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Vanya Dobreva
The young people of today and the left policy under the conditions of transition
Vanya Dobreva was born in 1965 in Sofia. Graduated from Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski' with the speciality Bulgarian Philology. Doctor of science. At the moment -Chief Assistant at the South West University 'Neofit Rilski', where she reads Balkan Literature, Byzantine Culture, History and Drama Theory. Two books published. Member of the Supreme Council of BSP. Participates in the work of the commissions on education and youth policy.
In the years of transition, since 1989 to present, the Bulgarian Socialist Party has acquired a serious and new experience in its work with the young people, with the young generation. This experience is new and specific by nature because it is conducted in a new, more precisely changing social environment in comparison with the time that has past.
Different interpretations of the translation exist. Some people review it from the point of view of political dynamics of the system, while others discuss more the changes in the forms of property and of functioning of the basic output. Third ones stem most from superstructure elements, such as information resources and mainly electronic media. This, however, is not a subject of my considerations. I have a more modest task - to consider the youth subject matter as part of the BSP policy. It is a fact that this policy has gone through different stages, which in the course of the years have been increasing riskily the tendencies of the distancing between the youth and the party. On the one hand, a change of the young generations has been taking place. Such was the case with my generation, which in 1989 just started its life. And now we fall into the so-called active working population.
On the other hand BSP, engaged with its own reforms or its attitude to the changes in the society, has been leaving behind the youth policy. A number of phenomena in the period were not fixed in the due time and analysed and summarized respectively. Thus, according to me, at the end of the last 20th century, we fell into a very deep crisis as concerns the contacts of the party with the young. It may sound inappropriate but the youth organizations themselves became more isolated, started to live with pseudo subject matter, to feed themselves with problems assimilated by the youth left organizations from the developed world, which in many cases were not applicable to the Bulgarian conditions. A strong sense of fast prospering and making a career along a youth and a party line developed to ensure privileges for certain leaders - and also along the line of grants and specializations abroad, and in relation to tearing off the liaison between the selected cadres and the remaining members or the groups of sympathizers. The situation in the different towns and villages in the country has been almost the same. It is known that there was a difference between the conclusions drawn in the reports and the concrete situation, between the summaries on the contributions and the amorphous activity of the organizations.
It seems to me that this negative and dangerous to the youth party policy tendency has decreased its resources in the beginning of the new millennium with the election of a number of young socialists in the leading bodies of the party - the Supreme Council and the Executive Bureau. A decisive moment for this type of change was the election of Sergei Stanishev as a Chairman of BSP. The issue here concerns, of course, the pure biological factor - the young take key positions. But the question concerns also the symptoms of a new type of behaviour, a skill for communication, for dialogue. New characteristics of thinking appeared too. Even the opponents of the party acknowledge already that BSP reacts today more efficiently to the newest public problems, some preventive reflections of the past have dropped off, more authentic is the correspondence with the international socialist and social democratic movement. And last but not least is the fact that BSP has the youngest leadership nowadays if compared to the traditional parties in our country. It is a significant fact that it is Sergei Stanishev namely who has put his signature for the BSP membership in the Socialist International. And this act discloses perspectives for BSP, as well as for the conduct of a more fruitful youth international policy.
With a view to the subject matter of our meeting the above mentioned bringing forward of youth policy to a more front position after the year 2000, I will emphasize that all this led to specification and enrichment of the youth orientated policy. If not in all aspects at least as discussions and drafting of projects. Splitting up of youth organizations has come to an end. They became more stable irrespective of the continuing conflicts within. At meetings with young people, students mainly, I get the impression that they already refer with a greater interest to the possibilities that a future rule of the Left shall solve their problems. In the media also a more moderate tone is being marked when the young leaders of the Left are mentioned. It is considered even, that they can more successfully lead a dialogue with the young politicians of the right and the centre.
These conclusions unfortunately do not refer to another form of party activities. At the same time at certain forums as well as in the Commission on Youth Policy at the Supreme Council of the party, the basic features of today's youth have been discussed, the unpleasant tendencies, the attitude of the state to the youth, the social collapses and the youth, the problems of health care, education, sport, the necessity of legislative actions, the specifics of the left youth policy were analysed.
