The Speech as a Crime: Writers under Attack by the People's Court. About the Second Wave of Terror after September 9, 1944

Abstract

The article examines the grounds, mechanisms and effects of the People's Court, through which the literary and media publicity in Bulgaria was transformed immediately after September 9, 1944, which led to a complete remodeling of the literary field. The general framework of prosecution through the institution of the People's Court is outlined, emphasizing how the written or spoken word becomes a criminal act and turns the writer and/or journalist into a criminal, and in the context of „people's justice“ turns its author in „public enemy“. Various cases of writers and journalists who were killed „without trial and sentence“, examples of writers who were convicted as ministers, as well as intellectuals who were brought before the Sixth Chamber of the People's Court were cited. The total number of convicted writers and journalists in Bulgaria in the winter and spring of 1945 is estimated at 150-170 people. Entire groups of authors disappear from the literary and media fields, and several ideological-thematic tendencies and genre-stylistic characteristics of literature fall into the zone of prohibition.