Memories of AEG Burgas

2010

  1. Memories of AEG Burgas

    May 17, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    Three years of teacher heaven – wonderful pupils, really nice colleagues, rather oppressive frightened management.

    “You’re going to the most difficult of the English Language schools.” British Council advice.

    Comrade Teacher! The class is ready for your lesson.

    “Less guitar, more testing!” Comrade Berberova explains the facts of life.

    The long echoing corridor lined with photographs of extremely serious politburo members. Who’s eaten their pudding? Why Bai Toshko of course – the only face not worn down by hard work and responsibility.

    The aunties sitting at the top of the corridor like some revolutionary tribunal, commenting loudly on every passer by.

    The death of the honourable communist, Vasko Nyotev. “For me lying to a teacher is a much worse offence than smoking.” This was his comment on the teacher’s collective’s decision not to lower the marks of a mendacious student with significant party connections.

    The teacher’s smoking room where Tsetsa Deneva held court, like a latter day Madame du Barry.

    The secret male refuge on the ground floor where Shipkov, Zhenkov and Grigorov hid out and raised the occasional rakia bottle. This left Yanko Yanev as the only oppressed Bulgarian male in the staffroom.

    Penny Nikolova poking her head round the classroom door to bring the glad tidings that after a day and a half labour, Malinna has been born.

    Comrade Bakhchavanova bursting into the classroom with a rare girlish grin, to inform us in shrill excitement that our beloved leader, Todor Zhivkov, is coming to Burgas. Class dutifully raised three cheers.

    “A Comsomol meeting is much more important than a dress rehearsal!” Rilka Ivanova days before first performance of Pygmalion.

    “Did you know Anthony Georgieff was going to smoke a cigar and drink alcohol on stage, Mr Buxton!” “No, Comrade Berberova.”

    The “spontaneous” Comsomol meeting held to celebrate Bulgaria’s first astronaut being blasted into space. My Professor Higgins and head of the Comsomol, Yoto Yotev, strikes his head dramatically with his hand. “I’ve just had a great idea!” he shouts. “Let’s send a telegram of congratulation direct to the space-ship!” Cue roars of approval from the student body.

    I add Mamkavi to my growing Bulgarian lexicon. It appears in glowing red paint in the teacher’s room a day after Petya Dubarova’s death.

    “Mr Buxton, why don’t you ask your embassy for some pictures of England to put up on the classroom walls – nothing political of course.” “Of course, Comrade Berberova.” I travel to Sofia and bring back glowing landscapes. “Mr Buxton, these are very nice pictures. I will keep them here in my study for you. They are YOUR pictures. If you ever want to use them, just ask.” “Of course Comrade Berberova.”

    Saturday afternoon lessons with the eighth class, particularly when Chernomoretz were playing at home – no-one’s heart really in it.

    My first encounter with Anthony Georgieff, insisting on calling me sir and lounging in the far corner of the classroom of fresh faced youngsters. He looks aged between fourteen and forty.

    “Are you sure you want to give Anthony a six? He’s very lazy.”

    “It’s a small world, Chris. You need to be careful what you say.” A garbled version of some comments I made to an English colleague in Plovdiv, return to haunt me in Burgas. Comrade Berberova is very cool for a couple of weeks.

    “Tell me about Trotsky, sir.” We’re in Burgas park. I instinctively wonder if the trees are bugged.

    The school secretary’s suspicion that I somehow profited from the boiler that nearly killed me and my family. Without hot water for a week, washing nappies in stone cold water, plumbers finally came to change the boiler, leaving me with a rusting hulk in my hallway. Where is the old boiler, Mr Buxton? I think you must have sold it for scrap metal! No, it got stolen from outside my door. Ah! the efficiency of the Gypsy Collection service.

    I unconsciously cultivate the eccentric Englishman persona. Walking down Freedom Boulevard to and from work, I read a book and occasionally trip over paving stones or bump into lampposts.

