The East in the West: Bulgarian Culture in the United States of America during the Global 1970s

In the 1970s, intellectuals and officials closely connected to the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) launched an ambitious program of international cultural events associated with the lavish celebrations, in 1981, of a national anniversary, the 1300 years since the establishment of the medieval Bulgarian state in 681. Exhibitions of ancient treasures and medieval icons put the ‘obscure Balkan country on the western world’s cultural map.’ Paris, Vienna, London, Munich, and New York City hosted events that were an ‘honor for the entire European continent.’ ¹ But Bulgarian representatives did not confine themselves to capital cities and famous museums; they also reached out to regional centers and rural areas in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, bringing books, films, and music to diverse publics. Between 1977 and 1981, tiny Bulgaria, with a population of 8.7 million in 1975, organized 38,854 cultural events across the world; of those, 7420 occurred in ‘developed capitalist countries.’ ²

These Cold War cultural encounters continue to cause debates in contemporary Bulgaria. A 2012 academic conference on ‘the Bulgarian cultural opening to the world’ at the University of Sofia became the venue of loud protests, accusing the organizers of rehabilitating the recent past and glorifying the communist elites. Exchanges followed in the press between historians of different political orientations. ³ In the meantime, in the center of Sofia, a crumbling monument, inaugurated in 1981 to commemorate the 1300 jubilee, has split architects, urban planners, cultural experts, and politicians over its possible removal or repair. ⁴ In April 2015, an exhibition of Thracian archaeological artifacts from Bulgaria opened at the Louvre. The prime minister, minister of culture, and a flock of journalists were present for the ceremony in Paris, provoking unflattering comparisons in the Bulgarian media with the state management of culture in the 1970s. ⁵ The cultural legacy of late socialism was on display again in May 2015 when the prime minister inaugurated a new museum complex in the building of the former Gallery for International Art in downtown Sofia – a building that had first opened in the late-1970s as a part of the international cultural endeavors initiated by Liudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the Bulgarian communist leader Todor Zhivkov. ⁶

This article examines the ambitious Bulgarian international cultural outreach during the 1970s at two levels; first, in the framework of the expanding contacts between East and West, exploring the importance of cultural diplomacy in the context of détente, and second, at the level of the actual cultural interactions, analyzing the meaning of cultural contacts across national borders and ideological divides. Focusing on the Bulgarian cultural endeavors in the USA, this analysis integrates insights from literatures that do not always converse: international history, transnational history, postcolonial studies, and anthropology. By studying a small socialist state that dynamically engaged with the West, despite its reputation of being ‘Moscow’s most loyal ally,’ the article showcases the ‘pericentric approach’ to the Cold War – which highlights the role of the periphery – that diplomatic historians have promoted. ⁷ By focusing on cultural exchange, rather than political or economic cooperation, it engages the ‘softer’ side of the Cold War that social and cultural historians of eastern Europe have been exploring in recent years. ⁸ Borrowing from postcolonial studies, the article further asks whether Cold War cultural exchange could be interpreted as one of the manifestations of contemporary cultural globalization that accelerated after 1945, as some cultural studies scholars have argued. ⁹ Finally, juxtaposing elite endeavors to orchestrate cultural contacts with local responses to official cultural policies, this work seeks to emphasize how local communities and individuals creatively shaped the Cold War realities. ¹⁰ The objective is to depict the complex, multidirectional flow of ideas, people, and cultural products between East and West during the long 1970s.

The Bulgarian cultural policies in the West were in line with the general expansion of East-West contacts after the ‘thaw’ inaugurated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. There is a growing literature on eastern Europe that studies transnational contacts across the ‘Iron Curtain’ as manifested in travel and tourism, the reception of western art, music, literature, design, and fashion, and the creation of socialist consumerism in the Eastern bloc, among others. ¹¹ While much of the work on the transnational Cold War has focused on the late 1950s and especially the 1960s, there is still little comparative research that would allow us to see how the dynamics of East–West interactions may have shifted in the 1970s. Instead, the literature on this period has focused on dissidents and human rights, often ignoring the more routine processes of accommodation between the late socialist regimes and their citizens. ¹² While the Bulgarian case does not allow us to generalize for the entire region, the archival evidence presented here makes it clear that, in the 1970s, interactions between East and West had become routine and expected even for a socialist state, such as Bulgaria, that had the reputation of being a ‘Soviet proxy.’

New global dynamics in the 1970s shaped the Bulgarian international cultural involvement as well. ¹³ The term détente is used to describe a variety of political strategies aimed at East–West reconciliation, which emerged out of concerns over the unsustainability of the Cold War escalation following the Cuban missile crisis. By the 1970s, political efforts had crystallized in the idea of ‘antagonistic cooperation’ with the goal of decreasing the likelihood of direct confrontation between the superpowers and establishing a structured process of negotiating differences. ¹⁴ The rapprochement between East and West also served internal reasons as a strategy of political legitimization following the profound domestic challenges that both western and eastern politicians experienced during the protests of the late-1960s. In the words of Jeremi Suri: ‘After two decades of Cold War rivalry, policy makers felt that they understood their foreign enemies and could rely on their consistency and pragmatism.’ ¹⁵ This analysis of détente as a conservative reaction of political elites who wished to reinforce the status quo certainly explains the willingness of communist leaders – including the Bulgarian power elites studied here – to embrace détente. West German Ostpolitik was a game-changer, as Chancellor Willy Brand adopted an ‘active strategy of engaging its communist neighbors,’ which ‘transformed the global environment of the Cold War’ by demonstrating the viability of enhancing political, economic, and cultural contacts among ideological adversaries. ¹⁶ During this exact time period in the early 1970s, Bulgarian officials also systematically expanded their contacts with the West, justifying their new global endeavors in the language of détente.

