These essays are about Bulgaria. I have no doubt that, as regards the problems and attitudes discussed, they refer to the Balkans as a whole.
Essay one
The attitude towards the Roma in Bulgaria doesn’t differ essentially from that in any other European country. Generally speaking it varies from sweet, romantic loftiness to angry rejection. At the two extreme points of the swinging pendulum, we ‘look at ourselves, and look, and look’ but … we can’t recognize ourselves at all. We create an impression with our way of life, with our typical appearance and the language that is strange to ‘the natives’. They have built ‘an image’ of us … the one they were able to build, the easiest way. (And if by chance you can’t be ‘accommodated into’ their a priori conceptions, God take pity on you…). In other words, in both cases, these are only … mental pictures, or rather ‘substitutes of mental pictures’. After 126 years of a new Bulgarian state the level of knowledge about the Roma is almost the same as it was at its birth. In the last few years studies have been published which try to look at things from more angles. Well, I should say that in those books, reports and articles the authors stay frequently within their empirical findings and display a superficial (to say the least) and manipulative attitude towards the problems. Pseudo-scholars, publicists and researchers pop up everywhere! They have nothing against dipping into the European purse full of money for modern Roma topics.There are many questions – who shall provide the answers and when? We are unshaven, shall we shave? Shall we pick up a new razor or shall we use the rusted one?Let us ask some of the questions:- Is ‘historical’ knowledge in line with the century-long ‘residence’ of the Roma on these lands?- What is Bulgaria for us?- What are we for Bulgaria?- What is the attitude of the ordinary citizen towards his/her fellow-countrymen?- What has the attitude of the Bulgarian authorities been towards us throughout all these 126 years?- What is our attitude towards the Bulgarian national destiny?- What is our attitude towards ourselves?- What is the attitude of the Bulgarian humanities towards us and towards our destiny?- What is our place in Bulgaria’s history and has science given an answer to this question?- What knowledge have the press, the other media, the arts provided of us as a whole?- What do our children learn – mutual respect, tolerance, attempt to look into the nature of the other or hatred and racism, spiritual dirt and elementary human stupidity? Well, we cannot answer these questions and a lot of other questions… An if we answer them, what difference does it make…
Essay two
In the centre of Sofia, right behind the Courts of Justice (what irony! showing quite visibly the impotence and carelessness of our judicial system and the government), skinheads threw a homeless and defenceless child from a high building and killed him. A lot of time has passed since this event which the newspapers used only for a single day, just to increase their circulation! They never returned to this symbolic event. No one cares whether the perpetrator became known, and if known, whether there were any consequences, if not… And why should he remain unknown? Society is in a state of blissful slumber. Every one has encapsulated himself in a shell, has submerged in his poverty, in his own physical and spiritual misery. So much that he got used to the bad news, that the only thing he says to himself is ‘pray this won’t happen to me’… And the picture which some people saw in the scenarios is already there – to frighten the public, to scare non-stop, if there is something you can use. And if there is nothing – do invent something, whatever it is, but don’t leave alone the ordinary man, the tax payer, the one who fills the state treasury. Twenty years ago, the Bulgarian was scared with the Turks, today he is scared with the Roma, tomorrow …, well, and until tomorrow comes we may invent something else. Society lives in permanent fear. Manipulate it in any way! If there is no threat – just invent it, but never let the public in peace. This is the philosophy of cynicism, the political cynicism of all rulers, of the nouveau riches, who live on our back. This is the philosophy of impotence, of the total lack of capacity to rule your own country; this is the philosophy of hatred towards Bulgaria and of everything Bulgarian. Yes, it is namely their lackeys that support the thesis - we are the only ones who think about the country. And that is why they raise the ‘big’ question about ‘the gypsy threat’ – you see after ten years the Roma shall be three million… These people scoop pure water from a swamp, nominate people who have less talent than themselves. They quote so many results from ‘studies’ that the ordinary man shall get vertigo… But that’s their goal! Today – a small article, tomorrow – a statement on a private TV channel, the next day – on the ‘Second TV channel’, on Friday – a half an hour radio transmission… Public opinion is manipulated, hooked, people’s conscience is framed, brains are washed. Some one pays for that. With the money stolen from the banks – with our money. With the money, which disappeared before November 10, 1989 – our money! Always with our money – hitting our heads.The truth is different: never in their history have the Roma raised their hands against another people! In the not so distant past we were living at latitudes where many languages and dialects were spoken, we were living together with many nationalities and national groups, there were many religions and heresies (professed completely freely and in a democratic way that we may dream of even today). In those days we used to live tolerantly with all our neighbours. When a person lives in such a mixed society he has no choice but to assume the principles of respect for the others – respect for their religion, language, culture, for their rights to profess them freely, to live freely, and to think freely. We are not greedy for power; we do not aspire for a state or for a territory. We are wiser than many think we are. We have been living and working for thousands of years for the country we lived in and not for anyone else. We did not rob the banks. We did not ruin the state – the levers were in other hands. We were just looking, 98 percent of us unemployed.