The governing project 'Youth Policy' worked out in 2002 marks the problems which the young people face today and which have to be solved. Here are some of them: how to ensure equal access to education; how to ensure equal opportunities for professional qualification and realization; the necessity of a preferential access to the new technologies for the young people; the lack of balances in the health prevention of the children and the juveniles, the need for efficient measures to protect and restrict drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution and crime, which in the years of transition have increased incredibly. The development of sport, tourism and healthy style of living among the growing ups and the youth was also discussed. It has turned out that the social crediting in important periods of life of the young person - employment, start of a business, setting up a family, buying a house, and etc. is of enormous importance. A visible lagging behind is noticed in the villages, the mountain and border regions, etc. It is not possible for the state and the Left not to be alarmed by the lack of balance in the demographic development, by the depopulation of entire regions or their ageing predetermining their disappearance. The specialists in the sphere of culture and education emphasize on the restoration of a former practice from the time of socialism - stimulation of the talents.
It is amazing how these discussions, conversations, meetings have come to concrete results. Part of them were discussed at the 45th Congress and included respectively in the decisions of the Congress. Along the rest, this means that the Left during a future government, which is expected after the parliamentary elections, will proclaim as its priorities education, the health of the young, the opportunities and the perspectives for their realization, the new formulation of the youth policy of the executive power.
In drafting youth policy, of course, it is necessary to involve every young socialist and sympathizer, which is not yet done sufficiently. We suggest that a preparation of a law package for the solution of the youth problems starts now. Such changes could take place in the taxation legislation to allow tax relief at the beginning of their length of service; changes in the higher and secondary education laws which have to guarantee the preparation of the young people and the children for their full participation in the information society; changes in the Labour Code to ensure job positions for the young; putting into effect our legislation in compliance with the ratified European Chart for participation of the young people in the local and regional life; conduct of a more social policy to assist the family, the motherhood, the children and the juveniles.
The future governing of the Left, according to the members of the Youth Commission and the Supreme Council of BSP, shall have to propose an independent state body on the problems of the youth, the family, the children and the juveniles, which is to fulfill on principle more different tasks from the now existing Ministry of Youth and Sport. The executive power of the Left is in a situation to revise the policy concerning the youth bases, which are down and all destroyed, sold out, changing their purpose. It is absolutely necessary for the Left to ensure a state support for buying a house of one's own through the cooperation system of house saving; to ensure preferential credits for students and PhDs, textbooks till 8th grade paid by the state; to seek ways for stimulating prices, fees and taxes for youth services and activities - travels, exchange, tourism, clubs, and etc.
I am not going to spread to other ideas, which should be included in the basics of the left governing, but by all means, if the concrete issues are not solved, the youth will continue to stay aside from the Left or will look sceptically and from afar as a whole to our contemporary political culture.
It is on purpose that I treat the concrete issues though there is also another number of problems, which even not so directly, are also connected with the relationship Left policy - Bulgarian youth. I will treat only some of these issues, which have as much social as moral characteristics too:
1. The attitude to the past of the party
During the period of reforms after 1989, BSP has been changing several times its attitude to the 45 year socialist period. Particularly at the beginning, the assessments have been absolutely negative and this becomes clear in one of the statements of the then President Petar Mladenov. And reaction on them we find also in the program documents. It has been defiantly insinuated that this past is entirely subordinated to guilt, it is predominantly criminal, it is filled with negative phenomena. Afterwards there it was insinuated that much more worthy for imitation is the approach of other left formations if comparing with the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), whose successor BSP proclaims itself to be. Along this approach, yet in the beginning of transition, there was the opinion that the young socialist is a continuator of a past, working against the Bulgarian people, based only on violence, prisons, death camps, the complete deprivation of human freedom, the exceptional non productivity of labour, the old technologies, and many others.
