A cunning plan was put into action. Lyudmila’s lover, Alex, was one of the Soviets’ many men in Sofia. They wanted to install him in power after the king’s death. They instructed Alex to talk Lyudmila into an attempt to overthrow King Todor I, whereupon he would take over power. But her pride was hurt: She had envisioned this position for herself! When the plan was discovered (perhaps thanks to her hurt pride?), the king went mad with fury. Yet he forgave his daughter, as he knew that her heart was full of love for him, for his kingdom, the whole world, and even the universe. “My dear child, all in good time! The throne will not escape you. You have proven to me that you are worthy of it,” he told his daughter. Lyudmila was relieved. Being the harmonious creature that she was, she did some more yoga stretches and meditated a bit upon the divine and eternal — and for her, the matter was settled.
But not for Alex, who understood that his Politburo career, if not his life, was at stake. What was to be done? He contacted his patrons, and they came up with yet another devious plan. Of course, in such medieval states, the custom was simply to resolve such complications with murder. But they did not put it so bluntly to Alex. In the meantime, who knows, he might have been influenced by all this light and beauty blah-blah of the princess. The Soviet secret police, the KGB, gave him a small crystal vial in a red velvet box. Allegedly, Alex was told that it was a magic potion. Once Lyudmila opened and smelled it, she would fall in love again and help him to the throne.
When Lyudmila, busy with preparations for the anniversary exhibition, received his gift, she was very pleased. She took it as a sign of remorse. Being a woman, she could not resist but to open the bottle right away, believing that it was a perfume. The sweet fragrance enveloped her. He still loves me, she thought, before her spirit left her body, only to become one with the universe — as she herself would have put it. She was thirty-nine years old. When the servants entered her chamber, her body was gone. No one noticed the small green frog that jumped through the window into the garden.
After her disappearance, darkness fell upon the kingdom. It lasted for the next eight years, when a new light descended upon Bulgaria, this time from the West.
“I think that we Bulgarians were blessed with her in a strange way. She had the power to do more bad things than she did. That is why I like the idea that she did not die of poison (which is only one of the many versions of her death), but rather turned into a small, fragile green frog — into a little animal, that is,” I told Evelina. “Ah, yes, how very typical of Bulgaria! Unlike in other fairy tales, in this one the princess turns into a frog and not the other way around. I like your interpretation! ʺ exclaimed Evelina, not really knowing much about the said Princess Lyudmila.
But she really did behave more like a princess than a party bureaucrat. Regardless of whether she was allowed (or not) to behave differently because she was protected by her omnipotent father, the truth is that she was educated, intelligent, and ambitious. Bringing a whiff of modernity to Bulgarian art and culture was a very positive attempt.
Even if her ideas were often very, very strange.
Take her “national program for aesthetic education,” as part of the “construction of a mature socialist society.” As much as she tried to put it into practice, her directions were vague and abstract. No wonder, because it was not an easy task to link “development according to the law of the spiral” with development according to the dominating laws of economic determination in Marxism: The material world represents the “base,” while the “fluffy” stuff of culture, beauty, and spirit belongs to the “superstructure.”
Or take her rhetoric. Her rhetoric was delightfully fuzzy and deceptive. Here is a quote from a 1980 analysis by the journalist Jordan Kerov, which Evelina found somewhere for me (I think she called the place the “Internet,” but I don’t know where it is situated):
Lyudmila Zhivkova’s opening speech at the 1979 “Banner of Peace Assembly” in Sofia, for example, contained the following words or concepts taken directly from the oriental mystics or from their occidental proponents: harmony, harmonious development of man, and perfection, etc. (occur 33 times); light, celestial light, brightness, etc. (35 times); the Universe, the Planet, the Galaxy, Endlessness, the Infinite, the Eternal, Nature etc. (33 times); Beauty, Truth, etc. (38 times); Wisdom (19 times); creative powers, dreams, aspirations, etc. (36 times); and Spirit, vibrations, energy, blessing, etc. (16 times).
Lyudmila Zhivkova also uses phrases like the “effulgent purposefulness,” the “sonorous vibration of the seven-stage harmony of the Eternal,” and the “vibrations of the electrons.” All this she managed to put together in a speech lasting only about 15 minutes and, which is the most amazing, addressed to children of up to 14 years of age.
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.”