This article about the manipulation of language in politics is based on my Chapter 5 published under the same title (pp. 99-120) in Ernest Andrews's edited collection of scholarly essays entitled "Legacies of Totalitarian Language in the Discourse Culture of the Post-Totalitarian Era" (Lexington Books, 2011).

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Introduction

This article will deal with the totalitarian legacies in the language of politics in Bulgaria, an ex-Communist country that has now become an integral part of the community of free and democratic nations after formally joining NATO in 2004 and the European Union (EU) in 2007. It will focus on the nature of the political language that has been in use ever since the November 10, 1989 palace coup toppled Bulgaria's long-time Communist leader Todor Zhivkov and set this country on the rocky road to democracy and capitalism. The qualitative analysis used below will explore in particular how the new Bulgaria's language of politics looks and behaves in the more open and democratic public discourse of the post-Communist era. The analysis will show, among other things, that the new, more open and democratic political discourse that was to have replaced what John Wesley Young has labeled as the "totalitarian language" of Communism--in his words, an "antecedent" of the "Newspeak" of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1)--is yet to overcome its communist totalitarian past.[tag]

"Totalitarian language," as defined in Blaga Dimitrova's work, relates to the official "language" of the Communist state and is characterized by "semantic atrophy" (2) and "deformities of speech." (3) In it, "Changes in linguistic expression take place somewhere in the back of our minds. We are not aware of them in everyday usage..." (4), even as this practice "has dragged us into the old trap of cruel obscurantism." (5) As a result, "A language within a language is created. This tendency to deform the meaning and sound of the word is typical of the totalitarian regimes." (6) As George Orwell saw it, "Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past"" (7), as well as ""the falsification of reality." (8) In his opinion, "it is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear." (9) Orwell also warned that "To be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country." (10) As legendary American journalist I. F. Stone often reminded his readers: "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."

Using content analysis, this study examines the presence of totalitarian vestiges such as the use of propaganda to mislead the public and conceal the ugly truth, the resort to duplicitous and euphemistic phraseology, the corruption of words, the reliance on internalized linguistic stereotypes, and other abuses of language as defined by Orwell (11), Dimitrova (12), Young (13), and others, which can still be found in the published speeches, political writings, public lectures, interviews, TV and radio broadcasts, and other political pronouncements of Bulgarian politicians.

Socioeconomic and political background

Bulgaria has fared very poorly in its transition to Western-style democracy and market-based capitalism. By nearly every macroeconomic indicator, the country is in a much worse shape now than in the Communist past. Official statistics show that both the annual gross national product (GNP) and the per capita income of the population have plummeted, the social-safety net has largely disintegrated, and even the physical survival of many impoverished Bulgarians may be in peril. The side effects of market-oriented reforms have included economic stagnation, unemployment, inflation, outrageous inequality of incomes, widespread poverty, and even malnutrition. Organized crime and endemic corruption in the form of nepotism and cronyism, graft on the job, embezzlement, bribe taking, influence peddling, smuggling, and protection rackets have also exacted a heavy toll on post-Communist living standards and livelihoods. Another unfortunate effect is the widespread neglect of the economic and social rights of ordinary Bulgarians, which has lessened the value of the newly-acquired political and civil liberties. (14)

The disastrous economic environment has in turn generated a rather volatile and unpredictable political climate. No cabinet government elected during the turbulent post-Communist period has survived in office for more than one term (and often even less than that). Elections have frequently brought to power newly-founded and largely untested political parties, movements or coalitions, some of which have all but disappeared from the political scene once they were thrown out of office. Thus, in a blow to the formerly dominant parties, especially the ruling Socialists (ex-Communists), the newly-created Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (Grazhdani za evropeisko razvitie na Bulgaria or GERB) won a resounding victory in the latest parliamentary election of July 5, 2009 and formed a single-party government under its authoritarian party boss, ex-national police chief Boyko Borisov. The right-wing GERB's electoral success again illustrates the unstable and unpredictable nature of politics in Bulgaria due to the catastrophic economic situation and the glaring inability of the existing parties to offer a credible solution to it. Fed up with pervasive government corruption, rampant crime, sharp economic decline, and widespread poverty, many Bulgarians have greeted the self-styled "tough law-and-order guy" Boyko Borisov as the latest savior on a white horse who has come to rescue their crisis-ridden country from what they see as the stranglehold on power by incompetent, self-serving, corrupt, and criminalized cliques of party politicians pursuing personal gain. Still more surprisingly, Borisov, the current Mussolini-like Prime Minister, rose to power even after the public's bitter disappointments with previous failed messiahs, such as former King Simeon II who served as Bulgaria's deeply unpopular prime minister from 2001 to 2005.

At the same time, politics has become by far the most profitable business in post-Communist Bulgaria--more profitable and also much less risky than any profit-making business activity. This has transformed the political parties into something akin to shark-like business corporations--well-organized coteries of unprincipled and predatory rent-seekers aspiring to take over the reigns of power in order to enrich themselves by exploiting the largely apathetic, cattle-like populace and plundering Bulgaria's resources (15), especially now that the country can count on receiving substantial amounts of foreign investment and aid, especially from the EU. (16) Powerful economic interests of both legitimate and criminal origins have lined up behind and financed each of the major political parties, adding strongly plutocratic elements to what is essentially a kleptocratic and mafia-like oligarchy. (17) Not surprisingly, Bulgarians today tend to refer to their own country as a "banana republic," a "circus," and "Absurd-istan."(18) The creeping criminalization of the political "elite" (to use here the favorite self-designation of its own highly-privileged members) has now gone a step further with the election of Prime Minister Borisov, whose controversial, albeit carefully hidden past as a loyal Communist Party member, a Communist state-security officer (with the rank of major) personally involved in Zhivkov's campaign of linguistic and cultural assimilation of Bulgarian Turks, and the politically savvy "godfather" of the powerful post-Communist mafia, is revealed in a popular recent book written by Bulgaria's most famous investigative journalist. (19)

Such persistent economic and political instability has impaired the political elite's ability to sustain public confidence in its own credibility, integrity, legitimacy and capacity to rule, thus greatly complicating the task of governing in an efficient, transparent, honest and democratic way. Faced with the daunting task of presiding over a cynical and deeply mistrustful nation that is politically unstable and in deep economic crisis, Bulgaria's party elites--both ex-Communist and non-Communist alike--have all too often reverted to using the rhetoric of the totalitarian past based on propaganda, demagoguery, indoctrination, and the manipulation of public opinion. What this article will show is that such vestiges of totalitarian mentality and culture persist to an amazing degree in the political language not only of the former Bulgarian Communists (now conveniently renamed Socialists), but also of the non-Communist parties and especially the anti-Communist politicians.

Orwell often complained about the political corruption of language and the deformities of speech that such corruption can generate: "In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer". But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can be spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should know and do know better." (20) While the outward linguistic verbiage and perhaps even the substance of public discourse may have changed dramatically in post-Communist Bulgaria, deeply ingrained authoritarian and undemocratic attitudes, dispositions, and habits of thought seem much harder to die, thus feeding directly into the topsy-turvy propagandistic phraseology still present in today's politics. For, as we shall see below, politicians today still view public opinion as something to deceive and manipulate, if they bother to take it into consideration at all.

