Women, Art, and Power: A Study of Socialist Bulgaria

The thesis aims at creating a nuanced picture of the female artistic position in the context of a socialist state and society. The research focuses on the impact of the Bulgarian socialist system on women’s lives and on the artistic context. I explore how this context is an additional dimension to the double regime of female labour in the socialist state. The combination of the traditional motherly role and the modern working role have been integrated by the ideological engineers of the socialist regime, but their integration was difficult. The woman artist presents a challenge to this dual construction. Women have been part of the traditional agricultural society typical for Eastern Europe until the mid-20th Century. The popularization of city life through mass urbanization, as well as the socialist welfare state and its ideological stances on freedom, equality, and women’s rights, has opened the doors to female participation in work and the arts. My intent with this work is to first explore the ideology behind the socialist states and its outcomes on women’s societal roles in Bulgaria. The policies created by the socialist state can be understood as a product of the original Marxist concepts of society, as well as of the influence of different societal groups. I continue to trace the development of such policies in the context of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement’s influential cultural role. The last chapter is dedicated to women in the two artistic spheres - cinema productions and fine art creation in the socialist state. These structural perspectives are juxtaposed with the prevalent modernist movement of the 20th Century, characteristic of the Western capitalist world. Through this study of socialist and capitalist modes of shaping the female artistic profession, I finally analyse the general outcomes of socialist policies on women and their artistic contributions.