This actually is not true. This is bringing weaknesses to a complete absurdity. But this position made the left youth as well as the rest of the young people feel uncomfortable as advocates of the social idea. It was demonstrated in public by left ideologists, as a non-prestigious and hopelessly old. After such a manipulation some of the ideologists of the Left should not be surprised from the emergence of a reflex, which could be called a Hamovski one - an expression of the visual neglect, underestimation of the family history, of the social group, of the party. We have not overcome this reflex. To one extent or another it most probably lives with everyone of us and it is from now on that approaches have to be sought for its overcome and for the restoration of the normal historical vision. But the past has closer projections.
One of them refers to the genesis, the origin of the first million, i.e. to the illegal and speculative accumulation of capitals in the 90s. In this forced formation of wild capitalism, in the application of the shock therapy, in the drafting of the Ran and Ut Program, former outstanding BCP functionaries play an enormous role, most during the time of the first BSP government when Andrei Lukanov was Prime Minister. During that period the reserve currency fund disappears, the funds of the enterprises disappear also, suitcases full of money and currency are being distributed, the foreign trade companies are being privatises at a quick-firing rate.
I have spoken to young people and so far even I am not aware yet of two things. First, how is it possible that the people who have headed the restructuring and the march to democracy, i.e. the people of the Left, are at the same time also 'the fathers of the criminal transition'? And second, but not least, why BSP leaders still not only that they do not want to distance from such a practice, but seek all possibilities to cover it.
The second (projection) is connected with the evaluation of the governing of the Democratic Left in 1995 - 1996. Even today the leadership of the party rejects the evaluation of this governing, and the ready cliché 'failure' is admitted. The last debate in Parliament on the vote of no-confidence to the government of Simeon Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha has shown that the BSP opponents today, and in the future, will attack it mainly for the so called governing failure of the government of Videnov. There are actual proofs for the serious weaknesses in governing, for omitted opportunities, but not for a failure. Thus several issues are bypassed:
- a) on the policy of the West before the war in Yugoslavia, aiming at ensuring puppet regimes in the states close to the front;
- b) The conflict between the executive power and the 'red' business.
- c) The activity of the opposition inside the party;
- d) The essence of the anti-state coup d'etat from January 1997 when a financial collapse took place too, which public individuals of the Left transfer some months backwards in the critical 1996.
These and other examples of duplicity, of keeping silent, of misinterpreting the facts and events and often in the name of the conjuncture arguments are alien to the young man. They put off, evoke mistrust. In fact this could turn also into a school for career-hunting - when someone thinks one thing and does another.
2. Peace, war and youth
In this sphere youth is not always taught lessons which to follow. It happens too often that the foreign-political course is changed. After 1990 BSP stands up for cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty, but against Bulgaria's membership in it.
Afterwards it undertook logically a second step - participation in the program 'Partnership for Peace'. Afterwards it proclaimed itself against the NATO war in Yugoslavia in 1999. Afterwards BSP has changed the course vice versa - at a separate congress the motto 'Against NATO' has been transformed into 'For NATO'. A little later the party has got ahead of UDF, proclaiming that it is for a speedy accession of Bulgaria into NATO, and not like UDF - just to become a member. In 2004 the Parliamentary Group of Coalition for Bulgaria insisted that the NATO agreement be ratified before the specified term.
Until 2003 BSP was against the disposition of American bases in Bulgaria. At the end of the same year the Parliamentary Group of Coalition for Bulgaria without a preliminary decision of the Supreme Council of BSP has voted positively for the disposition of American bases.
In 2003 at a seminar in Ribaritsa the deputies of the Left Coalition for Bulgaria approved with majority that Bulgaria shall join the claim of the USA to declare war on Iraq without sanctions of the Security Council. After a week or two the SC of BSP took a vice versa decision - Bulgaria should not participate in a war without a sanction of the UN Security Council. This decision is a pro European, identical with the positions of Germany, France, Belgium and Russia, it is of a great historical value and it is in the future that its significance will be evaluated. A little later: again protuberances of the duality. The leadership of BSP in contradiction with the decision of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Council did not oppose, actually it supported the participation of Bulgaria with a military contingency in the occupation of Iraq, in the same war, which was illegal and carried out without the sanction of the Security Council.
