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Communism, Science, and the University

The book explores the intellectual history of Bulgaria between the 1960s and
the 1980s at the intersections of the country’s social and political history. Based
on case studies, the research delves into three areas: the control and pressure
mechanisms used on science and the university; the clash of ideas while
performing the formal and hidden functions of academia in a communist regime
setting; the processes whereby research and academia acquire a relative autonomy
and alternative academic communities are being formed amidst the eroding
ideological legitimacy of the regime.
Centred on the concept of the “incident”, this setup allowed us to eschew the
narratives around the role of the dissidents or “freedom as a gift” and interpret
society’s transformation as the outcome of intersecting and overlaying sectoral
events, which gathered strength down the years and lay the ground for the eruption
labelled here as the “Big Event of 1989”.

Ivaylo Znepolski is the Director of the Institute for the Study of the Recent Past
in Sofia, Professor at Sofia University, Bulgaria, Visiting Professor at the École
des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1994–2002), former culture
minister (1993–1995), and an author of numerous books and edited volumes on
the recent communist past of Bulgarian and Eastern Europe.
Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe

1 Hungary since 1945

Árpád von Klimó, translated by Kevin McAleer

2 Romania under Communism

Dennis Deletant

3 Bulgaria under Communism

Ivaylo Znepolski, Mihail Gruev, Momtchil Metodiev, Martin Ivanov, Daniel
Vatchkov, Ivan Elenkov, Plamen Doynow

4 From revolution to uncertainty

The year 1990 in Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by Joachim von Puttkamer, Włodzimierz Borodziej, and Stanislav Holubec

5 Identities in-between in East-Central Europe

Edited by Jan Fellerer, Robert Pyrah, and Marius Turda

6 Communism, science, and the university

Towards a theory of detotalitarianisation
Ivaylo Znepolski

For more information on this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Rout

ledge-Histories-of-Central-and-Eastern-Europe/book-series/CEE
Communism, Science,
and the University
Towards a Theory of Detotalitarianisation

Ivaylo Znepolski
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Ivaylo Znepolski
The right of Ivaylo Znepolski to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Znepolski, Ivaĭlo, 1940- author.
Title: Communism, science and the university: towards a theory of
detotalitarianisation / Ivaylo Znepolski.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge histories of central and eastern europe |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019056979 (print) | LCCN 2019056980 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367895686 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003019879 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Communism and science–Bulgaria–History–20th century. |
Communism and education–Bulgaria–History–20th century. |
Bulgaria–Social conditions–1944–1989.
Classification: LCC HX541 .Z54 2020 (print) | LCC HX541 (ebook) |
DDC 306.4/50949909045–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056979
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056980
ISBN: 978-0-367-89568-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01987-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

Preface/Acknowledgements x

Introduction: On this book’s nature and objectives 1

Notes 8

1 Seizing power and institutionalisation of “the new socialist science” 9

Purging the university 10
De-Stalinisation and swift re-Stalinisation in the university 12
Notes 17

2 The Zhelyu Zhelev case: Sinning against faith and the

party Themis 19
Claiming subjectivity through individual action: Eventual
subjectivity 24
How to use the topsy-turvy political speak 27
Types of party discourses – of the prosecution, of the defence and
of the defendant 29
Radical honesty or venal pragmatism? 33
Structure and event in a post-Stalinist society 36
Notes 37

Theoretical outcomes (1): A sense of community awakens.

Small groups of civic engagement 39
Notes 42

3 The Ivan Slavov case: Between the threat of social exclusion

and the moral sanction of the group 44
A pamphleteer versus communist logomorphia 46
Private life as pretext for political blackmail 50
vi Contents
“The betrayal” as a private drama and test for the group’s
integrity 53
The excommunication from the group as a loss of identity 57
Notes 59

Theoretical outcomes (2): On actions committed under duress

and amidst severe freedom shortage 62
Notes 64

4 The Nikolay Genchev case: Against historiography as the

chambermaid of politics or life in two parallel worlds 66
Broadening the solidarity field 66
The early Nikolay Genchev and the history of the Algerian
revolution 68
For a national – rather than class – history. A critique of official
historiography 71
A personal story morphing into social history. Tearing apart and
sewing together of the physical author and his ideas 76
New challenges. Initiating the debate on Bulgaria’s political
system between the two World Wars 80
Changes in the intentional background of action. Nikolay
Genchev: The “double contingency” principle 82
The dual use of the primary party organisation. Nikolay Genchev,
an expert in the guerrilla warfare in the jungle of the party’s
chain of command 87
Notes 91

5 The Zhelyu Zhelev case (continued): Between truth and

authority – creation of “the revisionists” 94
Attempts at a philosophical position in the context of modern
times 96
The artfulness of a small man in the battle for survival 98
Zhelyu Zhelev, the postgraduate student and Todor Pavlov, the
academician 100
Samizdat within the bounds of legality. The scandal – a publicity
strategy in a closed system 102
The contrivance of scientific facts through text-substituting
“translations” 105
 Contents vii
The informal public sphere – how it functions? 108
A purging trend at the Philosophy Faculty 109
From criticising leading to wrenching Lenin out of the dogmatic
stranglehold. The generational discourse as political speak in
disguise 114
Notes 119

Theoretical outcomes (3): “Letters to the Chief” as a genre.

Social communication in a closed, overcentralised society 123
Notes 130

6 The Assen Ignatov case: Beyond the limits of the officially

regulated knowledge. Philosophy as a way to deliberate on
the human condition 132
A diagnosis of dogmatic thinking 132
The witch-hunt season is open 134
A basic programme for the development of social science.
Alienation under socialism 136
The party tribunal against Assen Ignatov. Timid solidarity and
loose ties within “the group” 139
Biographies falling apart. Living in the lie and through the lie 143
Sketching out a reformist agenda 147
Intelligentsia and the party bureaucracy 150
A surprising deliverance: the deus ex machina and the
ambivalence of the “pardoning from above” 152
“Philosophy in action”: a critique of the “asymmetrical
relations” in the education model 155
The end of a long administrative assassination 161
“Disarmament” and “self-criticism”: key concepts in the
discourse of power 163
A Bulgarian reception of Heidegger and ways of utilising the
philosopher 165
Heidegger’s deconstruction as a way to experience one’s own
existential situation. Designing a “project” for oneself 169
A play between the truth of historical facts and the “logic of
history” 170
Baiting the other side. State Security and the philosopher 172
Redemption and its price 175
Notes 177
viii Contents
Theoretical outcomes (4): The correlation between coercion
and free action in a totalitarian state 183
Notes 185

7 The Isak Passy case: The separation of political and intellectual

power. Theory and information breakthrough 186
On the tragedy of a crushed ideal 189
Facts against the dogmatist’s theoretical superstition 196
The philosophers’ enlightenment surge. A quest for the educational
and moral fundamentals of young people 198
Altering the whole intellectual context: “destruction through
creation” 202
Notes 206

Theoretical outcomes (5): Academic paradigm and community

amid the one-party dictatorship 208
Notes 214

8 From Zhelyu Zhelev case to the case of “fascism”: Anatomy of

a chain of incidents 215
Fascism: A dissection of the totalitarian phenomenon and the
semantic challenges of a book with a key 216
From a manuscript titled, The Totalitarian State, to Fascism: on
the collective authorship of an incident 220
“Constitutional fiction” and its use 224
The arraignment of the “ideological prosecution”: formalism and
lack of zeal 226
Fissures in censorship. Penalties for “blunted vigilance” and
“political myopia” 227
A split between the party commanding heights and the grassroots.
The primary party organisation – one possible pocket of
resistance 228
Notes 231

9 The Dobrin Spassov case: A clash between the rejection of

totalitarian practices and the commitment to social utopia 234
Alien among his own or the testing of loyalty 235
Hamstrung innovation 237
 Contents ix
Dobrin Spassov stepping into Todor Pavlov’s boots. Efforts
to overcome the “intense backwardness” of Bulgarian
philosophy 239
The debate on totalitarianism and the changes in the structure of
the scientific (philosophical) field 241
The emergence of an alternative assessment centre of academic
relevance and civil conduct 251
The contradiction between the regime’s nature and the principles
of civil conduct 254
Notes 258

10 The Ilcho Dimitrov case: In search of a win-win game within

the system: The public communications craftsman 261
Questioning the simplistic propaganda version of Bulgarian
history between the two World Wars 262
Ilcho Dimitrov and Todor Pavlov: historical facts against
class-and-party fitness for purpose 268
The intellectuals’ quest for positions of power. The relationship
between the power of force and the power of knowledge 272
The in-out existence in two different social environments. The
inexorable logic of symbolic capital exchange 275
The inner workings of big power. How can academic and political
attitudes part ways 279
“Paris is worth a mass”. Clashes between the state administration
and the party apparatus 283
The horizon of reformist thinking and action 288
Notes 290

Theoretical outcomes (6): Specifics of social criticism in

totalitarian society. Social criticism and social change 293
Notes 298

Conclusion: From the big event to the incidents: A reconstruction

of the event(ual) identity of historical change 299
Notes 310
Acronyms 311
Literature and archival sources 313
Index 321
Preface/Acknowledgements

The book you have in your hands is the result of a five-year research effort
following the winning of a European Research Council research grant on the
subject of “Regime and Society in Eastern Europe (1956–1989): From Extended
Reproduction to Social and Political Change”.* The work was carried out by an
international team of five researchers overseen by myself as the lead researcher.
In 2016, I published my part of the project output in the two-volume How Things
Change: From Incidents to the Big Event in the Bulgarian language. Thereafter,
I continued to work along the same lines, and the result was Communism,
Academia, and the University, an adaptation of the initial version for Routledge
and the English-speaking audience. I owe plenty of heartfelt acknowledgements
for being able to write this book.
First of all, thanks are due to the European Research Council for providing the
core funding, which such a large-scale research endeavour could not go without.
We also got valuable administrative support from Sofia University, complete with
everything we needed for our numerous meetings and other project teamwork. My
thanks to all four colleagues who contributed to the project: Thomas Lindenberger
(Germany), Dariusz Stola (Poland), Oldřich Tůma (Czech Republic), and Ádám
Takács (Hungary). Working together extended and deepened our understanding
of the region’s communist past; it also honed the methodological tools whereby
we can adequately interpret it.
I used the opportunity to diversify our project work into two international
conferences, one titled “From Case Study to Event. Principles of Historical
Research” (2014) and the other one, “Comparative Studies of Communism. Regime
and Society in Eastern European Countries” (2015). Apart from discussing some
key methodological issues, we also took a closer look into the interim outcomes
of our studies, including some that were shaped into sections of this book. These
conferences were attended by fellow researchers from various countries whose
papers, critical comments, and shared experiences were embedded in the final

* The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council
under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agree-
ment No. 269608.
 Preface/Acknowledgements xi
result along pathways visible or invisible. It is hardly possible to list all of them
down here, but at least some names ought to be mentioned: Robin Wagner-
Pacifici (USA), Jacques Revel (France), Daniel Dayan (France), Christoph Boyer
(Austria), Dimitri Ginev (Bulgaria), Martin Dimitrov (Bulgaria/USA), Pavel
Kolar (Italy/Germany), and Michael Werner (France).
Other colleagues were also getting involved as external experts in the work
on my topic at certain stages; as academics of high international standing their
comments and suggestions cannot be overestimated: Giovanni Levi, Jeffrey
Goldfarb, Sandrine Kott, and Padraic Kenney. I owe an acknowledgement to
them all as well.
My special thanks to the staff of the Central State Archives, the Sofia State
Archives, the Archives of Sofia University, the Archives of the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences, and the commission in charge of declassifying the
communist secret service files for providing access to their depositories and thus
enabling the research to find its robust documentary footing. I am particularly
indebted to Petya Vassileva-Grueva and Petya Slavova who contributed as
project fellows with invaluable work in the course of our lengthy and exhausting
foraging of the archives. I am also grateful to Dimiter Dimov for assisting me in
the final arrangement of the English text. But this book could have hardly reached
its English-language readership without the committed effort of Georgi Pashov,
whose translation and literary talent gave it an adequate linguistic form. I very
much appreciate that.
Introduction
On this book’s nature and objectives

This research has taken the shape of a branched-out narrative, which has collected
a multitude of closely related life stories that shed light on a variety of political
and ideological contexts and offer interpretations of the social, political, and sci-
entific aspects of academic or public discourses. There are “theoretical outcomes”
as well probing for some broader relevance into the crowd of individual-centred
narratives. These stories were reconstructed through much archive research, per-
sonal testimonies, and digging out of documents so far unknown. They have been
traced step by step, with an amount of detail which sometimes may strike one as
pedantic but is meant to contribute to the detailed reconstruction of the univer-
sity’s functioning and of its faculty’s behaviour during communism. I am aware
that the feeling of reality is sometimes far from reality itself. This is why the
narrative style of this text, despite the occasional interjections of empathy for
some of the personal strivings and agendas of the investigated historical figures,
should provide the degree of objectivity needed to bring the reader closer to the
main aim: a description of the genuine condition of the individual under com-
munism and an unveiling of the reasons for the way all those stories ended. I
believe there is no better way to study the dance between the communist regime
and society, the slow rotting of the system’s flesh, and the distancing between the
human beings and the regimentation that had been visited on them. And this is
somewhat obliquely confirmed by the frequent manifestations of misunderstand-
ing of the regime’s essential qualities – either in mundane lingo or in the realm
of high theory.
In July 1972, the young philosopher Assen Ignatov, expelled from the
Communist Party, sacked from the university, and subjected to pressure and
extortion by State Security, managed to slip through the latter’s iron grip and
emigrate to Belgium. In Bulgaria, they prosecuted him for treason in absentia,
confiscated his belongings, and harassed his family. While in exile, Ignatov was
astonished by his Belgian colleagues’ inability to grasp his former situation and
the reasons for his emigration. This is what he shared in a subsequent interview:

The people I went to met me with that degree of sympathy, which is driven
by the sheer ideological rejection of communism – without personally
knowing it. Anyhow, I bumped into quite a few bureaucratic paradoxes, into
2 Introduction
grotesque situations, into misunderstandings proceeding from simply not
knowing an entirely different world; I was asked questions, which sounded
naive to my ear – if I myself was less informed, I would have thought them
mean-spirited or cynical. I was frequently asked a question that could have
only annoyed a political émigré: ‘Won’t you be visiting Bulgaria this sum-
mer?’ Earlier in my sojourn, they also asked me: ‘Couldn’t you possibly
shut yourself in a world of your own?’ Those who asked were bright peo-
ple, but they didn’t know the communist world and hadn’t suffered its pain
(…) Soren Kierkegaard says: it is not enough to know the pain, you must
experience it in order to understand it.1

