Pioneer wasn’t. It was indistinguishable from going to school. To be thrown out of the Chavdars/Pioneers/Comosomol was a rare but complete social disgrace, and could end with a Corrective Labour School.
Each class was a Unit, and each Unit had its Pioneer committee: the Unit Leader was responsible for the overall excellence of the Unit, followed by a Unit Secretary who handled the funds, a Cultural Officer responsible for events, and the lesser posts of Physical Education Officer and Recycled Paper Officer, who was only activated on Recycled Paper Day when each Unit competed for the top quota in accumulated used paper. The bulk of used paper was supplied by
The Worker’s Deed
to which some parents subscribed. Mine didn’t, so my quota of used paper usually consisted of my parents’ old maths manuals. Turning up empty-handed was a disgrace for your Unit.
My default career as a Pioneer started with the post of Cultural Officer, which I did resentfully. I didn’t want to be organizing the Unit’s cultural events, I wanted to be organizing my own culture. But the Unit had to be present at key cultural moments, such as the ‘Flag of Peace’ Assembly on the outskirts of the Youths. There, we posed for class photographs in a concrete, open-air complex called The Bells. The Bells featured the national bell of every country in the world, and after the photos and the speeches we were allowed to toll the bells and have a picnic on the grass.
The idea of the Bells and the Assembly came from the Minister of Culture, Lyudmila Jivkova, daughter of Comrade Jivkov. She was an enigmatic woman who wore an eccentric Eastern turban. The intention was to unite all the children of the world – white, black, yellow, red – in an assembly of peace and comradeship. Surrounded by 120 national bells, in my red Pioneer scarf, I wondered when the colourful children of the world would finally arrive.
They never did, and Lyudmila died suddenly and mysteriously, aged thirty-nine. Her death, like her life, was a State secret. Now weknow that the autopsy report was signed by eminent professors who were not there. Speculation abounded and still abounds today: illness; accident; suicide; KGB-inspired murder. After all, the Soviets had issued several warnings about her internationalist projects, her interest in mystic teachings and unorthodox faiths, and her promotion of modern and ancient cultures. She created hundreds of art museums, opera houses, concert halls, and Sofia’s most prestigious humanities college for classical studies. She was a follower of Agni-Yoga teaching and made regular trips to India. In short, she was straying from the ideological struggle of Mature Socialism in its most advanced stage. After her death, an official cult of her person was loudly proclaimed, but her progressive cultural initiatives were quietly strangled.
Around that time, I was relieved of the Cultural Officer post, and suddenly promoted to the terrifying heights of a Unit Leader. Whenever Class E was called out by the school officials, I would step forward, sick with stage fright, with my right arm lifted across my face in the Pioneer salute, a salute separated from its Nazi cousin only by a fold in the elbow, to report to the more senior Brigade Leader.
Brigade Leader: ‘Unit ready?’
Unit Leader (me): ‘Always ready!’
It wasn’t clear to me what exactly we were ready for, but I was certainly always ready to step back into the ranks of my unit and fade away from the spotlight.
In the classroom, though, it was less easy to say your lines and disappear, especially with the arrival of our new Class Supervisor, Comrade Gesheva. She was short and neckless, with bulldog jowls. For a while we thought she was Comrade Geshev’s wife, a match made in comrades’ heaven, but they only shared a surname and an ideology.
Unfortunately, Comrade Gesheva was a teacher of literature, myfavourite subject. She wore a worker’s buttoned mantle over her civilian
Each class was a Unit, and each Unit had its Pioneer committee: the Unit Leader was responsible for the overall excellence of the Unit, followed by a Unit Secretary who handled the funds, a Cultural Officer responsible for events, and the lesser posts of Physical Education Officer and Recycled Paper Officer, who was only activated on Recycled Paper Day when each Unit competed for the top quota in accumulated used paper. The bulk of used paper was supplied by
The Worker’s Deed
to which some parents subscribed. Mine didn’t, so my quota of used paper usually consisted of my parents’ old maths manuals. Turning up empty-handed was a disgrace for your Unit.
My default career as a Pioneer started with the post of Cultural Officer, which I did resentfully. I didn’t want to be organizing the Unit’s cultural events, I wanted to be organizing my own culture. But the Unit had to be present at key cultural moments, such as the ‘Flag of Peace’ Assembly on the outskirts of the Youths. There, we posed for class photographs in a concrete, open-air complex called The Bells. The Bells featured the national bell of every country in the world, and after the photos and the speeches we were allowed to toll the bells and have a picnic on the grass.
The idea of the Bells and the Assembly came from the Minister of Culture, Lyudmila Jivkova, daughter of Comrade Jivkov. She was an enigmatic woman who wore an eccentric Eastern turban. The intention was to unite all the children of the world – white, black, yellow, red – in an assembly of peace and comradeship. Surrounded by 120 national bells, in my red Pioneer scarf, I wondered when the colourful children of the world would finally arrive.
They never did, and Lyudmila died suddenly and mysteriously, aged thirty-nine. Her death, like her life, was a State secret. Now weknow that the autopsy report was signed by eminent professors who were not there. Speculation abounded and still abounds today: illness; accident; suicide; KGB-inspired murder. After all, the Soviets had issued several warnings about her internationalist projects, her interest in mystic teachings and unorthodox faiths, and her promotion of modern and ancient cultures. She created hundreds of art museums, opera houses, concert halls, and Sofia’s most prestigious humanities college for classical studies. She was a follower of Agni-Yoga teaching and made regular trips to India. In short, she was straying from the ideological struggle of Mature Socialism in its most advanced stage. After her death, an official cult of her person was loudly proclaimed, but her progressive cultural initiatives were quietly strangled.
Around that time, I was relieved of the Cultural Officer post, and suddenly promoted to the terrifying heights of a Unit Leader. Whenever Class E was called out by the school officials, I would step forward, sick with stage fright, with my right arm lifted across my face in the Pioneer salute, a salute separated from its Nazi cousin only by a fold in the elbow, to report to the more senior Brigade Leader.
Brigade Leader: ‘Unit ready?’
Unit Leader (me): ‘Always ready!’
It wasn’t clear to me what exactly we were ready for, but I was certainly always ready to step back into the ranks of my unit and fade away from the spotlight.
In the classroom, though, it was less easy to say your lines and disappear, especially with the arrival of our new Class Supervisor, Comrade Gesheva. She was short and neckless, with bulldog jowls. For a while we thought she was Comrade Geshev’s wife, a match made in comrades’ heaven, but they only shared a surname and an ideology.
Unfortunately, Comrade Gesheva was a teacher of literature, myfavourite subject. She wore a worker’s buttoned mantle over her civilian
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