East–West cooperation culminated with the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in August 1975, following three years of negotiations at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The provisions of Basket One, including the inviolability of frontiers, non-intervention in internal affairs, and respect for human rights, carried an important political significance by sanctioning, 30 years later, the post-Second World War European borders. Equally important were the provisions of Basket Three pertaining to travel, family reunification, educational cooperation, and, generally, ‘the free flow of information,’ which facilitated an increase in East–West communication. In the interpretation of Sarah Snyder, the role of Basket Three was to ‘“unfreeze the situation” in Eastern Europe by exposing people to new influences’ and ‘open the Iron Curtain through human contacts’ on a new scale. ¹⁷ After 1975, Warsaw Pact and NATO allies emphasized different provisions of the Helsinki Final Act as its most important components; with ritualistic zeal, the East prioritized the recognition of postwar frontiers and non-intervention in internal affairs while the West focused on the respect for human rights and personal freedoms. The parties continued discussing their differences in the follow-up CSCE conferences in Belgrade (1977–8) and Madrid (1980–3). The process began in Helsinki – even though only functioning as a ‘declaration of intention’ – bound East and West into a mutually agreed upon process of negotiating differences and maintaining contacts across ideological divides that lasted until the end of the Cold War.

The insights of cultural diplomacy allow us to understand the significance of cultural contacts in the context of East–West rapprochement. If ‘the Cold War was, in its essence, a struggle between ideas,’ cultural relations played an important role because they structured the ideological content of the broader framework of political, economic, and military relations through the ‘transmission of ideas and values.’ ¹⁸ In other words, culture was in many ways the flip side of propaganda; in East and West alike, the goal of cultural programs abroad was to ‘pour… ideas and values in the minds of foreign public[s].’ ¹⁹ For that reason, after 1956, both the Soviet Union and the USA created a rigorous institutional framework for scientific, technical, educational, cultural, and sport cooperation, often explicitly referred to as ‘exchange.’ ²⁰ In the context of détente and especially after the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, cultural diplomacy continued to be an important arena of interaction between world leaders because many of the ideas associated with Helsinki were also tested out in the cultural sphere. The rhetorical obsession of communist leaders with ‘world peace’ and of western politicians with ‘human rights,’ even in the most mundane discussions of cultural exchange, was one manifestation of this tendency to use culture as a proxy for politics.

Yet, it is possible to situate the increased interactions between East and West in an even broader framework. New developments, such as expanding transportation networks, faster communications technologies, and the proliferation of international agreements, have prompted some historians to emphasize the accelerated pace of globalization during the Cold War. ²¹ Some cultural studies scholars have claimed that Cold War cultural diplomacy ‘supported the development of globalization’ from the mid-1950s on because cultural exchange created a new experience of global interconnectedness and contributed to ‘changing the frame of reference in which people think.’ ²² If we define globalization as ‘rapidly developing… network of interconnections,’ then the increasing cultural interaction between East and West may very well be interpreted as one more manifestation of ‘globalization in the making.’ ²³ Arjun Appadurai has famously analyzed the creation of various networks, or ‘flows,’ that develop in the condition of contemporary globalization trends in the postcolonial period – the emergence of ethnoscapes, financescapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes, or the new, faster pace in the circulation of people, capital, technology, popular culture and media images, and norms and ideas of states. ²⁴ The concept of ideoscapes is particularly helpful in the context of the Cold War when East and West promoted conflicting understandings of freedom, welfare, and rights. As evident in the research presented here, cultural exchange became a key arena for negotiating political and economic differences between ideological adversaries who sought to promote their ideas of state and society to a worldwide audience.

This global exchange of cultural ideas had an uneasy relationship with the political status quo because, by facilitating ‘access to the other side’s society in return for the granting of corresponding access to one’s own,’ it created new fields of interaction that eluded government control. ²⁵ An analysis of the bottom-up cultural contacts at the local level is indispensable in explaining what the exportation of culture meant to those who participated in cultural exchange. ²⁶ Here, the focus need not be on oppositional politics and challenges to authority. Transnational contacts in the Cold War had their limits because ‘the “default” ideological setting of the Soviet leadership remained distrust in the West’; in the words of Anne Gorsuch and Diane Koenker, despite the enhanced transnational contacts from the 1960s on, ‘the socialist world… did not necessarily become less socialist.’ ²⁷ Yet, opportunities emerged, in the process of dissemination of cultural ideas, to imagine a new and shared (cultural) space for ideological opponents, which was able to accommodate differences in novel ways. The scholarship focused on the ‘glocal’ and the process of ‘glocalization,’ or the dynamic relationship between global and local forces that constructs the local in global terms and vice versa, theorizes the discrepancy between state ideas of culture and actual cultural practices. ²⁸ Rather than assume that globalization was ‘inevitable, peaceful transition to global integration,’ anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing reminds us to study ‘the productive friction of global connections.’ ²⁹ The Bulgarian appearance on the global cultural scene of the 1970s was similarly ridden with contradictions because it often led to unlikely interactions that defied the ideological mandates that had allowed the contact in the first place.

