COURAGE

connecting collections

The University was founded as a branch of Sofia University in 1975 in order to locally train teachers for primary school and kindergarten. In 1983, the branch was transformed into the separate Higher Pedagogical Institute. New programs, including mathematics, physics, Bulgarian language and literature, Bulgarian language and history were established in the following years. By 1990, the Institute had five faculties running ten study programs. After 1990, and especially with the Law on Academic Autonomy, the Institute continued to expand its scope. Paid education was introduced as well, alongside study places funded by the government.

In July 1995, the Bulgarian parliament decided to transform the Higher Pedagogical Institute into Neofit Rilski South-West University  -  Blagoevgrad. In 1997, the College of Machine Building and Electrotechnics in Blagoevgrad was affiliated as a Technical College as part of the South-West University.

Today, the university offers training in 71 Bachelor's, 100 Master's and 74 specialized PhD programs. It has the around 14,000 students in the following faculties: Law and History, Natural Science and Mathematics, Economics, Public Health, Health Care and Sport, Pedagogy, Philology, Philosophy, Arts and Engineering.

The KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopastnosti/Committee for State Security), the Soviet secret service, was established in Soviet Lithuania in 1954, but the origins of the Soviet security service go back to post-Second World War times: the NKVD (Narodnyi komisariat vnutrenih del/People's Commissariat for Interior Affairs), and later, in 1953-1954, the MGB (Ministerstvo gosudarstvennoi bezopastnosti/State Security Ministry). The main task of the security service at that time was to fight the anti-Soviet armed resistance that lasted in Lithuania for more than eight years (1944-1953).
On 1 April 1954 was established the KGB on the bases of MGB. KGB was under the jurisdiction of the Council of Ministers. Methods of activities and operiational work continued chekist traditions introducing more flexible forms applaying to the local situation. While old staff of the MGB, mostly Russians, were employed in KGB as well, more Lithuanians after graduation of high education were invited to KGB in 50's and 60's. This "Lithuanization" of KGB was rational step surveiling society especially in fighting with more sophisticated forms of cultural opposition. So called "line two" operated by the KGB 2nd division and "line five" operated by the 5th department were most involved in activity against cultural opposition. The Second line meant keeping and control of state secrets and it was concentrated in industrial factories, construction, science and transport organization. The Fifth line was directly concentrated on counter-ideological work and acted mostly in high schools and culture institutions.

The KGB is the most commonly used acronym for Soviet Russia’s (and subsequently the USSR’s) political police, which was named Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) for most of its post-war existence, more precisely between 1954 and 1991. The KGB was originally established in December 1917 as the Cheka (Russian acronym for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Repression of the Counter-revolution and Sabotage), which functioned as the coercive instrument of the dictatorship of the Communist Party over Russia and all Soviet republics. It successively bore the names of GPU (an acronym for the State Political Administration) and NKVD (an acronym for the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs).  Immediately after the end of the Second World War, on 16 March1946, the People’s Commissariat for State Security, which had been established in 1941, became the MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti – Ministry for State Security). In March 1953, after Stalin’s death, the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) merged into a common institution under the latter name, which was headed by Lavrenti Beria. In the MSSR, the new MVD continued to function under the republic’s notorious first security chief, Iosif Mordovets, who was heavily involved in the massive campaigns of repression and deportation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A year later, on 13 March 1954, a decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU created a new structure of the security apparatus which remained basically unchanged until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. State security was now entrusted to the Committee for State Security (KGB) and its branches in the republics, separated from the MVD. Mordovets remained head of the new committee for another year, after which he was replaced by one of Khrushchev’s loyalists.