Essay three
For many years I have been avoiding reading newspapers. This has been my reaction to all journalistic and solvent people’s outrages, to those who buy scamps’ brains. Well, now and then someone tries to pass me over something idiotic to read. And being a professional reader – somehow I can not ignore it. It happened in that way some time ago when a newspaper was pushed under my nose – ‘take, read’. I opened the newspaper and searched. And I found ‘it’. A rather renowned cartoonist beats… Bulgarians – to make them wiser. Strange, I told myself. What is this mania to beat someone, whoever they are?! Some twenty years ago a poet, very prominent at the time, ‘killed’ Bulgarians. After some time another shall beat and kill the Bulgarian – several days later still another one in another newspaper would beat him for nothing. Ouch, so much beating and killing shall mercifully fall on this damned Bulgarian’s head, to hell, I said to myself! What a fancy?! And I started reading the great article. And I read and I admit there was so much nonsense that… Where is my brain, I said to myself. Not the cartoonist’s – there is always time for a man to become a laughing stock. To laugh at you own nuts. Not because of something else but because you are already of age, when it is inconvenient to be surprised by someone else in such an illegally-stupid way. Illegal, because a man pretends to be a wise man and you believe him, and in the end… But … mind your business! One cannot pretend every minute to be wiser than he ‘is’… From this article I understood that ‘America is not a state but a continent, a riff-raff of human odds and ends’. That Switzerland is also not a state but ‘a laundry’. There not money but ‘dough’ is laundered. I understood also that Bulgaria is not considered as a separate state, either. Bulgaria is for the writer ‘a misunderstanding in the world ocean, some reef’. Further on, the big wise man makes a greater discovery: that to become a Nobel-prize winner you have to be no more than a tailor. It is sufficient to know languages; the remaining is as easy as winking. So far, crap after crap. But let it go, you say to yourself, a man of age, with hair lost and not only hair but the brain cells as well gone somewhere. It is stranger that to the question “what should be feared most”, the great man goes directly to, well … to the gypsies. Well, you say to yourself, were it Moscow, or was it Washington?! How come indeed … the gypsies? And the man makes … a proposal. The Czechs were right to isolate the gypsies in ghettos. We should follow suit. And after a brief historical overview in which he repeats ‘truths’ as he sees them appropriate, he considers himself a great expert on the topic… Having read something here and there, he is self-inspired that he has so much brain that he can lend it to the statesmen, who dare not voice that proposal. You read and read and start getting angry that you know Bulgarian! And you wonder where to start with this great Balkan wise man! With the fact that not ‘the Czechs’ but some small municipality somewhere in the backyard of European geography has voted to raise a wall between people? As if those who voted for the wall did not recall what fifty years ago was done to them by the Nazis… Instead, for example, the idea that these municipal councillors should think how to create new jobs for these people, in order to avoid possible trouble. Because these people are hungry and starving. ‘The gypsies were the curse of Bulgaria, not the Turks.’ Great, another discovery. Twenty years ago another 700,000 people were deported – they were ‘the curse’, now new ones have been chosen as the curse. And this ‘highly tolerant’ person, as he declares himself, as if he can’t perceive that this is not the cause and that he should start looking for the roots of evil in him. Because it is very easy to put the blame on the other, it is very suitable, it’s never you… Because I don’t know a gypsy banker, for example, who has been robbing poor people, but I’ve seen Bulgarian bankers on the TV. My childhood friend Borko stole wires, but he did it as a man, and he was left hanging on the wire forever. And he did it not because he liked hanging very much but because his three children, already grown-up men and women, were and are still unemployed. And they have families, in which no one has so far found a job! Yet, look around, can you see a banker hanging somewhere out of shame – I haven’t, or a banker dying of hunger. Has the writer seen such a banker?! Conversely – somewhere in the States Bulgarian bankers have built a whole quarter! Also in Johannesburg and in Vienna! And there is no force that can bring them back, nor the people’s money. Because it seems the problem of the catastrophic situation is there, not with the gypsies. And elsewhere, of course, but let us stop here and continue with historical data. Long ago the Persians invited 10,000 gypsies to play music and they gave them land and seeds, but the gypsies squandered it all… Ladies and gentlemen, when you read Firdausi, you are not obliged to believe every fabrication of his; after all he is a poet! Just