This grassroots vantage point does not only delve into individual lives but pro-
vides an opportunity to shed light on collective phenomena and thus connect
the historical narrative with sociological explanations. Indeed, not all individual
fates are equally helpful from such a perspective. It would be better if the intri-
cacies of the selected case studies were applicable to wider social areas. In this
study, I opted for a group of young university teachers from the former faculty
of philosophy and history (PHF) of Sofia University. I limited the scope to seven
individuals: Dobrin Spassov (1926–2010), Isak Passy (1928–2010), Ivan Slavov
(1928–2012), Nikolay Genchev (1931–2000), Ilcho Dimitrov (1931–2002),
Assen Ignatov (1935–2003), and Zhelyu Zhelev (1935–2015). A few more of
their colleagues, e.g. Kiril Vassilev, Elka Panova, Petar Mitev, Alexander Foll,
or Milen Semkov, could have found a place in this group as well. My choice was
based on the actual academic contributions and the place of the core seven in their
academic community. The dramatic situations, which marked out their biogra-
phies to a higher degree than those of their co-workers, also had a role to play in
my choice. These were individuals, trying to practice science in unfavourable or
even perilous conditions, while trespassing the official standard for a “new social-
ist science”.
In the early 1960s, these young scholars, despite their “correct” social origins
and their party tickets, were haunted by political mistrust and locked horns with
the university party structures. They were investigated multiple times and bore the
brunt of various party or administrative penalties. Whatever reasons were quoted
for these penalties, e.g. revisionism, alien origins, moral turpitude or anti-party
activities, they boil down to one and the same thing: they constituted departures
from prescribed behaviour; they contravened principles and values of the estab-
lished order. The conflicts they triggered or were dragged into impinged on the
atmosphere of academia and science. At the end of the day, these clashes spilt
over the confines of the university and the world of science and placed these
young faculty members in a certain type of relationship with the party and admin-
istrative power at various levels.
The study is focused on each individual career, but the unfolding narrative
reveals that their separate cases are intertwined and inseparable. They form a
community, and this goes beyond a sum or an average. Therefore, we have a mul-
tiple rather than a collective subject. These young faculty members shared quite
 Introduction 3
a lot: they were university colleagues, Communist Party members, dedicated to
their careers; they ran afoul of party discipline, had a certain democratic instinct
and generational solidarity, etc. There were important differences among them,
too: in terms of their life and career projects, their motivation, the degree of public
commitment, and indeed in terms of their characters. But given the big powers
at play affecting their destinies, and as they developed within the field of their
mutual relations, they can be treated as offshoots of one common human situation.
Each one of these young academics plays a double role in the overall narrative:
once as the main character in his own story, and the second time as a partici-
pant, sometimes of crucial importance, in the stories of his fellows. Very rarely
is somebody just a formal observer in the lives of the others. A more accurate
evaluation of each participant may only be based on the sum of his interventions
across the individual life stories. Having said that, our exploration was steered in
such a way as to preserve the autonomy of each individual case. This has given us
a chance to highlight the multidimensional nature of this stretch of our history as
well as to never lose sight of individual responsibilities. We should keep in mind
that our protagonists are inevitably standing before a dual examination commit-
tee. One is from the past; it comprised the communist regime watchdogs, most
often lined up as a party tribunal. The other one is the potential readership after
1989, which evaluates their behaviour vis-à-vis their commitment to a future that
was a figment of their imagination in their time and is now a reality.
There is another factor related to the young faculty members, which makes
them a good choice in scrutinising the relationship between regime and society:
their professional fields, philosophy, and history. Both subjects were heavy-
weights in the communist state, having an important role to play in the process
of its legitimising. Marxism in its Leninist version was hailed as the “scientific
ideology”. The consequence was a society totally permeated by this ideology.
Marxism-Leninism functioned as a system regulating the human activities in all
areas of life, from its basic day-to-day aspects all the way to the branches of
science. Even the pettiest deviation from the texts, which underpinned the sys-
tem, could not be tolerated. Doubting any of their claims, or any encroachments
on their absolute monopoly were interpreted as an inroad into communist power
itself, into the very idea of socialism. Marxism-Leninism was crowned as the
official state ideology, with the official philosophers as its high priests. The bor-
derline between the scientist and the party apparatchik became blurred – as was
between science and pseudoscience. They even swapped their places, as pseu-
doscience gained the stature of science while genuine science was stigmatised
as pseudoscience. This was the turf where the clashes of our young philosophers
and historians took place. They perceived their disciplines as an area of personal
responsibility, career and mission.
But however interesting and socially meaningful they might be, their life sto-
ries on their own wouldn’t give us sufficient leverage for a deeper reconstruction
of the regime’s historical trajectory. Without interpretations based on relevant
concepts of the social sciences, we run the risk of relegating these life stories to
some sort of period drama or biopics. This is why the biographical trajectories of
4 Introduction
the seven philosophers and historians as well as the situations which bind them
into a community, into one larger case study, have been explored with the help of
two analytical categories securing the link between the two levels of the narrative:
the individual story and social life. The first research approach helps us inter-
pret the position and actions of our characters in various situations or within the
boundaries of different primary groups. They perform as variability indexes, and
through them we detect the position of the actors and the changes they undergo.
The concept of action is a pivotal one in this sense, and Donald Davidson has cor-
rectly defined it as an “ontological category”: one that triggers changes in a certain
substance and therefore produces meaning, which leads to the confirmation or
rejection of a certain identity.2 The actions of our seven echoed both in their close
circle and in the broader society, provoking various reactions. In other words,
they put other individuals or groups in certain situations, thus compelling them to
respond or take sides, or express an opinion.
If during the times of classic Stalinism the loopholes between what was explic-
itly permitted and what individuals could afford to do were either tiny or non-
existent, after 1956 these loopholes grew ever larger. This kind of action, which
represents an unexpected – from the vantage point of the system itself – deviation
from the established order, I define via the concept of incident. The incident has
a relational nature: it originates in the correlation between the individual and the
norm, between different individuals, or between the individual and the powers
that be. The key element in an incident is not only the departure from the pre-
scribed norm but also the repercussions that this departure has found among the
individual’s reference groups and the regime’s security extensions. This provides
the opportunity to monitor the behaviour of individuals of various positions in
different levels of the system.3 In a certain sense, the gap between a bigger and a
smaller deviation is not of vital importance as they put to the test the comportment
of individuals, groups and systemic norms to a similar degree. The incident is a
challenge, which has roiled the status quo.
The ferocious dictatorship rendered any opposition activities impossible.
Strikes, rallies, and simply outspoken negative attitudes were branded and pros-
ecuted as counter-revolution and treason. Language remained the only chance
of speaking in the first person – whether with or without political connotations.
Language acquired an oversized importance; and it was only the Communist
Party’s own language, that was allowed to exist. The young philosophers and
historians acted as conspirators within the bounds of the official language, which
they had also accepted as both the instrument of subterfuge and target of decon-
struction. Their linguistic shenanigans revealed them as both conformists and
rebels. They were ordinary people rather than heroes, full of discrepancies and
living amid compromise and through compromise. Only in this sense were tainted
by the moral code of the powers that be; they were integral part of the reality of
the ubiquitous fraud – albeit that small part of it, which served to disguise some
good intentions.
Sceptical opinions might also be heard nowadays as far as the stature of these
academics is concerned. They stand accused on account of their ambivalent
 Introduction 5
situation vis-à-vis the regime: they didn’t openly challenge the dictatorship, as
they were too timid to explicitly explain what their writings were suggesting. But
we mustn’t forget that it isn’t only what was said that matters – it is what was
said in a given situation. The politics of their speech acts can only be interpreted
as a correlation between text and context. It is obvious that throughout the 1960s
and during the first half of the 1970s, these acts were hardly performative. Being
young philosophers and historians, they were wary of openly staking their claim –
which doesn’t imply they didn’t have one. But their speech was the one of hidden
meaning, and it begged for interpretation. And the controversies typically erupted
when the powers that be took it upon themselves to interpret. But just like any
interpretation, the one of the regime was liable to dispute, and this was the only
defence line for those found at fault – inasmuch as they used the same language
as their prosecutors and referred to the same values or figures of authority. This
transformed their communist reality into an arena of never-ending, befuddling
language games.
This largely defines the nature of incidents arising in the course of our story.
They were triggered by words uttered in university auditoriums, by research stud-
ies, by publications. Words – spoken or written – stood at their foundation. These
were incidents of discourse. In its capacity as an ideocratic regime, communism
is fundamentally logocentric, which implies that for it everything exists inside
language. Therefore, everything taking place in society could only be understood
through discourse, in relation to discourses.
The other concept necessitated by our research is that of the event: it will be
introduced and discussed at the end of the book. This study follows each indi-
vidual story within the young academic group in the course of more than three
decades. This is a narrative unfolding in time to keep track of behaviours and
actions in a fluctuating context. But this couldn’t be a linear story leading from
point A to point B as the crow flies. There are cadences in these stories, hark-
ing back to moments that could be defined as regress in the social condition –
or indeed in the stance of an actor. If I could give you a spatial metaphor: this
narrative unfolds like a spiral delineating three expanding circles: the 1960s, the
first half of the 1970s, and the second half of the 1980s. These circles outline
three somewhat stereotypical situations, which are however determined by the
mutating variables of the social, cultural, and political context, and a different
balance of power between the usual antagonists. The actors themselves exhibited
meaningful differences in their motivation, objectives, social status, and nature
of their actions; they gained different formal or informal standing within their
professional milieu. The timespan allows us to make comparisons between the
three periods and to clarify the similarities or the differences between individual
incidents, between the ways, in which the powers that be chose to respond, and in
the echo of these incidents across society at large. The careful reconstruction of
narrative is an intellectual necessity for every serious analysis of the event. But it
is also necessary to tack back and forth between narration and theoretical reflec-
tion.4 It is precisely this reconstruction that allows us to contrast the principles
keeping the system together with the outcome of the protagonists’ destructive
6 Introduction
concrete endeavours. The interpretation of these incidents has revealed something
irreversible in each one of them, and it manifests itself in the actors’ changing
attitudes. Incidents have their mark.
A few words about the interplay of concepts used in the title. Its first part
designates the study’s inception situation: how ideology engulfed science; how
education was fully submitted to political expediency; how disciplines like phi-
losophy and history were reduced to chambermaids of politics. Political power
was exerted in science by its authorised proxies who formed an alien body in the
academic world: they vigilantly guarded the regime’s interest, along with their
own. The subtitle suggests a gradual shift in the domination of ideology over
science. “Power in university” was altered by “the power of the university”. The
implication is not that the university as an institution transformed into a place
where political power was exercised. Yet some of its faculty members did gain
power. This situation reflects the profound ambiguity in the concept of power as
such. I believe it could be understood in three distinctive ways, and each one is
grounded in the situations described in this study.
The first implication of the “university in power” indicates the aspirations
towards (and getting hold of) senior positions in the university administrative
pecking order by members of our protagonist group (among them head of ‘cathe-
dra’/department/faculty dean, member of faculty or academic council, rector/
provost, etc.) or Communist Party structures, e.g. secretary of primary party
organisation, secretary of university party committee. They typically occupied
these positions despite the shortage of enthusiasm from above and thanks to their
grassroots appeal achieved through their academic or human qualities, initiative
or public recognition. The notion of “university in power” is based on the notion
of resources. Their foothold in the academic administration granted them access
to such resources, e.g. influence on the election of department chiefs, of assistant
professors or PhD students, a say in the allocation of funds, trips overseas, spe-
cialisations, book approvals for print, among a few others. Having a foothold in
a primary party organisation was also a resource allowing them to challenge the
party bureaucracy further up the ladder.
The second meaning of “university in power” points beyond the academic turf.
Thanks to their qualities, competence, and credibility, after the mid-1970s faculty
members were promoted to key posts in the party hierarchy or the state admin-
istration, i.e. they were invested with real authority. They were guided by their
resolve – or delusion – to ease the regime into its next, more progressive, stage.
Thus, they turned into constituents of its structure.
The third implication reaches out for the realm of symbols: science was a part
of the symbolic order and was therefore the vector of symbolic power, the power
of authority (on university undergraduates, the readership beyond academia and
the public opinion at large). This authority rested on scientific merit and personal
presence in the public space. This kind of public credibility could only be based
on shared values and endeavours. Tapping into the resources of knowledge, the
academics gained up-to-date tools for research; they could also introduce new
 Introduction 7
forms of teaching. In various ways – more straightforward or circuitous – this
gave them influence in shaping society’s shared picture of the world. In a sense,
that gave power to the university.
Paul Ricoeur’s reflections on the relationship between power and domina-
tion help us to understand how power manifests itself under a despotic regime.
Ricoeur believes a pluralism of powers may exist even if there is a monopoly of
domination.5 Indeed, domination encompasses and limits the other powers, but
it is not capable of annihilating them. In our case, the university’s power was
strongly limited, but it managed to grow incrementally within its own realm. In
the field of their academic subjects, our young philosophers and historians were
getting the upper hand. In direct proportion to their upward careers, the party
proxies at the university were losing ground. This meant that the party itself was
also falling by the wayside. The institutionalising of science was increasingly
underpinned by the interactions between scientists. Academic communities were
being built, and they fostered their own rules and values. They now held stronger
orientation to the broader public as well; closer informal links between scientists,
artists, journalists, etc. were no longer uncommon, and this set the stage for a
broader scientific-intellectual movement.
But if our protagonists went some way in turning their backs on official ideol-
ogy, could we assume that the resulting science was ideology-free and neutral in
its axiology? Two authors, who in many ways have divergent or even opposing
views, Pierre Bourdieu and Paul Ricoeur, deny this possibility, although based on
different arguments. Bourdieu denies the idea of a neutral science such as fiction,
which serves to mask an ideological strategy disguised as taking an epistemologi-
cal stance.6 In his jargon, the pretence for neutrality masks the venal interests of
the dominant class. Ricoeur also thinks it is difficult, or even impossible, to set
science and ideology apart. He sees the reason for that in ideology’s function to
symbolise social relations, and to be a social mediator. For Ricoeur, the oppo-
sition ideology-science can neither be confirmed nor denied: it is a dialectical
relationship. “There is tension between them, which can neither be reduced to an
antithesis nor to a contradiction of genres”.7
The question boils down to the definition of “ideology”: is it the Marxian
notion of a false consciousness (Bourdieu basically stuck to this notion) or is it the
“ideology in the weak sense”? Every individual or a party, according to Raymond
Aron, even those which flaunt a most ideology-free stance, are charged with an
implicit ideology. Such an understated or even not entirely conscientious ideol-
ogy permeated the conduct and works of our young philosophers and historians.
We can try to reconstruct it while tracing their efforts to put a red line between
their own idea of academic work and position, on the one hand, and the req-
uisite class-cum-party approach of Marxism-Leninism on the other. Their texts
and behaviours are gravitating around principles and objectives, which impart
a week counter-ideology located not too far from liberal values or principles.
They appeared mostly unaware of that, or at least didn’t explicate it. It seems the
party apparatchiks became better aware of this fact. They keenly sensed that the
8 Introduction
undermining of the party science orthodoxy inevitably had political ramifications.
Their own place as the guardians of this model was also questioned – as were the
established social mores.
The horizon of this study is the fall of communism, the moment of radical
change, i.e. the mother of all events. But the latter won’t be scrutinised in itself:
this might be the subject of another special study. My primary task is to shed light
on the preconditions leading to it, on the genesis of communism’s slow descent
from the historical scene. Coming closer to an understanding of why communism
vanished into thin air so unexpectedly and ignominiously demanded an attempt
at hindsight, from its demise to the time when it looked all-powerful, and when
it stood bewildered before the audacity of the first and seemingly harmless inci-
dents. This retrospection enabled me to find, identify, and portray the agents of
the slow, incremental change, and to connect them with the space and time of their
activity. As far as the Big Event is concerned, its theoretical model is going to be
presented in the closing chapter of this work.