Language of propaganda

"Totalitarian language" is, above all, the language of political propaganda, employing words deceitfully and perverting their meanings in order to distort reality, manipulate people's minds, and deprive ordinary citizens of their ability to think for themselves. Its rhetorical propensity is always to overstate the regime's merits and achievements and to understate its shortcomings and failures in order to hold fast its grip on the population. Former Bulgarian Vice-President (1992-1993) and anti-Communist author Blaga Dimitrova denounced the shameless manipulation of language in the totalitarian era, when "one thing is said but something else is understood implicitly." (21) For instance, when the Communist authorities praised to the skies their "successful collectivization" of Bulgarian agriculture which converted privately-owned land into "collective-labor agricultural farms" (TKZS), what they actually meant was the government's forcible expropriation of private landholdings and turning them into large state-owned farms (rather than the much-lauded "cooperative farms"). When the ruling Communists boasted about the supposed "equality" of all citizens ("uravnivilovka"), what they actually meant is that all Bulgarians were more or less equal among themselves--except for the nomenklatura cadres who were, of course, "more equal than the others" (to use Orwell's apt sarcastic phrase in Animal Farm). And when in the summer of 1989 over 300,000 Bulgarian Turks departed for neighboring Turkey to escape Zhivkov's policy of forced linguistic and cultural assimilation (euphemistically labeled as "vuzroditelen protzes" or "the national revival process"), the ever resourceful propaganda machine declared them all to be "tourists" going on vacation abroad (euphemistically, if not entirely sarcastically, referred to as the "Big Excursion"). (22) These are all unmistakable instances of what Orwell calls "reality control" or "doublethink" (23), and what Dimitrova refers to as utilizing "language as a substitute for reality" where people, "not without their participation, were pushed into a verbal reality, which had nothing in common with reality." (24)

But similar cynical ambiguity, equivocation, and double meaning continue to plague official language usage even today, when endemic political corruption, grave economic setbacks, and widespread popular frustration with the hardships and deprivations of the seemingly endless transition are threatening to undermine the prestige of the new authorities and even the population's belief in Western-style democracy and market-based capitalism. For example, when top public officials extol the "modernization" and "democratization" of Bulgaria's failing health-care system, what they actually mean is that Bulgarians now have to pay out of their own pockets for all previously free, government-provided medical services (25), even though they also have to pay income, real-estate, and sales or VAT taxes--something they did not do under the previous totalitarian regime. And when politicians boast of the "democratization," "modernization," and "Europeanization" of the country's deteriorating education system, what they actually mean is the monetization and/or privatization of the previously free educational services, especially in higher education and the new private schools, colleges, and universities where students have to pay for their training, including many fees that each student must pay for taking entrance exams and other mandatory tests required at every level of schooling. And the wholesale (and economically disastrous) liquidation of all "cooperative" farms, the TKZS, in 1991-1992 by Filip Dimitrov's short-lived center-right government was presented to the public as no more than the legal "restitution" of farmland to its pre-Communist owners. When explaining why more than a million Bulgarians, mostly young people, have voted with their feet by seeking greener pastures abroad (mass emigration has helped reduce post-Communist Bulgaria's population from close to 9 million in 1989 to around 7 million today) (26), the authorities demagogically blame it all on the newly-acquired personal rights and liberties, especially the new freedom of movement. Complaining about the current GERB government's moves to increase fees and taxes, cut salaries and pensions, raise the age of retirement, and even possibly eliminate the 5-year difference between the retirement age of men and women, the left-nationalist magazine Nova Zora complained: "And all such outrageous steps are disguised by using fanfare words like 'reforms,' 'combating corruption,' 'health-care improvements,' "modernization," and so on and so forth." (27)

Today's politicians still resort occasionally to what Dimitrova decries as the deception and "blatant lies" of the totalitarian past (28) which were employed by the Communist regime to manipulate public opinion on politically sensitive issues. In the old days, for example, official propaganda used transparent euphemisms like "fraternal assistance" and "selfless internationalist help" to explain the Soviet-led invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The government-controlled mass media tried to justify Bulgaria's participation in this joint military operation of the Warsaw Pact armies by accusing Czechoslovakia's reformist Communist leader, Alexander Dubcek, of harboring plans to pull his country out of the "socialist camp," join NATO, and even have U.S. military bases and nuclear weapons deployed on Czechoslovak territory, thereby threatening the unity and security of the "community of socialist nations," including Bulgaria. When Communist Bulgaria's main ally and patron, the Soviet Union, invaded and occupied Afghanistan in December 1979, the Bulgarian mass media defended this act of aggression as "selfless brotherly assistance" provided to the "fraternal" Afghan government, army, and people to defeat the "dark forces" of "religious extremism," "terrorism," and "imperialist aggression" which were supposedly trying to undermine and overthrow all "progressive" and "anti-imperialist" regimes around the world. Dimitrova aptly warned about such propagandistic misuse of pathos: "Pathos is an infallible litmus test of totalitarianism." (29)

Using similarly deceptive words and euphemisms, Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi defended their government's deeply unpopular participation in the military occupations of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan and insisted that Bulgarian "peacekeepers" were only doing their "international duty" by rendering "selfless brotherly assistance" to the "liberation" and "democratization" of these "friendly" nations. (30) In a throwback to the incendiary and duplicitous propaganda of totalitarian times, Simeon and Pasi tried to convince a skeptical public that they were acting out of deep concern for "national security," as there was purportedly a very real threat that the Taliban and Al Qaeda could launch terrorist attacks against Bulgarian targets, while Saddam Hussein might attack Bulgaria with "terrorism" or even with his "arsenal of WMDs," including his "nuclear weapons." (31) Prime Minister Ivan Kostov (1997-2001) resorted to similar manipulative language (even boasting at one point about the country's "new independence in foreign policy" in his PR spin) to explain to a stunned and largely disapproving populace why his cabinet had allowed NATO aircraft to use Bulgaria's air space to rain bombs and missiles on Belgrade and other cities of neighborly Yugoslavia in 1999, while blocking Russian ships on the Danube ferrying humanitarian supplies for the Serbs. (32) And today the ruling GERB cabinet and its ideological allies in the media are trying hard to convince reluctant Bulgarians of the urgent need to accept U.S. anti-ballistic-missile defenses on Bulgarian territory (when neighboring Turkey and Greece, both close U.S. allies, have rejected a similar deployment on their soil) with apocalyptic warnings about some "distant countries" attacking "strategic targets on our territory" with "short- and medium-range missiles" or even about Al Qaeda acquiring nuclear missiles and possibly launching them against Bulgaria. (33)

When anti-NATO forces on the political Left--supported by a sizable majority of the population, according to all opinion polls at that time (34)--demanded the holding of a referendum on whether to join NATO, the pro-NATO parties on the anti-Communist Right (primarily the Union of Democratic Forces or SDS) responded with an aggressive propaganda campaign against the referendum idea, which was centered around a rather demagogic rhetorical question: "Since we did not hold a referendum on joining the Warsaw Pact in 1955, why should we hold one now on joining NATO?" Of course, no public referendum has ever been held in post-Communist Bulgaria on this or any other issue (for example, a Socialist-proposed referendum in 1999 on whether to permit NATO's use of Bulgarian territory and airspace to bomb Yugoslavia was similarly rejected), thus ignoring the principle (namely, the informed consensus of the citizenry) that, unlike totalitarian dictatorships, a democratic country like Bulgaria should allow its citizens to vote on such momentous foreign-policy decisions as NATO membership or the installation of U.S. military bases on Bulgarian soil. (35) No matter how advisable or even commendable the foreign-policy goals pursued in each of these cases may have been, the propaganda methods used to achieve them are still questionable from the perspective of having an open, honest, and democratic public debate.