Integrating insights from the literatures on the global Cold War, cultural diplomacy, and cultural globalization, this article explores the Bulgarian cultural program in the USA to ask what happens to the ideologically driven cultural ideas and practices of a communist state during their transmission abroad. As this research demonstrates, when Bulgarian officials tried to organize their cultural events in the 1970s, there was a dynamic relationship between official ideas and goals, on one hand, and the actual realization and reception of those cultural practices, on the other. Cultural cooperation happened from both above and below, because in addition to the meticulous plans and programs of cultural expansion, there were also global trends, local conditions, peculiar audiences, and idiosyncratic cultural practices that officials could not fully control. In the Bulgarian case, cultural cooperation was a state-sponsored initiative conceived and executed at the highest level of the political and intellectual bureaucracy, and ideology remained an important part of cultural exchange. Yet, the success of these cultural events depended on the local endeavors of Bulgarian cultural ambassadors – and the cooperation of their American hosts – which created a space of interaction for cultural practitioners from both sides of the Cold War ideological divide. The end result of this engagement was a dynamic and not always ideologically driven cultural affair that spoke the language of universal human values.

In the 1970s, there was a consensus among western diplomats that, within the Soviet bloc, Bulgaria played the role of ‘Moscow’s loyal flag-bearer.’ ³⁰ This opinion guided US policies vis-a-vis Bulgaria. Contacts between the two countries had been minimal since a breach in diplomatic relations from 1950 to 1959. From the US perspective, in the 1960s Bulgaria strictly followed Soviet foreign policy mandates. The Bulgarian leadership vocally condemned the Vietnam War, and Bulgarian troops participated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Based on such ideas of complete Soviet dependence, the annual report of the Department of State on Eastern Europe from 1972 only mentioned in passing the ‘limited’ and ‘unchanged’ relations with Bulgaria; even the ‘unsatisfactory’ situation in post-1968 Czechoslovakia attracted more attention. ³¹

Cultural diplomacy played an important role in the normalization of political relations between Bulgaria and the USA, which occurred after Bulgaria signed the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. The two countries concluded an Agreement for Cultural Cooperation in June 1977. The person in charge of Bulgarian culture was Liudmila Zhivkova, daughter of the BCP General Secretary Todor Zhivkov, chairwoman of the Committee for Culture (with the rank of ministry), and member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of BCP. Following the signing of the agreement, Zhivkova met informally with President Jimmy Carter at the White House. In 1978, negotiations at the level of deputy-foreign ministers and visits of US senators to Bulgaria resumed. ³² In September 1979, Zhivkova travelled to the USA again to represent Bulgaria at the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) for the inauguration of the International Year of Children and to advertise one of her pet projects, the Banner of Peace International Children’s Assembly held in Bulgaria that year. In New York, she met with US Secretary of State Cyrus Vans, the head of the US delegation at the UN. Despite the informal character of these meetings, they were publicized in Bulgaria as a political breakthrough, demonstrating the charged propaganda potential of cultural diplomacy. ³³

But while cultural efforts excelled, political and economic relations lagged behind. When Carter made human rights an important component of US foreign policy after 1977, the disagreement in the interpretation of the Helsinki accords shaped political relations between the two countries. ³⁴ The Bulgarian priority was to secure most favored nation status, but that possibility became conditional on ‘freedom of emigration’ and family reunification, a provision of Basket Three of the Helsinki Final Act. While Hungary and Romania had already accepted such clauses, Bulgaria maintained a ‘principled position’ based on another Helsinki clause, ‘non-interference in internal affairs.’ ³⁵ Both sides were strategically employing those Helsinki provisions that served their interest – human rights for the USA and non-intervention for Bulgaria. As cables between the State Department and the US embassy in Sofia confirm, the Bulgarian record on divided families was similar to the American and there was little evidence of outright Bulgarian repression of its citizens, yet US diplomats continued to raise the question of ‘humanitarian cases.’ ³⁶ Given this disagreement over the scope of the Helsinki accords, US–Bulgarian economic and political relations remained underdeveloped.

When Ronald Reagan arrived in the Oval Office in 1981, relations between Bulgaria and the USA became even more complicated. US interests had shifted elsewhere, namely to Iran and Afghanistan. In the Soviet bloc, the Reagan administration paid most attention to Poland after the establishment of Solidarity and imposition of martial law. The lack of dramatic political developments or dissident activities in Bulgaria confirmed the old cliché of Bulgaria being ‘the Soviet Union’s most obedient partner.’ ³⁷ Occasionally, speculations emerged in the press whether Liudmila Zhivkova, the ‘energetic daughter of the durable President of Bulgaria,’ promoting the worldwide dissemination of Bulgarian culture, was being groomed to inherit her father. ³⁸ But Bulgaria remained on the margins of US interest.

With the reserved attitude of the Republican White House, the Bulgarian strategy was to extend invitations to individual US Senators and Representatives, typically Democrats who opposed the Reagan administration’s foreign policy agenda, to participate in political consultations in Bulgaria during their trips to Europe. Cultural diplomacy provided a fresh opportunity because ‘the pending celebration of 1300 Years Bulgaria is an occasion for visits of US political and public figures.’ The intention was to use the worldwide jubilee celebrations to increase cultural contact with the USA and, at the next stage, resume economic and political negotiations. ³⁹

Cultural exchange in the 1970s followed a template created in the 1950s and 1960s, with some modifications to reflect the dynamics of the new decade. Cultural relations between the Soviet Union and the West had expanded under Nikita Khrushchev who opened the country for foreign visitors, initiated cultural contacts with the West, and adopted internationalism as an aspect of Soviet foreign policy. ⁴⁰ The USA joined the battle to win over hearts and minds by initiating its own cultural programs across the globe, including the Eastern bloc. ⁴¹ In eastern Europe, ‘the thaw’ after 1956 contributed to the internal cultural liberalization and more independent international involvement of Warsaw Pact members. The 1960s saw extensive transborder contacts in much of eastern Europe, including the expansion of travel opportunities and the experimentation with western cultural ideas. ⁴² In the 1970s, in the context of Ostpolitik, cultural contacts also functioned as an important diplomatic tool of reconciliation between West Germany and Poland. ⁴³

