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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN March 2, 2003 Issue 
The Truth That Killed by Georgi Markov Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat It We were in London to celebrate my son Zack's graduation from high school and scholarship at the University of Mississippi. As we neared the Waterloo Bridge while cruising the Thames, the tour guide started to tell us how in 1978 the Bulgarian State Security had murdered the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov with a poisonous pellet from an umbrella right there on the Waterloo Bridge. This incident worthy of the pen of Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy brought international attention to Bulgaria for a fleeting moment and continues to provide London tour guides with exciting material about London as the hub of international intrigue. While the guide retold this tale of cold war espionage and revenge, Zack nudged me with a knowing smile and I experienced one of those rare rewarding moments where you understand that some of the stuff you've been hammering into your kids' heads has really taken. For Zack was very familiar with the story, having read Markov's book and that not under duress, but due to a tempting bribe. The recent talk of war, of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and especially of ricin brought to mind Markov's death, for the umbrella pellet with which he was murdered was filled with ricin. This in turn gave me an excuse to write about his posthumously published book - "The Truth That Killed". As it has become evident by now, I am always in search of an excuse to write about some obscure topic that is of particular interest to me, hoping of course, to spark other people's interest in it. And obscure little Bulgaria and my memories of it, which undoubtedly, have been embellished though the eyes of nostalgia, is one of those topics. But I digress. Back to Georgi Markov's powerful book - "The Truth that Killed". Markov was born in 1929 in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. He was of university age by the time communism became established in the country and witnessed first hand the seismic changes it brought. The memories Markov shares with the readers have much to do with a specific moment in history. A brief rendering of Bulgaria's convoluted history at the time of World War II would provide that necessary background. During World War II Bulgaria had an active Resistance movement led by the Fatherland Front, a coalition of bourgeois and communist factions. The Soviet Army entered Bulgaria without opposition and on 9 September 1944 the Fatherland Front assumed officially the government leadership. But within a short time the Communist party grabbed the key ministries of Interior and Justice, established a "People's Militia", "People's Courts" and the State Security and proceeded to get rid of the non-communist factions in the Fatherland Front by trying hastily and executing its important leaders. Thus the Communist Party consolidated its power and in 1946 a rigged "plebiscite" abolished the monarchy opening the road for Bulgaria to become a miniature copy of a Soviet Republic. At the age of thirty-three Markov became famous with the publication of his first novel, "Men". It was translated into all Eastern European languages. He won the highest literary prize in Bulgaria and became the darling of the most elite set of communist leaders - the Todor Zhivkov circle. Zhivkov was the Bulgarian communist dictator who managed to hang on to his power for much longer than any other East European dictator. In 1969 Markov, disillusioned by the corruption, moral and ethical decay, destruction of human dignity and the sheer absurdity of life under communism, defected to London. Three and a half years later he was tried for his defection in Sofia in absentia. As a result he was sentenced to six and a half years of prison. Some years later he began to write his memoirs and to broadcast them over Radio Free Europe. "Today, we Bulgarians present a fine example of what it is to exist under a lid which we cannot lift and which we no longer believe someone else can lift," writes Markov eloquently and yet succinctly. "We exemplify an existence without the right to choose and sometimes we marvel that this too, is possible, that one can live in this way." In his broadcasts he spoke of the corruption and hypocrisy he had witnessed in Zhivkov's inner circle, of the methods of oppression and denigration of the Bulgarian people, of the meticulously planned cult of the personality campaigns of communist leaders to place them on the level of deities, of the routine spying and denouncements, of shattered lives, of tortures and sufferings in forced labor camps, of "thefts which are called privileges, and privileges which are called thefts," of "crimes which are unmasked before they have been committed," of the absurdity of required attendance to endless political consciousness-raising meetings and study teams dedicated to the study of the biographies of comrades Stalin or Dimitrov (the Bulgarian communist leader who thankfully died mysteriously in a Soviet sanatorium in 1949), of learning to use in one's daily conversation "phrases in which nobody believed, nonsense like 'leader of incomparable genius' and 'father and teacher of all progressive humanity'," of affirmative action in university admissions, of the creation of "class enemies" and the frenzy to invent for oneself a proletarian background. Markov was murdered for revealing the truth about the nature of communism and the characters of the Bulgarian communist leaders. Books like this one should continue to be published and read; films like "Max" (about Hitler's days as an artist) and the "Pianist" (the real story of a Polish holocaust survival) should continue to be made and viewed. New generations and those of us who suffer from historical amnesia must be reminded of how easy it is for dictatorships to flourish and destroy all the good in humankind. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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