Similarly, taking advantage of the sour antiwar mood of voters during the parliamentary election of June 2005, Socialist leader Sergei Stanishev ran a successful electoral campaign centered around his demagogic promise to withdraw immediately all Bulgarian "peacekeepers" from Iraq, but once elected as Prime Minister he chose not to deliver on this promise (as well as on other similar promises) until 2009--the very year he was running for re-election. (36) It is obvious that to the extent that members of the political elite have taken public opinion into consideration, they have viewed it as something to manipulate and deceive (rather than respect, let alone follow), if they bother to take it into consideration at all. This neototalitarian practice of using lies, deception, and manipulation has reached new heights during the current rule of Prime Minister Borisov, a charismatic strongman and an Il Duce-like demagogue with a shady ex-Communist past and rumored past ties to post-Communist Bulgaria's powerful mafia (37)--that is, the very criminal underworld which he now claims to be fighting.

As I quoted Orwell above, one of the priorities of totalitarian language is "the continuous alteration of the past." When the Communists seized power after their coup d'etat of September 9, 1944, they completely re-wrote Bulgaria's modern history to fit their ideological dogmas and current political needs. The totalitarian regime besmirched and vilified all their old political opponents, including the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty which was accused of having ruled in a "despotic," "autocratic," and "tyrannical" manner for nearly 60 years, as well as of bringing upon Bulgaria three "national catastrophes"--that is, the economically ruinous and territory-losing defeats in the Second Balkan War (1913), World War I, and World War II. The Communists also blamed the "fascist," "anti-Semitic," and "Nazi-aligned monarch," Boris III, for the extermination of the Jews from Bulgarian-occupied territories of Macedonia, Aegean Thrace, and eastern Serbia in World War II, all the while generously (and quite untruthfully) crediting themselves with saving the lives of the Jews in Bulgaria proper. (38) After the monarchy was abolished by a Communist-ordered referendum in September 1946, the royals were forced into exile abroad, their properties were confiscated by the Communist-dominated courts, and their names were banished from any public use. At the same time, numerous public places--from streets to major cities--were officially renamed after various domestic and foreign Communist "heroes," dead and living (even the Black Sea port city of Varna, which Bulgarians hail as their "maritime capital," was for a time named after Stalin).

After the fall of Communism, the conservative parties and the more openly monarchist groups set out to "correct" the historical record and repair the tarnished image of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty by praising the reign of both Ferdinand I (1887-1918) and his son, Boris III (1918-1943), as having been generally "free," "democratic," and "prosperous." Even before Simeon II (King Boris's only son) returned to Bulgaria for good in 2001, the monarchy's "unjustly" and "illegally" expropriated properties, valued at hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, were returned to him. Numerous streets, boulevards, squares, roads, schools, urban parks, hospitals, towns, villages, and other public places have been since officially renamed after the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha royals, past and present. (39) The new GERB government of Boyko Borisov angered the political Left and Bulgaria's few remaining Jews by renaming one of the capital Sofia's central streets after Bogdan Filov, King Boris's controversial prime minister, who had been tried and executed as a war criminal after World War II for his close wartime collaboration with Hitler and harsh persecution of the Bulgarian Jewry (a major public monument has been erected and dedicated to Prof. Filov and other WWII-era fascist politicians).

There has been a particularly fierce propaganda battle over the validity of the September 1946 referendum that had abolished the monarchy. (40) The more conservative politicians still reject the results of this "illegal" vote: "We have always declared that the 1946 referendum was illegal. We believe that the Bulgarian nation was given no free choice in 1946. That is why the question about Bulgaria's future form of government and the validity of the Turnovo Constitution remains an open one." (41) But that view is sharply disputed by more centrist politicians (such as the first SDS leader and anti-Communist president Zheliu Zhelev) who recognize the validity of the 1946 decision in favor of the republic and oppose the resurrection of the monarchy, given its discredited historical record:

"Some people maintain that the 1946 referendum was illegal because it was held under undemocratic conditions. Therefore, it must be repealed now and the Turnovo Constitution should be restored, together with the monarchy.... But I am absolutely sure that, despite all manipulations and falsifications which, no doubt, accompanied it, the 1946 referendum reflected the will of the vast majority of the Bulgarian people. And this is easily understandable...since the Coburg-Gotha dynasty was responsible for the two national catastrophes of 1913 and 1918, then it plunged Bulgaria in a third national catastrophe by siding with the Axis Powers during the last world war. It was also involved in coups d'etat, autocratic government, political assassinations, violations of the Turnovo Constitution, and so forth. I am not surprised that immediately after the war Bulgarians--like the Italians, the Romanians, and the Hungarians--placed their hopes for a better and more democratic future on the republican form of government." (42)

Amid endless mutual accusations and recriminations, the propaganda war for control over Bulgaria's historical past continues unabated to this day. As the ironic motto of Oceania's "Ministry of Truth" in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four proclaims, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." (43)

Plus ????a change, plus c'est la m????me chose

In the old totalitarian days, the propaganda machine incessantly and ritualistically waved the scarecrow of numerous domestic and foreign enemies--"the enemy within," "reactionary counter-revolutionaries," "bourgeois elements," "remnants of the old monarcho-fascist regime," "the enemy with a (Communist) Party card," "dupes of hostile Western propaganda," "rabid anti-Communists," "agents of Western imperialism," "American imperialists and warmongers," "anti-Communist and anti-Soviet chauvinists," "petty-bourgeois ideological traitors," "Mao's dogmatists and revisionists," "Turkey's irredentism," "religious (Muslim) extremism and fanaticism," to name just a few--in order to justify the regime's totalitarian rule and mobilize the populace for new ideological campaigns and/or more economic sacrifice. Political jargon may have drastically changed now, but not the government's need for domestic and foreign foes, real or imagined, to explain away persistent domestic problems and justify unpopular public policies. The only change are the different incantatory names of the present-day array of villains--"the old Communist nomenklatura," "the Communist secret police" (the DS), "the Red Mafia," "returning Communism," "neo-Communist propaganda," "surviving socialist mentality," "reactionary monarchist forces," "ethnic Turkish separatism," "organized crime," "Moscow's neo-Bolshevism" (even under President Yeltsin), "Slobodan Milosevic's ultranationalism," "Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction," "international terrorism," "Russia's imperialism and expansionism" (especially under Putin), "faceless and arrogant EU bureaucrats," "the global economic crisis," "Iran's nuclear-weapon program," and so forth. Even the way the names of the chosen "villains" of the day seem constantly to change in tune with the changing political needs and foreign-policy priorities of the government in Sofia is surprisingly similar. In the old totalitarian days, for example, the "fraternal Chinese Communists" of "Comrade Mao Zedong's glorious Red Revolution" eventually became "Mao's dogmatic revisionists" and "Great-Han jingoists." In quite a similar fashion, the "Muslim freedom fighters" and "heroic Mujahedeen" of the 1990's (in places like Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, etc.) eventually became the "Islamic terrorists," "fanatical jihadists," and "bloodthirsty killers" in the age of the "global war on terror" (in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Indonesia).