Bulgaria entered the western cultural scene in the early 1960s, but due to financial constraints, this initial cautious exploration had limited impact. From the late 1960s on, however, state and party officials started promoting Bulgarian culture in the West more methodically. ⁴⁴ Two reasons determined this new orientation. First, after the Brezhnev doctrine of 1968, the entire Soviet bloc saw the increased use of ideology in the new realities of ‘mature socialism’; Bulgarian officials now treated culture more seriously because they saw it as an aspect of ideology. Second, this period also saw the revival of nationalism in Bulgaria, which manifested itself through a campaign of ‘patriotic education’ domestically and a revival of the Macedonian controversy with Yugoslavia internationally; with the adoption of cultural nationalism, Bulgarian cultural circles were now gaining more influence within the state bureaucracy. ⁴⁵ The importance of culture in Bulgaria became even more apparent in the 1970s when Todor Zhivkov encouraged his daughter, Liudmila Zhivkova, to become involved in the cultural sphere. After her appointment as the head of the Committee of Culture in 1975, she provided administrative and financial support for ambitious cultural projects at home and abroad; Bulgarian culture now went to the West and western culture came to Bulgaria systematically. ⁴⁶

The close interconnection between political and ideological considerations in the execution of Bulgarian cultural projects in the West is clear from the institutional arrangements of cultural cooperation. ⁴⁷ Bulgarian cultural exchange with the ‘developed capitalist states’ closely followed political mandates reached at the highest levels of the Central Committee of BCP, the State Council, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following a 1975 decision of the Politburo, top party ideologues, high ranking diplomats, and a handful of functionaries in the ideological and cultural spheres designed elaborate plans on how to promote Bulgarian culture at home and abroad. ⁴⁸ Zhivkova personally directed many of these projects. The daughter of the Bulgarian communist leader had unorthodox interests in yoga, meditation, eastern philosophies, and clairvoyance, while her promotion of Bulgaria as a premier Slavic civilization produced rumors of Soviet dissatisfaction; these idiosyncrasies gave her credibility in the West because she was seen as introducing fresh ideas in a sphere traditionally dominated by ideology. ⁴⁹

Generally, cultural relations with western states became the purview of bilateral Agreements for Cultural Cooperation, usually renewed every two years, which included a preamble containing political declarations and a detailed list of specific cultural events. ⁵⁰ These agreements were the subject of heated discussions between diplomatic representatives (generally, the cultural attachés but also the ambassadors). In the USA, the organization in charge was the United States Information Agency (USIA, later USICA), which handled US cultural cooperation across the globe and worked in cooperation with the State Department. ⁵¹ In Bulgaria, the Committee for Culture sought the endorsement of the Cultural Section of the Central Committee of BCP and worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the specifics in each country, but also consulted with the respective creative organizations on the concrete events in the official plan.

In this context, a new generation of bureaucrats and intellectuals, many within Zhivkova’s circle, saw this focus on culture as an exciting opportunity. While loyal to the regime or close to Zhivkova personally, they used their newly cultivated western contacts as leverage against the older generation in charge and were committed to the cultural ‘turn’ to the West both professionally and personally. ⁵² Todor Zhivkov carefully balanced the aspirations of his daughter and her circle against the reaction of hardliners – mainly the security services but also some older Politburo members – who distrusted international outreach. The combination of these factors led to a period of unprecedented state investment in culture, from the mid-1970s to Zhivkova’s death in 1981, during a period that was described at the time as the ‘Second Golden Age of Bulgarian culture.’ ⁵³

In the new cultural policies pursued with Zhivkova’s blessing, ideology remained an important internal justification for cultural contacts with the West. Cultural activities in the capitalist countries were based on the ‘class-party approach adjusted to the concrete socio-economic conditions [in each country].’ ⁵⁴ Events in the West were supposed to be following an ‘uncompromising, coordinated ideological line’ that emphasized the superior cultural practices in the ‘socialist community.’ ⁵⁵ Culture was not the end goal, but the tool. The objective was to showcase the ‘wide-ranging achievements of building mature socialism’ and the Soviet bloc’s commitment to ‘the end of the arms race and preservation of world peace.’ ⁵⁶ Because hardliners objected to this new cultural outreach to the West, this ideological framework justified, internally, the need for the rapid expansion of cultural exchange with the capitalist world.

The ideological reasons for cultural cooperation with the West went hand in hand with national considerations: the goal was to increase Bulgarian ‘prestige.’ The global Bulgarian cultural expansion was, ultimately, a campaign of self-fashioning, so the most acclaimed and ambitious exhibitions, folk ensemble tours, classical concerts, and publishing enterprises took place in ‘capitalist countries.’ In 1980, Bulgarian cultural experts boasted: ‘There is hardly a world capital – from Washington to London, from Paris to Tokyo – that has not been engaged in an exciting opportunity to experience the extraordinary traditions and accomplishments of our people in culture and art.’ ⁵⁷ By the early 1980s, Bulgaria had cultural agreements with 16 capitalist countries in Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan, and Australia. ⁵⁸ While the number of cultural events organized in the West remained steady (25 per cent of all events), these cultural appearances generated excitement, led to cultural innovation, and required investment of money, time, and personnel on a new scale.

