site.btaBulgaria after the Prague Spring: Remembering a Student Protest in 1968

On August 20, 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia (CSSR) and brought the political reforms, initiated during the Prague Spring, to an end. Bulgaria was among the USSR satellites which participated in the suppression of the protests across the CSSR. Although the cultural and social soil in Bulgaria was incompatible with cultivating fierce public resistance, the topic did not go unnoticed among young people in the country.

In two separate BTA interviews, the historian and Archives State Agency Director, Assoc. Prof. Mihail Gruev, commented on the political background of the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and their impact in Bulgaria, while illustrator Veselin Pramatarov told the story of his graphic novel On Strings. 1968. A True Story. The book tells the story of three Bulgarian history students who protested against their country’s involvement in the military operation in CSSR and took a stand against the authorities’ decision. “This book describes how the civic sense of justice survived even within the limits of a totalitarian society”, reads the official website of Kibea publishing house. The students’ protests were unprecedented for the time. The actions that once led to university expulsions, detentions and prison sentences are now not only praised and commemorated, but also held up as examples of civic courage.

Socialism with a Human Face

The “spring” began in February after students and intellectuals in many Czechoslovak cities advocated the “socialism with a human face” concept which was at the heart of Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek’s reform programme. The idea aimed to liberalize Soviet socialism. The Warsaw Pact troops sent to “aid their Czechoslovak brothers”, as the regime would later justify its actions, crushed the wave of civil protests within two days in August. While Western countries condemned the aggression, the Eastern Bloc satellite states remained largely restrained in their response.

The concept called “socialism with a human face” was the primary source of the strong civic activism that emerged in many Czechoslovak cities. What stood behind this vague notion, and was it not contradictory to speak of ‘socialism with a human face’ when the ideology’s supporters claimed to represent the underprivileged?

“The architects of the Prague Spring faced this issue as well because they were not sure what would come of their experiment,” Mihail Gruev said in his interview with BTA. “For this reason, both the Soviet leadership and the communist parties in the satellites initially watched the situation in CSSR, beginning in January 1968, passively. Some time had passed before they recognized in the actions of Dubcek and his entourage an attempt to destroy the political status quo. There are clear similarities between the reforms proposed by Dubcek and those pursued during the Khrushchev Thaw.  Dubcek, however, sought a more liberal version of the regime than Khrushchev in 1956. At a certain point, he questioned the Communist Party’s leading role and the single-party system in general. As of today, it is impossible to say how and where his experiment would have ended if it had not been for the Soviet tanks”, Gruev underscored.

The reformist energy in CSSR was unprecedented among Eastern Bloc satellite states. This raises the question of whether it was contagious enough to spread to a loyal Soviet ally such as Bulgaria. A BTA report from the summer of 1968 transmitted an order of then Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov, according to which “the cooperation with intellectuals, young people and especially with students, should be enhanced”. Some crucial differences, however, distinguished the two Soviet satellites, namely the active civic community in CSSR and the lack of cultural and political conditions for such a reformist movement in Bulgaria. “As there were poor social conditions for such protests here, I would suggest that the order was precautionary, considering that students were the driving force of the protests in Prague and other Czechoslovak cities,” the Archives State Agency President noted.

Ninth World Festival of Youth and Students in Sofia 

The summer of 1968 in Bulgaria was marked by the ruling authorities’ joint efforts to deliver an important message to the world, namely, that the socialist state was looking after the well-being of its young people. Thus, the Ninth World Festival of Youth and Students, held from July 28 to August 6 in Sofia, became a platform for this propaganda. More than 15,000 attendees from 142 countries took part in the event.

“Yet, the festival failed to achieve its initial objective and had the exact opposite effect. Despite the fact that most of the selected participants were lefties and official members of Communist parties, the Bulgarian young people had the opportunity to observe hippies, beatniks and individuals denounced by those in power as representatives of ‘ideologically alien movements’. These encounters had a major influence on Bulgarian youth,” Gruev explained.