imagine! Is there a nation which has no peasants and workers and servants, and singers and musicians and whoever, so it should invite so many people from abroad? Is this not both exaggerated and stupid?! Such a nation may give birth to a Firdausi but could not raise musicians?! Hell, such a nation is very stupid and I personally don’t believe a tiny piece of that story!!! Firdausi wants to make his king also look unusually dull! Who is this shah, king or whatever, who would, out of his wits, bring 10,000 people, a whole army into his land! Never mind the instruments to … amuse his people! Because, you see, he is unable to amuse himself!? Well, when I read Firdausi I draw completely different conclusions!! The ‘history’ story is in general dictated by the clearly ‘political’ considerations of its author, considerations that we should try “to decipher” today. If there are enough red herrings. If there are none – it’s not mandatory to believe him 100 percent! But there is also something else. Well, let this piece of information be true: Don’t you think it is rather vulgar to invite someone for something and then to compel him to do something else?! The Louver may invite a master cartoonist to draw in Paris for a certain time and then buy part of his paintings at a price worthy of the Louver and the painter. Then, all of a sudden, someone buys ten cows, a piece of land and seeds and compels our buddy to breed cows, to plant and reap, because shall we say, at that moment there is something wrong with French agriculture. Well, don’t you think our buddy shall not swear like a trooper using a colourful Bulgarian swear word and bring his trinkets back to Bulgaria?! Then just imagine that some French newspaper starts to speak foully about that gentleman that he is very lazy - you see, the entire French nation is giving him bread in his hands but he doesn’t care about the lavish hospitality… In general, where is the criterion?!? Who is giving the right to an intellectual to speak in such a way about an entire nation?! And is the Bulgarian intellectual thought not perceiving that such a tone of voice is, to say the least, vulgar?!? Who and what are we teaching, educating? Here I take the liberty to repeat something, which I said to a former marauder ambassador years ago: I am very glad that my father has educated me – not people like you. My father was not a man chased for interviews. But I assure you that he was a highly educated and genuinely tolerant man. If this is tolerance – pity our state!!! I doubt very much that if 500,000 Bulgarians had been killed by Hitler, that’s the number of gypsies Hitler killed without any reason - a Bulgarian intellectual would have had the insolent perversity to claim that der Fuehrer is … shining.
Essay four
A senior state official (as it should be) is correct in his manners. A senior state official (as it should be) smiles, he is kind to everyone, he listens attentively.The senior university official is with grey hair (exactly as you imagine him). The senior university official gives advice (well, who else should do that?!).And we listen (obey).The senior state official listens attentively to the senior university official. Sometimes he smiles stately, sometimes – semi-condescendingly. No disputes – we pretend to be educated people.I understand the senior university official is in fact a lecturer – associate professor, Ph.D. holder, dean, - the man delivers very wise lectures to an audience eager for knowledge. Students listen (obey) attentively to his wise stories, sit for examinations and eventually fail. The students depend on him. He educates future teachers; they in their turn educate our children. He shapes public opinion. He participates in mapping out the government’s strategies and tactics on certain problems. Here is one of his wisecrack statements (I quote literally): ‘The government should take the necessary steps to make the minorities start loving Bulgaria at least a little’. The academic feels helpless – he asks the government to help science make those minorities start loving his beloved homeland at least a little. Because the teacher feels with his fibres that them minorities don’t love his homeland. And at this moment I saw the associate professor, the Ph.D. doctor, the dean, the professor and whoever. I saw him as a teacher in a small monastery school one hundred and fifty years ago. I imagined him strolling in the middle of the classroom with his homespun full-bottomed breeches, surrounded by children with shaven heads. The teacher with a cornel-tree stick in hand enforcing obedience and pouring knowledge into the pupils’ empty pumpkin heads… The state official nods understandingly. He has not forgotten that he is a diplomat but I know that he reasons in the same way. We, the poor ones, we keep mum. We are school kids. We went to school to buy brains. ‘Science is a sun that shines in our souls…’Ask the teacher whether if this is homeland for him, it is a pigsty for me! Ask the teacher how come he entered my soul and did not find there a drop of love towards his beloved homeland. Ask him what measuring gauge he uses to determine those