The 1300 jubilee, conveniently combining cultural, ideological, and national issues, became the centerpiece of this global cultural offensive. In the mind of Zhivkova, the jubilee celebrations had to highlight the unity of past, present, and future and to demonstrate that, today’s Bulgaria, on the triumphant path of building communism, was the proud heir of an equally glorious past. The objectives of the worldwide cultural events associated with 1300 were twofold: to ‘display the real contribution of Bulgarian culture in the development of human civilization’ and to ‘stimulate [international] political, economic, cultural and social relations, with a focus on the advantages and superiority of real socialism.’ ⁵⁹ By the end of 1980, 14 western European countries, the USA and Canada had established national committees honoring the 1300 jubilee. ⁶⁰ With the limited political progress in the USA, celebrating the 1300 jubilee became a way to express, loud and clear, the ‘principled Bulgarian position’ on a number of issues – from the ‘superior role of culture in socialist society’ to the socialist bloc’s love for ‘world peace and disarmament.’

Despite the rigorous institutional framework and solid ideological logic of cultural cooperation, the implementation of cultural exchange produced a number of unintended consequences. Once culture crossed borders, the Bulgarian representatives had to adjust their meticulous plans to the reality of cultural practice. Ideology gave ways to more nuanced, even universal messages because Bulgarian officials understood that they could not simply export their ideas to the USA. As US culture came to Bulgaria, on reciprocal grounds, they also had to manage the circulation of western ideas among their midst. Bulgarian experts painstakingly considered how to handle the new conditions of what one might call globalization, or ‘the radical changes, linked to the scientific-technical revolution’ and the accompanying ‘gigantic, perpetual acceleration… in the cultural potential of humanity.’ In the conditions of expanding global contacts in the 1970s, top Bulgarian officials now saw culture as a main tool of Bulgarian foreign policy. ⁶¹

Ideological clichés were inevitably part of the extensive documentation produced by Bulgarian officials who sought to justify the need to expand cultural relations with the number one ideological enemy of Bulgaria. In 1980, the Committee for Culture opined that Bulgarian–USA cultural cooperation, coming from ‘diametrically opposing ideological, political, social, aesthetic and moral perspectives,’ should be based on the principles of ‘primacy of the communist party, proletarian internationalism, and peaceful mutual coexistence.’ ⁶² Cultural experts devised complex plans and schemes, such as the one shown in Figure 1, to demonstrate how cultural cooperation with the USA was supposed to serve larger objectives, follow strict guidelines, and accomplish clear outcomes according to the ideological priorities of a ‘real socialist’ state. ⁶³

Yet, in reality, the need to attract American audiences to these events necessitated the moderation of the ideological language and an emphasis on a more universal vocabulary free of political imperatives. In effect, different languages were used internally and externally to promote the Bulgarian cultural presence in the USA.

In 1976, the Committee for Culture decided on the implementation in the USA of ‘a large penetration (probiv) characteristic of our culture.’ ⁶⁴ The Thracian Treasures from Bulgaria exhibition toured the Metropolitan Museum in New York City between June and October 1977, followed by the Boston Museum of Art (see Figure 2). Bulgarian experts innovated with technologies of cultural dissemination: the exhibition was accompanied by a conference as the Archaeological Institute of America, the screening of Bulgarian films, the distribution of print materials, and the broadcast of radio and TV programs. While these endeavors showed overreaching attempts at central planning, they also revealed the ability of communist elites to take advantage of new global mediascapes to spread their ideas of state. The official goal of the exhibition was to ‘familiarize the American public with the ancient roots of Bulgarian culture, to underscore the attention our country gives to our heritage, [and]… to acquaint the Americans with the contemporary Bulgarian socialist culture and art.’ ⁶⁵ But in its execution, the focus was on the glorious past of ancient times rather than the success of socialist Bulgaria. This was an exhibition for educated, cosmopolitan audiences who wished to find out more about ‘the obscure circumstances of the ancient and rugged Thracian culture’ and marvel ‘the significant art of “barbarian” peoples who have contributed far more to the advanced civilizations of Greece, China, India, and Persia than previously was recognized.’ ⁶⁶ In the end, ideology was muted to emphasize universal historical contributions, a strategy that attracted large US audience to the Thracian Treasures. ⁶⁷

Other events quickly followed. A Week of the Bulgarian Book at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library in Washington, DC, in March and April 1977 showcased Bulgarian fiction. The Library of Congress and the Bulgarian National Library concluded a cooperation agreement including book exchanges and librarian visits. The Pirin folk ensemble toured the United States for three months in the first half of 1979, including concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC. ⁶⁸ Bulgarian scholars organized and participated in major academic conferences at prestigious universities, including Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh, and Ohio State University. In November 1980, noted Bulgarian poets, Liubomir Levchev and Georgi Dzhagarov, read their work at the Library of Congress. These two came with impeccable credentials – Dzhagarov served as Vice Chair of the State Council while Levchev was the Chairperson of the Union of Bulgarian Writers. Their presence served to demonstrate, as pointed out in official correspondence, ‘our desire to continue the policies of the détente and the development of cultural ties [with capitalist countries] during a period of renewed pressures against socialism.’ ⁶⁹ But the actual presentations adopted an apolitical, universal language. As the US coverage of the Bulgarian poets’ visit remarked, ‘Bulgarians and Americans may live in different corners of the world, but good poetry, which speaks to universal emotions, will unite those from different cultures.’ ⁷⁰

One of the reasons for the success of these cultural interactions lied in the fact that the Bulgarian representatives were mostly in contact with independent cultural agents, academic figures, or individuals who had interest in Bulgarian history, culture, art, or academic life. The conversations between state officials continued to be fraught with tension. In November 1980, during a meeting of the Mixed Commission for Cultural Cooperation in Washington, when a US representative asked for oral declaration that ‘the celebration of the [1300] anniversary would not be accompanied by communist propaganda,’ the Bulgarian ambassador threatened to leave the negotiation table. ⁷¹ But Bulgarian diplomats seamlessly communicated with US professors, visited academic conferences where they asked informed questions, and exchanged friendly visits with public figures. Having been ostracized in their official dealings with the US government, Bulgarian representatives actively tried to identify ‘actors who can raise their concerns… and exert pressure more effectively.’ ⁷² Generally, contacts with institutions of higher learning remained free from political content and focused on academic issues and professional debates. ⁷³ Communist elites were successfully interacting with their global peers, often creating lasting friendships.

