In 1953 Alexander Zhendov – a graphic artist, one of the “fathers” of Bulgarian political cartoons, author of many satires and feuilletons - died of cancer. Even though he was an uncontested authority among artists, no more than a handful of people dared attend his funeral. Throughout his life, no one could have had any doubts that the guiding principle in his life and work had always been his communist beliefs and anti-fascist activity. But in 1953 no one dared say this out loud at his graveside.

“He was a remarkable man. When evil reared its head within our Union of Artists and people came down on Zhendov hard, that caused me much suffering, because he was a rock, a man of great wisdom and… talent. But they were after him because he would always tell the truth and would spare no one – neither Todor Zhivkov, nor Vulko Chervenkov (communist leaders). If you want a life of dignity, then you must lead a dignified life. That is what makes you a citizen. There was a group of young artists who backed Zhendov, because he was the embodiment of nobleness of mind, of justice, of the true measure of art and opposed opportunism and vulgarity in art, vulgarity for the sake of money. He could never have been rich, but as Pushkin put it, he raised a monument not made by human hands and I am happy to have been able to stand by him, when many of our Union artists abused him. He was very fond of me. But in his later years he was affected by this abuse so badly that even his gait suffered, whereas earlier, when he was in his prime, when he walked he would “split the road”. He was tall and would take strides like a pendulum. Zhendov was a man who could not go unnoticed and that made him a marked man…”

These words belong to his colleague, Prof. Alexander Poplilov, a recording from the BNR Golden Fund audio archives.

After 1956, Alexander Zhendov was exonerated, albeit tacitly, and went on to become a symbol of the umasking of the Vulko Chervenkov personality cult. Paradoxically, the artist and the future party and state leader went to school together – at the Sofia secondary school No. 3. Zhendov was also friends with poet Hristo Smirnenski, whose cycle of poems Winter Tales he illustrated; Vulko Chervenkov was also among Smirnenski’s friends. When TB cut the poet’s life short in 1923, Chervenkov and Zhendov were among the men who carried his casket side by side.

Meanwhile Zhendov had started doing painting at the Sofia Art Academy and then – graphic and decorative art in Germany. In 1930 he graduated from the Higher Institute of Industrial Arts in Moscow but was ordered to return to Bulgaria by the Bulgarian Communist Party. In 1931 he was among the founders of the Association of New Artists where he was all for socialist realism in art; he took part in the establishment of the Union of Militant Labour Writers and the Union of Friends of the USSR, then took over the chair of the Association of New Artists. Due to controversies over the Helm of the Nation newspaper he was stigmatized by the communist party leadership and expelled. After the pro-Soviet coup on September 9, 1944, Zhendov had his membership restored and started working towards asserting the “people’s democratic rule” and its socialist culture.

Upon Chervenkov’s return from Moscow in 1944, the two met once again. Vulko Chervenkov took over cultural propaganda, while Zhendov went on with his scathing criticism of all things bourgeois and of capitalism in cartoons and feuilletons. The 5^th congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1948 however, set the task of accomplishing a “cultural revolution”. Vulko Chervenkov started a series of meetings with the artists’ unions to clarify the party’s bidding: “The cultural front shall be spearheaded by the party, as all other fronts in public, political and economic life.” After the 1950 plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party, a new wave of repressions was launched against intellectuals who had dared express any independent view, other than the official one. But before that, in 1949, Chervenkov had ordered the formation of a commission to investigate the party organization of the Union of Bulgarian Artists. The Commission recommended “a severe official reprimand and last warning” for Alexander Zhendov. The reason: “factional struggles, insubordination and careerism.” On New Year’s Eve, 1950, Chervenkov and Zhendov fell out dramatically. The artist insisted that the party leadership was incompetent and that it should be artists and not apparatchiks that should be in charge of art. Later he was to formulate this in a long letter so as to ward off any unpleasantness with Chervenkov, who was already secretary general of the communist party. In his letter, Zhendov reiterated his position that “the party has all but set itself the goal of stripping artists of their individuality and putting on them the shackles of army discipline, subduing them with iniquity and peremptory censorship, tearing art down to the plane of vulgarity.” However in 1950, Chervenkov was installed as absolute autocrat and Zhendov was expelled from the communist party and forgotten by one and all. He died of cancer at the age of 60. Just three years later, in 1956 he was tacitly exonerated as one of the victims of the personality cult.

English version: Milena Daynova

Sources used:

Dimitar Avramov: ”Notes on totalitarian art.”

Pencho Kovachev: “The end of the politicians: Zhendov takes issue with Chervenkov and pays with his life.”