Maria Genova: Communism, Sex and Lies

I looked at my wedding ring somewhat incredulous. The three diamonds sparkled beautifully in the bright sun. Married in Las Vegas, in the lair of capitalism. If anyone had predicted this a few years before, I would have said they were crazy. Back then we couldn’t even leave our country and all Bulgarian media portrayed The West as hell on earth. That seemed so long ago now. Perhaps because communism was such a surreal experience. We were taught pseudo history and were silenced from a very early age. It was for that very reason that my generation did not believe that the ideals on which we were raised would so quickly land on the dumping ground of real history. We felt free and happy in our spacious cage, in a country where nothing was allowed and everything was tolerated. We enjoyed our carefree life without our own responsibilities, because communism was in control. We had plenty of time to party, to flirt or to stand in line to pick up the latest scarce product.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall my eyes were opened. Communism was suddenly an incomprehensible paradox. I had helped build a just society, one I tried to dismantle with just as much dedication a few years later. Despite everyone knowing there was no way back, many people started to feel nostalgia towards the good old days, where you didn’t need to worry if you could put enough bread on the table or that you would lose your job. They didn’t want communism to live on in the memories of generations as just a cold dictatorship, because underneath the cold surface hid much optimism, humour and good ideas.

I found nostalgia towards the past to be completely useless, because no one could bring it back to life. My youth became an unreachable island in time. Only in my thoughts could I still be that innocent girl that sang communist songs with such fervour. Only in my thoughts could I see myself as the sexy, rebellious teenager, who tried to win the hearts of young men. In reality, the girl has blossomed into a woman, a woman with a past. She could not forget that, because the Bulgarian communists were the most skilled designers of the soul.

While I admired my expensive diamond ring I wondered for a second whether the entire wedding in Las Vegas had actually taken place. The communists had made us believe in things that didn’t exists and denied those that did. Was I so brainwashed that I also could not distinguish fairy tales from reality?

Memories swam like tiny lost fish towards the surface of my consciousness. As communist youth, we were probably the neatest because we had to endure a weekly inspection at school. Every Monday the teachers would look at our nails and if they felt they were too long they would cut them short right there. A teacher disapproved of my hairdo, grabbed a large pair of scissors from her desk drawer and started cutting. I thought it pretty normal that my hair was cut in front of the class and I was not embarrassed. I was more worried about the result, but because there was no mirror I could not see. The only thing I heard during those endless minutes was the tsjik-tsjik sound. The blunt scissors caught in my thick hair a few times, but eventually all undesired hair fell on the floor.

During the break, all the other kids were remarkably quiet. No one dared to comment on my new hairdo. After a while the biggest bully came towards me. ‘Mer, you have quite an original look’, he said. ‘Like a cabbage run over by a Trabant’.

‘Why don’t you go and say that to Comrade Dimitrova’, I snapped. ‘Then you might be given an even more original look. If you’re too chicken, I can arrange it for you’. The bully backed off just as quickly as he had appeared before me.

When I got home my mother nearly had a heart attack. ‘What happened to your hair?’.

‘Comrade Dimitrova thought it was too long,’ I replied. ‘Has Comrade Dimitrova gone blind? Your hair was no longer than shoulder length!’

‘She didn’t think my hairdo was neat enough’.

My mother was outraged. She always thought she could cut my hair well and now her creation had been publicly disapproved of. Despite this, she did not go to complain, because you just didn’t do that. You never argued with teachers, civil servants or party secretaries. The people did what the party leaders commanded and adhered to thousands of unwritten rules. No wonder that during my time communism had become so accepted: the older generation had been completely brainwashed and the new generation inherited a tightly controlled thought pattern.

The most important school rule was that you were not allowed to forget your silk communist scarf. All teachers were very strict about this: without the red scarf, you were not allowed in school. It did not matter how far away you lived from school, you had to go back home to get it. And if your parents were out to work then you had to phone them to get them to come as soon as possible.

We were not bothered with all the rules. It was all daily routine and only now and then did things go wrong. My grandmother has knitted a lovely white collar as replacement for the cotton collar of my uniform. I had to leave the school premised immediately, because such deviations were not tolerated in a country where all citizens were to be alike.

Some teachers with dictatorial tendencies had the habit of pulling disobedient children through the classroom by their ears. One always threw pencils through the window if he became angry, another hit us around the ears with a ruler and threw chalk at us. The same teachers gave us lessons in ethics in order to become better citizens. We had to repeat in unison what we would do if we saw an old woman with a heavy shopping bag. ‘Ask the woman if we can carry her shopping home for her’, we repeated obediently. And if a mother with a child boarded a full bus? ‘Stand up and ask if she wanted to sit down’, was the answer.

I personally hated Comrade Popova the most, a teacher who wore a gold ring. If I wasn’t paying attention she would tick it against my head. Sometime Comrade Popova thought that half the class was not behaving and sent us all to the corner. As there were not that many corners, we would form lines along the wall. We would stand with our backs to the class, look at each other and try not to laugh, because that would only make things worse. We didn’t want any remarks about bad behaviour in our school reports.

To get revenge on such tyrants, we would ‘disable’ their chairs by unscrewing bolts and moving the seat a little. We would laugh out loud if such a smug tyrant thudded onto the floor. ‘Who did this?’ was of course the inevitable question. We never ratted each other out. The lessons in ethics seemed to have some value after all.

Most of us were happy in the artificially created vacuum of Bulgarian communism. We felt it obvious that this was the most just, solidary and fantastic society. Nearly everything was well organized and there were no serious threats from outside the borders. Even though America had nuclear weapons we were convinced we could defeat the enemy. After all, we had the most powerful ally in the world: mother Russia.

Because of the communist propaganda, we knew that our ideals were stronger than the empty materialism of the West. This why every year we exuberantly celebrated the day that the communists came to power. Thousands of us marched through the streets in rows, waving balloons and chanting patriotic slogans. The festive music swept us up. Just once did we hear sad sounds and everyone turned around surprised. We saw a few men carrying a black coffin, on which the word capitalism had been painted. That was the reason for the sombre music, western capitalism was being symbolically buried to make room for a shining communist future for all countries worldwide.