The attendance of the Czechoslovak delegation was a key element of the event which kept the authorities constantly on guard. “It is known that there was a special operational plan for isolation and control of the group. Part of the delegation was not permitted to cross the border,” the historian pointed out.

Nevertheless, liberal trends managed to find their way into Bulgaria and inspired Bulgarian students. Cultural phenomena like the Czechoslovak New Wave in cinema would later inspire several secret gatherings where the avant-garde films provided a basis for political discussions outside the confines of the official party line.

“From a global perspective, there was an exodus from Communist parties, as people were stepping away from the idea that such a system could be synonymous with normality. Moreover, the youth delegations which had attended the festival in Sofia in 1968 returned to their homes deeply disappointed by the contrast between their idealized perceptions of the system and the unpleasant reality,” Gruev summarized.

History records several radical acts of protest in Czechoslovakia and Poland, where students committed suicide by self-immolation. Czech student Jan Palach remained a symbol of the discontent with the public acquiescence to the “normalization” of an unreformable regime. “Valeri Petrov’s poem Self-Immolation represents a direct response to the student’s act, and, in my opinion, captures the impact of the Prague Spring in Bulgaria quite precisely – brief shock, followed by passiveness. Whereas in CSSR, a massive civic wave was crushed, in Bulgaria, an attempt at protest was suppressed but there was no actual civic outburst,” Gruev said.

Three Bulgarian Students Did Not Remain Indifferent

Eduard Genov, Alexander Dimitrov and Valentin Radev learned about the events in Czechoslovakia through reports on foreign radio broadcasts and, after a brief discussion, they concluded that they could not remain indifferent to what they regarded as a historical crime. For this reason, they decided to craft leaflets to place in the letterboxes of residential buildings in Sofia and Plovdiv. They devised a method, so that their handwriting would remain unrecognizable. Within a few days, a total of 200 leaflets bearing the message “Out with the troops of the puppet Zhivkov from the CSSR!” were distributed as research of historian Stefan Dechev shows.

In October, they initiated a second action with another batch of leaflets - an action that did not go unpunished. The new leaflets read: “On October 10, five Soviet citizens who had expressed solidarity with the CSSR received harsh sentences. People, awaken!" and "Five Soviet communists held a demonstration on Red Square. What are you doing?". They referred to the Soviet citizens who dared to oppose the regime.

The students made cautious attempts to attract several colleagues to join them in their protest, but the idea was soon abandoned. The turning point came with the intervention of Bozhidar Strikov, a childhood friend of Eduard Genov. After he learned of the second action, Strikov prepared a detailed report to the State Security Committee. On October 29, the three initiators were arrested and subsequently suspended from university. They received prison sentences of differing durations, with which the case, No. 370/1968, was subsequently closed.

On Strings. 1968. A True Story

Decades after the case was closed and the regime had fallen, the story of Genov, Dimitrov, and Radev was brought back into the public eye. Rather than being portrayed as criminals, they were depicted as heroes.

In a café in the Sofia centre, Veselin Pramatarov talked to BTA about the graphic novel dedicated to the three students, and how art and history can intertwine to preserve the memory of the most distinctive voices amid the silence in Bulgaria surrounding the aggression in Czechoslovakia.

The idea to create the comic originated with the Czech Centre, which, in the summer of 2020, was preparing events to commemorate the Prague Spring, Pramatarov explained. “The centre’s director at the time decided that a graphic novel would be a much more memorable way to celebrate the event than a conference, for instance”. The deadline was tight – the graphic novel needed to be completed within a month.

As the graphic book adheres to historical authenticity, the illustrator’s research comprised extensive work with archive documents and conversations with historian Stefan Dechev. Alongside this, Angel Filchev’s memoir 1968 – the Crushing of the Prague Spring had a strong impact on the creative process because Filchev was a student in Prague during the uprisings. His book provided a first-hand account which affected Pramatarov’s perception of the events, despite some factual inaccuracies as Filchev was originally a journalist rather than a historian. The documentary The Aggression was also among the sources which brought the illustrator closer to the boys’ story.