Notes
1 “Assen Ignatov – The Philosopher Who Laughs and Cries”, an interview by Nelly
Konstantinova, Bulgarian Journalist, Vol. 4, 1991.
2 Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford University Press, New York,
1980, pp. 173, 180.
3 Incidents help us better understand the nature of the regime: its structures, ways of
exercising power or repression, the mutations it undergoes in the course of the years,
its modes of negotiation and compromise, and finally – its weakness.
4 William H. Sewell Jr., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2005, p. 244.
5 Paul Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, Seuil, Paris, 1990.
6 Pierre Bourdieu, Les usages sociaux de la science. Pour une sociologie clinique du
champ scientifique, Une conférence-débat organisée par le groupe Sciences en ques-
tions, Paris INRA, 11 mars 1997.
7 Paul Ricœur, Du texte à l’action. Essais d’herménétique II. Éd. du Seuil, Paris, 1986,
p. 323.
1 Seizing power and institutionalisation
of “the new socialist science”

Between 1964 and 1970, an intense process of internal differentiation and con-
frontation was developing among the relatively small teaching staff in a disci-
pline taught at the Sofia University, philosophy, accompanied by investigations
and inquiries along administrative and party channels, harsh accusations, harass-
ment and punishments going all the way to expulsion from the Communist Party
and – by default – dismissal from office. The purpose of these actions is “re-
convalescence” of the environment, if we use a favourite expression of the party
vernacular.
At that time, philosophy and history were fused together into the Philosophy
and History Faculty (PHF), under a common administrative management (Dean’s
Office and Faculty council) and with a common Communist Party organisation.
The latter united the two distinct membership groups of philosophers and histo-
rians, but only as a whole was it entitled by statute to take decisions on member
accessions or expulsions. This situation is further complicated by the fact that the
two specialities had different specifics and problems, and, as we will see later,
substantial variances in terms of staff quality. Nonetheless, whatever took place
in the philosophy speciality could not but have an impact on what was going on
among the historians, hence the crisis gripping the former engulfed individual
historians as well, with one of them (N. Genchev) being a very active participant
in the conflict.
This kind of situation is not something new for the SU; it could actually be seen
as one of the abating purge waves in the process of the communist “renewal” of
the university after the communists took power on September 9, 1944. In its initial
stages, the process was spontaneous, even elemental, targeted against lecturers
blacklisted for their fascist past. Thereafter, it took a more regulated fashion with
the adoption of the Decree on the Purge of Teaching Cadre from All Degrees in
the Education System, and all its subsequent amendments. Most of the so-called
“bourgeois academics” were fired, and the purge affected a substantial portion of
the studentship as well. The restructuring of the national higher education system
was also accompanied by a fundamental replacement of curricula: the two pro-
cesses were intertwined as the new education doctrine could only be implemented
through a fresh and ideologically trained set of cadre. A pivotal element in this
process was the decree of March 1949 whereby – alongside the introduction of
10 Seizing power and institutionalisation
requisite ideological subjects – imposed “literacy” trainings in dialectical and
historical materialism for university teachers across the other disciplines. A broad
teaching niche was suddenly created.1

Purging the university

The personal archive of the newly fledged red academician Todor Pavlov con-
tains two papers from the 1950s, both having a stringently instructive nature and
designed to reposition Bulgarian science and academia onto a Marxist-Leninist
foundation. The first one is a lecture on “Science and Partisanship”2 read at Sofia
University in front of a faculty and undergraduate audience, and the second one is
a bulky piece entitled “On Partisanship in Philosophy and Other Sciences”.3 The
key assumption in both pieces is that every area of learning and research should
be marked by its party affiliation as it is inevitably a unity of worldview and
method, with all appeals for “pure, above-class, non-Partisan, a political, neutral,
etc. science are nothing else but a class interest in disguise”, “a genuine glass,
party and gnoseological reaction”. Pavlov criticism specifically targets the legacy
“bourgeois science”:

It can comfortably be claimed that the huge majority of our academics and
faculty did in the past and up until today stand by exactly this kind of posi-
tion; it will not be misguided to add that even now one might still find such
“Marxists/dialectical materialists” who are still convinced and maintain that
science is one thing while partisanship is entirely another (…) In our country,
a prominent figure as a theorist and philosopher of the “non-partisanship” of
academia and research, was in the past, and is even today, Professor Dimitar
Mikhalchev (…) Along with a number of national and overseas academics,
Mikhalchev has always deemed – and still deems – it necessary to prove
that natural and formal sciences do not and must not have anything to do
with philosophy, or, which is still the same, that no scientific philosophical
foundation or method is needed for dedicated areas of research (e.g. physics,
biology, etc.) to develop properly.

The list of criticised scientists swells with additions from other branches, e.g. his-
tory, language and literature, mathematics, agriculture, biology, etc.

It is not only the scientific philosophy as a scientific worldview and a most

general scientific methods is and must be – due to its very scientific nature,
role and importance – consistently and inevitably and all the way through
partisan in a Bolshevik way. Every science, being a dialectical unity of theory
and method, including biology, as well as psychology, and physics, or even
mathematics, should be consistently and all the way through partisan – and
in a Bolshevik way too. If it fails to do so, it will fail to be a real science and
have the nature, role and importance of a weapon, not only of the scientific
explanation, but of a progressive, revolutionary remodelling of the world.4
 Seizing power and institutionalisation 11
Faculty members from the “old” university were dismissed according to lists,
which were put together by local Communist Party commissars and personally
approved by T. Pavlov.
The events from the early 1960s we are dealing with were taking place in an
entirely different context: a firmly entrenched communist rule and a certain mel-
lowing of the regime having set in nearly a decade after the twentieth congress
of the Soviet Communist Party and (CPSU) its echo, the “April Plenum” of the
Bulgarian Communist Party, and after having gone some way down the hesitant
but still palpable “road of de-Stalinisation”. This time, the vigilant ideologues’
atavistic reflex to detect a hostile entity was not targeted at the old class enemy
but at their comrades from the common faculty party organisation, mostly young
assistant professors who had recently received their party membership cards, and
– almost without any exceptions – enthusiastically joined the drive to transform
society the communist way. The kind of squabbles PHF was going through were
seen across SU faculties, but nowhere else were they so severe and had such
alarming consequences as in the philosophy speciality. This is corroborated by
the memo of the 8th BCP Regional Committee in charge of the tertiary education
establishments5 from 19 March 1966 titled “On the results of the measures taken
by the regional BCP committee towards enhancing the functioning of organisa-
tions of deteriorating party unity”6. The memo had established a growing num-
ber of de facto split faculty BCP organisations, subsequent to hostile in-house
relations and jockeying for power. There were examples available from several
universities: the Civil Engineering University, the Hydrotechnical University, the
Supreme Institute for Physical Education and Sport and the Sofia University (in
its philology, physics, and philosophy/history faculties).
The memo qualified the situation in the philosophy speciality as a matter of
grave concern. While across other faculties fraction struggles sprung up to a large
degree on the basis of personal or age-related conflicts, the philosophers were
blighted by fundamental divergence on the very role of politics in the scientific
area. This was precisely what frustrated the supreme party leadership: it regarded
the speciality as an ideology bastion and a pillar of the regime, as it was the key
tool of the new education doctrine warranting the upbringing of young specialists
in the spirit of communism and loyalty. Philosophy teachers were regarded as a
complement to the Party’s propaganda machine. This was exactly why only a
member of the party could be a philosophy teacher: a non-member (never mind a
hostile element) could not possibly teach a subject demanding profound personal
conviction. The problem cropped up as soon as there were indications in place
that party membership no longer guaranteed the loyal fulfilment of the tasks com-
missioned. Something even worse: an alarming dispute was brewing on the very
nature of these tasks.
The university teachers accused of veering away from the ideological line
were made subject to a genuine investigation, and their conduct was lambasted at
special party meetings. All these meetings were reminiscent of a trial exhibiting
similarities with the inquisition process (this image reappeared in the memories of
a number of communists affected by the repressions during the 1950s and 1960s7)
12 Seizing power and institutionalisation
as long as the investigated “crimes” did not have a civil or legal nature but were
trespasses against the faith. The ideological heresy was epitomised either by the
“revisionist” or by the “dogmatic”, depending on the ideological perspective.
These trials – however innocuous they might look compared to the political
ones from the times of classic Stalinism (as long they were not aimed at the physi-
cal annihilation but at the social marginalisation of the culprit) employed a similar
structure and staging techniques. The action was kicked off by exaggerated or
downright false accusations, then a campaign was launched to smear and discredit
the alleged culprits mostly in the eyes of the broader public but also before the
superior party structures, a severe mental pressure was exerted on the accused
ones, long hearings or interrogations were held, and all possible means were tried
to wrench confessions, i.e. “self-criticism”, and a conviction was pronounced in
the end. Even though the venues of these trials typically were the meetings of
the grassroots party organisation, the trials in series of cases had their invisible
ramifications up the chain of command: e.g. the other BCP regional committees,
its Central Committee departments, and all the way up to Politburo. The machine
was centralised, and even the tiniest motion somewhere in the periphery sent
shock waves to the centre. Hence the importance of understanding the position
and personal commitment of the philosophy party group members and how they
were manifested in real life.8

De-Stalinisation and swift re-Stalinisation in the university

If we were to clarify the underpinnings of this intensive purge in the philosophy
discipline at SU and to find our bearings around the motivation in each particu-
lar case, we have to get back a few years to the 20th Congress of the CPSU and
its political repercussions in Bulgaria, having materialised in the so-called April
Plenum of BCP that took place in the same 1956. Reams of pages in Bulgarian
historiography have been dedicated to this issue. The evaluations have ranged
from extolling it as the symbol and guarantee of the normalisation process all
the way to belittling it as simulated de-Stalinisation aimed at halting the real pro-
cesses of democratisation and conserving the top party ranks and the entrenched
political pattern. Its target actually was to hit the proper degree of de-Stalinisation
and prevent the broader party membership or – even worse – the broader public
taking the initiative in its own hands. Unlike Poland and Hungary, the de-Stalin-
isation process proved unable to profoundly shake up BCP or lead to internecine
power struggles or schisms. Its top tier stayed monolithic and retained full control
on the critical attitudes among various social strata stopping every attempt to step
beyond the pale in its tracks.
De-Stalinisation was taking place in a society that had been profoundly
changed. In all areas of life, the old elites had either been destroyed or had adapted
to the new circumstances (they had accepted the rules, some were even offering
their service) or were thoroughly marginalised and rendered voiceless. The social
arena had been populated by new characters who had taken part in establish-
ing the regime or had been its frank sympathisers who, in one form or another,
 Seizing power and institutionalisation 13
were giving a hand to establishing the party dominance in every area of life. The
major division was no longer the one between communists and anti-communists
but between party members and outsiders; among party circles there was a clash
between dogmatic Stalinists and “democratic communists”. Therefore, the new
opponents – not to the regime or to its ideology, but to its methods or to what
was perceived as “unacceptable political mores” – were forming realignments
amidst the party ranks, amidst the people whose careers were kickstarted under
the regime and in its name. These so-called “polyvalent” communists who at one
time or another – regardless of their place in the pecking order – could play dif-
ferent roles, sometimes conservative ones, sometimes liberal ones. This typical
character born amidst the frustrations of Khrushchev’s time gained firmer ground
in Brezhnev’s era. Its rank-and-file representatives were actually taking their cues
from the top: despite their differences, Vladislav Gomulka, Janos Kadar, and
Todor Zhivkov had a common feature: each one of them could and actually did
spring up a broad range of policies, from repression all the way to liberalisation.
This imparted opportunistic flexibility to the system and fostered longer-term
expectations for change. Liberalisation is probably as accurate as we can get in
designating the boundaries of the permissible. Liberalisation rather than democ-
ratisation. The regime saw risky connotations in the latter. Liberalisation implied
slackening of repression within the limits set up by the regime. Thus, society in
the late 1950s and early 1960s was living under the aegis of liberalisation watch-
ing the attempts of certain individuals to test the impermeability of the system
through solitary acts of deviation or challenge.
After the regime change in 1944, and especially after 1947, most significant
philosophers of the older generation – Spiridon Kazandzhiev, Ivan Sarailiev
(who wrote on Peirce), Dimitar Mikhalchev – were removed from the faculty for
their bourgeois origins or views incompatible with Marxism-Leninism. Curricula
were altered beyond recognition by virtue of introducing new disciplines: dia-
lectical and historical materialism, political economy of capitalism, criticism of
contemporary bourgeois philosophy, etc., while philosophers were seen as party
workers commissioned with an outstandingly onerous task. These new cadres
were schooled in the ideological disciplines by the Moscow “Red Professorship”
(Radoslav Yanchev, Yanko Atanasov, Raycho Karakolov), where the future
staffers for the party and propaganda machine were trained. From various direc-
tions, they were joined by former paramilitaries (partisans) and political prisoners
having gone through the party schools of Moscow (Kiril Petrov), Sofia (Vassil
Ivanov) and even Beijing (Lenin Dimitrov). An exception in the group of former
partisans was Kiril Vassilev, a SU philosophy graduate in 1942. This list was
being filled up to the early 1970s with people who can be defined as the residue
of power struggles among the top party ranks. After their removal from senior
positions, they were “re-accommodated” as teachers in ideology disciplines. Such
as Vassil Ivanov, who graduated the Sadovo Farming School and the Supreme
Party School in Sofia to become personal assistant in Valko Chervenkov’s office
(1951–1955), head of the Archiving (1951) and Propaganda and Agitation depart-
ments of the BCP Central Committee (1961–1966); Kiril Petrov, former head of
14 Seizing power and institutionalisation
department at the 8th BCP RC (1949–1951), former deputy head of the higher
education department at the Committee for Science, Art and Culture (1952–1953)
and parallel with that an assistant to Valko Chervenkov, former head of the party
training facility at the BCP Sofia City Committee (1963–1967), first secretary of
the 8th BCP RC (1967–1968); Ghirghin Ghirghinov, of veterinary background,
prior to his nomination as PHF Dean (1960–1967) and Head of the Dialectical
and Historical Materialism Department (1961–1968) was heading the science
and education department at BCP Central Committee (1950–1952) and later the
Dialectical and Historical Materialism Department at the Agricultural Academy
(1959–1960). In 1966 Ghirghinov was nominated as the head of science and edu-
cation department at the BCP Sofia City Committee. In his later career, having
been through a number of high-ranking positions, he became a member of the
party’s Central Committee (1977).
These hybrid teachers typically had no philosophical background and were
therefore attached to the disciplines, which the regime had just created and was
striving to impose as the kingpins of the curriculum: “History of the Bulgarian
Communist Party”, “History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”,
“Dialectical and historical materialism”, “Political Economy of Capitalism”,
“Scientific Communism”, “Civil Defence”, etc. These disciplines were not
demanding in terms of creative talent; what they wanted instead was a correct
position and a conviction that continuous repetition of “the truth” warranted com-
pliance with the party line. The university under communism could not get rid of
the hybrid lecturers until the system’s very end, although their weight was greatly
reduced.
The situation was less extreme among the university historians. There was no
shortage of resistance members (Dimitar Kossev, Evlogy Buzhashki), intellectu-
als affiliated to communist circles prior to 1944 (Todor Borov), Soviet gradu-
ates (Atanas Milchev) or party apparatchiks (Asparoukh Avramov). Yet given
the nature of the discipline, the training staffers who occupied the vacant jobs of
removed bourgeois professors were in most cases professional historians with
teaching experience. Despite their subservient contribution to the communist
forging of national history, they were not inclined to extreme indoctrination of the
academic milieu. History was at least an older discipline demanding real qualities
and specific knowledge, especially in areas such as archaeology, library studies,
and archiving. Dimitar Angelov had a doctoral degree from Munich (1939–1943),
Alexander Bourmov specialised in Vienna (1940–1941), Khristo Gandev had a
doctorate from Prague (1937), and Tushe Vlahov specialised in Berlin and Paris
(1929–1932). Yet there were others who sojourned in the discipline’s margins as
teachers in small towns and villages. Nikolay Genchev described one of them,
who obtained the honours of an academician9 the following way:

Khristo Khristov was a latecomer to the university after long years in the out-
back as a village teacher. People like him were the ones who were summoned
after 9 September 1944 to step in and replace the old bourgeois professors.
 Seizing power and institutionalisation 15
Khristov was profoundly appreciative of this Party gift. Yet having gone
through the mayhem of the 1940s and 50s and having served as a “scientific”
cat’s paw in bringing about the abovementioned forgeries, his personality
had gradually forked, and he began to realize the fact he had been running
unseemly errands. Yet this character bifurcation was kept deep down in sup-
pressed by layers of gratitude that they had made him a professor and later
even an academician, and by the fear he could lose it all unless he faithfully
served the ideas for the sake of which he had been uplifted from the Rhodope
village of Chokmanovo and brought all the way to Sofia.10