Even Communist propaganda's "two camps" doctrine, with its neatly fractured view of the world (44) (as Stalin famously declared, "You are either with us or against us"), has been revived, but with a new ideological twist. The old totalitarian propaganda divided the world between a "progressive camp" comprising the Soviet-led "community of socialist nations," leftist and "anti-imperialist" Third-World regimes, and pro-Soviet insurgent "Movements of National Liberation," versus an "imperialist" or "bourgeois camp" consisting of the American "hegemonic warmongers" and other "imperialist" and "neo-colonial" Western powers as well as their "puppets" and "lackeys" around the world. If the rather familiar "two camps" rhetoric of anti-Communist politicians today is to be believed, the world continues to be ideologically split between the "Free World" of liberal-democratic and capitalist nations, to which Bulgaria now "proudly" belongs, and a veritable "axis of evil" which groups together all kinds of "dictatorial," "totalitarian," and even "terrorist" regimes ranging from Russia, China, and Belarus to Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

Blaga Dimitrova has criticized the related overuse of the superlative prefix "the most" in the bombastic "anti-language" of the totalitarian era, with its high-flown bragging about "Hyper-production. Hyper-crops. Hyper-gains. Hyper-plan. Hyper-words." (45) But the "hyper" mania of those days obviously lives on. For example, each post-Communist government has typically boasted of being by far the "most democratic," "most open," "most transparent," "most honest," "most incorruptible," "most industrious," "most caring," and even "most business-friendly" ever in the country's modern history, while lambasting the previous government(s) as being the "most incompetent," "most corrupt," "most dishonest," and even "most criminal" (a self-serving practice that has reached new heights under the ruling GERB party). The post-Communist mass media, which seem to be almost as much under the government's thumb as they were in the totalitarian era (46), have contributed to this trend, praising various government leaders with pompous and flattering epithets in their superlative form--as, for example effusively praising "our Boyko" or "Uncle Boyko" ("Bat' Boiko"), the current autocratic prime minister around whom a real cult of personality has been created (as the perennial "Man of the Year," the "Conqueror of All Women," the "Idol of Journalists," the "Fearless Fighter against Crime," the "Best Friend of Silvio Berlusconi, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel," and so on). (47)

As a Bulgarian academic recently complained about this unbridled media adulation of Bulgaria's current prime minister, "The new Messiah has been enthusiastically greeted by the orchestrated chorus of the mass-media guild which quickly raised their voices in hymns of praise. There is no end to the oratorios and dithyrambs sung in Boyko Borisov's honor, as the flattery of the new Bulgarian Pharaoh is reaching unprecedented proportions. Journalists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and the like have all been left breathless, praising him to heaven". The glorification of our beloved new Pharaoh represents Bulgaria's latest contribution to the idea of building cults of personality."(48) But such rhetorical flattery of the national leader is strongly reminiscent of the atmosphere of official adulation and glorification surrounding Todor Zhivkov, which prompted Dimitrova to complain that "Eulogies addressed to the sovereign are a characteristic sign of an autocracy." (49) And speaking of the widespread use of inflated "hyper-words," even the siupermarket ("supermarket") of Communist days has become the hilariously-named hipermarket ("hypermarket") of today.

Such rhetorical blasts from the totalitarian past should not come as a surprise, however. The majority of Bulgarian politicians grew up and were educated under the previous totalitarian regime and still tend to think and express themselves--frequently without even realizing it--in the categories and terminology of Communist ideology and propaganda (50), which tended to reduce every problem to a Manichean, heaven-or-hell confrontation between "socialist" Good and "capitalist" Evil. Even the few anti-Communist dissidents who are still active in politics today are better known for their rebellious nature and anti-Communist militancy than for being particularly liberal-minded, politically tolerant or democratically-oriented. A lot of old-guard Communist cadres (many of them Soviet-educated), now posing as either Socialists, independents or even anti-Communists, still occupy high-level positions of power, authority, and prestige in politics, business and the media, as many of them have become presidents (such as the current President Rossen Plevneliev), prime ministers (such as the current Prime Minister Boyko Borisov), cabinet members, high-ranking government bureaucrats, top bankers and businessmen, influential media figures, ambassadors and consuls, EU administrators, and international civil servants (one of them, former Communist apparatchik Irina Bokova, is the current Director-General of UNESCO [51]). Even post-Communist Bulgaria's supposed bastion of capitalism, the Bulgarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CRIB), is headed by a former secret policeman and intelligence officer, executive director Evgeni Ivanov.

A lot of other ex-Communists quickly, effortlessly, and quite profitably switched from the old "party line" to the new anti-Communist line of propaganda. In fact, quite a few former Communists have miraculously transformed themselves into today's fervent anti-Communists. (Orwell scorned analogous political hacks and chameleons in his own time with words of ridicule and contempt: "a bought mind is a spoiled mind" [52]). Many of the lower-echelon bureaucrats from the totalitarian era have inundated today's non-Communist and anti-Communist parties (like the currently governing GERB) and in some cases have even taken over their leaderships in the not so unreasonable expectation that the time has finally come for them to become politically successful, socially prominent, and materially prosperous. (53) One of them, the current Prime Minister Borisov followed the old-time political instincts of a former Communist and trainee of the Communist police academy, calling for the ex-Communist Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) to be banned. (54)

All these ex-Communists, including the "Johnny-come-lately" anti-Communist crusaders like Borisov, have given up neither their old black-and-white way of thinking (or what Orwell calls "the totalitarian outlook" [55]) nor the militant phraseology of ideological intolerance and vehement vilification that comes with it. Much like the totalitarian-era propagandists who used to blame all the ills of the Communist system on the "surviving vestiges of capitalism and monarcho-fascism" in the nation's collective consciousness, the born-again "democrats" of today tend to blame the shortcomings of the new order on the totalitarian legacies of Communism, including the supposed national "failure" to condemn it. (56) And anyone who disagrees with them or engages in any other kind of ideological heresy is branded variously as a "Zhivkovite," "Communist holdover," "Red garbage," "Turkey's fifth column," "KGB agent," "Moscow's stooge," "Belgrade's dupe," "chauvinistic brown-shirt," "fascist," and many other similarly disparaging epithets of totalitarian-style name-calling.

