Съпротивата на пиесите за съпротивата на Георги Марков
The Resistance Against Georgi Markov’s Resistance Plays

Summary/Abstract: The article examines some of the plays by novelist and playwright Georgi Markov (1929-1978) that are devoted to the topic of the armed resistance of the communists during the early 1940s: To Crawl Under the Rainbow, Assassination in the Dead-end Street, Communist, the first documentary drama ever written in our country, that was pro- hibited at the main rehearsal, and Archangel Michael, a play written in emigration, which, in its more abstract and generalized form, can also be classified in this thematic group. The first three dramas, written in Bulgaria, had a difficult staging history, and underwent various ordeals through various levels of censorship by the communist authorities; this history is amply reflected in the article. Before analyzing the texts themselves, the author attempts to situate the life and works of Georgi Markov within the general picture of those times. During the whole period from 1944 to 1989, the conflict between the Idealist and the Materialist may be considered one of the central oppositions expressed in Bulgarian art in general. This is true for G. Markov’s plays as well. I designate these two functional characters of drama as the „Actionary” and the „Reac- tionary”. In three of these plays the topic is situated in a more or less abstract framework, and only in Communists is the theme presented with genuine historical concreteness. But it seems that abstractness on one side and realism on the other, especially in its documentary version, were the two great evils, the two most dangerous and impossible neighbours, of „socialist realism” – whatever that means.

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