minorities’ love of his beloved homeland. The teacher knows much, otherwise how come he was hired as a teacher? But he doesn’t know for sure that both my great-grandfathers have died ‘valiantly’ (as written in an official document that was not destroyed by accident) in the Balkan wars. They died defending the teacher’s beloved homeland – the one, which he categorically seems to deny calling it also my own (No wonder he may deny that right also to my great-grandfathers Nicola and Mincho). Though I don’t know whether his great-grandfather has not died from apoplectic stroke near his wife’s stinking behind. Though I don’t know whether there is brain or 6 % millet-ale in his head – otherwise, how come he can think that someone, let it be a senior state official, or the entire government, could make those ethnoses start loving Bulgaria at least a little… In a word – sheer nonsense…
Essay five
‘The Gypsies are the curse of Bulgaria’ – what have we come to - to hear that from the screen of the Bulgarian national television… (After the gutter newspaper ‘Trud’ – BNT didn’t lag behind…). By slightly changing this great idea of a genius you can understand right away how stupid this claim is. For instance: ‘The Armenians are the curse of Byzantium’. Or ‘the Bulgarians are the curse of Europe’. All these ‘enlightenments’ are worm-eaten or moderately stupid. Someone had voiced them somewhere, either in Constantinople a thousand years before, or in Rome when trying to kill the Pope some twenty years ago. True or false they exist in the speaker’s head. When you are given the chance to voice such a piece of idiocy, the television is to blame. And when you allow yourself to use this chance, the piece of idiocy is … personally yours.
Essay six
In the age of the so called ‘Great Discoveries’ Columbus set to discover India. He did not discover India. He discovered another continent, later called America after the name of another discoverer who in fact did not “discover” it. No doubt - injustice. Despite that America kept the name of the man who did not discover it. The second injustice was that although Columbus understood he had not discovered India, he named (he or someone else – does it matter when the name is used even today!) the local people ‘Indians’ (in English the name Indian refers both to the American Indians and to India’s people. The American Indian is sometimes called ‘Red Indian’, but this name obviously was coined rather late!). The name remained though the civilized Europeans and civilized Europe could have asked the local people – hey you, how do you call yourselves? Tell us so that we could call you by the same name! Because you can’t meet Christopher Columbus in the street and without knowing his name start calling him Ivan just because you met and said hallo to another Ivan. But the Europeans didn’t ask. And the native Americans had names – differing widely, because they came from different tribes, different people with their own traditions, customs, language and culture, achievements and history, worthy of respect. Some called themselves Mayas, others Incas, Cherokees, Apaches and so on… And they should not be called ‘Indians’ because they were not Indians! In fact Europe did not respect them. During the long years of conquest, massive killing, or to use a modern word - genocide – Europe behaved as a civilization of Barbarians. It had decided to educate the world with blood and fire and to make it learn to live according to the European standards. The European is the greatest egoist (possibly) in the entire world. He thinks he is the only one in the universe and that the tastes he indulges are the best. He is intoxicated only with the smell of his own divine sweat, his lips are the only ones that utter sacral truths, and he alone has the right to define … whatever it is… As strange as it may seem, this reflex is alive even today – look at what the US did during the past years in Vietnam, Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq and where else? And not only the US - the same was also done by England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Russia – highly civilized states and nations… They were the right ones. The others, they were wrong… It was no accident that at the time some ‘right’ conquerors and many ‘great’ persons were eaten alive or boiled on an island or inside the continental impenetrable lands. It is no accident that today the civilized man is wondering when he encounters ‘Barbarians’ with bomb belts. Things are clearer than that: evil for evil, blood for blood, inhumane attitude shall be retaliated with inhumane attitude. But the civilized man is not losing his reflexes so easily–first he kills the local population, then … he builds museums in their honour and studies their indigenous culture and history… That’s it; long live the dominant culture of the European ‘civilization’…For centuries this same ‘reflex’ has been demonstrated towards the gypsies. ‘They’ are not interested in what’s your name. ‘They are used’ to calling you… Despite the highly civilized explanations of yours, which were adopted and implanted as ‘civilized’ all over the worlds.