    I’m the Englishman who reads in streets and jumps on tables, not the one who’s religious, or who likes nurses, or whose hair is so long he’s barred from restaurants, or whose love of birds gets him arrested in the salt marshes.

    Singing “We are sailing” in my last classes Summer 1980.

    For a fictionalized account, read “Prudence and the Red Baron” published Ciela 2008.

  2. Well hung parliament

    May 8, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    Between Ghurkas and shirkers – are Ghurkas illegal immigrants? Are illegal immigrants shirkers? The Daily Express needs to bring Joanna Lumley back from the Nile to sort out this problem.

    Two earnest responsible Public School prefects battle a dour headmaster with a terrible secret.

    Conservative poster gives us a dynamic Cameron in a hurry in open necked shirt and sleeves rolled up, thumb up, finger pointing the way, turning the out of focus crowd like Wayne Rooney turns a bunch of Burnley defenders. Worryingly though he is looking away from the direction he’s going, tempting collision with a lamppost or bollard.The headlines scream out a series of shortcut thoughts. Let’s cut benefits for those who refuse work…Let’s….! All the suggestions are straight interpolations of Daily Mail headlines – but it’s the use of the word let’s that bothers me. Here’s a man in a rush, firing out policies as though they’ve only just occurred to him. Too much like an excited teenager on a school trip to Amsterdam.

    And now having missed an open goal more times than Berbatov, Cameron will be lucky to survive the growing grumblings of the Tory Right. To win those southern working class seats, he needed some nasty qualities and all we got was nice, responsible, nice Head Prefect. I await Norman Tebbit’s comments with interest.

    Lib Dems losing so many seats out in Cornwall – could that be anything to do with Europe? Or the proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants. The lesson seems to be don’t get stuck with policies that can’t be explained in headlines.

    In fact all Liberal policies always require too much explanation. That’s how Clegg inevitably turns into a cuckoo clock over the three weeks. Voteforchange; voteforchange…

    Still how do we explain why Labour did so well in spite of everything? Under a headmaster’s thunderous brows and an ominous smile that presages six of the best?

    The Daily Mail would have it that our moral fibre has been weakened by years of Political Correctness. We have become cowards and shirkers. We should be more like….But no they’re foreigners!

  3. Wolfhunt by Ivailo Petrov

    April 22, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    Wolfhunt by Ivailo Petrov is a Bulgarian modern classic. It was first published in 1986, four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tragic and comic in turns, it was the first novel to bravely spell out the human cost of Communist policies in Agrarian Bulgaria, written by a man who never lost his close understanding of the claustrophobic eccentricities of village life. It has been translated into Russian German Hungarian and Czech and gone through eight editions. It was adapted into a six part TV drama in 2000.

    Set in the late 1960s, it is an account of an absurd midwinter wolf hunt. Six old men set out from a warm village pub into a blizzard from which only three will return. The wolves are a pretext. The hunt has been conceived as a means of healing old wounds. But the wounds are deep. In the freezing wilderness, the hunters are separated and each has an irresistible opportunity to even up long festering scores, many of which have been exacerbated by Communism and its campaign of Collectivisation.

    The village is inhabited by the old – the result of a policy of industrialisation and migration to the towns. Each of the hunters has a nickname: Salty Kalcho a work-shy recluse; Zhendo the Bandit, a former rustler and calculating pragmatist; Ivan Jack-of-all-trades, restless painter, actor, dissident and womaniser; Nikolin the Horn a naive easily deluded orphan, unlucky enough to inherit an estate just as the Communists seize power; Kiro Go-to-hell, a hard working one-time small farmer devoted to his land and animals, hoping with the proceeds to see his sons through university; and brooding over them all the man who has modelled his persona on his hero, Stalin: former Party Secretary and President of the Collective farm, Stoyan the Georgian.