However, the most valuable memory of the creative process remains the the conversations with the last surviving member of the three protesters, Alexander Dimitrov. “Every word he said was enormously significant to me,” the illustrator shared. Among his most vivid impressions was that Sasho (as Pramatarov himself calls him) did not hold a grudge against the inspectors who had interrogated him. On the contrary, he even described one of them as ‘rather bright’”. In Stara Zagora prison, Southern Bulgaria, Dimitrov had come across interesting people, and shared that a cellmate had taught him Turkish.

The illustrator admitted that at times he was surprised by Dimitrov’s remarks. “For instance, I had been picturing the agent, Strikov, as an intimidating man with a predatory expression the whole time. When Sasho looked at my illustration, he said: ‘he was in fact a plump little man with a gentle appearance’. I was bitterly disappointed that my concept was so far away from reality (he laughs). Initially, Sasho was unhappy with my portrayal of Eduard Genov: ‘Now, you made him too kind-looking, while he had always been hot under the collar’, and I had to alter the whole comic”.

It turned out that the rebellious nature of Genov became more pronounced over time and did not allow him to remain indifferent to the provocations in prison, deliberately incited by the State Security Committee. Subsequently, Genov’s sentence was extended and he spent a total of 11 years in prison.

Pramatarov identified the central artistic concept of his work as a search for balance between fact and fiction. “I wanted to find the thread which would lead to existential human problems. The main characters in the graphic novel are four – the three boys and their spontaneity.” What makes their act so captivating is their genuine reaction to the injustice in Prague. There were no grand preparations and the boys used materials at hand, yet their willingness to take a firm stance was unconditional. “In opposition to the propaganda which predominated during the socialist regime, here I wanted the human story to prevail,” the author added.

Undoubtedly, the comic book’s title and cover allude to the socialist regime. Originally, author Anton Staykov, who was supposed to write the novel’s script, proposed the title ‘Puppets’ after the official case file name. “However, I was inspired by a song called Puppet on Strings which was popular during the period, and people have associated it with Todor Zhivkov,” Pramatarov explained.

What is remarkable about the Puppet case was the spontaneity and determination behind the actions in times when complaints against the regime could be voiced in informal settings, while any act of protest would pose a risk to the personal safety: too great a sacrifice for which most Bulgarians at the end of the 1960s saw little point. As one of the students, Valentin Radev, pointed out: “Chatting over a drink was one thing but when it came to actions…”.

At a 1969 meeting of the Dean’s Council, Stoyko Kolev, who at the time was standing in for the party secretary, read a report with information from the Interior Ministry on the case. He then made a notable remark: “Unfortunately, these are history students from our faculty…”.

Nearly 60 years after this one-off protest action against the Prague Spring suppression, the Sofia University Rector’s Badge of Honour was conferred on Alexander Dimitrov, Eduard Genov (posthumously) and Valentin Radev (posthumously) for their civic valour, services to democracy and freedom, as well as for the stance they took during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. At the ceremony, the remarks made regarding their revolt sounded very different than those made in 1968: it was now a source of pride rather than misfortune that the citizens who ‘awoke the dawdling conformist Bulgarian community’, as Assoc. Prof. Gruev put it, were history students. “It is an honour for Sofia University to have had such students,” then Faculty dean Assoc. Prof. Mira Markova said.

Assoc.Prof. Gruev emphasizes that the protests of the “brave and selfless” Alexander Dimitrov, Eduard Genov and Valentin Radev were harshly and mercilessly punished, as they “paid for their audacity not only with their freedom but also with their health and their entangled lives”. Their act of protest was ahead of its time and foreshadowed later student demonstrations across the country, different in terms of extent, forms and motives.