Essay seven
It seems that Bulgarian journalism has been left to its own conscience for 14 years now. It had to overcome a number of ‘painful’ notions, ideas, formats and mentality. Don’t ask me why – open any newspaper, magazine, switch on the TV set or the radio receiver to any program and listen carefully. If you are not prejudiced, you shall be convinced. I may give many examples; in fact we are literally buried under them. Every new day brings new information so it is hardly appropriate to burden you with my memories or facts… Not that there are no noble men among the journalists’ guild. There are noble people and that’s good. Some of them obey their own conscience - they take also into account ‘other’ points of view and observe ‘other’ worldly principles and philosophy. But I am not speaking here about these journalists. I am speaking about the others. They have adopted a model of public behaviour, which is not positive for the Bulgarian nation and which pollutes Bulgaria’s air, instead of purifying it. In our country journalism is at light years’ distance from Western journalism. Not so much in terms of talent and skills, technical and financial possibilities, etc, although they also count. It’s more with respect to the mission of the journalist to inform civil society and build the nation’s future. When I say ‘civil’ I have not in mind the notion of ‘civil’ dating back to 10 years ago, which linked this term with purely party goals, with a specific party directive. I am speaking about the genuine creator’s state of conscience This conscience compels him to seek and comply with other points of view, to have an in-depth understanding of topical problems, to avoid cheap manipulations by ‘ideas’, parties, movements or by separate self-sufficient political or financial gurus.Conscience – that’s what contemporary Bulgarian journalism is lacking! Journalists are preoccupied much more with ostentation (show!), top clothes, format, than with the essence of events, their depth, regretfully… They aim to amaze. Instead of seeking the roots of a phenomenon, they are interested only in facts, which are also very important, of course. Instead of digging out beyond the facts, they dream of sensations and ‘find’ them even where there are none. Journalists are running around after the powers that be, after the gurus, after money and, regretfully, do not consider any opposing point of view. Journalists are not interested in learning such points of view. ‘These opposite views’ bring no money, no ‘clout’, no self-esteem, nor ‘prestige’. It’s of no importance that this prestige is self-sufficient, it is the prestige of scums, of the nouveau riches, etc). Alas, such a prestige in our times ‘turns out’ to be the coveted one… In this sense, Bulgarian journalists, in the process of ‘letting them to themselves’, have to live through … ages. Hopefully these ages should not last insupportably long…
Essay eight
What is racism? Here is a specific example.During the Iraq war, the wonderful Bulgarian journalist Elena Yoncheva was attacked and robbed, something worse could have happened to her. In her live broadcasts from Iraq she talked not only about what had befallen her but she mentioned also the person who saved her. On the following day a high-circulation daily newspaper printed on its front page in huge letters that she was robbed and maltreated by … Arabs. As far as that piece was published by the newspaper, which during the last 13 years has contributed heavily to brainwashing in Bulgaria, the facts were objectively rendered. Yes, indeed she was robbed and beaten by Arabs. But she was saved also by Arabs. On that point the newspaper was reticent. Maybe in the text of the article this detail was also told. This is however in no way sufficient. After reading the non-objective title I ignored the article and threw the great global newspaper in the garbage bin. This act of mine was a direct consequence of the specific manipulation, which literally incites one race against another, one people against another people. I hope other people did the same and at least for a couple of months I shunned this newspaper. There is no other way to oppose today’s public situation. The prosecution office, which in such circumstances cannot pretend that nothing has happened, that nothing can be seen, has no right to remain blind and deaf to the apparent single-mindedness, racism and journalistic and human idiotism.That’s it. Some guys are playing on the dark instincts of people in order to sell gutter press information. Other people also join the play by pretending that nothing has happened and they can see nothing. I shall not continue here to present the many distorted questions and problems. I shall not speak about what the Roma have been living through and are still living for over 13 years as a result of such publications by many other media in bright and beautiful Bulgaria…
Essay nine