Some senior academics of this kind were not so much overshooting party bounds
as they were conformists who would not eagerly embark on persecutions but
hardly ever found the courage to stand up for those accused of ideological sins.
The undergraduate situation was no different. The bulk of students were
admitted by virtue of several methods, and only one of them was the admission
test. Over 50% of undergraduates signed up by default based on some sort of
privilege. Former partisans, political prisoners, workers, youth union activists:
typically young people without any solid education who had graduated from one
of the party schools or the so-called workers’ faculties (Rabfac). In the wake of
Khrushchev’s thaw, several consecutive waves of decommissioned army officers
were given the chance to sign up to a freely chosen discipline. A major portion
of them chose one of the “ideological disciplines”. These students typically were
much older than their counterparts and had already been through the stringent
school of party or army discipline, their interests were limited and their plans
for the future were seldom related to science. They rapidly found their way to a
career as Komsomol functionaries, occupied key positions in youth organisations
and student councils where they dictated the agenda. In a number of cases they
got involved in surveillance and snitching on their fellow students and teachers.
All this frustrated – to a large extent deliberately – the formation of a homog-
enous youth environment, and was a manifestation of an overarching principle:
to infiltrate every social system with a “healthy class core”, and thus to ensure it
lived up to the party standards in its organisational life.
But the philosophy curriculum also contained subjects left over from the “old”
university, which made up the classical system of philosophical education. They
couldn’t be taught by people without a more robust training, hence the renewal of
the socialist university went through the co-opting of “our young cadres” – activ-
ists of the communist youth movement and fresh recruits of the Communist Party,
having majored in philosophy or history at the Sofia University. They covered
traditional disciplines like history of philosophy, logic (with its branches, e.g.
dialectical, symbolic, etc.), ethics, psychology, aesthetics, criticism of modern
bourgeois philosophy, etc.
Small staffing breakthroughs took place in the philosophy speciality after
1956, with the appearance of a few better professionally qualified, highbrow
young teachers, connected with the communist movement as well yet not having
16 Seizing power and institutionalisation
had directly participated in establishing the new regime and different to their pre-
decessors – who mostly came from rural backgrounds – in terms of their social
milieu and attitude towards their subject. Dobrin Spassov and Elka Panova were
the first ones who came to the faculty followed by Kiril Vassilev. This circle was
later expanded to include Isak Passy and Ivan Slavov. They did not perceive their
philosophic vocation as a party commission but as an opportunity for a real aca-
demic career guided by genuine fascination or even passion for philosophy. They
were also in command of foreign languages and were widely read. The passion for
genuinely scholarly philosophy was specifically palpable among the next recruit-
ment of young assistants or PhD students such as Assen Ignatov, Peter Mitev,
Zhelyu Zhelev, etc. These young people pursued their own interests in science.
They formed a peculiar circle heartened by the free thinking and support by the
doyen Kiril Vassilev.
Indeed, Kiril Vassilev, D. Spassov, E. Panova and I. Passy, or even some of
their younger fellow philosophers, did pay their due to their times. Their admis-
sion to the philosophy faculty was eased not only by their party membership but
also by their actual conduct and publications sharing a spirit, which affiliated them
to the dogmatic environment and gained the trust of ideological patrons and senior
officials.
University history was getting refreshed by a similar new wave. Among the
most publicly vigorous and prominent young historians were Nikolay Genchev
and Ilcho Dimitrov, but the group also included Milen Semkov, Alexander Foll,
Konstantin Kossev, Khristo Kiossev, etc. Even though most of them were not
bound to enter nearly as many frays as their philosophy counterparts in the sub-
sequent careers, the conduct of younger historians was no different from that of
younger philosophers, with strong friendships and partnerships emerging between
the two groups. These ties were in themselves one of the key prerequisites for
survival in a barren and inhospitable academic environment.
In the early 1960s, the PHF party organisations were already split into two
camps: party functionaries and serious scientists, Stalinists and anti-Stalinists,
dogmatists and creative Marxists. The first one was how the groups understood
the nature of philosophy as a university discipline: the apparatchiks stubbornly
upheld its “ideological nature”.11 The requirement was that philosophy lecturers
be Communist Party members and hence their shared membership in one and the
same party grassroots organisation led to the overlapping of roles and complicated
relationships. In a situation like this, both the party functionary and the talented
researcher could claim priority to an equal degree. The dogmatists did their best
to push the argument out of science into the turf of ideology or ultimately politics,
hijacking the role of party line mouthpieces not without support from the top
party ranks. The second reason was of a personal nature: the older generation was
clearly aware that losing their positions in the faculty would scupper their chances
for successful promotions up the party hierarchy (this would prove their inabil-
ity to live up to the commissioned tasks). Another alarming sign for them was
the strong interest among undergraduates towards the lectures of members of the
 Seizing power and institutionalisation 17
opposing camp, as well as the growing broader popularity quite a few of the latter
enjoyed thanks to their publications and other media appearances. D. Spassov, K.
Vassilev, and I. Passy went out of their way to stay away from the dogmatists’
innuendo, yet the youngest philosophy lecturers were neither as experienced, nor
as cautious, they felt less dependent. After the lull in the late 1950s, the spiral of
conflict and repression was again set off by the activities of a freshly enrolled PhD
student. He stirred up a situation of direct confrontation, and despite their efforts
to play down the clash they were flushed into clarifying their positions and inevi-
tably dragged into the eye of the storm.

Notes
1 “The Tribunal Upon Historians”, Bulgarian Historians-Documents and Discussions
1944–1950, compiled by Vera Mutafchieva, Vessela Chichovska, Dochka Ilieva, Elena
Noncheva, Zlatina Nikolova, and Tsvetana Velichkova, Academic Publishing House
“Prof. M. Drinov”, Sofia, 1995.
2 BAS Archive, T. Pavlov Section – Domain 42, list 1, archive unit 222. The lecture was
delivered on 22 December 1947.
3 BAS Archive, T. Pavlov Section – Domain 42, list 1, archive unit 285. The article
is dated 20 February 1949. Todor Pavlov, On Partisanship in Philosophy and Other
Sciences.
4 Ibid.
5 BCP organisations in Sofia were territorially structured. The city had been divided into
seven regions and the grassroots party organisations of those working or living in an
area were subordinate to a regional BCP committee. The higher education schools –
regardless of their location – were the only ones that were squeezed into the special
8th region, in charge of the monitoring, directing and supervising Communist Party
life across universities. We can assume that this segregation of higher education into
a special structure was done mainly for two reasons: (1) to allow a stricter centralised
control inasmuch as this group was prone to a more lax discipline and unwanted liber-
ties in their thinking and sometimes even moving, and (2) to ward off spreading the
“infection” from this party organisation out to other sections of the party membership,
especially among working-class party organisations.
6 Sofia State Archive, Domain 13, Inventory 6, archive unit 1, sheet no. 101–115.
7 Vladimir Topencharov, Demons of My Time, Bulvest-2000, Sofia, 1993. Ivan Slavov
(ed.), Fascism Against Fascism, University Publishing House “St. Kliment Ohridski”,
Sofia, 1991. In parts of his diary, published in this book, Kiril Vassilev, recollecting a
similar trial, used expressions like, “party tribunal proceedings”, “the ruthless org-party
Themis”, “the party org-Themis”.
8 The party organisation of the Philosophy and History Faculty comprised two party
groups: one of philosophers and one of historians. Either led an organisational life of its
own but they shared a leadership, with issues like new member admissions or expulsion
from the party falling within the competence of the overall party organisation.
9 The highest title in Bulgarian (and Soviet) academic hierarchy followed by professor.
10 Nikolay Genchev, Selected Writings v.1–5, Recollections v.5, Gutenberg, Sofia, 2005,
p. 142.
11 In general terms, the faculty atmosphere was anything but academic. There was never
an occasion when we could sit one opposite the other to argue on principles, to con-
tradict one another (…) There was a pack writing dumb papers and a bunch of aca-
demic people who were constantly worried and had their ears pricked most of the while
18 Seizing power and institutionalisation
because the others could come and kick them around. Brains were no privilege, no
advantage, on the contrary, brains made you dangerous (…) There used to be a crucial
issue back then: whatever we taught, was it a science? This science, how did our stu-
dents take to it, did it have any public repercussions, and were there any ramifications
outside Bulgaria? This is what it was like – philosophy was struck dead as a science
throughout those years. Everybody was deprived back then.
Ivan Slavov, Interview, January 2012.
2 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
Sinning against faith and the party Themis

