Literature

Three sacrificed on the altar of revolutionary rage

4 reading minutes

written by Diana-Alice Ramsauer · 10 May 2022 · 0 comment

Three sacrificed on the altar of revolutionary rage

The devastated

This is the story of a country liberated from Nazism by the Soviet Union. At least, this is the official story, set in Bulgaria in the 1940s, of three women whose husbands are taken from them. A journalist-writer, a clergyman and a businessman, supposedly enemies of the state, sold out to reactionary ideology. If the message, fundamentally anti-authoritarian, is not new, its treatment, in The Devastated is touching, and sheds light on the history of a little-known country.

Devastated. This is undeniably the feeling of these three Bulgarian women who see their husbands murdered for having thought and acted in a way that the totalitarian Soviet state of the 40s could not accept.

The first, Raïna, is the wife of a writer-journalist. Both come from the Bulgarian upper middle class. Their daily lives are punctuated by literary gatherings in the garden of their second home, an hour's train ride from the capital Sofia. Bulgaria, an ally of Germany in the First and Second World Wars, saw the arrival of the Red Army - «the Ukrainian regime» - in 1944. The country then became part of the USSR.

For Raïna's family, it's the end of a certain quietude. Rumors of arrests became more and more oppressive, until her husband, editor-in-chief of a successful literary magazine, was threatened. While some see this as freedom of expression, others see it as propaganda against the state. The man of letters will be purged. Widowed, Raïna is expropriated from her luxurious home.

Allowing the unthinkable out of a sense of revenge

History repeats itself with Ekatarina. Her tragedy is that she married a man of the Church, while the new powers-that-be are intent on destroying all forms of spirituality. Charity towards the poor becomes class contempt: for some of the needy, the general clean-up becomes revenge, a way of moving from the place of the rejected to that of the conqueror. Shot, the man of faith leaves behind a sick wife and three boys. The family, reduced to four members, was deported.

The fate of Viktoria and her adopted daughter Magdalena is no better. Admittedly, the family man and businessman is particularly wealthy, but the reasons for his liquidation are less ideological than linked to a personal and intimate settling of scores. Viktoria, the great pianist, is driven from her home. To survive, her long, slender fingers have to make briquettes. Destitution is total. Alcoholism finishes the job.

Bulgaria as elsewhere

The message is clear: Theodora Dimova offers us a portrait of three women destroyed by the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union. The theme has been dealt with many times before. There's nothing really surprising about this story. Except that it takes place in Bulgaria. And today, who cares about Bulgaria?

The fact remains that Devastated doesn't stop at its geographical particularity. If it's sometimes difficult to identify with these bourgeois women living through the activities of their husbands, for their husbands and, finally, without their husbands, the author's story of pain, expectation, incomprehension and powerlessness sometimes moves us to tears. Observing history through the eyes of those who often played only a secondary role - certainly saving it - enables us to address human tragedy beyond political horror. It reminds us that the tragedies of the past permeate our flesh, even generations later. When historians have already said it all, writers have a duty to tell the story. To remember.

Write to the author: diana-alice.ramsauer@leregardlibre.com