This expansion in cultural relations did not preclude tensions. The Bulgarians and Americans came from different cultural milieus and often faced basic problems of ‘reading’ their conversation partners. Bulgarian experts nurtured doubts that a small country should follow the principle of reciprocity in cultural exchange, yet they used the concept selectively when negotiating cultural events. Following the Thracian Treasures exhibition at the Metropolitan, Bulgarian representatives proposed an exhibition entitled 100 Paintings from the Metropolitan to tour Bulgaria in 1979. But the director of the Metropolitan refused to be involved in such discussions, shunning Bulgarian attempts to frame cultural exchange on their terms. Firmly committed to securing a US exhibition of the same quality as the Thracian Treasures, Bulgarian officials declined to accept a third US photo exhibit, as proposed by USICA. ⁷⁴

The difference between the state management of culture and an entrepreneurial approach was clear. The Bulgarians struggled to understand that political considerations could not override prior contract agreements. When the Committee for Culture tried to reschedule the American Photo Exhibit originally planned to take place in Bulgaria in the summer of 1978, the US Embassy and USICA threatened to cancel the exhibition because they would have to pay a large fine to the agency in charge. In 1981, when the Bulgarians changed the duration of the Medieval Jewelry exhibition from six months to 45 days, the Smithsonian Institution promptly postponed the showing for 1984. ⁷⁵ Cultural exchange was a matter of mutual discovery and careful accommodation of different cultural practices.

But bringing more western culture at home, on reciprocal grounds, also created the dilemma of how to control the message of western ‘cultural invasion’ in Bulgaria, reviving the ideological language for domestic consumption. ⁷⁶ The Bulgarians were highly suspicious of any exhibition that USICA, their main US conversation partner in official cultural exchange matters, proposed. Even the neutrally titled ‘The Artist at Work in America’ seemed to have political overtones as it came with a library that contained undesired books (thus visitors had to be monitored) and audio-visual effects that were no match to the Bulgarian technological abilities (emphasizing the superiority of US culture). ⁷⁷ The topic of another exhibition proposed in 1982, ‘The American Museum: An Experience in Community’ also caused frantic correspondence because it envisioned the projection of films and the presence of American curators. ⁷⁸ When such exhibitions happened, the Bulgarians neutralized their ‘propaganda effects’ by keeping the audiences small. In Bulgarian opinion, capitalist countries used ‘cultural exchange… to impose the capitalist way of life.’ Cultural interaction with the West was a delicate act that required ‘balanced export [of culture].’ ⁷⁹ In 1983, after years of trying to organize a ‘balanced’ American cultural event, the Bulgarians finally secured an exhibition that lacked ‘propaganda effect’; the American Expressionists, with sixty oil paintings from the Metropolitan, was finally coming to Bulgaria. ⁸⁰

As Bulgarian cultural contacts with the USA expanded, the Bulgarian emissaries toned down ideological clichés and focused on universal ideas, such as the rich Bulgarian historical legacy and the success of a small country in the preservation of its cultural heritage. The celebration of 1300 in 1981, the ‘climax’ (kulminatsiia) of all Bulgarian activities in the USA, embraced this framework. A notable success was the establishment of a National Jubilee Committee in the USA, which included prominent politicians and academics: from Senators John Fulbright and Adlai Stevenson to writers John Updike, Erskine Coldwell, and William Styron to many scholars of Balkan studies (John Bell, Frederick Chary, James Clarke, Charles Gribble, John Lampe, Philip Shashko). Other high-profile events dedicated to 1300 included an ethnographic exhibition accompanied by folk concerts in Pittsburg; scientific symposia at Ohio State University and University of Pittsburgh; and a Week of Bulgarian Culture in Los Angeles. The mayors of New York City and Los Angeles sent congratulatory telegrams to the Bulgarian people, giving an official stamp to the events. ⁸¹ Despite the snub of Washington, the jubilee events in the USA were considered a triumph of Bulgarian culture abroad.

The execution of Bulgarian cultural practices in the West cannot be understood without examining the people involved in the events and their interactions on the local cultural scene. The most natural audience of the Bulgarian events in the West were the Bulgarians living abroad, but interacting with émigrés was a delicate affair. In 1980, there were 300,000 Bulgarians living in the West. Generally, officials divided the members of the Bulgarian ‘colony’ into ‘hostile’ and ‘loyal.’ The ‘loyal’ ones tended to be the second- and third-generation descendants of Bulgarian economic immigrants from the late-nineteenth century who showed interest in the Bulgarian activities as a part of their heritage. During the tour of the Pirin folk ensemble in the USA, these Bulgarian Americans had flocked the concert halls in great numbers and showed good disposition when approached by Bulgarian representatives. But there were also the ‘hostile,’ or the political émigrés after 1944 with firm anti-communist positions – some 11,000 according to an estimate of the Politburo from 1980 – who vocally portrayed the Bulgarian cultural events in the West as totalitarian propaganda. ⁸² How to court the ‘loyal’ and undermine the ‘hostile’ émigrés emerged as an important consideration in the execution of all Bulgarian cultural events in the USA.