Following a continuous pause in anti-Stalinist and anti-cult rhetoric garnished

with rumours about Khrushchev’s uncertain position or even Stalin’s restoration
to glory, the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (17 to
31 October 1961) unexpectedly revisited the issues around Stalin’s crimes and
amplified the critique levelled at the personality cult and its grave consequences.
This event temporarily put at bay the surreptitious or even unabashed Stalinists
at BCP’s top tier who were perfectly well aware that if they were to survive, they
had to cling to the official Soviet line and ostentatiously support it. The cult-
bashing rhetoric reappeared across official documents. The Lovech labour camp –
the last one in Bulgaria, having become infamous as a death camp, with at least
155 people having perished in it according to contested statistics –was shut down
in the spring of 1962. In a great deal of later memoirs, the early 1960s have been
described as a moment of euphoria that gripped the liberal artistic and univer-
sity circles. The trauma from the clampdown on the Hungarian revolution had
partially been outlived while the hopes of the imminent democratisation of the
regime had again resurfaced. The crouching of the ideological stalwarts in the
university had also become visible.
This new situation found one Zhelyu Zhelev, a philosophy “aspirant” (a PhD
student) since 1961, in a bind. As the topic of his candidate’s dissertation1 he
had chosen an ambitious set of ideas which had been subject to lively debates in
Soviet, East German, Polish or even Bulgarian philosophic circles: the definition
of matter as a concept. His drive apparently was to build upon the outcome of these
discussions and to make his own bold step disclosing a number of imperfections
in Lenin’s definition included in his pivotal Materialism and Empiriocriticism
long canonised in Marxist literature. When Zhelev informed his fellows from the
dialectical and historical materialism department of his intentions, he bumped
into a wall of misunderstanding and disapproval. The department’s chairman,
Prof. Ghirghin Ghirghinov, was particularly negative. Zhelev was recommended
to give up on his idea and opt for another one. All senior scholars he addressed
with the request to supervise his work turned him down, and this put him in a sort
of beyond political limits situation. But aspirant Zhelev persisted no less, and,
instead of giving up, used every appropriate forum – e.g. university workshops,
book discussions, etc. unofficially initiated by himself – to indulge into a public
20 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
presentation of his ideas, with his courage boosted by the new course of criticizing
the cult leadership methods.
In the spring of 1962, an instruction came from BCP’s Central Committee
to the ideological institutes (PHF of the Sofia University and the Institute of
Philosophy within the BAS system) urging them to organise a theoretical con-
ference aimed at discussing Stalin’s mistakes in philosophy. In the aftermath of
Stalin’s political discarding at the 20th Congress of CPSU, a major part of the
Bulgarian philosophers still lionised Stalin as a classic of Marxist philosophy on
a par with Marx, Engels, and Lenin. It was quite telling that this initiative did not
arise from the circle of philosophers but came down instead as a political com-
mission. Incidentally, the philosophers soon realised who the real commissioner
was: Moscow. To bolster the scale of the event all lecturers in Marxism-Leninism
across the country were invited to attend the conference on 12 June 1962, already
falling into the groove as yet another party window dressing designed to showcase
the accommodating party line. And this would undoubtedly have been the case
unless the aspiring Zhelev in his despondence had not seen in this forum a way
out of his situation as a chance to present his case and make a breakthrough on
his dissertation topic. He went to great lengths to carefully elaborate his paper and
then embarked on an audacious coup: he got enrolled among the presenters, i.e.
the officially established philosophers.
Before carrying on with my story, I would like to briefly present Zhelyu
Zhelev’s life (1935–2015) up until that moment, 12 June 1962, a date that would
prove a turning point for him. He was born on 3 March 1935 in Veselinovo, a
village near Shumen, to a poor family with seven children. “They were merci-
lessly orphaned by the death of their mum. It was a big grief, big hunger and
deprivation that these children went through. (…) But Zhelyu, his soul was like a
bird’s. He would always fly high. Dressed in tatters but his head always up in the
air. (…) As orphaned as one can be, he grew up without burying his soul in the
dirt”.2 Zhelev himself would recollect treading the village street dust with his bare
feet. The “people’s authority” gave the indigent village boy a chance to study and
grow along the regime’s line of churning out an intelligentsia of its own meant to
replace the bourgeois middle classes. Zhelev belonged to the broad strata, which
gained from the upheavals after the communists took over on 9 September 1944
to become a genuine pillar of the regime. He made it into the posh Shumen “gym-
nasia” (secondary school) where, apart from his scoring high as a student, he
made his first steps as a youth communist activist to climb all the way up to the
chair of a students’ committee. His classmate, and later on fellow philosophy
undergraduate, Assen Ignatov, recounted that “As a high school student Zhelev
was an enthusiastic communist”.3 While Zhelev himself admitted that once he got
the news of Stalin’s death he was struck stiff and felt shudders down his spine,
then cried bitterly.4 Dobrin Spassov, his philosophy teacher, also witnessed “how
difficult he found it to outlive the disclosures of the CPSU’s 20th Congress”.5
Yet who of these young activists – children of their times, who got the chance
to rise out of indigence and make a career unencumbered by the burden of the
old regime – was not seduced by communist mythology? While in high school,
 The Zhelyu Zhelev case 21
Zhelev developed an interest in social matters and felt an affiliation with the pow-
ers that be. In his memoir he admitted he had read all Stalin’s works while he was
still a schoolboy. They triggered his interest in philosophy. Through the works of
the great leader, philosophy sparkled as a fascinating yet at the same time clear
and accessible field. As a university undergraduate, Zhelev was quick to make a
difference with his hard work and his vivid, engaging nature. He became a mem-
ber of his grade’s Komsomol bureau and impressed as a good organiser. He was
a diligent learner and read Hegel with particular zeal yet without losing interest
in the developments of his contemporary society. While still an undergraduate,
Zhelev blithely sent an article he had penned to the Moscow Issues of Philosophy
magazine dedicated to the once sensitive issue of the contradictions amidst social-
ist society. The piece, apart from the casual party clichés of the non-antagonistic
contradictions, was bold enough to raise the thorny question of the presence of
antagonistic contradictions as well. This publication served him as proof of his
qualities as a politically reliable young scholar.
After his graduation, Zhelev made an unsuccessful attempt to become a PhD
student (“aspirant”) in the BAS Philosophy Institute. The major hurdle was that
he wasn’t a member of the Communist Party: the practice to grant PhD scholar-
ships to party members alone, meant to be trained as “fighters on the ideological
front”, had already been well entrenched. Zhelev had to temporarily return to his
native village where, as the only young man with a university education, he was
offered the post as full-time Komsomol secretary. Zhelev worked hard in the local
field and managed to give a spark to the lethargic life of rural youth. He launched
a number of initiatives, which earned him local popularity and approval. His
Komsomol background ushered him into the Communist Party: in 1960 he was
admitted to the grassroots BCP organisation in Veselinovo.6 His second attempt to
pass through the PhD study competition was more successful than the first. As he
would later realise, he was lucky to be enrolled at SU rather than at the Philosophy
Institute. At the onset of his career, Zhelev was profoundly overwhelmed by the
power of Marxist philosophy and was full of desire to grow as a creative Marxist.
The conference was opened on 12 June 1962 in the big hall of the Science
Academy. The discussions soon went into the area of political myopia, with the
design to tip Stalin off his pedestal as a Marxist classic. Subject to criticism were
some of his assumptions: he discussed “four features of dialectics” whereas the
correct jargon was “four laws”; Stalin failed to analyse the negation of negation
law in its proper relation to the law of quantity accruals transcending into quality
changes, etc.7 This pattern of debate was turning the conference into yet another
chance to discuss Stalin as a philosopher who made mistakes just like any other
philosopher. There was no hint of the Stalinist system imposing total control on
sciences and minds. Yet another formal event was taking shape without cast-
ing any shadow on the dominant position of Stalinist dogmatism in Bulgarian
academic circles. That is until the lectern was occupied by the young unknown
PhD student.
Zhelev put in a great deal of time and effort to elaborate his paper structuring
it around several overlapping key issues. I will try to recount it in brief. The paper
22 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
starts with the claim that the conference’s topic was worded in a narrow and mis-
guided way. The key problem was Stalin’s crimes inflicted on philosophy, as well
as on spiritual and artistic life in general, rather than his philosophical mistakes
per se. The criticism so far apparently found no place for the role of Stalin’s cult
as a Marxist-Leninist classic, for the brutal way of imposing it and the price paid
for his imposition as the superior philosophic authority: the demise of the most
promising germs of the early Soviet philosophy as well as the marginalisation
and even the physical annihilation of thousands of scholars. Then Zhelev went
on to criticise the phoney de-Stalinisation going on in Bulgaria. “Our philoso-
phy, said Zhelev, has yet to see its 22nd Congress”. Things remained unchanged
or, even worse, no one ventured any change as the rule was still in the hands of
well-known old-time Stalinists. “These people are evidently incapable of living
without the cult. The 22nd Congress ultimately left them without the Stalin cult
before whom they bowed and spread intrigue in philosophy until yesterday”.8 The
expression until yesterday ostentatiously referred to the period between the two
Soviet congresses. The same people who adored Stalin yesterday, and persecuted
everyone who was not an orthodox Stalinist, “put on the mantle of (…) fighters
for the purity of Lenin’s philosophical legacy, banning, stifling and terrorizing
every attempt to question this or that idea in this legacy”.9 Thus the cult acolytes
launched a new attack under a new banner—the banner of Leninism. Incapable of
salvaging their old idol, they have erected a new one. It is not hard to recognise
that this critique rested on the author’s own experience, on his own clash with
the concrete wall of dogmatism in his attempt to criticise Lenin’s definition of
matter. Zhelev’s conduct manifests that the opening of one’s eyes – despite the
officially outed information about Stalinist crimes – is much more dramatic if
it went through a personal clash with the system’s absurdities and the resulting
disappointments.
Thus, Zhelev reached his key assumption that the essence of the cult in phi-
losophy should be seen in the relations between politics and philosophy. “The
cult was a period when – under the disguise of connecting philosophy to politics,
to practice, to the tasks of socialist development and the international communist
movement – philosophy was reduced to a wretched footservant of politics just as
it had been a footservant of theology throughout the Middle Ages”.10
Philosophy had lost its academic nature and had profoundly reoriented itself
into a theoretical extension of politics. Compelled to bow to the empirical tenets
of politics and to “justify the political prejudices of party leaders, regardless of
whether they were right or wrong, true or false; philosophy was robbed of its right
to deliberate on the truthfulness of political assumptions (…) Hence this mon-
strous prostitution that philosophy was forced to resort to”.11
Under the guise of the new cult for Lenin and Leninism, Zhelev saw something
thoroughly trite – political venality. Holding on to this cult did not rest on valid
theoretical arguments but was instead a casual tool for domineering. Echoing
the simplified ideological tenets of dialectical materialism, stripping philosophy
down to their own size, these people, “rather mediocre and unfit for theoreti-
cal work, devoid of any natural proclivities toward theorizing, towards abstract
 The Zhelyu Zhelev case 23
and dialectical thinking” find a safe way to wrap themselves in the philosophy
label. “With this kind of indecent and ignorant subservience to politics, a host of
people scrambled together an academic career, became docents, professors, even
academicians”.12 Now these “philosophers” are going out of their way to take the
fangs out of the critique of the cult style as they feel personally threatened, being
“well aware they have to go out of the door hand in hand with the cult”. This is
why anything that transcends the boundaries of their own worldview tends to be
branded as “revisionism, idealism, deviation from dialectical materialism, etc.”13
And here comes Zhelev’s ultimate condemnation of his contemporary Bulgarian
philosophy: “ubiquitous pig-headedness and sclerosis”.
In his speech, Zhelev went head to head against the major philosophic institu-
tions: BAS Philosophy Institute and its theoretical arm, Philosophical Thought,
the only professional philosophical journal in the country, pointing his finger at
them as the mainstay of Stalinism and dogmatism and as active channels of the
cult methods into philosophy and hence as the main hurdle jamming its develop-
ment. Everybody in the audience knew very well who stood behind these insti-
tutions. Zhelev stood up to the official philosophers of the regime: the sinister
and powerful figure of academician Todor Pavlov, PI director and Philosophical
Thought editor-in-chief, and Prof. Raycho Karakolov, his deputy and a mem-
ber of the journal’s editorial college. The latter was personally named. Zhelev’s
speech came into stark disagreement with the established style of platitudinous
talk and abstract criticism. Mentioning his targets by name made this clash pal-
pable and visible. Zhelev not only dared to personify his opponents but to boot
made an appeal that those whose predominant occupation in philosophy was to
cheerlead the praises for comrade Stalin’s genius, “to vanish from science as the
cult itself”.14 The mediocre party functionaries serving as watchdogs in philoso-
phy would never forget what he said. In him they would see a personal enemy
and would persecute him as long as they could. Thus, Zhelev was turned into a
scapegoat for a group specifically affected. The subsequent developments help us
get an insight into one of the aspects of political struggles: the personal interests
in withstanding occupied party territory. This was how conscientiously or by the
unpredictable logic of his polemical passion the PhD student whom no one knew
stood up against the most powerful figure in Bulgarian Marxism, academician
Todor Pavlov (1890–1977).
T. Pavlov was associated with the communist movement since the 1920s.
Between 1932 and 1936 he emigrated to the USSR to become, along with Valko
Chervenkov, a lecturer in the Red Professorship Institute. Then he suddenly
returned to Bulgaria in his capacity as – it is plausibly alleged – a Soviet resident
spy. This is corroborated by the fact that after the country was occupied by the Red
Army and the young tsar regents were convicted and executed, Pavlov was nomi-
nated as one of the new regents. He occupied this post until the People’s Republic
was proclaimed in 1947. The BAS Philosophy Institute, founded in 1945, was
initiated by two older academicians – D. Mikhalchev and S. Kazandzhiev joined
by two newly elected ones, T. Pavlov and Mikhail Dimitrov. Between 1945 and
1947 Mikhalchev was the first PI director, a post he undoubtedly deserved for
24 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
his stature and talent. But once the country’s Sovietisation was complete and the
regents’ council ran out of functions, the time came when Mikhalchev could be
dismissed and marginalised. The director’s seat was manned by T. Pavlov who
stayed there a very long time. His only book of any prominence, A Theory of
Reflection, having gained recognition in the USSR and among the international
Marxist circles, claims to uphold and further develop Lenin’s philosophical ideas.
T. Pavlov would make the most of these dividends until the end of his life, as ever
surrounded by a retinue of social climbing cronies, failing to see that science had
long walked past him. T. Pavlov headed the PI during the period 1947 to 1952
and completely oriented it towards running ideological errands for the upcoming
Communist Party by filling the Institute with faithful ideological front warriors.
After Stalin’s death, T. Pavlov was temporarily sidelined but was recycled in
the aftermath of the 1957 Hungarian Revolution to be promoted as a member
of the Central Committee, and in 1966, as a Politburo member. In 1960 he was
restored to the director’s seat at PI to stay there until his death in 1977. From this
seat – having tripled its weight for the director’s partisan standing – T. Pavlov
guided and supervised the whole philosophical field deploying his cronies across
university faculties, publishing houses, the Central Committee’s Propaganda and
Agitation and Science and Education departments as well as in the Ministry of
Education.
Zhelev’s speech at the conference triggered a stunning uproar. He himself
relayed the controversial reactions in the audience in his memoir. Some of the
attendants, in their outrage wanted him silenced and taken off the lectern while he
was still speaking. The chairing professor A. Bunkov retained his academic toler-
ance and allowed him to finish although, as Zhelev recounted, he looked strongly
surprised by what he was hearing. Scattered applauses also became audible. Most
of those applauding would later on be identified as undergraduates, a circum-
stance which would be subsequently used against Zhelev.

Claiming subjectivity through individual

action: Eventual subjectivity
Let us now imagine what could have taken place if in the big hall of BAS filled
with various public, central committee monitors among them, and without any
doubt observers from the Soviet embassy as well, after Zhelev finished his con-
tribution, 10 or 15 people had grabbed the mic and spoken in support of his pro-
nouncements sustaining the passion of his ideas. Then whatever he said would
have stood a much stronger chance to be heard and stayed in history as a common
stance and an expression of mature willingness for change rather than as a rogue
scandal. This could have dragged along other players as well, could have enheart-
ened more liberal elements within the Communist Party, had those existed, to
try and speed up the policy of de-Stalinisation, render it more radical, etc. Then
Zhelev’s and his colleagues’ fate could have been different. Yet the audience –
with the exception of a few applauding students, remained passive or rather,
as it was chock full of lecturers from ideological departments from all over the
 The Zhelyu Zhelev case 25
country – broke into menacing growls. Zhelev’s co-workers from the philosophy
department did not attend the conference due to a party group meeting scheduled
(hardly by chance) on the same day.
What were the reasons for his hope when he launched his solitary action (as
this unfortunately is the precise term for what he did)? He could not but be aware
that a single individual was not up to stirring the status quo. A change might have
only been set off by a critical mass of supporters. An isolated action did not have
the potential to get a sufficient number of people to alter their positions and stand
behind an alternative view. Zhelev was most likely to have flung into action with
the hope that others would jump in on the act and that there would be a common
stir resulting in some measure of support. Susanne Lohmann would call this situa-
tion an informational cascade. What it does is crystallise discontent and urge into
action through individuals who never had the intention to act out.15 An informa-
tional cascade could take place even in the absence of any visible signs of support.
Clashing with the conscious mental controls, this kind of cascading involvement
might have been emotionally interiorised but still have some lasting effect. As we
shall see in the subsequent unfolding of this narrative, there was a period of inner
workings of the involvement process, with its results only coming to the fore years
later, in different circumstances, in another shape and apparently underpinned by
a different motivation. Zhelev had obviously been convinced he was not the only
one to harbour such thinking, that his position was shared by others, and would
invoke their approval. This certitude must have come from his insider knowledge
of his own environment, i.e. the circles of young philosophy scholars or teachers,
his alumni; he must have had plenty of chats with them. Zhelev was convinced
that he articulated the tacit convictions of fellow philosophers and friends and that
he gave the expression of their silent thoughts.
How many people are willing to jump in on a protest action questioning the
mainstream or rather a stringently guarded status quo, depends on their own
assessment of what sort of consequences they will be faced with. Each individ-
ual decides for him/herself where the limits of risk he/she is going to take are.16
Days before the conference on Stalin’s philosophy mistakes, Zhelev confided to
A. Ignatov his intention to speak out and suggested Assen did the same. This is
what Ignatov replied: “You are quite right, you’re definitely right but what it boils
down to is not the truth but whether one is prepared to suffer (…) Are you ready
to go to jail for the sake of ideas as Đilas? I wouldn’t be able to do it”.17 This
exchange outlined the difference between the two of them: Ignatov was gripped
by fear and his misgivings were triggered by his expectations that a confrontation
with conservative forces would entail consequences he would not be able to cope
with, going all the way to repressions or even jail. Ignatov frankly owned up to not
being fit for martyrdom. Zhelev obviously had a much higher risk threshold, and
he did not foresee nor was rattled by any extreme forms of repression. This con-
versation between the two of them outlines the split in the stance of anti-dogmatic
intellectual circles at the moment. Both factions tried to stay within the legitimate
and principled “party” criticism. The first one whose speaker Zhelev wished to be
(gestures similar to his own were made in some artistic or literary circles around
26 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
the same time) was the position of direct confrontation with dogmatism and unin-
hibited articulation of one’s opinion on the lay of the land; the other position was
again based on profound reservations to the status quo but stayed just shy of all
out confrontation, instead taking the road of cautious alienation by refusing to
actively take part in various scholarly or career strategies. For the representatives
of either type of discontent Milovan Đilas had already established himself as a
measure of the risk acceptable or otherwise.
Let us now try to address the issue of why Zhelev’s risk threshold was higher
than the one of his counterparts. Various authors could offer a variety of responses.
Some of them would emphasise that well-integrated people have a stronger bent
for undertaking risky endeavours than marginal ones who feel their adaptation to
the situation is only facile or flimsy. This helps us explain Ignatov’s unwillingness
to join Zhelev in his tour de force: the former had already been criticised for his
origin and family environment and is conscious of the possible outcome in case
they attributed his critical stance to where he came from. Zhelev was a different
case; his origins and his background as a Komsomol activist could dispel any
possible suspicions of him as a surreptitious class enemy. He felt the regime was
his own turf, and this gave him courage and legitimacy to be critical. This was
later compounded by the origins of his girlfriend and future wife whose father was
an influential communist, well connected with the party’s higher ranks. Personal
links and contacts, as we will see further on, were crucial in getting involved in
higher-risk enterprises.18
At that point, Zhelev has realised better than his more prominent university
fellows that in a political system where control is ubiquitous and the policing
machine allows no organising, luck is on the side of the individual. The latter
is the only possible focus of resistance as he/she stands clear of allegations for
fraction mongering or conspiracy. The key element here is the individual’s will-
ingness to take a risk, to speak for his/herself and not reproduce ready-made for-
mulas and party accepted truths. This is the new development in the early 1960s:
the waking up of the person and his/her individuality, plucking up the audac-
ity to contradict the collectivist imperative blocking individual actions. And for
himself Zhelev found the right tools for staking a claim – scandal and publicity.
Publicity, which in a political system with jammed communication channels can-
not be anything but scandal, and vice versa – scandal which can present itself as
a vent into publicity. These are accessible and legitimate channels which Zhelev
would resourcefully use further on during his march through the years. His con-
ference act was the first one to outline his method of thinking and moving. It set
the start of his public career and became something of an initiation that already
went beyond the point of return. This was how he declared his own subjectivity.
The subject/subjectivity, claims Jacques Ranciere,19 is random/eventual rather
than arbitrary. The subject is born in a pre-subject situation as a result of the
play of subjective forces. Evidently, T. Pavlov and his philosophical brigade are
subjects of power, they are the mouthpieces of the status quo and yield the power
to persuade, even through force. The courage to stand up to them and assume
the risk of confrontation, the courage to buck power is – however illusory – a
 The Zhelyu Zhelev case 27
demonstration of force in the face of a counterforce. The competence of the sub-
ject comes from his/her free action which provides the chance of emancipation.
We can then ask ourselves what kind of subjectivity that was. Against the back-
drop of a lingering Stalinism, the self-declaration of one’s own subjectivity might
only be a political act. This kind of subjectivity is not essential or constant, built
upon obvious principles, but instead is dynamic, and it came and went on the spur
of the moment as it was consistently exposed to power pressures. Individuals are
entangled in the nets of power, but they have the opportunity for subjectivisation
and desubjectivisation depending on the power situation.20 The further unfolding
of our narrative is going to corroborate – contingent on the situation – precisely
this kind of fluctuation. The subject is the product of power relations. When the
pressure of power upon the individual lets up, the situation starts working towards
desubjectivisation and the other way around.

