Even if I try very hard, I just can’t imagine Madame Ceausescu or Madame Hoxha giving a similar speech in front of children or workers or Communist Party members or the Politburo. Many compared her to the powerful wives of other leaders, like Nexhmije, the wife of the first secretary of Albania, Enver Hoxha. Or like the notorious Elena Ceausescu. Both of them had power but didn’t even attempt to do anything good with it. Unlike women in positions of power acquired through their relationships with dictators, Lyudmila did something good, at least in one particular field. In spite of her folly, her reign as the minister of culture is nevertheless considered the golden age of art and culture in Bulgaria. Artists traveled abroad to study, and abstract art was exhibited in galleries—unheard-of in the other satellite states. Under her reign, a national palace of culture was constructed and the National Gallery of Art was replenished with formidable works of art. The exhibition “Thracian Gold Treasures from Bulgaria” traveled to twenty-five cities around the world, and many countries also saw the fine exhibition of Orthodox icons. Last but not least, a big “manifestation,” “Banner of Peace, World Children’s Assembly,” was held in Sofia, under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
At a time of such a feudal type of rule as Zhivkov’s in Bulgaria, of strong oral tradition, myths, folk songs, and fairy tales—because in spite of all the lip service, none of this was eradicated by the decades of socialist government—it was also normal to keep dancing bears.
Why, then, did we animals see in Lyudmila the possibility of salvation at all? I think we believed that, if she understood art and beauty and their importance in life, there was hope for this society and its primitive treatment of animals. Not to mention the fact that her father, like all other Communist heads of state, was a hunter! But she believed that animals have souls! Surely she would do something about bears dancing under her nose with burned paws and bleeding noses? If only she knew about us! If only the ruler knew the real condition of his subjects, he would change it, for sure. Rulers are just. Surely she was just. Or so we hoped for a while.
I must say that, frankly, I was impressed that she was a vegetarian. This custom was pretty much unheard-of in Bulgaria. Yes, there were some sensitive souls who couldn’t eat meat because it belonged to a slaughtered animal. Instead of a piece of meat on the plate, they would see a little calf calling for its mother. But such individuals were few and far between. People ate meat if they could buy it; anything else was considered to be eccentric and likely to be ridiculed, maybe even declared as the “decadent influence of the capitalist West.”
At first I thought that to be a vegetarian in a country where many people could not afford to eat meat—where such a diet was not a matter of taste or choice—was an extraordinary, enlightened decision. You have to be really high-minded and spiritually oriented. Because vegetarianism is more than a diet—for example, as when an ill person is prescribed vegetarian food. It is also more than a taste preference, like when you do not enjoy the taste of meat. It is an ideology, and it fit well with her other ideologies. But apparently I was wrong. Long after Lyudmila was gone I understood how easy it had been for her to be a vegetarian. She defended the rights of other living beings, mostly mammals, because animals are like people; they feel pain, they feel fear. Therefore, she appeared more human herself. On the other hand, she did nothing to change their conditions. Her activity in our favor was restricted to just that—not eating meat. And hoping that one day everybody would come to the conclusion that it is not moral to feed on creatures that endure as much pain as humans do.
I naively imagined how, for example, she could have given the order to ban the capture and torture of wild bears. Or, for that matter, to let people travel abroad and then decide for themselves what beauty and light and harmony are. But this would have required much more from her than grand words. It would have also been more dangerous to deal with human than with animal rights. At the time, human life was seldom perceived in its single form; it was usually seen as only a mass, a crowd. Our princess fled to the safe sphere of the spirit and light. When she spoke, it was in the lofty language of symbols and poetic metaphors. There was no real change; there could not be any. In the end, even if her intentions were good, our life went on without change. Freedom—be it for animals or for humans—was not her priority. How could it be? She had little or no contact with real life, with real underdogs and underbears. She simply did not see us as being enslaved. The simple truth was that socialist leaders could not care for us animals because they did not care for people either. We were all the same to them.
As far as my life was concerned, darkness fell upon it, too. And so it remained until a year ago, when activists from the Free Bears Now! organization come to rescue me from Angel. They saw that fatal TV footage of me dancing in Sofia and tracked us down. Apparently, I was one of the last dancing bears in the Balkans to be saved. Now I see that it was about time for my rescue, because I am old, exhausted, and in pain.
Anyway, at first I did not want to leave Angel for a better (but unknown) life in a resort. So when two activists visited us, both Angel and I tried to reason with them. Angel swore on his life that I am to him like his own child, that he feeds me the very food he eats. Of course, he was exaggerating. He fed me mostly stale bread and leftovers from their disgusting, unhealthy, sometimes carnivorous meals. He even shed a tear or two for me. Angel could shed tears whenever; I never understood this ability of people and how tears could be taken seriously as an argument among their kind. I, on the other hand, tried to verify his story in a way these young people might perhaps understand, so I displayed my figure and fur and bared my poor teeth as proof. But the iron ring in my nose, and the fact that Angel kept me chained to a mulberry tree in front of his shack, spoke strongly against him. In the end, the older of the two, a serious, businesslike young man, gave Angel an offer he could not refuse: a lump sum of money as compensation. He actually was not in a position to argue, because dancing bears had become outlawed, anyway. Plus, Angel badly needed to repair his roof. Even though Gypsy Roma people are famous for their disregard of the law, my transfer was duly arranged. I was not asked for an opinion, of course. Democracy yes, but not for bears!
Ah, the wheel of fortune—or, perhaps, the wheel of history?—turns in unpredictable ways.
Before they left, and while Angel was signing the papers for my release, the young activist said, “We especially care about these poor beasts because they symbolize the Bulgarian people, whom Todor Zhivkov kept chained!” Well, he couldn’t resist an ideological statement, could he? I guess he meant that people under Zhivkov did what he wanted and never rebelled against him. True, very true! The other side of this picture was, however, reflected in Angel’s case, where the socialist government provided the basic (bare) necessities for them. Most people, not only this Gypsy Roma, valued that. I know it from my own experience: however meager the provisions you get, if you get them regularly, they make you feel safe. Before, it was a simple trade-off: One traded one’s freedom for security. After all, what is freedom without anything to eat? I must add that my friend Evelina strongly disagreed with me. She repeatedly shook her head, exclaiming that never, ever would she trade freedom for anything. But saying “never” in such an adamant way is so typical of young people, simply because they have no idea what they are talking about.
Was I truly rescued as a symbol of a society? Then and there, I understood that it is hard for past and present to meet. The bear-rescuing mission was some kind of a new dogma for these youngsters. While people are left to struggle for survival in the jungle of the market economy, it is the turn of the animals to be taken care of and sheltered. A new, free generation just assumes that in a democracy people should take care of themselves.