    The main spur for the hunt is the memory of a wedding in 1943. At the wedding feast, following the bedding of the young couple, unstained bridal sheets spell shame and a harsh reckoning for the bride’s father, Salty Kalcho. But Zhendo the Bandit’s calculated triumph lasts only as long as the sorry life of his new daughter-in-law.

    At the same wedding, Ivan Jack-of-all-trades sneaks off to the barn with Mona. The girl who is conceived there will break the heart of Nikolin the Horn.

    Stoyan the Georgian is the unwilling Godfather at the wedding. Disapproving of old superstitious customs, he looks forward to the triumph of the Russian Army and the passing of power to the Bulgarian Proletariat. He will become the village petty Dictator, frustrated by his fellow citizens’ inability to share his vision. Smallholders who have struggled all their lives to make a living from their tended plots and cherished animals, balk at the idea of common ownership, which, as they see it, can only benefit the lazy and incompetent. Some will hang themselves. Others will have to endure threats to their family and physical abuse before they sign away everything they have worked for, for “the common good”. Kiro Go-to-Hell sees his much loved cows fall sick in the communal barn.

    Along with the new regime of fairness for all comes a puritanical code of morals that party activist Ivan Jack-of-all-trades will fall foul of. His use of local characters as subjects for the new church icons, especially Mona as the Madonna, leads to their public burning. His protests result in his being sent to a labour camp.

    Now so many years later, in a village where only one baby has been born in the last ten years, a wine tasting ritual awakens bitter memories, and in an attempt to assuage them, Ivan Jack-of-all-trades proposes the hunt.

    Petrov’s theme is the helplessness that drives people towards desperate solutions. He uses a multi narrative technique that is reminiscent of Faulkner but much more accessible. Past events are viewed through the eyes of the six hunters in turn. Through these changing perspectives, the reader is taken on a voyage of deepening understanding, putting the calamitous history of twentieth century Bulgaria into a human context.

    Ivailo Petrov who died in 2005 remains one of Bulgaria’s most popular novelists. His novel Before I was born and Afterwards is a richly comic account of his home village and the eccentric characters to be found in it. It describes a world that has been irrevocably transformed by the changes brought about since the war. In Wolfhunt the Bulgarian village is once again a source for vibrant humour. But sensing the imminent implosion of a failed human experiment, Ivailo Petrov seized the opportunity to write a tragic masterpiece. His humanity and attention to comic detail make this an unforgettable reading experience – one which the English speaking world has had no opportunity to enjoy.

    Ivailo’s widow, Ofelia, has given me permission to translate the book. So far I have translated the first two parts.

  4. In praise of Gencho Stoev

    March 18, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    Gencho Stoev’s The Price of Gold 1964, gives us a multi-narrative account of the April uprising. While it never skirts the horror of the Turkish atrocities, Stoev drives home the moral dilemmas occasioned by nationalist fervour. Although the novel enjoyed considerable critical success, it was never a popular book with Communists or nationalists.

    There were bodies too in the church yard and in the sunlight by the fence the teacher lay yellow and tubercular; looked just about alive, because his head hadn’t been cut off like the others, his body hadn’t been plundered and the chain of his watch – the only one in the village, glittered underneath his unbuttoned French coat; even the handle of his pistol still rested in his nerveless right hand.
    “Ey! Are you happy now, School master?” Hadji-Vranyo had asked him through the smoke and the groans. “Are you happy the village is burning?”
    “I’m happy, Daddy-Pilgrim,” the teacher replied. “The very best stakes are charred at the ends – so they don’t rot when you drive them into the ground. Just such stakes are what Bulgaria needs.”
    “Who’ll plant stakes in empty unpeopled land, School master?”
    “The emptiest lands are those which no-one has ever died for, but the most populated lands are those which the locals have watered with their blood. They are sacred lands.”
    The words were spoken as if from an icon: wise, harsh and deaf.
    “What do you know about land? What property have you got? You’d have no clothes on your back if it weren’t for my brother-in-law’s help…”
    “True,” answered the teacher and his face was blotched, yellow, pink and black. “I’m no rich man; I’ve got no estate. So I seized on to the people’s cause, to lead you to freedom…”
    “To lead us to the mass chopping block!”
    (Translation Christopher Buxton)

