His Pen Took Him where He Shouldn't be. Institutionalization of Censorship in Bulgaria in the 1950s

Abstract

The article examines the beginning of censorship in Bulgaria in the early 1950s. The author proceeds from Arlen Blum's classification of the levels of control in the Soviet Union: the first level is self-censorship; the second level is editorial censorship; the third level is Glavlitov control – carrying out the practical work of censorship; the fourth level includes the criminal police – the NKVD, the KGB in the Soviet Union and (State Security in Bulgaria) and the fifth level, which makes final decisions, is ideological censorship, carried out by the party brass through decisions, decrees, etc. In Bulgaria, the beginning of "total censorship" was marked by the institutional building of totalitarian structures during the Sovietization of the country, when new institutions were organized with the assistance of Soviet envoys and normative rules and practices were introduced to control social and cultural life. The author does not examine the different levels defined by Arlene Blum, as they must be studied in their symbiosis, but, drawing on concrete examples from archival documents, shows how self-censorship was nurtured in Bulgaria in the early years of the totalitarian communist regime.