By using a local perspective that pays attention to the individuals involved in these cultural interactions, it is possible to reconstruct the ‘messy and surprising features of [cultural] encounters across difference’ in small town America. ⁸³ New Lexington, Ohio is a town of 5000 inhabitants located 60 miles from the capital Columbus. The town was the birthplace of Januarius MacGahan, a late-nineteenth century American journalist who had traveled to the Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule in 1876 to witness and condemn the infamous Batak massacre that put the Bulgarian national question on the international scene. MacGahan died in Istanbul in 1878, but his body was exhumed and reburied in New Lexington in 1883. In 1911, local residents erected a monument bearing the inscription ‘MacGahan. Liberator of Bulgaria.’ In the 1970s, when a local citizen committee began annual celebrations of MacGahan’s death, Bulgarian immigrants from across the Mid-West started to frequent New Lexington each June to pay respect to the ‘Liberator of Bulgaria.’ ⁸⁴

In Bulgaria, 1978 was the year of the centennial of the Bulgarian liberation from the Ottoman Empire following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8. MacGahan’s dispatches from Batak were republished in Bulgarian and a monument was erected in Batak to celebrate his contribution to the Bulgarian cause. ⁸⁵ Across the Atlantic Ocean, as the local committee in New Lexington prepared to celebrate the centennial of his death, it invited members of the Bulgarian communities in New York, Toronto, Chicago, and various places in Ohio to pay their respects (see Figure 3). ⁸⁶ The Ohio House of Representatives declared the week of 3–9 June as the Week of Januarius MacGahan. ⁸⁷

In the summer of 1978, a Bulgarian Television crew filming a documentary on MacGahan visited New Lexington and encountered ‘Bulgarian immigrants hostile to our socialist system.’ To neutralize ‘anti-Bulgarian (against the current [political] system) occurrences,’ the delegation recommended to the Committee for Culture to gift to New Lexington a replica of the commemorative bust of the American journalist that had recently been erected in Batak (see Figure 4). ⁸⁸

In the meantime, Bulgarian émigrés from Toledo and Akron, Ohio, most of them with anti-communist orientation, spearheaded an alternative project of commemorating MacGahan. In 1979, a well-known Bulgarian sculptor, Liubomir Dalchev, defected during an exhibition in Vienna, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1980, émigrés sponsored his exhibition in Akron and commissioned a monument of MacGahan. ⁸⁹ The full-size sculpture, bearing resemblance of socialist monumental art, was placed across from the New Lexington City Hall (see Figure 5).

Throughout the 1980s, the annual memorials organized during the month of June on occasion of MacGahan's death, brought together in ‘productive friction’ official representatives of communist Bulgaria, recent anti-communist émigrés, second-generation Bulgarian heritage folk ensembles, US-based Bulgarian Orthodox priests, and the local inhabitants of New Lexington. ⁹⁰ The official Bulgarian cultural objectives intersected with local community interests and émigré national sensibilities. So the representatives of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria had to participate in rather awkward cultural encounters involving Orthodox priests and Bulgarian émigrés. Yet still, New Lexington became one of the meccas of official Bulgarian visits to the USA. One can only imagine the thoughts of Bulgarian representatives when encountering the MacGahan sculpture erected by the ‘defector’ Dalchev whose work they no doubt recognized.

While in the 1970s and 1980s, the term used to refer to the Bulgarian cultural endeavors abroad was ‘penetration’ (pronikvane, probiv), recently the term ‘opening’ (otvariane) surfaced in Bulgaria to describe the events. This choice of words is, of course, not neutral. The question of ‘opening’ is connected to contentious memory wars about communist elites, their post-socialist reincarnations, and the nature of Bulgarian communism in general. ⁹¹ Many Bulgarians continue to be fascinated with the life and career of Liudmila Zhivkova, the unorthodox daughter of Todor Zhivkov who made possible this Bulgarian cultural extravaganza. In 2012, her daughter, Evgeniia Zhivkova, commemorated the seventieth anniversary of her mother’s birth with an exhibition at the Gallery for International Art, one of her mother’s creations. The previously mentioned conference at the University of Sofia on the Bulgarian ‘cultural opening’ featured talks by close associates of Zhivkova’s. The April 2015 exhibition of archaeological discoveries from Bulgaria at the Louvre also led to renewed discussions of her legacy when Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, a former bodyguard of Todor Zhivkov’s, reportedly called the exhibition ‘a fulfillment of Liudmila Zhivkova’s dreams.’ ⁹² A recent post about Zhivkova in the Facebook group ‘Memories from the People’s Republic’ expressed an overwhelming opinion that she was a remarkable woman whose ‘good and beautiful deeds cannot be erased or forgotten’ because she ‘made Bulgaria famous worldwide.’ ⁹³

These verbal choices have overt political connotations because they depict an overwhelmingly positive picture of Zhivkova’s legacy. But the concept of ‘opening’ makes sense if we return to Suri’s interpretation of détente as an essentially conservative reaction of political elites, both in East and West, whose goal was to reify the Cold War status quo, rather than overcome it, through selective appearances of change. ⁹⁴ In Bulgaria, it was the daughter of the long-term communist dictator who presided over the cultural expansion abroad. Only a small number of intellectuals, many of them close associates of Zhivkova or connected to the regime in other ways, actively participated in cultural exchange with the West. ⁹⁵ Ordinary Bulgarians did not have the opportunity to travel to the sites of Bulgarian cultural diplomacy, such as the Metropolitan Museum or the Smithsonian Institution. Instead, they learned about these events from brief dispatches in the press. The global cultural programs were intended for foreign publics; most Bulgarians in the audience were émigrés. Disgruntled with the tight state control, US diplomats continuously urged Bulgarian authorities to open up cultural cooperation because the number of allocated seats for exchange scholars remained unfilled. The cultural ‘opening’ remained a communist elite phenomenon, and the persons who shaped cultural policies with the West were vetted at the highest level. ⁹⁶