    The speakers are Peter Bonev, a teacher and rebel leader and Hadji Vranio, a patriarch and pilgrim to the Holy Land the richest man in the village of Perushtitsa. The date is Easter Sunday 1876. The context is the April Uprising, in which 1000 Turks were killed and at least 30,000 Bulgarians were massacred in response.

    The confrontation between the two men takes place in the village church, by which time the village is in flames and apart from the already dead and dying insurgents, the remaining villagers, men women and children are about to be massacred.

    The April Uprising has been the subject of much nationalist-pornography – particularly during the Communist period, where the government was seeking to whip up anti-Turkish fervour in support of its policy of forcible re-naming and reclassification of its Moslem and Turkish populations. It was simple to paint the insurrection in terms of evil bloodthirsty Turks and heroic patriots. It was tempting to dwell on the barbaric methods of execution employed by the oppressors. The inconvenient fact that most of the country did not respond to the badly organised call to arms was explained in terms of cowardice and capitalist self interest of those Bulgarians who had prospered in the Turkish Empire.

    The teacher Bonev has drawn Hadji Branyo’s sons into the insurrection. Bonev rightly foresees that the insurrection is but the preface to the inevitable end of Turkish rule in Bulgaria. But Hadji Vranyo feels no elation. The old man, who has amassed thousands of pounds from his wine and sesame oil business, now anticipates the annihilation of his family and everything he has worked for. Ironically his wife and surviving grand-daughter are to be saved from rape and murder by his old friend Ismael Aga – an unusual but not unique portrayal of a humane Turk in Bulgarian literature.

    So Gencho Stoev proved to be a brave writer in the context of his simplistic time. His novel dispassionately presents us with sharply realised dramatic confrontations – between human beings who despite ethnic and religious differences are striving to understand the horror that has been unleashed. As a result while the book has rightly been hailed as a literary masterpiece, Stoev never received the acclaim accorded to Anton Donchev and his novel A Time Apart. He even faced difficulties getting the book published and his film script was blocked by the Communist Central Committee.

    The Bulgarian critic Boycho Penchev has spotted an anti-Stalinist aspect to Bulgarian historical fiction in the 1960s in which: the conflict between the Bulgarian People and narrow minded dogmatic communists was played out in costume. This conflict is exemplified in the extract translated above.

    The words that Stoev puts into the ideologue Bonev’s mouth have a disturbing resonance. The notion that land has to be fought for to have any value – that land that necessitates death is “sacred” – this word alone summons up the mystical patriotic fervour that fuels the Serbian patriot and war criminal Karadjic and seeks to justify the massacres at Srebenitsa and the fight for Kosovo.

    Bonev is an iconic figure, enthused by the same romantic passion that inspires IRA and ETA bombers and the Taliban. His destructive actions are designed to provoke extreme reaction which will lead to the changes he desires. The immediate consequences – rape and massacre are not just a price worth paying but an essential holy sacrifice. Ironically, Stoev in his sequel to The Price of Gold paints a very negative picture of the repressive Bulgarian monarchy that Bonev and his co-insurgents helped put in place of the rightly hated Turkish empire.

    And the words Stoev uses to describe Bonev’s uncompromising declaration: wise, harsh and deaf mark him out as a truly courageous writer.

  5. Family Memories of War

    March 10, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    It is generally accepted that former combatants are unwilling to talk about their war-time experiences.

