Prof. Evelina Kelbecheva: We live with the metastases of communism Prof. Evelina Kelbecheva teaches European and Bulgarian history at the American University in Bulgaria. She has worked in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and read lectures on cultural history of the Bulgarian Natural Revival at Sofia University. At the University of Irvine, California, she has taught Balkan history and cultural history of Eastern Europe. In 2013, Prof. Kelbetcheva initiated a petition for the study of totalitarian regimes in secondary school, which received the support of two presidents, a huge number of experts, historians, journalists and celebrities, but not that of the decisionmakers in education. - Have you ever thought that 25 years after the change learning the truth about the recent past will have to be petitioned? - The beautiful, enthusiastic half-drunkenness we went through in 1989 fooled us that the vast majority of people had understood the essence of the regime and would no longer accept its metastases. We continue to live with infinite not metamorphoses but rather metastases of communism. I could not imagine that for 25 years history textbooks would not be replaced, that we have yet to ask another minister to comply with the laws that give all grounds communism to be taught as a criminal regime. - What is the nutrient medium for these metastases? - Unrelieved political and economic elite, the transfer of political to economic power by the heirs of the previous establishment. And this unique cynicism, the lack of mechanisms to stop post-communist propaganda. I am absolutely convinced - it is no coincidence that textbooks have not been replaced, the media are not free, that people who are still trying to get to the root of evil are pursued, that much of the young elite of the Bulgarian nation prefers to develop and to work abroad. - There is no more obscurity in terms of knowledge about the communist regime.
- But the relationship is broken between scientific knowledge and the way it is transmitted through the media and all the background knowledge from people with mantras about the unspiritual modern times compared to the great "spirituality" of communism. Much of the profound devastation resulting from the impossibility of communism to be progressive, human or productive is recognized at the forums of the Communist Party itself. For example we are constantly hearing how democracy has destroyed agriculture. As early as in the period 1986-88 at the plenums of the Central Committee the very senior functionaries say that they have absolutely destroyed agriculture. None textbook mentions that Bulgaria under communism actually suffered through three bankruptcies. They call them euphemistically debt crises, and this is a bankrupt country that eventually sold for pennies the already taken by the Russians 23 tons gold reserve. - What happens now with your petition? - Thank God, thanks to that Metodi Andreev made a petition that was signed by over 100 MPs from different formations, we have now submitted two petitions together with Minister Kuneva. She promised to make changes just in the spirit of the law by which 15 years ago the communist regime was declared a crime. If the laws in Bulgaria were observed, half of the authors of history textbooks would be in prison. All this socialist nostalgia and the prevention of a change in the educational system is a long-term and unfortunately extremely successful operation of the Committee for State Security and its successors. We are champions in poverty and lack of memory. Blocked are all channels for true knowledge about communism and how the heirs of the former rulers privatized the state. If we have accurate data about who and by what means owns equity in Bulgaria at the moment, we see that the vast majority of them are exactly those people from the Committee of State Security, about whom some say, "Come on, enough with this State Security." But they are here, they govern us. And control the Bulgarian economy.
- You took part in the "Memory of the Past, Knowledge of the Future" forum which took place in the European Parliament. What will be the contribution to the cause that you are defending? - The initiative was Andrey Kovachev's, who has already organized such events in the European Parliament several times. The forum, of course, was not honored by MEPs from other parties except for RB. I think one thing was said clearly - no more waiting. Now we will organize a conference of expert historians to give their proposals about what should be included in textbooks. We want, of course, a change in the curriculum, we want the history of communism not to be studied only in the last period of the 12th grade, we want it to be included in the State Exams with more than one topic and to be included in university entrance exams. These will be the two practically very effective tools. And I think we need to talk primarily and more about the consequences of the communist period, and about the falsification of history which is supported by the political elites with very few exceptions. - Fixating on the slavery as an anchor of identity also does not seem accidental. - It pours water to the mill of the ultra-left nationalist, chauvinistic and other populist formations because it's easy. The nationalism card is played at a time when you need to shift attention. So it was brought up during one of the successive economic collapses of communism - the so called Revival Process. In this case I think it was the same methods, well designed by the Committee of State Security and these elites, because we are the only Balkan nation that uses the word "slavery". It was a term of national propaganda during the Bulgarian National Revival and it served the same purpose later. But the theme of slavery is just a substitute for the big issues that society has no real knowledge. -... But this society is persuaded to believe that it is a slave tribe by genetics.
- The fact that there was long armed resistance against communism is not present in any Bulgarian textbook. Camps and prisons and missing Goryani are not mentioned. Less than 1% of my students (and they come from elite schools) know that there were concentration camps during communism. But everyone knows of their existence before September 9. That is the asymmetry of knowledge. It's not true that young people have no interest in the truth about the past. They care about the economy, how - according to the documents - the first argument for the construction of "Kremikovtzi" is to "improve" the class composition of capital, how Bulgaria maintained by Soviet money terrorist movements called national-liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, etc. Their interest is the lifestyle of the establishment in relation to the ordinary people. But ask them what's Gulag - they say an Internet search engine. Their knowledge is extremely perfidiously blocked. We are experiencing terrible retrogression in public knowledge about the communist period - because of "good" work done by committees and agencies. They can accuse me of conspiracy theory, but the way textbooks are written is not random. There are five or six things without which communism cannot be studied - killings, disappearances, People's Court, camps until 1962, lies on the April Plenary Session as a form of greater liberalization, buying of intelligentsia which partly discouraged dissidence, the pursuit of people inside and abroad, the gradual murder of agriculture, heavy industry that never had to be even considered in Bulgaria. That all was dictated by Moscow. Many leading Bulgarian historians say that Todor Zhivkov proposed that we become the 16th republic of the USSR because he knew his proposal would not be accepted. And that's perfidious pseudo-historical treatment. As well the talk about what huge progress the period represented and what modernization has happened during it. Mandatory in textbooks should be Georgi Markov's "Distant Reports", "Hot Peppers" by Radoy Ralin, and other satirical works. Because, thankfully, anger against the regime in Bulgaria has never been absolutely crushed. The more young people see the faces and words of those people who have experienced the horrors of the regime, particularly the repressed, the more they will get to know history and it will be much more understandable for their own searches. At the moment the ball is again in the field of the Ministry of Education, which has all the legal and political power to change this shameful
and criminal ignorance. I hope for public pressure, for an expert assessment, and for full commitment by the government. I have utmost respect for what Metodi Andreev did. His petition is political action.