How to use the topsy-turvy political speak

To alleviate the harms done to science by the cult, said Zhelev by the finish of his
conference speech, the proper correlation needs to be restored between politics
and philosophy. He believed that would be a long, uphill struggle related to a tan-
gle of other imminent tasks. And he went on to list down some steps that should
be taken:

1. “To warrant the full publicity of every opinion, view or position in the
press; whether a view is right or wrong should be decided in a public dis-
cussion rather than in an editorial board. No considerations of the purity of
Marxist-Leninist philosophy kind should be respected as what lurks behind
them in the current setting is dogmatism clinging onto quotations from the
classics and terrorizing any attempt to further develop certain issues in our
philosophy”.21

The free public space that he dared recommend, the liberal forum where ideas
could be exchanged is one of the landmarks of a democratic system. Therefore,
under the thin disguise of an appeal to do away with censorship in science a criti-
cism was levelled at the very system. Zhelev’s own experience had shown him that
under the conditions of an ideological monopoly the role of the censor was taken
over by editorial boards – of the Philosophical Thought journal in his particular
case, but also of any other printed publication – and it was directly handpicked by
the powers that be. Such editorial boards would disallow any opinion that differed
from the official one, namely the opinion of the Stalinists. On the other hand, the
conditions Zhelev was trying to articulate (with the main focus on the opportunity
to freely discuss the Marxist philosophic legacy) would have allowed him per-
sonally to complete his own research – a critical revision of Lenin’s definition of
matter – without any interference.
The second point that attracts attention is the wavering between first person
singular and first person plural. Throughout his expose Zhelev seems to be talking
28 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
on behalf of “our philosophy” in an obvious wish to declare his belonging to the
philosophy community and evade interpretations alleging an outsider talk. Yet
there is more than a safeguard stratagem in this. Despite his own later pronounce-
ments for an early alienation from Marxism, at this early stage he seems to pursue
a distinction between the way the socialist idea was specifically implemented in
Bulgaria from Marxist philosophy as the ideological warp underpinning this ideal.
The points of his master plan strike with the semantics of their kick-off phrases:
to warrant, to recognise (twice). “To warrant” refers to a legal case as constitu-
tional acts are the only ones that can warrant certain rights, but Zhelev’s agenda
is political rather than juridical. Zhelev himself is keenly aware of this as his
latter two points start with the expression “to recognise”. Who was supposed to
recognise the need for free discussion? Recognition is always something granted
by the will of those who are strong and who are in control. And what could pos-
sibly urge them to guarantee something which up until then had been deemed
as contradictory to their interest? A clear element of utopia sparkles throughout
Zhelev’s appeal. He was hopeful in a utopian way that the regime might become
conscious of the need for change and grow inherently convinced that it was bound
to evolve to a marriage between socialism and democracy rather than degenerate
into repression.
It seems necessary we ought to introduce another one – a varying subjectivity.
As a whole, Zhelev’s paper manifested a fluctuation between the scholarly (philo-
sophical) field and the political one. The shift of emphasis from “Stalin’s mistakes
in philosophy” over to “Stalin’s crimes inflicted on philosophy” in itself was a
shift from the scholarly to the political discourse, from the scholarly to the politi-
cal subject. When Zhelev said: “The human head is incapable of thinking with a
political axe hanging over it, ready to cut it off at any time the head indulges into
the luxury of critical thinking”22. He took a political stance. But when he goes on
to say: “A combat needs to be launched against dogmatism in general, a combat
against its style, its methods and forms in academic research” he chucked the ball
back to the field of scholarly debate.
This wavering proclamation of a political position acquires a much clearer
outline in another place of his presentation. The appeal for change in the academic
(philosophical) area has been underpinned by a generation discourse. Zhelev fin-
ished his paper on the following note:

For us, the young generation in philosophy, making its first steps, fighting the
cult and dogmatism is a matter of life or death. As more than ever we are enti-
tled and we are bound to fight for the decimation of dogmatism as this fight will
address the issue of whether we will be involved in science, whether we will
commit the most brilliant years of our lives, our youth, to scholarly creativity or
whether we will poison them by intrigue, slander, jockeying for political power
or any kind of skulduggery left over from the times of the cult.23

The generation talk shifted the emphasis from the first person singular to the
first person plural but this time he spoke on behalf of a narrower young Marxist
 The Zhelyu Zhelev case 29
philosopher community. Zhelev sensed he stood a better chance to be heard if he
spoke on behalf of a formation, and therefore resorted to concepts like “youth”,
“future”, “creativity”, etc. which were casually used by the official ideological
discourse. Zhelev could not but pay his dues to the well-entrenched generational
delusion suggesting a by-default link between the new generation and renewal
even though he himself was perfectly aware that the young philosopher genera-
tion was anything but not homogenous, that the dogmatists were nurturing their
own “high-spirited shift” as the Komsomol cliché went. His own biography would
several times crisscross with the path of a typical high-spirited shift representa-
tive. Let’s refer to him by his real name: Mitryu Yankov.
Zhelev’s presentation caused a stir in the audience. His place at the lectern
was taken by the next speaker as planned in the agenda who tried to field some of
Zhelev’s invectives in his stride, but after him nobody volunteered to take over.
The chairman suspended the session by saying that the conference would carry
over to one of the following days. But it was never resumed. Zhelev was blamed
that his presentation ruined it. The “top” came down with an order that Zhelev be
held to account for his conduct and his party situation revisited. A comprehensive
evaluation of the SU philosophy department’s work had to be launched.

Types of party discourses – of the prosecution,

of the defence and of the defendant
Zhelev’s “inadmissible” comportment was discussed at two drawn-out meetings
of the philosophers’ grassroots party group. One was held in June straight after
the scuttled conference but failed to deliver a unanimous decision. The second one
was on 4 July 1962. I will have a closer look at it as, thanks to Ivan Slavov’s per-
sonal initiative, the minutes were kept and publicised after 1989.24 The shorthand
record offers no information about who commissioned the investigation around
Zhelev. The party secretary Kiril Petrov might have given this information at the
first meeting or the one who made the minutes might have omitted it as some-
thing insignificant (orders presumably came down from one and the same place
back then, and everybody was familiar with it). It might be surmised that firemen
from lower party ranks were set into motion for this kind of event. The most
likely ringleader was Vassil Ivanov, the guy in charge of the CC Propaganda
and Agitation Department, whose intimacy with the circle around T. Pavlov was
secret to no one. At the same time the onslaught against Zhelev could also involve
a number of “self-activations” by people across the faculty administration or the
party organisation, e.g. G. Ghirghinov and K. Petrov of the senior ones with the
vigorous support of the less senior Peyko Slavov, Illiya Tassev, Lenin Dimitrov,
Tonyo Botev, etc.
In the concept of “signifying relations” (relations significatives à l’intereur d’un
ensemble) Montesquieu saw a key tool in analysing society. He believed it was
impossible to understand human society without focusing on signifying blocks to
systems based on human relations within the boundaries of an established politi-
cal or economic order. Without the pretence of seeing it as a micro-model of
30 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
society, we could plunge in the small circle of PHF philosophers in pursuit of
such signifying relations. By the ways these people behaved while investigating
Zhelev, we can distinguish three types of roles and ensuing relations: (1) Accusers
representing – or pretending to represent – the official party line who acted both
as party gauleiters and philosophy teachers; (2) defenders – philosophers of the
young or middle generation committed to their professional views and perceiving
the university as a scholarly institution; and (3) the defendant– the one who fell
afoul of the established rules on how a party member and a PhD student should
behave. The first two roles were populated by leading figures as well as by others
who were supporting actors. There was also a strikingly large number of absen-
tees suggesting that most of them simply concocted some reason to stay away and
crouch to see how things would develop down the line. Some of the fence-sitters
would later on emerge as supporters of either camp.
I will give some attention to the stories of these actors who formed a rather
divergent society and will trace how their conduct changed over the years. Behind
their behaviour I am going to seek their personal strategies and the motivations
and goals toward which they strove while taking into account the host of contra-
dictory norms within which they existed socially.
The exchanges in the record make it clear that the first meeting kicked off with
an expose by Kiril Petrov spelling out the accusations against Zhelev. The minutes
of the second meeting with their quantity imbalance between those who spoke to
condemn and those who spoke to defend suggest that the former were strongly
prevailing. They were appealing to Zhelev to become aware of his mistakes and
own up to them. Yet Zhelev persisted in holding his ground. His defendants man-
aged to scramble a compromise whereby Zhelev was given time to deliberate on his
conduct and get another hearing. During the break between the two sessions of the
party court his well-intentioned colleagues were advising Zhelev quite persistently
– as he remembered himself – to change tack and resort to self-criticism. This was
the only way for them to make their case and resist his expulsion from the party.
Zhelev resigned and promised to come up with “some sort of self-critique” and this
was what the second meeting kicked off with. Zhelev did not have much of a choice.
He took some of his friends’ advice on board and embarked on placating his
detractors by relenting on some of his assumptions. He did not quite give up on
them but tried to shed a bit more light on them. He admitted to having been a little
too sharp, he said he was not properly understood. Here is a summary of his words:

• “The critique you came up with could not but make me think. I do not stand
for questioning all issues in Marxism (…) I believe this would have been a
revisionist or even pernicious thing to do, and I entirely go along with the
comrades who spoke and who condemn this kind of thing. A revisionist is a
sceptic, a relativist and I differ from this, I am all for discussions from singu-
larly Marxist positions”.
• “Yes, there were overstatements in my speech which give the impression of a
crude generalization. I give up on the expression ‘ubiquitous pig-headedness
and sclerosis’ (on the contemporary state of Bulgarian philosophy – IZ)”.
 The Zhelyu Zhelev case 31
• “I do not think highly of my contribution (in response to the condemnation
that he was bound for ‘cheap glory’ and ‘pseudo-innovation’ – IZ)”.25

But before we take a closer look at the Zhelev’s whole response and comment on
it in the context of what the other participants said or did, let us cast a glimpse
aside onto the strategies of the other “groups”. I put this word in quotes because,
as I already mentioned, apart from a few similarities these line-ups exhibited sub-
stantial differences in their behaviour. Kiril Petrov and G. Ghirghinov, the accus-
ers, as well as Peyko Slavov and Illiya Tassev, the ones who were singing along,
said whatever they had to say at the first meeting. Now they would only respond
to what the others said and further hone the accusations. G. Ghirghinov, the lead-
ing prosecutor, was not alien to certain insightfulness. He understood the half-
heartedness and formality of Zhelev’s “self-critique” and refused to appreciate
it: “The deeper one gets into Zhelev’s position, unless one is not bent to justify
this position, the better one understands that this is all serious staff (…) Instead of
taking Zhelev’s holding forth for what it is, some people here have set out to get
him convinced he doesn’t think the way he speaks”. Then again: “I used to believe
that Zhelev erred, he got carried away as he was genuinely trying to clarify some
issues, as he really had sharp wits. But after his attempts to sleek away at the
discussion, I saw he wasn’t as clean, bona fide or naïve as he looked”. This con-
clusion was corroborated in a more curt way by Peyko Slavov: “Now Zhelev is
making a step back but it’s a step back under duress”.
Let’s now articulate the key counts on which Zhelev stood accused at the two
meetings of the party tribunal: the “liquidation” of Marxist philosophy, “the sell-
out of our philosophy” (in view of the allegation that anything in Marxism could
be questioned barring the primary nature of being); his overshot activism – the
setting up of a debating society and harmfully influencing undergraduates; his
phoney innovation (“Zhelev is in a hurry to say something new before he mas-
tered the old stuff”; “Zhelyu would have us swim in murky waters, Zhelyu has
not become a Marxist yet. And without having become one he has been trying to
jump into innovation”.) All these pronouncements are sheer accusations without
any attempt to make a case against Zhelev’s assumptions. The critique he levelled
at the Philosophy Institute and the Philosophical Thought journal, at the scholarly
ineptness of the “leading” philosophy cadre, at their dogmatic and Stalinist under-
pinnings, at their entrenched censorship, etc. was altogether carefully avoided.
Incidentally some of Zhelev’s critics did not even try to hide their dogmatic
stance: “If liquidation of our philosophy were the alternative to dogmatism I’ll
stand by the side of dogmatism” (Peyko Slavov).
The design was to create an impression that Zhelev was not alone. What made
him tick was the general atmosphere in the discipline and possibly the patronage
of certain people:

• “What we are dealing with is not an isolated attempt but a link in a chain (…)
It’s not the mistakes of a single person that we are tackling, they did applaud”
(Peyko Slavov).
32 The Zhelyu Zhelev case
• “Zhelev has reduced to absurdity the doubts some comrades had (…) in
respect of the theory of reflection (the key work of T. Pavlov – IZ). Zhelev is
finding his cues with some more eminent people” (G. Ghirghinov).
• “When I’m talking of self-esteem over the top I mean a number of comrades
in the cathedra rather than Zhelev alone. (…) Zhelev’s platform is a revision-
ist one. He even went further that a great deal of modern-day revisionists. I
don’t mean to say that Zhelev is the banner of revisionism but in real terms
Zhelev’s philosophical interpretation belongs to himself and to others like
him, i.e. the revisionists and some of the other graduates who think along his
lines” (G. Ghirghinov).

This broadening the circle of culprits, albeit impersonal, to some extent skews
the behaviour of the philosophers mentioned during the two sessions of the
party tribunal. G. Ghirghinov and those around him were lambasting the situa-
tion from an outside higher and less than clearly identified vantage point. This
was construed as a weak point by D. Spassov and he pointed his finger at it
with his usual tactfulness and precision of words: “Peyko Slavov and others
(a meaningful generalization and a hint to those who might have recognised
themselves in it – IZ) who are emotionally detached from our group now foster
these rumours that Zhelev’s mistakes are actually the sins of the university
philosophers (the substitution of “sins” for “mistakes” is quite telling – IZ)”. In
this situation protecting Zhelev was to protect themselves and the philosophi-
cal core of their discipline. But they realised that the balance of powers, both
within and without the faculty, would not allow any open support of Zhelev’s
ideas. This is why their strategy was two-pronged: (1) to endorse Zhelev’s self-
critique as a sufficient argument in averting the repressive measures against him
looming on the horizon; (2) to thrash one or other of his ideas as an attempt to
disown him.26

• “After Zhelev’s clarifications some of the critical remarks I meant to level at

comrade Zhelev will have to be dropped” (Isak Passy).
• “We all heard how comrade Zhelev tried, not without some success, to cast
a critical glimpse into his speech (…). His sincere willingness to come to
terms with his own errors is something to be taken into account at any rate”
(A. Ignatov).

