Engagement of a Communist Intellectual in the Cold War Ideological Struggle: Nâzım Hikmet’s 1951 Bulgaria Visit

Abstract

The globally known Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet fled from Turkey to the Soviet Union in June 1951 due to political reasons. He spent the last 13 years of his life in the Soviet Union, from where he was able to travel all around the world. During this period he visited socialist Bulgaria twice, where a considerable Turkish minority was living, first in 1951 and again in 1957. His first visit, which will be analyzed here in detail, was in September 1951 — the same year he left Turkey. This visit had a specific mission: to convince the Turkish minority in Bulgaria not to migrate to Turkey and to encourage them to take part in collective farming — the mode of agricultural production that the Bulgarian communist government sought to establish in the rural areas. For this purpose, Nâzim — accompanied by a group of local officials, intellectuals, and journalists — visited many villages and towns in Bulgaria, which were populated by Turkish peasants.KeywordsCommunist PartyRural SettlementTurkish PopulationSocialist CountrySocialist SystemThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.