Elsewhere in eastern Europe, ‘professionals’ and ‘experts’ played an important role in redefining the relationship between state and society in the post-Stalin period and benefitted from the new transnational contacts sanctioned by the state. In Bulgaria too, technocrats successfully carved a degree of autonomy from the Communist Party bureaucracy after 1968; even members of the lower nomenklatura were now able to engage in extensive international contacts with state support. ⁹⁷ By the 1970s, the third generation of communist elites was beginning to form; some, such as Zhivkova, were related to the old guard, but others rose from the bottom or despite their family’s bourgeois origins. Many of those involved in the Bulgarian cultural activities abroad were part of this third generation. The Bulgarian scholar Mihail Gruev describes the ‘circle of Liudmila’ as ‘guild elites’ pursuing common interests – educated in the West and possessing a different value system, they were frustrated by the static thinking of the second generation that was in charge, so they used international contacts as a channel of upper mobility and professional realization. ⁹⁸

Locating the emergence of the third-generation of communist elites in the 1970s allows us to explore their relationship to the accelerated pace of globalization during this period. Scholars have increasingly paid attention to the fact that, while globalization created new grassroots opportunities, elites were the real agents of the changes that shaped the global transmission of ideas, finances, or people. Cultural capital served as an important instrument in elite production and reproduction because of the prestige factor associated with cultural consumption and display. ⁹⁹ Studies of post-socialist elites emphasize ‘spatial mobility’ as one of their defining features, while reminding us that many of the current power elites were able to adopt their ‘mobile habitus’ because of their prior links to the communist power structures. ¹⁰⁰ It is not surprising that a British Foreign Office study titled ‘Leading Personalities in Bulgaria in 1980’ contained the names of many of the persons involved in expanding cultural relations with the West. ¹⁰¹ In Bulgaria, culture was part and parcel of state-sanctioned policy; idiosyncratic takes on culture were tolerated because they originated from cultural-political elites with proven loyalties whose goal was not to undermine but strengthen the political status quo and their own position within it. ¹⁰²

Here, it is useful to sharpen the distinction between a ‘global Cold War’ and a ‘transnational Cold War’ that some scholars indicate. Global history suggests parallels and synchronous trajectories in the same historical context, but lacks the interaction, interpenetration, and mutual borrowing at the center of transnational history. ¹⁰³ The Bulgarian experience in the USA during the 1970s indicates that this ‘cultural opening’ was a mostly elite phenomenon, which, in the Bulgarian case, generated highly controlled and uneven contacts that involved more diverse practices on the territory of the USA rather than in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian cultural endeavors in the West did not always result in two-way transnational contacts, but were first of all a manifestation of the desire of communist elites to partake in global phenomena. There was an appearance of ‘opening’ but not the actual reality of ‘exchange.’

To evaluate fully the question of ‘opening,’ it is important also to examine domestic responses to those international cultural events. Generally, events abroad were advertised in Bulgaria as success, but the reception of the Bulgarian public is unclear. A 1982 survey of public opinion on the jubilee celebrations contained no questions on its international aspects. One could only speculate how Bulgarians would have responded, but the lack of a question is revealing by itself. Obviously the Information-Sociological Center of Central Committee of BCP did not wish to invite deliberations from a ‘public opinion’ that had already voiced its criticism of ‘unnecessary expenses’ and ‘lack of access’ to by-invitation only events, domestically. ¹⁰⁴ During the same time, people grumbled about the lavish spending associated with 1300 – as the People’s Palace of Culture (NDK) in Sofia, one of the trademarks of the 1300 jubilee, was being built, Bulgarians joked that the acronym meant ‘new tightening of the belt’ (nova dupka na kolana). Rumors circulated that Zhivkova had paid an exorbitant amount to have a private viewing of the Louvre. ¹⁰⁵ In the context of a closed society that did not have many chances to explore the world, it is likely that at least some Bulgarians, unable to travel, use their hard currency freely, or reunite with their families abroad, were resentful of the opportunities of the cultural and political bureaucracy to travel, all expenses paid. ¹⁰⁶

Still, the ‘surrogate nationalism’ of the 1300 jubilee had appeal for the ‘masses.’ Even in Radio Free Europe’s assessment, the resurrected nationalist sentiment ‘provide[d] the Zhivkov regime with an element of legitimacy’ and ‘serve[d] as a safety valve.’ ¹⁰⁷ Despite the lack of reliable polls, the 1982 survey mentioned previously showed that seventy per cent of all Bulgarians pointed out that ‘national pride’ was ‘the strongest emotion’ associated with the jubilee. ¹⁰⁸ Linking the Bulgarian cultural extravaganza abroad to the 1300 anniversary may have worked to create a level of acceptance among Bulgarians of these centrally planned cultural policies that required a huge financial investment.

The worldwide celebration of the 1300 jubilee allowed ordinary Bulgarians to imagine connecting, at least mentally, to other parts of the world, giving them a ‘chance to participate in the global stream of humanity.’ ¹⁰⁹ When Todor Zhivkov spoke how, thanks to the extensive international cultural program, ‘the world, literally, “rediscovered” the culture of old and new Bulgaria,’ there was some truth to this statement. ¹¹⁰ Further, the export of Bulgarian culture abroad was connected to the import of foreign culture to Bulgaria, so as Bulgarian culture toured Paris, London, New York, New Delhi, Tokyo, and Mexico City, exhibitions of Leonardo da Vinci, American expressionists, Mexican muralists, Japanese prints, and Indian art came to Bulgaria, too. A small state with limited resources lacking international stature was now able to become a global player through cultural policy. For many Bulgarians, that also meant a new awareness of global interconnectedness that allowed them to feel as a part of a broader, global world.