The manipulations can be of any sort. They can be deliberate and unintentional, big and small, wise and stupid… And who knows what else. I shall not speak about the deliberate, big and wise manipulations – one can see there other things, much deeper than one could perceive at first sight. But even ‘the small’ manipulations, if one starts thinking, turn out not to be so small. They affect the masses by nourishing their false self-esteem. The small manipulations are consonant with the masses’ moods, opinions and principles. And there’s more to it.Bulgarian National Television, Channel 1. The TV camera is getting closer to some shrubs, an open fire is seen, and a large tin vessel with water is boiling up. Children are hopping about. A nylon tent is pitched; it is called by the father ‘the palace’. Elementary questions are asked and the answers are also elementary. The producer makes ‘a show’, the Roma father ‘performs’ in the show. Speaking colloquially – the television makes ‘a circus’, and people love to go to the circus. The respondent is answering the questions exactly as you want him to: ‘Do you feel good here’?, ‘Yes, this here is my palace, if I have a place to lay my head on, take a bite and drink a couple of beers, what else do I need? Look, my wife is again pregnant, we are happy”. In between the TV camera is circling around the gypsy camp, an unshaven man is assuming the role of a great lover, well, as a youngster he gave pleasure to so many dames. He is raising the beer bottle, probably bought by the TV crew, well ‘we have to make people feel good’. A small boy comes around, takes the bottle from the bearded man, tips it up, the TV camera won’t miss the moment – ‘Well, they’re all such, this is so typical of them, and the TV must catch typical moments’… The camera man gets closer to the woman, asks the same stupid questions. The only difference in the answers is that as a measure of human happiness she needs at least five beers … Typical background music is heard at the same time. My goodness, could they turn on Brahms or Paganini? And all this is garnished with the interviewer’s deep thoughts, who not infrequently also shows his good feelings towards this different world, probably because he himself is also different, hey, ‘there are also wise men’. The interview is over.Where are, however, these people from? Why are they exactly here and not elsewhere? What made them go to the public squares? Do they have a permanent roof over their heads? Have this man and woman ever worked? What kind of job? Are they now employed? Why are they unemployed? These kids, do they attend school? Why not? How do they see their tomorrow? In fact, do they see it at all? What do they think about their life, about life in general? Is there any alternative for them? Why not? What did their parents do, their grandfathers and grandmothers? What did they do for a living? And why don’t you follow their trade? Do you have to steal? Why do you have to? Where would you like to live? What do you want to work? Why don’t you do something to start working what you want? What do you think about the state, you are also citizens of this state? Et cetera, et cetera…The reporter is not interested at all in asking such questions. Our Roma fellows pretend to have kept their human dignity, they are not complaining. But I know very well that they answer out of spite towards themselves and towards the man with the mike. This is an unconscious psychological reaction - that not everything in your life is lost and squandered. The truth shall shine again late at night. When ‘those’ from the residence blocks behind the shrubs fall asleep, and the music will blare out loud enough to enter your soul. Tip the bottle up. And the tears, unwillingly, and in consonance with the true melody that breaks your heart, start rolling down your unshaven cheeks, until the booze consumed makes you fall down next to the glowing embers. There is no escape, deliverance is in heaven. That’s good, it’s the soma. You forget everything till dawn at least…
Essay ten and last
I like the idea of a certain Atanas Dalchev about the Homeland! For the last years the stinking patriotism (even that of some professors, journalists and patriots) has been deeply repulsive to me. When my two grand-grandfathers died for Bulgaria during the Balkan wars, they hardly ever remembered to raise the gonfalons of empty fake patriotism high up. Although for sure they were shouting “Five to the bayonet”, when they were called to attack. They did well because they gave their lives for the Homeland, unlike the professors, journalists and lazy-bones patriots, who, an inch beyond the borders of Bulgaria are absolutely unknown to the world and who have been eating, drinking and profiting all their lives invoking the Homeland’ name!
Not long ago I was deeply impressed by a boy – Svetlin Nakov. He was invited by some big corporations to work across the ocean but he refused to go. A highly qualified computer specialist, working at Sofia University as a lecturer, this 24 year old young man astonished me in a TV interview not only with his achievements but also with his big patriotism so different from the small talk of many older and titled men. This is genuine patriotism, indeed everything else is from the devil… And this is by no means accidental! A great mind can be seen “immediately”, it is great in everything it touches! I take great satisfaction that such people exist. I pray (to whom?) that society and the media may give the go-by to such people, not to others… In one of his novels Thomas Mann, half seriously, half ironically, spoke of ‘man as a friend’. His hero Tonio Krueger confessed that ‘he would feel proud and happy, if he finds a friend among men. So far, - he says, - I have found friends only among the demons, the goblins, the evil spirits and ghosts, who were speechless and stilly before knowledge, in other words: literary creatures’. If I were naive enough and could have been reincarnated as a literary character just for a moment, then I would not have taken the liberty to draw such a modest analogy with today’s event. I would repeat that I would feel proud and happy, if I could find a friend among men, even if they were demons, goblins, evil spirits and ghosts, who would stand speechless before knowledge, in other words: researchers, historians, ethnologists, in brief - intellectuals. They are fated to be humanists and seek and find ‘the friend in man’. That is the only way they could be elevated to the lofty position of men and creators.
