Seminar with Yana Yancheva, chaired by Agnieszka Nowakowska on the subject of “The image of the ‘heroic youth’ in Bulgarian left poetry of the 1930s-1940s and the art of socialist realism from the first decade after 1944”

Abstract

This analysis is based on a study of partisan and revolutionary poetry from the 1930s and 1940s and poetry from the period of socialist realism, describing the socialist construction of the second half of the 1940s and the 1950s, as well as art works – painting, graphics, sculpture, created in the 1950s (also in the style of socialism), but depicting the partisan movement in Bulgaria and socialist construction. The period of creation of the researched works is situated on the border of two political epochs, when idealism and romanticism of revolutionary creativity (until the mid-1940s) was transformed into a dogmatic structured method of socialist realism after the establishment of the socialist rule in Bulgaria. The research finds a connection between the language and imagery in poetry and art from that period and Georgi Dimitrov’s addresses to the youth of the 1930s and 1940s.

All the works in the analysis are united by their content, representing the young people in heroic light. The image of “fighters for peace” and “fighters against fascism” is built on the notions of (silent) martyrdom, sacrifice and immortality of the heroes. “Builders of Socialism” or so-called heroes of the labor front are represented by their basic features such as enthusiasm, youth energy, eternal youth, unity. Other aspects of the heroic image of young people are their perceptions of “avant-garde” as the “eternal young”, and as eternal aspirations for self-improvement.

Dr. Yana Yancheva is a senior assistant professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economic Sociology from the University of National and World Economy, a master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, and graduated in Ethnology from the National University of Bulgaria. In 2012, she successfully defended her dissertation “Collectivization in the Bulgarian Village (1948-1970). Ethnographic Aspects” in the Ethnology of Socialism and Post-Socialism Department at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Since 2013, she has been a senior assistant professor in the same department.

Main fields of research:

ethnology of socialism and post-socialism, collective memory and trauma, socialist collectivization, everyday culture, socialist modernization, Bessarabian Bulgarians from Moldova and Ukraine, youth (sub)cultures, ethnology of agriculture, ethnology of childhood, etc.