This easy adaptation to the changing circumstances is not in general close to the mentality of the young people, no matter how much they are inclined to liberties and adventures. The more essential issue is that one of the fundamental problems for the youth not only with us is the problem of peace and war. It is time that BSP defines itself whether it wishes to be the party of peace or the party of war. I am on principle against a behaviour which identifies and praises as heroic the participation of our Bulgarian mercenary troops in Iraq. A young man and every Bulgarian should ask himself also why after taking the road to the European Union, we do not follow the positions of the German social democrats, and now also of the Spanish socialists, of France, as well as of the democratic society in the States, but allow the party to be used in service of the Bush Administration.
3. The transformation of BSP from parliamentary and a mass party to a parliamentary one only
Since the middle of the 90s BSP gradually but steadily turns the Parliament and the parliamentary activity into a centre of its work. This is where the addresses sound, this is the place of the speeches and the information on the occasion of one or other legislative draft, there the statements in the day of the parliamentary control take place, this is the place where the public manifestations of the deputies start or of the sociologists in the press and the electronic media. The social protests, the manifestations, the street marches, the involvement of larger social groups into mass actions belong to the past.
If this, in other words, is strange for one party, which according to its Statute is a parliamentary and a mass one, then this model affects even more unfavourably the positioning of the young at the present stage. During the same period (from the middle of the 90s) the protest youth actions have disappeared, as for instance the camp of tents in front of the Parliament in 1999, the protests of the students from the Slavonic University against its closing, the youth concerts of political address and others.
The pocket small youth organizations of some of the pocket small parties within the New Left wished to build and enforce the image of the middle class young man - well educated and good looking in every aspect, reminding of the boys and the girls of the Mormon sect, walking in the streets in dark suits, with white shirts, with rucksacks on their shoulders and with their college hair-do.
All this is presented as the model of the West left youth. The same youth which participates in initiatives of the anti-global movement, attended by hundred thousands and millions, which movement was the vanguard of the protests against the Iraq war in London, Madrid, Rome, Paris, in the cities of Germany in which millions of people took place. The organisation of similar grand events is already impossible with us. Even when the reasons are decisive for the Bulgarian youth - for instance closing of Units III and IV of the Nuclear Power Station.
Such a crucial attitude to youth policy, along with everything else, is in contradiction, with the nature of the young, with their alert feeling for justice and injustice, with their energy and morality to say 'yes' or 'no' to things which concern them, which they see around them. Thus the century old tradition of our Left is being abandoned. The ideologists of a similar thinking - to be found also in the youth organizations - may be unconsciously deprive our youth movement of important instruments of identification, bringing in the character and the spirit of the Bulgarian youth elements of the character and the spirit of the commonplace person, ready to make any compromises, a fuel for conformism, providing his most direct interests, described by the way in a brilliant way by the great Bulgarian sociologist Ivan Hadjiiski.
There is sense in thinking over whether this represents some danger for the present and the future of our youth left movement, as to how much it is right to neglect the communication with the masses, which expands the camp of the advocates and attains new forms of interaction. And is it possible to implement changes in the directions which not only I consider unfavourable.
4. Nationality and the young
After destroying the system of values from the time of socialism, Bulgarian youth was proposed new spiritual directions. Along with the discrediting of the social idea an attempt against the national idea was also performed. The natural and the necessary course of globalisation was used for counteraction between world tendencies and the life of a certain nation. In this period the study programs treated the problem tendencies and personalities related to Bulgarian tradition, with the building-up of the national conscience. Every factor was set on a pedestal, which alienates us from the national heritage and culture.
The national ideal has lost its interior projections in order to be offered as a sacrifice or made dependent somehow on foreign influences. In such way the grading of the categories nation, regional unifications, continental unions and domain of the state-hegemon - the United States of America was made. The lowest step in the hierarchy falls to the nation, and the top is occupied by the state-hegemon. For 15 years we were convinced that an achievement of the Bulgarian development is the loss or the essential rejection from independence and sovereignty.
