsurprisingly, the lovely khubavitsa was a mainstay of Bulgarian

political and commercial art, as well. With her rounded cheeks, sparkling eyes and arms overflowing with the bounty of the Bulgarian land, she was an attractive symbol. Her colorful costume spoke of a unique Bulgarian culture, and her ample harvest spoke of her connection with the earth. Angel Tilov’s attractive 1940 tourist poster, “Bulgaria” a young woman smiles serenely while embracing a fountain of roses with one arm.300 _Her other hand delicately tucks one of the roses behind her ear, as if she was caught in a playful moment while harvesting roses in the warm morning sun. Roses, and rose oil, of course, were one of Bulgaria’s major exports. The woman’s healthy frame is clad in a heavily embroidered riza301_{and the dark scoop necked sukman characteristic of the Sofia}

region.302 _{Behind her mountains, cultivated fields and farms speak of the peace and}

299 _{The sukman is a sleeveless overdress common to many regional variations of Bulgarian folk dress. It is} made of a dark woolen material, usually black, which serves as a background for decorative embroidery, braiding, appliqué. Mercia Macdermott, Bulgarian Folk Customs (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998), 46.

300 _{Svetlin Bosilkov, Bŭlgarskiiat Plakat (Sofia: Izdatelstvo Bŭlgarski Khudozhnik, 1973), 61.}

301 _{Macdermott, Bulgarian Folk Customs, 44. A riza is an embroidered chemise (usually white) which}

serves as both an outer and an inner layer, whose shoulders, sleeves and bosom are generally visible under the sukman (overdress).

302 _{Maria Veleva, Bŭlgarski Narodni Nosii i Shevitsi (Sofia: Dŭrzhavno Izdatelstvo "Nauka i Izkustvo",} 1970). Plate 32.

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bounty that the tourist will find in Bulgaria. That is not to say that Bulgaria was immutably personified as a young woman.303

During the war, Bulgaria was Maĭka Bŭlgariia, Mother Bulgaria. Always dressed in folk costume, she was the khubavitsa of the war years, a little older, perhaps, and a little more careworn. Maĭka Bŭlgariia was younger than her Soviet counterpart. Where Rodina

Mat’ called her sons to battle, Maĭka Bŭlgariia sent her husband to war, with a toddler in

her arms.304 _{She can be seen in the central figure of several wartime monumental} sculptures. Unlike the postwar sculptures, which largely depicted soldiers in battle or in victory, the monuments built during the war often featured Maĭka Bŭlgariia. Both in her guise as a mother of young children and as a peasant, she would sadly contemplate the cost of the war. For example, in 1942, French-trained sculptor Marko Markov created a war monument in the village of Vurbitsa in the Veliko Tŭrnovo region. Wearing the long-kerchief and sukman associated with Bulgarian folk costume, the woman seems to have paused in her work, her hand still folded into her apron as if clutching her seeds.305 That same year, Liubomir Dalchev erected another arresting war monument in Drianovo. In this monument, a mother stands next to a roughly hewn arch, barefoot but wearing clearly delineated folk costume with the characteristic pafta or metal belt buckle. In one

303 _{It should be noted also that while Bulgaria was usually personified as a woman, it could be referred to} as either a motherland or a fatherland. Bulgarians use both the female rodina and the male otechestvo to refer to their homeland.

304 _{This was actually the subject of a 1942 stamp in which a young woman in folk costume holds a young} child in one arm, while with the other she gives flowers to a soldier on his way to the front. Anonymous, 'Katalog Bŭlgarski Poshtenski Marki 1879-1979', (Sofia: Ministerstvo na Sŭobshteniata DTP, Filateliia, 1979), 47, 49.

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arm she holds a toddler, whose arms are wrapped around her neck, the other arm enfolds a sad-eyed young girl.306 _{Such figures, both melancholy and old fashioned, had no place} in the victorious landscape being carved out in the postwar Bulgarian Republic.