The second line of his fellows was to criticise his assumptions. In some cases,
they entirely mirrored the official Communist Party position, in others it targeted
the element of exaggeration or generalisation leaving their core unscathed:

• “Zhelev has failed to make an insight into the intricate relations between
cult and socialism, into the fact that – despite the cult – the objective laws of
socialism were at play which the cult was unable to alter or revoke. From this
perspective, he has overestimated the potency of the personality cult. Zhelev
has reduced an attribute to a relation (Isak Passy).
Another random document with
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all fear of everything terrible, not only of death, but also poverty and
disease, and ignominy, and things akin to these; being unconquered
by pleasure, and lord over irrational desires. For he well knows what
is and what is not to be done; being perfectly aware what things are
really to be dreaded, and what not. Whence he bears intelligently
what the Word intimates to him to be requisite and necessary;
intelligently discriminating what is really safe (that is, good), from
what appears so; and things to be dreaded from what seem so, such
as death, disease, and poverty; which are rather so in opinion than in
truth.
This is the really good man, who is without passions; having,
through the habit or disposition of a soul endued with virtue,
transcended the whole life of passion. He has everything dependent
on himself for the attainment of the end. For those accidents which
are called terrible are not formidable to the good man, because they
are not evil. And those which are really to be dreaded are foreign to
the gnostic Christian, being diametrically opposed to what is good,
because evil; and it is impossible for contraries to meet in the same
person at the same time. He, then, who faultlessly acts the drama of
life which God has given him to play, knows both what is to be done
and what is to be endured.
Is it not then from ignorance of what is and what is not to be
dreaded that cowardice arises? Consequently the only man of
courage is the Gnostic, who knows both present and future good
things; along with these, knowing, as I have said, also the things
which are in reality not to be dreaded. Because, knowing vice alone
to be hateful, and destructive of what contributes to knowledge,
protected by the armour of the Lord, he makes war against it.
For if anything is caused through folly, and the operation or rather
co-operation of the devil, this thing is not straightway the devil or
folly. For no action is wisdom. For wisdom is a habit. And no action is
a habit. The action, then, that arises from ignorance, is not already
ignorance, but an evil through ignorance, but not ignorance. For
neither perturbations of mind nor sins are vices, though proceeding
from vice.
 No one, then, who is irrationally brave is a Gnostic; since one
might call children brave, who, through ignorance of what is to be
dreaded, undergo things that are frightful. So they touch fire even.
And the wild beasts that rush close on the points of spears, having a
brute courage, might be called valiant. And such people might
perhaps call jugglers valiant, who tumble on swords with a certain
dexterity, practising a mischievous art for sorry gain. But he who is
truly brave, with the peril arising from the bad feeling of the multitude
before his eyes, courageously awaits whatever comes. In this way
he is distinguished from others that are called martyrs, inasmuch as
some furnish occasions for themselves, and rush into the heart of
dangers, I know not how (for it is right to use mild language); while
they, in accordance with right reason, protect themselves; then, on
God really calling them, promptly surrender themselves, and confirm
the call, from being conscious of no precipitancy, and present the
man to be tested in the exercise of true rational fortitude. Neither,
then, enduring lesser dangers from fear of greater, like other people,
nor dreading censure at the hands of their equals, and those of like
sentiments, do they continue in the confession of their calling; but
from love to God they willingly obey the call, with no other aim in
view than pleasing God, and not for the sake of the reward of their
toils.
For some suffer from love of glory, and others from fear of some
other sharper punishment, and others for the sake of pleasures and
delights after death, being children in faith; blessed indeed, but not
yet become men in love to God, as the Gnostic is. For there are, as
in the gymnastic contests, so also in the Church, crowns for men and
for children. But love is to be chosen for itself, and for nothing else.
Therefore in the Gnostic, along with knowledge, the perfection of
fortitude is developed from the discipline of life, he having always
studied to acquire mastery over the passions.
Accordingly, love makes its own athlete fearless and dauntless,
and confident in the Lord, anointing and training him; as
righteousness secures for him truthfulness in his whole life. For it
was a compendium of righteousness to say, “Let your yea be yea;
and your nay, nay.”
 And the same holds with self-control. For it is neither for love of
honour, as the athletes for the sake of crowns and fame; nor, on the
other hand, for love of money, as some pretend to exercise self-
control, pursuing what is good with terrible suffering. Nor is it from
love of the body for the sake of health. Nor any more is any man who
is temperate from rusticity, who has not tasted pleasures, truly a man
of self-control. Certainly those who have led a laborious life, on
tasting pleasures, forthwith break down the inflexibility of temperance
into pleasures. Such are they who are restrained by law and fear.
For on finding a favourable opportunity they defraud the law, by
giving what is good the slip. But self-control, desirable for its own
sake, perfected through knowledge, abiding ever, makes the man
lord and master of himself; so that the Gnostic is temperate and
passionless, incapable of being dissolved by pleasures and pains, as
they say adamant is by fire.
The cause of these, then, is love, of all science the most sacred
and most sovereign.
For by the service of what is best and most exalted, which is
characterized by unity, it renders the Gnostic at once friend and son,
having in truth grown “a perfect man, up to the measure of full
stature.”[1257]
Further, agreement in the same thing is consent. But what is the
same is one. And friendship is consummated in likeness; the
community lying in oneness. The Gnostic, consequently, in virtue of
being a lover of the one true God, is the really perfect man and friend
of God, and is placed in the rank of son. For these are names of
nobility and knowledge, and perfection in the contemplation of God;
which crowning step of advancement the gnostic soul receives,
when it has become quite pure, reckoned worthy to behold
everlastingly God Almighty, “face,” it is said, “to face.” For having
become wholly spiritual, and having in the spiritual Church gone to
what is of kindred nature, it abides in the rest of God.
 CHAPTER XII.
THE TRUE GNOSTIC IS BENEFICENT, CONTINENT, AND DESPISES
WORLDLY THINGS.

Let these things, then, be so.

And such being the attitude of the Gnostic towards the body and
the soul—towards his neighbours, whether it be a domestic, or a
lawful enemy, or whosoever—he is found equal and like. For he
does not “despise his brother,” who, according to the divine law, is of
the same father and mother. Certainly he relieves the afflicted,
helping him with consolations, encouragements, and the necessaries
of life; giving to all that need, though not similarly, but justly,
according to desert; furthermore, to him who persecutes and hates,
even if he need it; caring little for those who say to him that he has
given out of fear, if it is not out of fear that he does so, but to give
help. For how much more are those, who towards their enemies are
devoid of love of money, and are haters of evil, animated with love to
those who belong to them?
Such an one from this proceeds to the accurate knowledge of
whom he ought chiefly to give to, and how much, and when, and
how.
And who could with any reason become the enemy of a man who
gives no cause for enmity in any way? And is it not just as in the
case of God? We say that God is the adversary of no one, and the
enemy of no one (for He is the Creator of all, and nothing that exists
is what He wills it not to be; but we assert that the disobedient, and
those who walk not according to His commandments, are enemies to
Him, as being those who are hostile to His covenant). We shall find
the very same to be the case with the Gnostic, for he can never in
any way become an enemy to any one; but those may be regarded
enemies to him who turn to the contrary path.
In particular, the habit of liberality which prevails among us is
called “righteousness;” but the power of discriminating according to
desert, as to greater and less, with reference to those who are
proper subjects of it, is a form of the very highest righteousness.
There are things practised in a vulgar style by some people, such
as control over pleasures. For as, among the heathen, there are
those who, from the impossibility of obtaining what one sees,[1258]
and from fear of men, and also for the sake of greater pleasures,
abstain from the delights that are before them; so also, in the case of
faith, some practise self-restraint, either out of regard to the promise
or from fear of God. Well, such self-restraint is the basis of
knowledge, and an approach to something better, and an effort after
perfection. For “the fear of the Lord,” it is said, “is the beginning of
wisdom.”[1259] But the perfect man, out of love, “beareth all things,
endureth all things,”[1260] “as not pleasing man, but God.”[1261]
Although praise follows him as a consequence, it is not for his own
advantage, but for the imitation and benefit of those who praise him.
According to another view, it is not he who merely controls his
passions that is called a continent man, but he who has also
achieved the mastery over good things, and has acquired surely the
great accomplishments of science, from which he produces as fruits
the activities of virtue. Thus the Gnostic is never, on the occurrence
of an emergency, dislodged from the habit peculiar to him. For the
scientific possession of what is good is firm and unchangeable,
being the knowledge of things divine and human. Knowledge, then,
never becomes ignorance; nor does good change into evil.
Wherefore also he eats, and drinks, and marries, not as principal
ends of existence, but as necessary. I name marriage even, if the
Word prescribe, and as is suitable. For having become perfect, he
has the apostles for examples; and one is not really shown to be a
man in the choice of single life; but he surpasses men, who,
disciplined by marriage, procreation of children, and care for the
house, without pleasure or pain, in his solicitude for the house has
been inseparable from God’s love, and withstood all temptation
arising through children, and wife, and domestics, and possessions.
But he that has no family is in a great degree free of temptation.
Caring, then, for himself alone, he is surpassed by him who is
inferior, as far as his own personal salvation is concerned, but who is
superior in the conduct of life, preserving certainly, in his care for the
truth, a minute image.
But we must as much as possible subject the soul to varied
preparatory exercise, that it may become susceptible to the
reception of knowledge. Do you not see how wax is softened and
copper purified, in order to receive the stamp applied to it? Just as
death is the separation of the soul from the body, so is knowledge as
it were the rational death urging the spirit away, and separating it
from the passions, and leading it on to the life of well-doing, that it
may then say with confidence to God, “I live as Thou wishest.” For
he who makes it his purpose to please men cannot please God,
since the multitude choose not what is profitable, but what is
pleasant. But in pleasing God, one as a consequence gets the
favour of the good among men. How, then, can what relates to meat,
and drink, and amorous pleasure, be agreeable to such an one?
since he views with suspicion even a word that produces pleasure,
and a pleasant movement and act of the mind. “For no one can
serve two masters, God and Mammon,”[1262] it is said; meaning not
simply money, but the resources arising from money bestowed on
various pleasures. In reality, it is not possible for him who
magnanimously and truly knows God, to serve antagonistic
pleasures.
There is one alone, then, who from the beginning was free of
concupiscence—the philanthropic Lord, who for us became man.
And whosoever endeavour to be assimilated to the impress given by
Him, strive, from exercise, to become free of concupiscence. For he
who has exercised concupiscence and then restrained himself, is
like a widow who becomes again a virgin by continence. Such is the
reward of knowledge, rendered to the Saviour and Teacher, which
He Himself asked for,—abstinence from what is evil, activity in doing
good, by which salvation is acquired.
As, then, those who have learned the arts procure their living by
what they have been taught, so also is the Gnostic saved, procuring
life by what he knows. For he who has not formed the wish to
extirpate the passion of the soul, kills himself. But, as seems,
ignorance is the starvation of the soul, and knowledge its
sustenance.
Such are the gnostic souls, which the Gospel likened to the
consecrated virgins who wait for the Lord. For they are virgins, in
respect of their abstaining from what is evil. And in respect of their
waiting out of love for the Lord, and kindling their light for the
contemplation of things, they are wise souls, saying, “Lord, for long
we have desired to receive Thee; we have lived according to what
Thou hast enjoined, transgressing none of Thy commandments.
Wherefore also we claim the promises. And we pray for what is
beneficial, since it is not requisite to ask of Thee what is most
excellent. And we shall take everything for good; even though the
exercises that meet us, which Thine arrangement brings to us for the
discipline of our stedfastness, appear to be evil.”
The Gnostic, then, from his exceeding holiness, is better prepared
to fail when he asks, than to get when he does not ask.
His whole life is prayer and converse with God. And if he be pure
from sins, he will by all means obtain what he wishes. For God says
to the righteous man, “Ask, and I will give thee; think, and I will do.” If
beneficial, he will receive it at once; and if injurious, he will never ask
it, and therefore he will not receive it. So it shall be as he wishes.
But if one say to us, that some sinners even obtain according to
their requests, [we should say] that this rarely takes place, by reason
of the righteous goodness of God. And it is granted to those who are
capable of doing others good. Whence the gift is not made for the
sake of him that asked it; but the divine dispensation, foreseeing that
one would be saved by his means, renders the boon again
righteous. And to those who are worthy, things which are really good
are given, even without their asking.
Whenever, then, one is righteous, not from necessity or out of fear
or hope, but from free choice, this is called the royal road, which the
royal race travel. But the byways are slippery and precipitous. If,
then, one take away fear and honour, I do not know if the illustrious
among the philosophers, who use such freedom of speech, will any
longer endure afflictions.
 Now lusts and other sins are called “briars and thorns.”
Accordingly the Gnostic labours in the Lord’s vineyard, planting,
pruning, watering; being the divine husbandman of what is planted in
faith. Those, then, who have not done evil, think it right to receive the
wages of ease. But he who has done good out of free choice,
demands the recompense as a good workman. He certainly shall
receive double wages—both for what he has not done, and for what
good he has done.
Such a Gnostic is tempted by no one except with God’s
permission, and that for the benefit of those who are with him; and
he strengthens them for faith, encouraging them by manly
endurance. And assuredly it was for this end, for the establishment
and confirmation of the churches, that the blessed apostles were
brought into trial and to martyrdom.
The Gnostic, then, hearing a voice ringing in his ear, which says,
“Whom I shall strike, do thou pity,” beseeches that those who hate
him may repent. For the punishment of malefactors, to be
consummated in the highways, is for children to witness;[1263] for
there is no possibility of the Gnostic, who has from choice trained
himself to be excellent and good, ever being instructed or delighted
with such spectacles.[1264] And so, having become incapable of
being softened by pleasures, and never falling into sins, he is not
corrected by the examples of other men’s sufferings. And far from
being pleased with earthly pleasures and spectacles is he who has
shown a noble contempt for the prospects held out in this world,
although they are divine.
“Not every one,” therefore, “that says Lord, Lord, shall enter into
the kingdom of God; but he that doeth the will of God.”[1265] Such is
the gnostic labourer, who has the mastery of worldly desires even
while still in the flesh; and who, in regard to things future and still
invisible, which he knows, has a sure persuasion, so that he regards
them as more present than the things within reach. This able
workman rejoices in what he knows, but is cramped on account of
his being involved in the necessities of life; not yet deemed worthy of
the active participation in what he knows. So he uses this life as if it
belonged to another,—so far, that is, as is necessary.
He knows also the enigmas of the fasting of those days—I mean
the Fourth and the Preparation. For the one has its name from
Hermes, and the other from Aphrodite. He fasts in his life, in respect
of covetousness and voluptuousness, from which all the vices grow.
For we have already often above shown the three varieties of
fornication, according to the apostle—love of pleasure, love of
money, idolatry. He fasts, then, according to the Law, abstaining from
bad deeds, and, according to the perfection of the Gospel, from evil
thoughts. Temptations are applied to him, not for his purification, but,
as we have said, for the good of his neighbours, if, making trial of
toils and pains, he has despised and passed them by.
The same holds of pleasure. For it is the highest achievement for
one who has had trial of it, afterwards to abstain. For what great
thing is it, if a man restrains himself in what he knows not? He, in
fulfilment of the precept, according to the Gospel, keeps the Lord’s
day, when he abandons an evil disposition, and assumes that of the
Gnostic, glorifying the Lord’s resurrection in himself. Further also,
when he has received the comprehension of scientific speculation,
he deems that he sees the Lord, directing his eyes towards things
invisible, although he seems to look on what he does not wish to
look on; chastising the faculty of vision, when he perceives himself
pleasurably affected by the application of his eyes; since he wishes
to see and hear that alone which concerns him.
In the act of contemplating the souls of the brethren, he beholds
the beauty of the flesh also, with the soul itself, which has become
habituated to look solely upon that which is good, without carnal
pleasure. And they are really brethren; inasmuch as, by reason of
their elect creation, and their oneness of character, and the nature of
their deeds, they do, and think, and speak the same holy and good
works, in accordance with the sentiments with which the Lord wished
them as elect to be inspired.
For faith shows itself in their making choice of the same things;
and knowledge, in learning and thinking the same things; and hope,
in desiring[1266] the same things.
And if, through the necessity of life, he spend a small portion of
time about his sustenance, he thinks himself defrauded, being
diverted by business. Thus not even in dreams does he look on
aught that is unsuitable to an elect man. For thoroughly[1267] a
stranger and sojourner in the whole of life is every such one, who,
inhabiting the city, despises the things in the city which are admired
by others, and lives in the city as in a desert, so that the place may
not compel him, but his mode of life show him to be just.
This Gnostic, to speak compendiously, makes up for the absence
of the apostles, by the rectitude of his life, the accuracy of his
knowledge, by benefiting his relations, by “removing the mountains”
of his neighbours, and putting away the irregularities of their soul.
Although each of us is his[1268] own vineyard and labourer.
He, too, while doing the most excellent things, wishes to elude the
notice of men, persuading the Lord along with himself that he is
living in accordance with the commandments, preferring these things
from believing them to exist. “For where any one’s mind is, there also
is his treasure.”[1269]
He impoverishes himself, in order that he may never overlook a
brother[1270] who has been brought into affliction, through the
perfection that is in love, especially if he know that he will bear want
himself easier than his brother. He considers, accordingly, the other’s
pain his own grief; and if, by contributing from his own indigence in
order to do good, he suffer any hardship, he does not fret at this, but
augments his beneficence still more. For he possesses in its
sincerity the faith which is exercised in reference to the affairs of life,
and praises the gospel in practice and contemplation. And, in truth,
he wins his praise “not from men, but from God,”[1271] by the
performance of what the Lord has taught.
He, attracted by his own hope, tastes not the good things that are
in the world, entertaining a noble contempt for all things here; pitying
those that are chastised after death, who through punishment
unwillingly make confession; having a clear conscience with
reference to his departure, and being always ready, as “a stranger
and pilgrim,” with regard to the inheritances here; mindful only of
those that are his own, and regarding all things here as not his own;
not only admiring the Lord’s commandments, but, so to speak, being
by knowledge itself partaker of the divine will; a truly chosen intimate
of the Lord and His commands in virtue of being righteous; and
princely and kingly as being a Gnostic; despising all the gold on
earth and under the earth, and dominion from shore to shore of
ocean, so that he may cling to the sole service of the Lord.
Wherefore also, in eating, and drinking, and marrying (if the Word
enjoin), and even in seeing dreams, he does and thinks what is holy.
So is he always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of
angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their
holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the
saints[1272] standing with him.
He recognises a twofold [element in faith], both the activity of him
who believes, and the excellence of that which is believed according
to its worth; since also righteousness is twofold, that which is out of
love, and that from fear. Accordingly it is said, “The fear of the Lord is
pure, remaining for ever and ever.”[1273] For those that from fear turn
to faith and righteousness, remain for ever. Now fear works
abstinence from what is evil; but love exhorts to the doing of good,
by building up to the point of spontaneousness; that one may hear
from the Lord, “I call you no longer servants, but friends,” and may
now with confidence apply himself to prayer.
And the form of his prayer is thanksgiving for the past, for the
present, and for the future as already through faith present. This is
preceded by the reception of knowledge. And he asks to live the
allotted life in the flesh as a Gnostic, as free from the flesh, and to
attain to the best things, and flee from the worse. He asks, too, relief
in those things in which we have sinned, and conversion to the
acknowledgment of them.
He follows, on his departure, Him who calls, as quickly, so to
speak, as He who goes before calls, hasting by reason of a good
conscience to give thanks; and having got there with Christ, shows
himself worthy, through his purity, to possess, by a process of
blending, the power of God communicated by Christ. For he does
not wish to be warm by participation in heat, or luminous by
participation in flame, but to be wholly light.
He knows accurately the declaration, “Unless ye hate father and
mother, and besides your own life, and unless ye bear the sign [of
the cross].”[1274] For he hates the inordinate affections of the flesh,
which possess the powerful spell of pleasure; and entertains a noble
contempt for all that belongs to the creation and nutriment of the
flesh. He also withstands the corporeal[1275] soul, putting a bridle-bit
on the restive irrational spirit: “For the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit.”[1276] And “to bear the sign of [the cross]” is to bear about
death, by taking farewell of all things while still alive; since there is
not equal love in “having sown the flesh,”[1277] and in having formed
the soul for knowledge.
He having acquired the habit of doing good, exercises
beneficence well, quicker than speaking; praying that he may get a
share in the sins of his brethren, in order to confession and
conversion on the part of his kindred; and eager to give a share to
those dearest to him of his own good things. And so these are to
him, friends. Promoting, then, the growth of the seeds deposited in
him, according to the husbandry enjoined by the Lord, he continues
free of sin, and becomes continent, and lives in spirit with those who
are like him, among the choirs of the saints, though still detained on
earth.
He, all day and night, speaking and doing the Lord’s commands,
rejoices exceedingly, not only on rising in the morning and at noon,
but also when walking about, when asleep, when dressing and
undressing; and he teaches his son, if he has a son. He is
inseparable from the commandment and from hope, and is ever
giving thanks to God, like the living creatures figuratively spoken of
by Esaias, and submissive in every trial, he says, “The Lord gave,
and the Lord hath taken away.”[1278] For such also was Job; who
after the spoiling of his effects, along with the health of his body,
resigned all through love to the Lord. For “he was,” it is said, “just,
holy, and kept apart from all wickedness.”[1279] Now the word “holy”
points out all duties toward God, and the entire course of life.
Knowing which, he was a Gnostic. For we must neither cling too
much to such things, even if they are good, seeing they are human,
nor on the other hand detest them, if they are bad; but we must be
above both [good and bad], trampling the latter under foot, and
passing on the former to those who need them. But the Gnostic is
cautious in accommodation, lest he be not perceived, or lest the
accommodation become disposition.
 CHAPTER XIII.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GNOSTIC CONTINUED.