The young people of today are very keen in perceiving the breach of historically proved proportions between a nation and a globalising world. I have come to the conclusion that they are rather alienated from everything which the official propaganda proclaims as a new national ideal and the only thing to which they react is Bulgaria. In contrast to the former generation, which has been striving in any possible way to imitate the Western society, trying to apply immediately its value system in our country, the today's young turn their sight to the developed countries only as a source of a better subsistence, and not as criteria values. In some cases they are more pragmatic - that is why they are ready to make their living abroad, if they are well paid.
But irrespective of this fact they prefer, in case they are given a chance to show their worth, to remain in their fatherland, because as if in a greater degree they perceive it as part of themselves. Their sympathies are bigger in their attitude towards Europe and the European style of life than towards the States and their ambition to dominate the world over.
The paradox is that deeper such moods with a characteristic national strain go, the more the political class discloses the main road to Bulgaria in the Atlantic, and not simply in the Euro-Atlantic values. According to me, as a state of spirit, today's young are with senses used to disagree with the policy of the one polar world. But this youth has no strongholds in a concrete political force, which has to unite successfully the global and the national issues, expressing in a Bulgarian environment the formula of De Gaulle for 'Europe of the free fatherlands'.
In the last years of the transition the Bulgarian Left which suggested that it could become a leader of such public states had also underestimated the manifestation of these moods. Certain circles even try at the moment to put an equation sign between patriotism and an extreme nationalism, to replace internationalism traditional for the left internationalism with an excessive tolerance in relation to the will of the new masters of the Balkans. Despite this the young people, and I am sure about that, continue to consider BSP as a national responsible party. The party, which has a potential to be a national unifier, without however taking enough advantage of this fact.
With the new disposition of the forces between Europe and the USA the young find out greater possibilities for coincidences between the national and the European idea in comparison with the coincidences between the national idea and the Atlantic idea. I am afraid that BSP leaders, led by pragmatic considerations, omit golden chances for contacts with the Bulgarian youth, chances which testify that the Bulgarian Left is the national political force, that it personifies our national ideals and interests.
And the last issue, though there are others important too, which I would like to discuss:
5. The party construction and the place of the young and the youth organizations
This is a risky moment. After 1989, with the affirmation of the principle of the party construction according to the living area the trap for the party organizations to become a place for meetings of the old generation has been set. But this old generation has become even older and thus the risk has appeared of biological disappearing out of the party organism itself. The young ones, as much as they exist, do not feel themselves comfortable. They come with enthusiasm, and afterwards….. The interests clubs have intensified their activities and this is one indisputable achievement of the new leadership of the party. But they are still luxury for the party's life. The subject of their activity is approximate. It comes out that the forms of a party, party-youth activity will have to be restored on the principle of the job location. Because here are the actual interests, here the people unite themselves, and work together for the common purpose.
But such a transformation presupposes also a new approach in relation to the way of the organization of the young left, particularly, when the influence of the left in the civil society, in the various cultural, sport, media, business and other organizations, is concerned. It is in the future that one has to think how to overcome the weak effect of the Left among the students and is there any way for the left ideas to penetrate more directly among the studying young people.
An important issue which is often underestimated is the work of BSP with the syndicates and in particular how the young people could, in a dialogue with the left, protect their labour rights. Not only in the state enterprises, but in the private business as well where the workers and the young people are most deprived of any rights.
In my way of thinking I have omitted on purpose the theoretical and the pseudo theoretical summaries for the transition as a process and for the transition and the youth. I have thought over the facts and the arguments, on the concreteness, with two words, on the transition in action. There is sense in this. We can discuss this also - discuss the tasks and the purposes of the Bulgarian youth in the changing reality, the sense and the contents of the left policy. We can interpret the words of the great Balkan writer Mesha Selimovic for the possibilities to perform by means of political jesture that mission, in the name of which every generation lives on earth.
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