PAISII ON THE FRONT OR CELEBRATING THE BICENTENARY OF SLAVONIC-BULGARIAN HISTORY

Abstract

The present paper deals with the construction of the image of Paisii Hilendarski during the period 1962 – 63 – on the eve and immediately after the celebration of the 200th anniversary in honour of Slavonic-Bulgarian History (1762). The paper analyses a selection of nonfiction and lyrical texts published in our Bulgarian periodicals and/or in lyrical books in which the totalitarian rule in Bulgaria shapes collective identity connecting the Revolutionary Marxist phraseology of the time with the Renaissance languages of national mythology. Thus, the celebrations of the anniversary turned into another „reason“ for the proletarian culture of the socialist realism to uphold the „struggle on the ideological front“ at the beginning of the 60s of the 20th century.