Blaga Dimitrova also complained about the disappearance of politeness and civility under Communism, when "the polite verb forms like 'please,' 'I'm sorry,' and 'excuse me' are almost forgotten nowadays." (57) But she would not have found the situation much different today. In fact, the Bulgarian press has complained about the veritable "tsunami" of aggressive "rudeness" that is sweeping post-Communist public discourse and everyday speech (to which Prime Minister Borisov and especially his controversial ex-Finance Minister Simeon Diankov have contributed immensely with their often vulgar and incendiary language). (58) Journalists warn that polite words and phrases (like the Bulgarian equivalents of "excuse me," "beg your pardon," "sorry," "my apology," "please," or "thank you") have disappeared from the contemporary vocabulary to such an extent than they all might as well be removed from Bulgarian dictionaries as only very rarely used, obsolete or even archaic.

But, as Dimitrova also suggests (59), mass consciousness, though generally conformist even to the point of being slavish, could be at the same time fickle and politically unreliable. For when a wide gap exists between official rhetoric and everyday realities, the skepticism and cynicism of ordinary people can give rise to a sarcastic counter-language (most often in the form of political jokes, puns, humorous proverbs, wordplay, comic poems and ditties, caricatures, graffiti, and other satirical messages of dissent and defiance) that mocks the distorted official view of reality and reveals the true state of affairs. Much like in the totalitarian era, Bulgarians have again taken to composing, most often anonymously, countless anti-government jokes, poems, and puns, ridiculing the "democratic" and "Euro-Atlantic" pretensions of the new ruling nomenklatura class in what many local writers--sometimes even among the generally Big Brother-friendly and sycophantic mass media--call "Bulgaristan" (a derisive allusion likening post-Communist Bulgaria to the politically undemocratic and economically backward states of post-Soviet Central Asia). A good example of such satirical counter-propaganda language is a popular recent joke, in which Ivancho ("little Ivan," a fictional character of numerous jokes during the totalitarian period) asks his father, "What is democracy?" His father patiently explains, "Ivancho, democracy is just like our family. I work every day and earn all the money, so I am capitalism. Your mother does not work, yet she makes all important decisions, so she is the government. Our maid works day and night to take care of our needs, thus she is the working class. You don't work because you must attend school every day, so you are the intelligentsia." "But, Dad, how about my baby brother?" asks Ivancho. "Well, your baby brother is the future of our democracy." In the middle of the night the baby's crying awakens Ivancho who runs barefoot into his parents' bedroom only to find that his brother badly needs a change of diapers. But Ivancho cannot wake up his mother who is sound asleep, nor can he find his Dad. He then runs into the maid's room only to find her having sex with his father. In the end, Ivancho gives up and goes back to bed. In the morning he tells his father, "Dad, now I know what democracy is really like. Capitalism is screwing the working class, but the government is doing absolutely nothing to stop it. The intelligentsia is powerless to do anything on its own, and our democracy's future is all covered in sh*t!" (60)

Xenologophilia

Even though it is not in and of itself a strictly totalitarian tendency, another linguistic similarity between the Bulgarian Communists and their post-Communist successors is what John Wesley Young calls the "xenologofilia" (Latin for "affection for foreign words") of totalitarian language. (61) Such linguistic proclivity tends to produce what Orwell calls a "bastard vocabulary" made up of numerous foreign words and phrases usually "translated with a maximum of clumsiness." (62) During the Communist years there was a massive infusion of Russian loanwords into Bulgarian. Many of the regime's cadres received their training and indoctrination in Soviet educational institutions and brought back with them a large stock of Russian terms, idioms, and ideological cliches which they used extensively in their professional activities as well as in daily life. Throughout these years, all Bulgarian students without exception had to study the Russian language as a compulsory subject, starting from primary school and continuing through at least the first year of higher education. Also, every Friday evening the national television (for many years Communist Bulgaria had only one TV channel) broadcast nothing else but news, shows, and sport events in Russian--in fact, re-broadcasting for its viewers the programs of Moscow's main TV channel Ostankino. (63)

Inevitably, all this led to some significant changes in the lexicon of the everyday language of Bulgarians, who began using many Russian words even in the vernacular (a process of linguistic "code-switching" and "code-mixing" facilitated by the similarity between these two Slavic languages). Much of the country's official terminology and ideological vocabulary came to consist of Russian loanwords. Many Russian terms began to eclipse their more traditional Bulgarian equivalents. (64) For example, the Russian loanword shkola ("school") began to elbow out the equivalent Bulgarian term uchilishte. The Russian term razvedka ("reconnaissance") began to be used as often as the native word razuznavane. Uborka ("cleaning") replaced the traditional Bulgarian noun pochistvane. Similarly, the Russian-derived term vertolet ("chopper") nearly eclipsed the Greek-derived lexeme helikopter. Even the Russian greeting privet ("hello" or "hi") began to be frequently used in place of the traditional Bulgarian greetings zdravei or zdrasti. Critical observers like Blaga Dimitrova attributed this widespread pattern of incorporating Russian terms into the written and colloquial usage of Bulgarian to the Communist government's political vassalage to the Soviet Union.

There has been a similar massive influx of English lexical items and expressions into Bulgarian during the post-Communist period due to the West's overwhelming political, economic, and cultural influences in Bulgaria as well as the efforts of the new authorities to promote the "de-communization," "democratization," and "Europeanization" of their country. After the fall of Communism, English became the most studied and widely used foreign language (for example, a recent law passed by the GERB-dominated parliament has even made it mandatory for all university-level academics in Bulgaria to prove their proficiency in English), while the study of Russian, German, and even French has declined. Many Bulgarians (including the new regime's top cadres and even many ex-Communists) now travel to the U.S. and Western Europe (mainly Britain) for their education and professional training which is usually conducted in English. As a result, a lot of changes have taken place in the lexical-semantic corpora of the official and vernacular Bulgarian language (according to Liubomir Levchev, Bulgaria's most famous living poet, at least 5,000 English words have entered the Bulgarian language in the last 20 years alone). Many English loanwords have entered the native vocabulary through the mass media--very often simply by adding a Bulgarian grammatical suffix to the English word. For instance, a new verb kanseliram has been coined just by adding the Bulgarian grammatical suffix -iram to the English verb "cancel," even though a perfectly good native equivalent exists (otmeniam). The neologism frustriram has been likewise formed by adding -iram to the English verb "frustrate," as was another oft-used neologism, otoriziram, similarly coined from the English verb "authorize."

