But in the beginning of the seventies a change happened in Bulgaria, when Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of Todor Zhivkov, was appointed to a number of high party and state offices. She was installed in high positions while her relatives occupied lower ones. Her appointment was not at all unusual; when a king or a dictator does something like that, it is hardly a surprise. After all, Bulgaria was not alone in this; such was the custom in other, similar societies, like Romania and Albania. But the difference was that Lyudmila was not incompetent. On the contrary, she was a historian by training, and even wrote a few books (supposedly with a little help from her staff). She studied history in Sofia and Moscow, and even spent some time at Oxford University researching a book about Turkish-Bulgarian relations. From 1972 on, and within a very short period of time, Lyudmila became: chairwoman of the Committee for Culture; a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo; chairwoman of the Commission for Science, Culture, and Education; the People’s representative (MP) in their Parliament; and a member of the Council of Ministers. In 1975 Lyudmila became the minister of culture.
I know that many saw her for what she really was: a second generation of the Communist nomenklatura children, groomed to become the heir to her father’s throne. At that time Bulgarians did not live in the twentieth century, as people call it — we bears count time differently. They were stuck in medieval times, when the country was treated as the private property of a family, and power was handed down from father to son. Or, in the case of Lyudmila, to daughter. In many old Bulgarian folk songs, a woman is a magical creature, a mediator between the earth and the sky, between the natural and the supernatural. Such a woman is called a samodiva, or a wild fairy, and she possesses the untamed spirit necessary to maintain balance in the universe. It turned out that Lyudmila did indeed act as if she were a samodiva, linking two totally opposite worlds, one material and the other mystical and occult. Raised with the atheism and materialism of Marxist dogma, she embraced the opposite: yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as the folk medicine of Peter Dinev and the prophecies of Vanga, an allegedly clairvoyant illiterate peasant woman.
In fact, the story of Lyudmila reminds me of our old fairy tales. In my view, a fairy tale about her would run somewhere along the following lines:
Once upon a time, in the faraway land of the dictatorship of the proletariat, beneath the Balkan mountain there lived a young woman by the name of Lyudmila. She was not a beauty, but she was quick, intelligent, and ambitious. Moreover, she was a princess, the apple of the eye of the mighty King Todor I. After finishing her education and becoming learned in history and many other important, not to mention unimportant, subjects, one day she approached her father with a plan. “Beloved father,” she said, “I have thought long and hard about how to improve the lot of our people.” Her words caught the king’s attention, and he was delighted, as he himself had devoted his whole life to this very aim, alas not very successfully. His kingdom was a sad place, where people and animals dwelled in misery. Something needed to be done before his subjects, having nothing to lose, would rise up and start to rebel against him. Something that would make them love their king even more. “I know how to turn them into harmonious human beings, full of celestial light and eternal beauty. The whole universe would rejoice in our new life of wisdom, truth, and spirituality!” the princess explained to her father.
These words sounded strange to the king’s ears, which were used to a very different vocabulary, but what the heck? If his little darling could do something to change life in the kingdom — even if only in spirit — so much the better. He knew that in order to accomplish this she had to become the high commander of culture. The Council of Elders, or Politburo, approved his decision instantly. Of course, it was merely a formality. So the princess, the apple of the king’s eye, presented to the council her master plan of improving the soul of the entire nation. “Balance will reign in our beloved Bulgaria,” she promised them. The old men applauded; they could do nothing else anyway. They were experienced enough to know that the new language she spoke, and which they could not understand — and were sure that nobody else could either — carried an important message: In real life nothing much would change for them. Or for other subjects, for that matter.
Princess Lyudmila threw herself into her work. She dispatched envoys to bring to her the best scientists and artists, the most distinguished writers and academics, and the finest intellectuals. They together would create magnificent plans and programs to implement beauty in the everyday life of the people — especially through education. For it was clear to her that one has to start with young minds not yet molded by reality.
Some of these envoys she sent abroad to search for beauty and light there, as she herself did by traveling to exotic kingdoms like India and Nepal, many days ride by horseback. More important still, she reached out to the people. In her speeches she tirelessly and enthusiastically explained how they could benefit from the creative powers of spiritual change that each of them possessed within themselves — it only needed to be awakened. Everywhere the princess went she was met by enthralled masses of people; it was a sign that she was speaking straight to their souls. It was so evident to her that her subjects and her country needed a spiritual renaissance, and she often wondered how it was that nobody had understood this before her.
Among all these frantic activities she found time to marry, divorce, remarry, and have two children. However, she expressed the desire for her private life to be kept out of the public arena.
The ambitious princess, the apple of the king’s eye, was capable of rising even higher above the harshness of reality. She wanted to present the little kingdom of Bulgaria to the world, as this was the home of great Thracian treasures, and of beautiful orthodox icons. Under her supervision and command, exhibitions sprang up and traveled around the world. The king had to squeeze money from his subjects, but that was never a problem when a higher cause demanded of them such a sacrifice. The most important of her many projects was the celebration of the thirteen hundredth anniversary of Bulgarian statehood. But the neighboring Great Soviet Empire was not really pleased with Lyudmila’s barely concealed nationalist projects. They thought that the planned celebration was a daring display of Bulgarian national identity. As if Bulgaria were an independent kingdom and not merely one of its many satellites! Such an act was dangerous, because it could inspire other Eastern European satellites to think that they, too, could have an identity (and life!) separate from the Great Soviet Empire. That simply could not be allowed. Especially because there were signs that the princess might be the next in line for the throne and — according to spy reports of the time — she was but a dangerous lunatic.