Bones of Contention: The living archive of Vasil Levski and the making of Bulgaria's national hero

Part II: The Apostle of Freedom, or What Makes a Hero?

PART II THE APOSTLE OF FREEDOM, OR WHAT MAKES A HERO? In the summer of 1998, I visited the artist Todor Tsonev, who had become famous after 1989 with his exhibition of cartoons of Todor Zhivkov that he had painted during communism, one of the very few cases where the expectation of a “closet full of masterpieces” that were cached away from the forbidding eyes of censorship actually was vindicated . Maria Ovcharova, his close friend and collaborator and a scholar in her own right, had organized this exhibit after 1989, and it triggered enormous interest. For a brief period of time Tsonev became the hero of democracy, the notion which in the first years covered the genuine democratizing transformations in the Bulgarian polity, as well as a pet of the “democrats,” the label given in jest to the anti-communist political leadership. He soon disappointed both the “democrats” as well as the so-called reform socialists, the so-called “blue” and “red” factions, and reverted to caricatures, in which he exposed the pains and evils of “really existing democracy.”1 1 Maria Ovcharova, Totalitarizmît v karikaturite na Todor Tsonev, Sofia: Bîlgarski khudozhnik, 1990; Todor Tsonev ot totalitarizîm kîm demokratsiia, predgovor i sîstavitelstvo Maria Ovcharova, Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Okhridski,” 1992. My impression of Todor Tsonev, which I entered at the time in my diary, was of a very artistic and original individual, with a keen sense of humor, and a strange combination of goodness with a certain malice. He was clearly enormously self-assured and did not have to be persuaded of his worth as an artist. His remarkable sensitivity for social injustice went, also strangely, hand in hand with an almost primitive anti-Americanism , garnered with anti-Semitic pronouncements. This was only an aside of our conversation which was almost entirely about his art and his pre-1989 life, but I report on it, because by 1998 one could hear an emotional reaction against things American, after the previous short-lived pro-American euphoria of the early 1990s. Some of it was the result of a number of American political faux pas vis-à-vis Bulgaria, some was produced by the general amazement at the crudities of “free-market democracy,” behind which the shadow of the new Big Brother was discernible. The anti-Semitic tinge was entirely news to me, as I had never perceived it before in Bulgarian educated and, even less so, uneducated circles, whose attitude could be generalized as between neutrality and philo-Semitism. It may have to do with the general perception of Israel as an US-client state, alongside several economic scandals in which Russian-born Israeli oligarchs had acquired huge wealth during Bulgaria’s privatizations and when the activities of some among them were exposed as fraudulent, they took refuge in Israel. On the other hand, the presence of anti-Semitic texts in some bookstores is part of the general liberalization of the public space, in which articulations of several interwar 178 The Apostle of Freedom, or What Makes a Hero? When I entered his studio, I was struck by an almost life-size portrait of Levski in uniform, on which the artist was working. It was not a spectacular piece of art. Tsonev was an excellent cartoonist, whose genius lay in the combination of quick and sparse line with strong civic consciousness. He was also working in oil, woodcarving and minisculpture , but these were not his forte. Following my surprised gaze, Tsonev explained that he had been arrested for a brief period in the early months of 1989. His interrogator was a young man, and quite humane, according to Tsonev. After Tsonev’s release, he visited him from time to time. Then he disappeared for a longer period, and when Tsonev met him again, he had started a successful business. He asked Tsonev to paint for him a huge portrait of the Apostle that he wanted hanged in his living room.2 Obviously the portrait was accorded the role of an indulgence, only one is not sure whether it was supposed to atone for the pangs of consciousness of the former interrogator or the present businessman. Todor Tsonev had no qualms about producing this portrait, no doubt because this particular interrogator had been good-hearted, and because he was making a living out of it. He himself held Levski and Botev as his heroes and...