The structure of the central apparatus of the Moldavian KGB was typical for the general pattern prevalent throughout the USSR. It was divided into the following sections: Section I (general intelligence), Section II (counter-intelligence activity), Section III (operative collaboration with the MVD), Section IV (operative activity concerning the sphere of transportation), Section V (struggle against ideological deviations, later known as Section “Z” – defence of the constitutional Soviet order), Section VI (operative activity in the industrial sphere), Section VII (surveillance), the technical-operative division, and several auxiliary services. For our purposes, the most interesting and relevant subdivision of the Moldavian KGB was Section V, which dealt directly with the repression and “re-education” of potential dissidents, unreliable and untrustworthy persons. This section was responsible for controlling and keeping under close surveillance all those opposed to the regime, including those who expressed dissenting views in the sphere of culture and identity issues. It thus combined a repressive dimension with an aspect of propaganda that overlapped with the party’s own Agitprop department. At the end of the 1980s, the Moldavian KGB had around 300 permanent employees. Out of this total number, approximately two thirds worked in the central apparatus of the organisation. Seventy employees worked in the five city branches of the Moldavian KGB (Chişinău, Bălţi, Bender, Tiraspol, and Ungheni), while another sixty operatives were divided among the nineteen district bureaus (as a rule, each bureau was responsible for two districts). Around forty KGB operatives were working in Transnistria, and another ten people in the Gagauz region.

The Moldavian KGB had an excellent reputation at the all-Union level and was deemed one of the most effective branches of the Soviet security apparatus. In Soviet Moldavia, the KGB’s record (like that of its predecessor organisations) was that of a pivotal instrument of communist nation-building, political control, and repression, with its key positions entrusted, as a rule, to Russian or Ukrainian officers. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Moldavian KGB was especially preoccupied with the purported threat of “local nationalism,” investing a lot of resources and efforts to combat this phenomenon. After the breakup of the USSR, the assets and part of the personnel of the KGB in the MSSR were transferred to Moldova’s Ministry of National Security, a predecessor of the Information and Security Service, the country’s intelligence agency since 1999. According to 1997 official reports, some 30 percent of the personnel working in Moldova’s Ministry of National Security were hired before 1990 as KGB officers. The KGB was officially disbanded by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in October 1991. 

The St. Cyril and St.Methodius National Library is currently the largest public library in Bulgaria. It is the oldest cultural institution of Bulgaria, established in 1878 as the "Sofia Public Library". The library received its own building in 1900.  In 1939, the construction of a new building began, but in 1944 both the new and old buildings were destroyed during allied bombardments of Sofia. In 1953, the National Library opened its new building under the name "People’s Library Vasil Kolarov", named after one of the leading Bulgarian communists, who was a leading functionary in the Communist International, and prime minister of Bulgaria from 1949 to his death in 1950. In 1963, as part of the process of strengthening national identity and reaffirmation of Bulgarian Mediaval history,  the library was renamed into "Cyril and Methodius" library, named after the famous monk, who created the Glagolitic alphabet for their translation of the Bible into Slavic. The Cyrilic alphabet is named after Cyril. The so-called "Apostles to the Slavs" are honored in Bulgaria with festivities on 24th of May, which is the official state holiday "Day of the Slavonic Script and Bulgarian culture". After the collapse of the communist regime, "Saints" was added to the names of the two missionaries in the official designation of the library.

In 1994, the National Library was declared a cultural institute of national importance. In 2009, with the Law for Public Libraries, the institution's name changed from "People’s Library" (Narodna Biblioteka) to "National Library" (Natsionalna Biblioteka).  

The National Library is a mandatory depository for all documents published in Bulgaria: books and periodicals. It contains also special collecitons with items from the Bulgarian cultural heritage, such as manuscripts, incunabula, old books, maps, prints, photographs, and private archives donated to the library. The National Library collects and stores official editions; cartographic and graphic publications, musical publications and others from countries around the world, and functions as a national information center. The library fund contained 8,040,804 registered units at the end of 2016.

During the communist regime, public access to many publications, books, and magazines, was forbidden, as they were placed in the so-called Special Collection. But the literary (and partly musical) legacy of the period of socialism is kept; the Library hosts many collections which reflect the cultural opposition against the communist regime. Through a range of cultural, educational and informational initiatives and events, the characteristics of the culture from the period of state socialism and the forms of opposition are discussed and popularized.

The National Library performs various public activities. Only in 2016, there have been more than 130 exhibitions. NCBM also conducts extensive research activities and participates in national and international projects and programs: Europeana. Culture. Denken; The European Library; World Digital Library; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; Memory of the World. The library organizes public outreach activities, such as the literary event series "Club Pismena" and "Galeria da dumite".

Since 2006 the library implemented digitization programs, with the result that many documents of cultural value and old periodicals have become accessible online (http://www.nationallibrary.bg/wp/?page_id=1337).