    My maternal grandfather, known as Grandad

    Grandad was extremely reticent about his time in the First World War trenches. I don’t know what moved him to share some memories with me, two years before his death. Perhaps he was irritated by my anti-war unpatriotic views and my generally shaggy appearance. Or perhaps he felt that with my naïve passion for history I needed educating. Anyway, out of the blue he opened up.

    “Of course I had to fight. You had to fight for King and Country. I didn’t know anything else much. Some Arch Duke shot in the Balkans. But King and Country was good enough for me.”

    After basic training, he found himself in the trenches. In spite of the mud, the order was still to keep every piece of equipment polished. This included the helmet. It was only after countless Tommies were shot by German snipers that the order went out for helmets to be caked with mud.

    Grandad was promoted to Corporal and was sent one night into No-mans-land with two privates to superintend the digging of a new forward trench. The flares went up; random sniper fire broke out. The two privates dug for their lives and as soon as possible, Grandad took shelter with them in the deepening trench.

    An officer appeared above them (life expectancy of an officer was three days). “Corporal Jones! What are you doing down there?” “Taking cover, sir!” “Get up here at once! You’re in charge!” Miraculously Grandad survived having to stand in the brightly lit open ground until his detail safely completed the task.

    Before going over the top in the battle of the Somme, Grandad was issued with a measure of rum served in a can. Then somewhere in No-mans-land a shell exploded and filled his body with shrapnel.

    He lay between unconsciousness and death out in the open. It was lucky for him that the Generals on both sides cared about the health of their surviving soldiers. It was vital that they died from bullets, gas or shrapnel rather than dysentery. So after sharp conflict had taken its usual toll, a short truce was declared so carts could be sent out to collect the dead bodies, before flies spread disease. As the red cross guys threw Grandad’s body into the cart, they noticed it twitching.

    Close to death, Grandad was temporarily patched up and then shipped back to a London hospital. After some considerable time he was discharged from hospital, wearing a suit that Grandma had brought in. He got on a bus to take him home. There he noticed two young women who stared at him and then fell into earnest conversation. A decision was reached and one of them, crossed the bus, reached into her handbag and presented Grandad with a white feather.

    What I can’t get over is the thought that alongside makeup and purse, every red-blooded English girl had to have a collection of white feathers in her handbag, ready to present to total strangers not in uniform. I expect they read the Daily Mail.

    He was not considered to be sufficiently fit to return to the front but was sent instead to Ireland, which was on the brink of civil war. He told me that walking the streets of Ireland was more terrifying than being in the trenches. It was there also that he was demoted. He was escorting a prisoner – I think they were at a railway station. The prisoner wanted to go to the toilet and of course Grandad was too much of a gentleman to stand over him while he relieved himself. There was a back window to the toilet which provided even greater relief to the agile prisoner. The escape was seen to be Grandad’s fault and so he was relieved of one of his stripes.

    My father-in-law

    Shortly after the 9th of September, after the Russian crossed the Danube and triggered a “spontaneous Communist revolution,” Ivan Volkanov, my father-in-law, found himself as an officer in the new Peoples Republican Army, pushing up alongside the Red Army though Yugoslavia. His battalion was following the earlier thrust against the German occupying forces.

    There had been a battle up ahead in which some lads from his village had reportedly died, so the following night, Ivan saddled up his horse to see if he could get more news. . He rode up along a railway track which led to the forward positions and the battlefield. Eventually he saw in the distance a flickering light and drawing closer, he made out some figures sitting huddled about a brazier on a platform in small village station. They were Bulgarian. He asked about the lads from his village. They shrugged and pointed up the line.

    Ivan rode another mile down the track and reached the battlefield in the cold dawn. Bodies lay on both sides of the dividing track. On one side were Russian and Bulgarian boys; on the other lay Germans. What he saw needs no comment from me.

    “I looked to my left. The Bulgarian and Russian boys were filthy, they were lousy, they were ragged. I looked to my right. The German boys were clean shaven, their uniforms were spotless, their boots were polished. But they were all dead – all dead!”

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