The postwar period saw an important shift in general perceptions of peasant culture. While stringent hygiene campaigns attempted to reorganize all aspects of village life and industrialization campaigns pulled much of the rural population to the cities, a sanitized and modernized vision of the peasantry began to be disseminated. Interestingly, this “modern” vision was not only a rejection of the foolish backwardness of the selianin but also an increasing discomfort with folk culture as well. So that folk culture and peasant culture which had been so intertwined in the interwar period began to be two separate entities.307

In the poster art of 1950s Bulgaria, however, we see that there was also something more subtle going on, something which suggests that folk culture was never completely rejected, even if it was for a time sidelined an marginalized. In Stoian Venev’s 1947 poster, “Long live the first of May!” we see women and men dressed in the clothing of the proletariat, with simple, unadorned clothing, which yet retain the slightest suggestion of folk costume.308 _{As in the Monument to the Soviet Army, many poster artists seem to} have tried to find a peasant who was at once modern and Bulgarian. At times this was

306 _{Ibid, 97.}

307 _{See Chapter 5.}

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expressed with the suggestion of a sukman,309 _{or in touches of the ever popular red}

appearing in embroidery around the cuffs or collars of agricultural workers, who otherwise are attired in appropriately “modern” clothing.310 _{At other times, it seemed that} working the Bulgarian land was quite symbolic enough to make the peasants clearly Bulgarian, and it would be difficult to distinguish the clothing of this agrarian proletariat from that of their industrial comrades.311 _{In the 1955 poster “Let us ensure the bread for} the nation!” both images emerge. A bareheaded, dark haired young woman takes notes as she weighs out the grain. Her hands are strong but feminine. The long sleeves of her dress are loose, in the folk-style, and embroidered in red at the edges. Behind her, however, another woman and three men, all in “modern” clothing unload a truck into a warehouse.312

The Monument to the Soviet Army bears a striking resemblance to this final poster. The peasant woman in the central sculptural group is undoubtedly reminiscent of Maĭka

Bŭlgariia, but the peasant girls and mothers who welcome the Soviet Soldiers in the two

sculptural groups at the beginning of the approach, are for the most part dressed in the clothes of the peasant proletariat. The design of the monument was undoubtedly in step

309 _{As in Venev’s poster, or Georgi Atanasov’s 1946 poster “Long live the all-nation holiday of the} worker!” Ibid, 106.

310 _{For example, in the graphics collection of the Nationalna Biblioteka “Sv.Sv. Kiril I Metodii”: 1955} poster ‘Da osigurim khliaba na naroda’ [Let us ensure the bread of the nation!]. Gr. 66. and ‘Za nashata skŭpa, prekrasna rodina gotovi sme trud i zhivot da dadem’ [For our dear, beautiful mother land, we are ready to give our work and our lives!] 1955, Gr. 1916.

311 _{For example the three young women depicted in Georgi Popov’s “In the battle for rich crops!” 1950.} Bosilkov, Bŭlgarskiiat Plakat, 120.

312 _{In the graphics collection of the Nationalna Biblioteka “Sv.Sv. Kiril I Metodii”: ‘Da osigurim khliaba} na naroda,’ Gr. 66. This poster dates to 1955 which is after Stalin’s death, but a cultural thaw wasn’t really felt in Bulgaria until after Khrushchev’s 1956 speech to the 20th _{Party congress in which he criticized} Stalin’s mistakes. R. J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria, 196.

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with a visual trope that existed at that time. However, merely looking at the final product gives an incomplete picture of the competing narratives at work within the monument. The monument was planned and constructed over a five year period, with hours of presentations, arguments and compromise going into its design. By considering this process, we not only get a window into the intention behind the final design, but also an understanding of the complex method by which Soviet cultural norms were received and negotiated in Stalinist Bulgaria. The finished product can give the impression that these images, these symbols came out fully formed, that the Socialist Realist peasant was handed down from on high and taken without question. The reality, however, was that the monument was a result of a process of negotiation, self-censorship and cautious creativity.