Jordan Ganchovski [e-vestnik]

http://bulgarianpresidency.eu

Our author Milena Dimitrova gives the floor today to writer Jordan Ganchovski, whose career in poetry and literature is developing in Chicago, and whose recent novel published in Sofia “The Night Before 10 November” has prompted debates. A good read, even for those who will not necessarily share his views.

Jordan Ganchovski: “Why did I leave Bulgaria? Every profound socio-economic and social change or its aftermath leads to consequences for decades and sometimes for centuries. Undoubtedly for Eastern Europe the phenomenon of “emigration” is one of those shaping the present anthropo-social picture of post-totalitarian societies. Unlike migration, it is anti-natural and often takes a long time; it is also associated with a bunch of side-effects.

In a nutshell, emigration is not a natural way of life and for someone to take this way, there must be life-defining reasons. It is not by accident that man is born in a specific place. It is not by chance medicinal herbs heal only if they grew where you were born. It was our fate to be part of the most widespread phenomenon of “emigration” in Bulgarian history.

The main reason for our case, and for all Eastern European countries, is economic, but as with any phenomenon there is always an effect of inertia – “I do it because others do it”. Of course, in most cases, leaving home is caused by fated and unavoidable causes.

My case is a bit different and it can be said to be a “continuation” of an aborted departure in the spring of 1979. Then, in the day when [the Soviet rocket carrying Bulgarian] cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov was unable to dock with the space station, I was captured in Maribor [a city in the then Yugoslavia, now Slovenia, close to the Austrian border] by the Serbian authorities on my way to Vienna, and if I was not on the train but trying to cross the land border, they would have brought me back to Bulgaria. It is clear what was going to happen – but to explain, I’ll tell you what happened to a similar case – with the current artist from California, Dimitar Marinov. I think of him as a brother, without knowing him, and I am glad that he has got a significant role in a Spielberg’s film – his American dream came true. This young Bulgarian guy at the time tried to escape a few years after me and they caught him, which makes me think that after my case they changed tactics in the case of excursions to Serbia – that is, there were more than one cop from the State Security (DS) in the group and they figured out who is suspicious, then they went after him. That’s how they got him and he spent two and a half years in the prison in Stara Zagora, where criminal inmates boke his arms, for forty days he was beaten by DS, and they took him off the scene during his admission exam at Vitiz [the High Institute for Theater art] when some time later he tried to apply.

I’m telling these stories to make the case that I was right I when I wanted to leave the Communist state at that time. And that all those who managed to leave were right. Why Dimitar Marinov wanted to escape –obviously to live in a normal, not in an artificial society. For the same reason I wanted to leave – and I was probably more naive in my intentions – as I imagined that around the Bulgarian service of Radio “Free Europe” a powerful anti-communist organisation could gather, to change the format of the broadcasts, without knowing that there were international arrangements that could not be breached under any circumstances. I considered this to be my duty, but I never believed for a moment that I would see Communism fall. I always believed it would collapse, but far after my lifetime, I just wanted to carve my stone and throw it on its facade. And I did not know that at that moment, when I was first year as a student, Communism was already taken water in its huge economic hole, and nothing was able to stop this. Only a few economists close to power knew it. They thought the USSR would fix things, but in the USSR the same thing was happening! Even on a much larger scale. Can a society, organized in a state, survive if, ever year, it has a spending gap of $2.5 billion and that this money cannot be found? The result is clear, but it was a deep secret for us – the secret of an abyss dug by the Communists and prepared for everyone.

Actually I did not leave immediately – I hoped, like many others, that things [after November 1989] would get better and after a maximum of three or four years, the economic difficulties would be overcome. But only in less than a year the terrible truth became clear to me – Bulgaria would never be right without radical measures.

I felt it first intuitively, and then, rats descended from above, like those of Zhivkov, they began to appear before my eyes. I saw the same jerks as in the time of Zhivkov, who because of their career and personal interest are ready for everything. I saw that the obvious was again eclipsed by the empty phrases of the “new heroes” similar to dwarves in front of a mountain. It was a burlesque show where instead of humorists and satirists, there was a frenetic crowd shouting “down” or “long live.” Then the same crowd was swearing at yet another failure, and was ready to take someone else on its shoulders.

This should stop at any price. But this can stop only if people have eyes and senses. The rest is empty hopes. The crowd will cease to be a crowd and will become a multitude of individuals who have decided to overcome their selfishness and delusion only if they overcome their social blindness. Only then could we talk about something new and some hope of change.

Do you want me to name just a few of the many absurdities of the social turmoil, which has been called democracy in Bulgaria?

In which country on the national TV do they show movies about bold communist agents and bloodthirsty CIA agents who want to destroy paradise built under the shadow of the USSR?

In which country they put down TV shows by buying the entire TV channel just because these shows are disturbing power and corrupt business?

In which country each year 55 million public contracts are awarded per day [he probably means contracts to the amount of 55 million leva are awarded per day], and only for the last nine years 87 billion public procurement contracts have been awarded, and the effect for the public is zero. Do you know how much is 87 billion – with this money you can build has been built once again the destroyed infrastructure of Zhivkov’s Bulgaria. This is what corruption means – this money is distributed with astronomical accuracy among those on mpower. The same is true of highways – compare prices for a mile highway in the United States and a kilometer highway in Bulgaria – for a mountainous section, for a viaduct, for a flat area. US salaries are 3-4000 dollars a month for a construction worker. The prices of materials are the same. Then arithmetic is easy and anyone can do the counting.

In which country top policemen are on oligarchs’ payroll and everyone says – try to prove it. The connections are more than obvious, and nobody cares. In many cases, the oligarchs are promoting the top policemen in the country’s hyearchy. Such feudalism can only exist in Bulgaria.

In which country will a thousand-year-old tree be chopped and there will be no consequences? In which country they will find human remains and there would be no investigation? In which country they will refuse to register and investigate village crimes – very often also in cities? Do you know which country I am talking about?

In which state they take measures taken only if media make noise and report? Only then, those in power will pretend they are concerned about the oppressed. All this is disgusting for a person who has lived in a normal country.

In which country do police officers collude with the real estate mafia, providing information about lone old men without heirs? And again, noone has been sentenced as cases are covered by their accomplices in the hierarchy of power.

In which country would a great writer like Georgi Markov, killed by communist agents, have the same agents currently being glorified on national television, while there is no boulevard named after him, and this author’s works are not studied in schools and universities?

In which country can the entire military budget for transport aviation be spent, without a single weapon being fitted on the aircraft and without technical ability to mount it? In another countries all those who signed the contract would go to jail.  Not in Bulgaria, where the Russophilian cast has entrenched itself on power, and they don’t want us to have a single weapon against the Russian threat – apparently this is what Moscow has ordered them.

The bashing by General Gundyev, masked a Russian patriarch, in front of the silent Bulgarian head of state, is a logical continuation of all the above. No one will respect you if you do not respect yourself.

 have drawn a social formula for the Eastern European countries, which in its essence is an axiom: “The prosperity and progress of an East European country are inversely proportional to the degree of linkage and rapprochement with Russia.” This formula works flawlessly – you can check it out for yourselves.”

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