Lexical borrowings and constructions from English have consequently displaced a large number of earlier Russian borrowings (or what Dimitrova calls "Russicisms" [65]) and even many traditional Bulgarian words and phrases. For example, the Russian borrowing reviziya (which itself may have come originally from French) has now been largely replaced by the rather odd-sounding neologism odit, which is the Bulgarian transliteration of the English noun "audit". Quite similarly, the traditional Bulgarian term izpit ("exam") is being edged out by the English loanword "test." Mladezh ("youngster") and iunosha ("youth") are being both eclipsed by tineidzhur , the Bulgarian transliteration of the English lexeme "teenager." The clumsy neologism koherenten, the Bulgarian transliteration of the English word "coherent," is upstaging the native adjective smislen. The newly-created word fen ("fan" or "supporter") has nearly replaced the native noun zapalianko. Relevanten is coming close to replacing suotveten ("relevant"). Even the ear-irritating inaguratzyia, the Bulgarian transliteration of the English lexeme "inauguration," is now part and parcel of the new "bastard vocabulary." (66) Even Prime Minister Borisov would rather use imidzh, the Bulgarian transliteration of the English noun "image," instead of the traditional native lexeme obraz. (67) "Impyichmunt" (the title of an article in the daily Standart, dated November 10, 2009, concerning the first of the attempted impeachments of Socialist President Georgi Purvanov by the GERB-led majority in parliament) is the Bulgarian transliteration of the English lexeme "impeachment," which has now entered the language to such an extent that today no one even remembers what Bulgarian equivalent was used in the totalitarian past (when discussing the impeachment of U.S. President Nixon, for example). Some perplexed readers, who probably do not speak much English and thus have absolutely no idea what such oft-used neologisms as nonsens (the Bulgarian transliteration of "nonsense") or puzel (the Bulgarian transliteration of "puzzle") could possibly mean, have complained that they are having a hard time comprehending the heavily anglicized Bulgarian (or "Anglo-Bulgarian," as some critics have quipped about the constant use of so many foreign terms and verbs [68]) found in the news reports and articles of the current Bulgarian press.

Even the way politicians and journalists express themselves in Bulgarian has changed under the growing influence of English. For example, the "Russicism" varel ("barrel," as in "a barrel of crude oil") has been transformed phonetically into the more English-sounding word barrel. Even a pivotal political term like reformi ("reforms"), overused during the transition period and traditionally pronounced as [re-'for-mi], began to be pronounced instead (especially by anti-Communist politicians) as [ri-'for-mi]--that is, sounding more like the pronunciation of the equivalent English word. When speaking of the "difficulties" the country is experiencing, politicians and journalists alike invariably use the politically fashionable though hardly appropriate word predizvikatelstvo (which is the Bulgarian translation of the English lexeme "challenge") rather than the semantically much more accurate traditional noun zatrudnenie ("difficulty"). Such changes in phonetics, grammar, and syntax, which are affecting even colloquial linguistic expressions, are now so widespread that they are actually setting the standard for everyday language usage (the lingua franca).

The Ivan Kostov government formed in 1997 by the fanatically anti-Communist Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) even pushed unsuccessfully for replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the "more universal" and "transparent" Latin alphabet--an idea fervently supported by then President Petar Stoyanov (1996-2001), also of the SDS. But Kostov's infamous "choice of civilization" proposal, which seemed ominously reminiscent of the politically-motivated orthographic reform carried out by the Communists in 1945 (69), was rejected by the other political parties, especially since Bulgarians are very proud of having pioneered the Cyrillic alphabet by being the first to adopt it, then introducing it to other Slavic nations.

Conclusion

The fall of Communism in Bulgaria has made it all the more urgent to create an intellectually and morally honest, open, and referential language that would be more suitable for the public discourse of a newly-democratized and free nation. But Dimitrova warned us early on of "the danger of slipping into verbiage analogous to the socialists, that is, to do nothing but launch loud declarations 'in the spirit of democracy'." (70) Struggling to convince a distrustful and skeptical public of the advantages of Western-style democracy and "free-market" capitalism compared to the failures of totalitarian Communism and the state-run economy, politicians today still resort to the use of a high-flown, boastful, and manipulative phraseology largely reminiscent of the old deceptive Communist lingo with its inflated bombastic style of "magic spells," "fanfare phrases," and "verbal euphoria" (in Dimitrova's own words). In fact, one of the former SDS leaders complained recently that "I am appalled by the spread of totalitarian language and thinking throughout the entire Bulgarian nation." (71)

The continued presence of ex-Communists in many high-level positions in politics, business and the media, as well as the oligarchic, corporatist, and conspiratorial nature of post-Communist politics may have made such vestiges of totalitarian language, including the reliance on standard propaganda stereotypes in defiance of all linguistic logic, even harder to uproot. For, like their colleagues from the totalitarian past, politicians today have discovered that their most dangerous enemy is that sleeping, acquiescent and inattentive beast, namely the mass public--the repository of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's volonte generale--which more often than not needs to be misled, manipulated, and kept from thinking rather than being informed, followed or accommodated (according to the vox populi vox Dei view of the role of public opinion in politics).

The new openness of the post-Communist language of politics thus cannot obscure the many similarities of speech, spoken and written, with the totalitarian period. In fact, the evidence presented in this sociolinguistic analysis can only confirm the timeless validity of Orwell's contemptuous remark about the corrupt linguistic practices of politicians and political parties everywhere, namely that "Political language--and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." (72) Considering the numerous economic, financial, social, political, demographic, moral and other deep-seated problems within the country, how to further democratize post-Communist public discourse and eradicate the totalitarian legacies in the lexica and semantics habitually used by Bulgarian politicians is not going to be an easy task and will probably take a whole lot of time to accomplish.

Notes

1. See John Wesley Young. Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

2. Blaga Dimitrova. "Language and Politics in Bulgaria." Towards a New Community: Culture and Politics in Post-Totalitarian Europe. Ed. Peter J.S. Duncan and Martyn Rady. School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1993, 133.

3. Ibid., 135.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 144.

6. Ibid., 142.

7. George Orwell. "The Prevention of Literature." Orwell and Politics. Ed. Peter Davidson. London: Penguin Books, 2001, 384.

8. Ibid., 392.

9. George Orwell. "Politics and the English Language." Orwell and Politics. Ed. Peter Davidson. London: Penguin Books, 2001, 405.

10. Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature," 387. See also George Orwell's essay "Propaganda and Demotic Speech" in Orwell, All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, 223-31.

11. According to John Wesley Young, "the Orwellian Model of Totalitarian Language" includes six major components: intent of the rulers to control thought and behavior through language, exaltation of the state over the individual, violence and vilification, euphemism, special political terminology, and the failure of words to reflect reality," Totalitarian Language, 215. Of course, other possible components could be added to this model. For example, Aldous Huxley wrote in the Foreword to the 1946 edition (New York and London: Harper) of his dystopian novel Brave New World that "The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an 'iron curtain' between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals." An example related to such "silence about truth" could be what took place on February 6, 2003, when the famous tapestry replica of Picasso's "Guernica" on display just outside the U.N. Security Council was covered with a huge blue drape while Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his speech inside the chamber making the case for invading Iraq which was followed by a televised press conference Powell gave for attending journalists right in front of the covered-up tapestry.

12. See Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 133-45.

13. Young, Totalitarian Language.

14. See Rossen Vassilev, "The 'Third-Worldization' of a 'Second-World' Nation: De-development in Post-Communist Bulgaria." New Political Science 25:1 (March 2003), 99-112.