He never remembers those who have sinned against him, but

forgives them. Wherefore also he righteously prays, saying, “Forgive
us; for we also forgive.”[1280] For this also is one of the things which
God wishes, to covet nothing, to hate no one. For all men are the
work of one will. And is it not the Saviour, who wishes the Gnostic to
be perfect as “the heavenly Father,”[1281] that is, Himself, who says,
“Come, ye children, hear from me the fear of the Lord?”[1282] He
wishes him no longer to stand in need of help by angels, but to
receive it from Himself, having become worthy, and to have
protection from Himself by obedience.
Such an one demands from the Lord, and does not merely ask.
And in the case of his brethren in want, the Gnostic will not ask
himself for abundance of wealth to bestow, but will pray that the
supply of what they need may be furnished to them. For so the
Gnostic gives his prayer to those who are in need, and by his prayer
they are supplied, without his knowledge, and without vanity.
Penury and disease, and such trials, are often sent for
admonition, for the correction of the past, and for care for the future.
Such an one prays for relief from them, in virtue of possessing the
prerogative of knowledge, not out of vainglory; but from the very fact
of his being a Gnostic, he works beneficence, having become the
instrument of the goodness of God.
They say in the traditions that Matthew the apostle constantly
said, that “if the neighbour of an elect man sin, the elect man has
sinned. For had he conducted himself as the Word prescribes, his
neighbour also would have been filled with such reverence for the
life he led as not to sin.”
What, then, shall we say of the Gnostic himself? “Know ye not,”
says the apostle, “that ye are the temple of God?”[1283] The Gnostic
is consequently divine, and already holy, God-bearing, and God-
borne. Now the Scripture, showing that sinning is foreign to him,
sells those who have fallen away to strangers, saying, “Look not on a
strange woman, to lust,”[1284] plainly pronounces sin foreign and
contrary to the nature of the temple of God. Now the temple is great,
as the Church, and it is small, as the man who preserves the seed of
Abraham. He, therefore, who has God resting in him will not desire
aught else. At once leaving all hindrances, and despising all matter
which distracts him, he cleaves the heaven by knowledge. And
passing through the spiritual Essences, and all rule and authority, he
touches the highest thrones, hasting to that alone for the sake of
which alone he knew.
Mixing, then, “the serpent with the dove,”[1285] he lives at once
perfectly and with a good conscience, mingling faith with hope, in
order to the expectation of the future. For he is conscious of the
boon he has received, having become worthy of obtaining it; and is
translated from slavery to adoption, as the consequence of
knowledge; knowing God, or rather known of Him, for the end, he
puts forth energies corresponding to the worth of grace. For works
follow knowledge, as the shadow the body.
Rightly, then, he is not disturbed by anything which happens; nor
does he suspect those things, which, through divine arrangement,
take place for good. Nor is he ashamed to die, having a good
conscience, and being fit to be seen by the Powers. Cleansed, so to
speak, from all the stains of the soul, he knows right well that it will
be better with him after his departure.
Whence he never prefers pleasure and profit to the divine
arrangement, since he trains himself by the commands, that in all
things he may be well pleasing to the Lord, and praiseworthy in the
sight of the world, since all things depend on the one Sovereign God.
The Son of God, it is said, came to His own, and His own received
Him not. Wherefore also in the use of the things of the world he not
only gives thanks and praises the creation, but also, while using
them as is right, is praised; since the end he has in view terminates
in contemplation by gnostic activity in accordance with the
commandments.
 Thence now, by knowledge collecting materials to be the food of
contemplation, having embraced nobly the magnitude of knowledge,
he advances to the holy recompense of translation hence. For he
has heard the Psalm which says: “Encircle Zion, and encompass it,
tell upon its towers.”[1286] For it intimates, I think, those who have
sublimely embraced the Word, so as to become lofty towers, and to
stand firmly in faith and knowledge.
Let these statements concerning the Gnostic, containing the
germs of the matter in as brief terms as possible, be made to the
Greeks. But let it be known that if the [mere] believer do rightly one
or a second of these things, yet he will not do so in all nor with the
highest knowledge, like the Gnostic.
 CHAPTER XIV.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GNOSTIC FURNISHED BY AN EXPOSITION OF 1
COR. VI. 1, ETC.

Now, of what I may call the passionlessness which we attribute to

the Gnostic (in which the perfection of the believer, “advancing by
love, comes to a perfect man, to the measure of full stature,”[1287] by
being assimilated to God, and by becoming truly angelic), many
other testimonies from the Scripture occur to me to adduce. But I
think it better, on account of the length of the discourse, that such an
honour should be devolved on those who wish to take pains, and
leave it to them to elaborate the dogmas by the selection of
scriptures.
One passage, accordingly, I shall in the briefest terms advert to,
so as not to leave the topic unexplained.
For in the first Epistle to the Corinthians the divine apostle says:
“Dare any of you, having a matter against the other, go to law before
the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Know ye not that the
saints shall judge the world?”[1288] and so on.
The section being very lengthy, we shall exhibit the meaning of
the apostle’s utterance by employing such of the apostolic
expressions as are most pertinent, and in the briefest language, and
in a sort of cursory way, interpreting the discourse in which he
describes the perfection of the Gnostic. For he does not merely
instance the Gnostic as characterized by suffering wrong rather than
do wrong; but he teaches that he is not mindful of injuries, and does
not allow him even to pray against the man who has done him
wrong. For he knows that the Lord expressly enjoined “to pray for
enemies.”[1289]
To say, then, that the man who has been injured goes to law
before the unrighteous, is nothing else than to say that he shows a
wish to retaliate, and a desire to injure the second in return, which is
also to do wrong likewise himself.
 And his saying, that he wishes “some to go to law before the
saints,” points out those who ask by prayer that those who have
done wrong should suffer retaliation for their injustice, and intimates
that the second are better than the former; but they are not yet
obedient,[1290] if they do not, having become entirely free of
resentment, pray even for their enemies.
It is well, then, for them to receive right dispositions from
repentance, which results in faith. For if the truth seems to get
enemies who entertain bad feeling, yet it is not hostile to any one.
“For God makes His sun to shine on the just and on the unjust,”[1291]
and sent the Lord Himself to the just and the unjust. And he that
earnestly strives to be assimilated to God, in the exercise of great
absence of resentment, forgives seventy times seven times, as it
were all his life through, and in all his course in this world (that being
indicated by the enumeration of sevens) shows clemency to each
and any one; if any during the whole time of his life in the flesh do
the Gnostic wrong. For he not only deems it right that the good man
should resign his property alone to others, being of the number of
those who have done him wrong; but also wishes that the righteous
man should ask of those judges forgiveness for the offences of those
who have done him wrong. And with reason, if indeed it is only in
that which is external and concerns the body, though it go to the
extent of death even, that those who attempt to wrong him take
advantage of him; none of which truly belong to the Gnostic.
And how shall one “judge” the apostate “angels,” who has
become himself an apostate from that forgetfulness of injuries, which
is according to the Gospel? “Why do ye not rather suffer wrong?” he
says; “why are ye not rather defrauded? Yea, ye do wrong and
defraud,”[1292] manifestly by praying against those who transgress in
ignorance, and deprive of the philanthropy and goodness of God, as
far as in you lies, those against whom you pray, “and these your
brethren,”—not meaning those in the faith only, but also the
proselytes. For whether he who now is hostile shall afterwards
believe, we know not as yet. From which the conclusion follows
clearly, if all are not yet brethren to us, they ought to be regarded in
that light. And now it is only the man of knowledge who recognises
all men to be the work of one God, and invested with one image in
one nature, although some may be more turbid than others; and in
the creatures he recognises the operation, by which again he adores
the will of God.
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of
God?”[1293] He acts unrighteously who retaliates, whether by deed
or word, or by the conception of a wish, which, after the training of
the Law, the Gospel rejects.
“And such were some of you”—such manifestly as those still are
whom you do not forgive; “but ye are washed,”[1294] not simply as
the rest, but with knowledge; ye have cast off the passions of the
soul, in order to become assimilated, as far as possible, to the
goodness of God’s providence by long-suffering, and by forgiveness
“towards the just and the unjust,” casting on them the gleam of
benignity in word and deeds, as the sun.
The Gnostic will achieve this either by greatness of mind, or by
imitation of what is better. And that is a third cause. “Forgive, and it
shall be forgiven you;” the commandment, as it were, compelling to
salvation through superabundance of goodness.
“But ye are sanctified.” For he who has come to this state is in a
condition to be holy, falling into none of the passions in any way, but
as it were already disembodied and already grown holy without[1295]
this earth.
“Wherefore,” he says, “ye are justified in the name of the Lord.” Ye
are made, so to speak, by Him to be righteous as He is, and are
blended as far as possible with the Holy Spirit. For “are not all things
lawful to me? yet I will not be brought under the power of any,”[1296]
so as to do, or think, or speak aught contrary to the gospel. “Meats
for the belly, and the belly for meats, which God shall destroy,”[1297]
—that is, such as think and live as if they were made for eating, and
do not eat that they may live as a consequence, and apply to
knowledge as the primary end. And does he not say that these are,
as it were, the fleshy parts of the holy body? As a body, the church of
the Lord, the spiritual and holy choir, is symbolized. Whence those,
who are merely called, but do not live in accordance with the word,
are the fleshy parts. “Now” this spiritual “body,” the holy Church, “is
not for fornication.” Nor are those things which belong to heathen life
to be adopted by apostasy from the gospel. For he who conducts
himself heathenishly in the Church, whether in deed, or word, or
even in thought, commits fornication with reference to the Church
and his own body. He who in this way “is joined to the harlot,” that is,
to conduct contrary to the Covenant, becomes another “body,” not
holy, “and one flesh,” and has a heathenish life and another hope.
“But he that is joined to the Lord in spirit” becomes a spiritual body
by a different kind of conjunction.
Such an one is wholly a son, an holy man, passionless, gnostic,
perfect, formed by the teaching of the Lord; in order that in deed, in
word, and in spirit itself, being brought close to the Lord, he may
receive the mansion that is due to him who has reached manhood
thus.
Let the specimen suffice to those who have ears. For it is not
required to unfold the mystery, but only to indicate what is sufficient
for those who are partakers in knowledge to bring it to mind; who
also will comprehend how it was said by the Lord, “Be ye perfect as
your Father, perfectly,”[1298] by forgiving sins, and forgetting injuries,
and living in the habit of passionlessness. For as we call a physician
perfect, and a philosopher perfect, so also, in my view, do we call a
Gnostic perfect. But not one of those points, although of the greatest
importance, is assumed in order to the likeness of God. For we do
not say, as the Stoics do most impiously, that virtue in man and God
is the same. Ought we not then to be perfect, as the Father wills?
For it is utterly impossible for any one to become perfect as God is.
Now the Father wishes us to be perfect by living blamelessly,
according to the obedience of the gospel.
If, then, the statement being elliptical, we understand what is
wanting, in order to complete the section for those who are incapable
of understanding what is left out, we shall both know the will of God,
and shall walk at once piously and magnanimously, as befits the
dignity of the commandment.