15." The politicians are incredibly indebted to the people. Their enrichment is impossible to be explained, Stoyan Ganev, former Chef de Cabinet of Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, said on Darik Radio. I see nothing wrong to be aboard a yacht, the problem is in that when the people are poor, such things enrage them," Standart in English, June 5, 2003.

16. In reaction to numerous accusations of official corruption, fraud, and embezzlement of EU funds, Brussels suspended several EU aid programs for Bulgaria that were worth nearly a billion euros.

17. "By far, Bulgaria's most serious problem is that for the past 20 years its politicians have been shamelessly abusing power and getting away with it. All political parties in power have done so. But our politicians--divided as they are into coteries, gangs, mafias, and other similar criminal groups vying for power--ought to realize that Bulgaria cannot simultaneously be an EU member and continue to be governed in such a criminal way." Interview with Tzvetozar Tomov, "Ima opiti da se nalozhi avtoritaren rezhim" [We Are Witnessing an Attempt to Impose an Authoritarian Regime], Duma 298, January 5, 2010 (my translation).

18. See, for example, "Nie sme bananovata republika na Evropa" [We Are Europe's Banana Republic] Standart, October 30, 2009; and Dimitar Iliev, "Durzhava tzirk po nasledstvo" [A Country Turned into a Circus] Standart, October 30, 2009.

19. See Grigor Lilov, Tainyiat proekt Boiko Borisov [The Secret Project of Boyko Borisov], Sofia: Kailas, 2009. According to Lilov, soon after the fall of Communism Borisov (aka "Batman") became personally involved in murderous gangland warfare against other Bulgarian Mafiosi in the streets of the capital Sofia. See also Jeff Stein, "Bush's Bulgarian Partner in the Terror War Has Mob History, Investigators Say." Congressional Quarterly.com, March 7, 2007.

20. Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 407.

21. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 133.

22. For more on this topic, see Rossen Vassilev, "Bulgaria's Ethnic Problems." East European Quarterly 36:1 (Spring 2002), 103-25; also Rossen Vassilev, "Changes in the Linguistic Status of Post-Communist Bulgaria's Ethnic Turkish Minority." Linguistic Changes in Post-Communist Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Ed. Ernest Andrews. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, 215-30.

23. George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992, 37.

24. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 144.

25. According to Law Professor Valkanov, a former independent presidential candidate, "Our health care system is in dire straights. Each case of illness represents an individual tragedy, but our entire healthcare system is a national tragedy. Not everyone has the right to receive medical treatment, for only those who can financially afford it are entitled to health care." Velko Valkanov, "Sreshtu pohvalnite slova za programata Ran/Ut" [Disagreeing with the Words of Praise for the Rahn-Utt Program], Duma 271, November 27, 2009 (my translation).

26. See Rossen Vassilev, "Bulgaria's Demographic Crisis: Underlying Causes and Some Short-Term Implications." Southeast European Politics VI:1 (July 2005), 14-28.

27. "Predi narodut da kazhe 'Ne'mam nervi'" [Before Bulgarians Say "I Can't Take It Any More"], Nova zora 38: October 27, 2009 (my translation).

28. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 133.

29. Ibid., 140.

30. See Rossen Vassilev, "Public Opinion and Bulgaria's Involvement in the Iraq War." East European Quarterly XL: 4 (December 2006), 467-87.

31. On March 19, 2003, Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha declared in the National Assembly that the controversial actions of his cabinet in Iraq were all "in the national interest" and that Bulgaria "wishes to give a strong signal of its solidarity with the forces of freedom and democracy and that it is a responsible member of the international counterterrorism coalition," Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) in English, March 20, 2003.

32. War is the favorite diversion of totalitarian and neo-totalitarian rulers who seek to draw public attention away from troubles at home and re-direct it toward imaginary "enemies" abroad. As Hermann Goering, undoubtedly an expert on the practical utility of employing propagandistic pathos and Big-Lie propaganda, explained in an interview given at the time of the Nuremberg trials, "Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country" (quoted in Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1947, 278-9).

33. According to GERB's defense minister Anyu Angelov, "There is a very real danger that some distant countries in possession of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles could launch them against strategic targets on our territory," Dian Morkin, "Bulgaria burza da vleze pod zashtitniia shtit na NATO" [Bulgaria Is in a Hurry to Obtain NATO's Protective (Anti-Missile) Shield] Sega, May 17, 2010 (my translation); see also "Solomon Pasi: I Al-Kaida mozhe da se snabdi s raketi i da strelia kum Bulgaria" [Solomon Pasi: "Al Queda, Too, May Acquire Nuclear Missiles and Launch Them against Bulgaria"], Sega, March 10, 2010.

34. See Rossen Vassilev, "Public Opinion in Bulgaria." Encyclopedia of Public Opinion (in two volumes). Ed. John Geer. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004, vol. 2: 526-32.

35. See, for example, the Bulgarian Left party's call for holding a "National Referendum on the Issues of Peace and War" in Ivan Genov, "Triabva ni referendum za mira i voinata" [We Need a Referendum on Peace and War], Duma 70, March 25, 2010.

36. See Vassilev, "Public Opinion and Bulgaria's Involvement in the Iraq War."

37. See Stein, "Bush's Bulgarian Partner in the Terror War Has Mob History."

38. See Rossen Vassilev, "The Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews in World War II," New Politics XII:4 (Winter 2010), 114-21.

39. See Lozan Takev, "Za imenata na ulitzite v Sofia: zahsto imame Maria Louisa, no niamame Georgi Dimitrov?" [Concerning Street Names in Sofia: Why Do We Have a Princess Maria-Louise Street, But Not a Georgi Dimitrov Street?] Duma 33, February 10, 2010.

40. See Rossen Vassilev, "Will Bulgaria Become Monarchy Again?" Southeast European Politics IV:2-3 (November 2003), 157-74.

41. Interview with Assen Agov, one of the anti-Communist SDS leaders, Duma, February 9, 1996 (my translation).

42. Zheliu Zhelev. Obrushtenia na prezidenta kum naroda i parlamenta [Presidential Addresses to the Bulgarian People and Parliament]. Plovdiv: Khristo G. Danov Press, 1996, 201-3 (my translation).

43. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 37.

44. See Young, Totalitarian Language, 136-41.

45. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 142.

46. See Bistra Ouzounova, "Mediite produlzhavat da tichat sled pobeditelite" [The Media Continue to Serve the (Electoral) Victors], Afera.bg, May 21, 2010.

47. A typical example of the glorification and heroization of Boyko Borisov would be a recently-published collection of poetry entitled "Zvezda ot Vitleem" [Star of Bethlehem] by pro-GERB poetess Veneta Bakalova, in which the following sycophantic ode appears under the title "Premier, izbran ot naroda" [A Premier Chosen by the People]:

"Oh, glorious General, lead us forward!

We trust in your sacred pledge!

Guard us from enemies like the ethnic Turks!

Trail-blaze our difficult path ahead,

So that Bulgaria can take its honorable place

Within the European Union and

Shine like a star in the night sky and

Be greeted and cheered by one and all.

Oh, heavenly tidings! Almighty Jesus Christ,

Bless our beloved General and Bulgaria!" (my translation).

48. Georgi Sapundzhiev, "Faraonut" [The Pharaoh]. Duma 279, December 7, 2009 (my translation).

49. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 141.

50. Victor Klemperer describes a similar phenomenon in post-WWII Germany, where the vestiges of Nazi ideology and propaganda survived in the daily language of Germans: "What a huge number of concepts and feelings [the language of the Third Reich] has corrupted and poisoned! At the so-called evening grammar school organized by the Dresden adult education center, I have observed again and again how the young people in all innocence, and despite a sincere effort to fill the gaps and eliminate the errors in their neglected education, cling to Nazi thought processes. They don't realize they are doing it; the remnants of linguistic usage from the (National-Socialist) era confuse and seduce them. So much is being said at present about eradicating the fascist mentality and so much is being done to that end. But it appears that the language of the Third Reich is to survive in the form of certain characteristic expressions; they have lodged themselves so deep below the surface that they appear to be becoming a permanent feature of the German language. For example, since May 1945 I have on countless occasions, in speeches broadcast on the wireless and passionately anti-fascist demonstrations, heard reference to such things as innate qualities "of character" (characteristischen Eigenschaften) and the "aggressive" (k????mpferischen) nature of democracy." (Victor Klemperer. Lingua Tertii Imperii--The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook. Translated by Martin Brady. London and New Brunswick, N.J.: The Athlone Press, 2000).

51. See Rossen Vassilev, "A Familiar 'New Face' at UNESCO," The American Spectator, October 5, 2009.

52. Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature," 392.

53. As the anti-Communist daily Standart recently wrote: "the (Communist) nomenklatura has transformed itself into the Red bourgeoisie of today. The latter has replaced its masters (Washington and Brussels have replaced Moscow, NATO has replaced the Warsaw Pact, and the EU has replaced COMECON), but has preserved its privileged life-style, political power, and personal wealth" (Iliya Troyanov, "Diktatura na donosite" [A Dictatorship of Informers], Standart, November 9, 2009 (my translation).

54. Appearing on the New Television Channel on October 18, 2009, Borisov reportedly called for outlawing what he called the "successor to the terrorist Communist Party," adding that "the BSP has harmed our country and will continue to do so for as long as it exists. It is a mistake that the (former) Communist Party, which had used terror and had killed people in the past, has not yet been banned," (Chavdar Dobrev, "Plodovete na populizma" [The Fruits of Populism] Nova Zora 38, October 27, 2009, my translation). This is rather ironic as Borisov was reportedly the only official of the post-Communist Ministry for Internal Affairs (the agency responsible for domestic security), who was fired during the 1991 "depolitization" drive for refusing to give up his Communist (Socialist) Party membership (Lilov, Tainyiat proekt Boiko Borisov).

55. See Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature," 389, 391, 392.

56. See, for example, Georgi Lozanov, "Da opitomim chudovishtata i da gi nahranim ot shepa" [Let's Tame the Monsters and Hand-Feed Them]. Kultura 29 (2556), July 30, 2009.

57. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 138.

58. See Mikhail Videnov, "Deputatite otkradnaha rechnika na mutrite" [Our Parliamentarians Are Using the Language of the Mob], Afera.bg, April 3, 2010; also Velislava Dureva, "Teneke" [Chatterbox], Duma 65, March 19, 2010.

59. See Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 138, 143-4.

60. As a form of comic counter-language, this particular joke is rather similar to many of the "Ivancho" ('Little Ivan") jokes from the totalitarian past, one of which went something like that: The history teacher asks the students of Ivancho's primary-school class in what particular historical era they would like to have lived. Most are content to live under socialism and thus participate in building the Communist future. A few students say they'd rather live under the previous capitalist system, so they could participate in the struggle for socialism. Ivancho alone ventures that he would prefer living in ancient Egypt. When the startled teacher asks him why, Ivancho explains to her, "Like in Bulgaria today, you slaved six days a week in ancient Egypt, but at least on Sunday the Pharaoh did not make you march by the pyramids, chanting "Ramses, Ramses," "Eternal friendship with Mesopotamia," "Down with the Hittite Imperialists!" Even Blaga Dimitrova did not escape the biting mockery of anonymous satirists at a time when she was still Zhivkov's favorite and privileged poetess. In a comic word-play with her name, she was referred to as "Oblaga Dimitrova" (in Bulgarian, oblaga means "benefit" or "profit"), thus in effect calling her a careerist and opportunist.

61. Young, Totalitarian Language , 81.

62. Orwell, "Propaganda and Demotic Speech," 223.

63. In a joke popular in those days, the fictitious Radio Yerevan was asked, "What would Bulgarians be doing today if Tsarist Russia had not liberated them from the Turks?" (Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1396 to 1878). Radio Yerevan's answer: "On Fridays they would have been watching Turkish TV."

64. However, I have not encountered either in speech or in writing a single instance of the Russian word urozhai ("crop," "harvest" or "yield") being used in place of its Bulgarian equivalents rekolta or dobiv, as Blaga Dimitrova suggests on page 140 of "Language and Politics in Bulgaria."

65. Dimitrova. "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 140.

66. "Vtorata Goliama Depresiya ni podmina" [We Have Avoided a Second Great Depression], Standart, September 15, 2009 (my translation).

67. "Boiko Borisov: Parite ot Briuksel sa imidzh" [Boyko Borisov: The Money from Brussels Improves Our Image], Standart, September 14, 2009.

68. See, for example, Sabina Vassileva, "Mladite u nas veche govoriat polubulgarski" [Our Young People Already Speak in Anglo-Bulgarian], Sega, May 6, 2010.

69. The orthographic reform of 1945 reduced the number of letters from 32 to 30 by removing two archaic-looking letters from the previous version of Bulgaria's Cyrillic alphabet (which had been first proposed by the Bulgarian historian and philologist Marin Drinov and officially in use since the 1870s). Not only did this change in orthography make Bulgaria's Cyrillic alphabet more similar to the Russian one then used throughout the Soviet Union, but it also allowed the new, Communist-dominated Otechestven Front ("Fatherland Front") government to purge all undesirable literature from every book store and public library. This literary auto-da-fe was, in fact, the first of what Dimitrova decries as the Communist-initiated "linguistic purges in Bulgarian" ("Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 136).

70. Dimitrova, "Language and Politics in Bulgaria," 145.

71. Veselka Venkova, "Iliya Kozhuharov: Demokratizmut e luksozna igrachka pridobita s lisheniya" [Iliya Kozhuharov: Democracy Is a Luxury Obtained through Sacrifice]. Interview with Iliya Kozhuharov, Duma 253, November 6, 2009 (my translation).

72. Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 410.

(Article changed on December 27, 2014 at 22:42)

(Article changed on December 27, 2014 at 22:55)

Authors Bio:

Rossen V. Vassilev was a Bulgarian diplomat to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in 1980-1988. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the Ohio State University in Columbus, OH, in 2000. Dr. Vassilev has been teaching various undergraduate classes in political science and international peace studies. He lives with his family in Delaware, Ohio.