FAITH, FREEDOM AND MARTYRDOM DURING COMMUNISM IN THE LOWER DANUBE
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2025, N 3, pp. 730 – 744, DOI: https://doi.org/10.62761/645.EB.LXI3.11
Liudmila MINDOVA 
Institute of Balkan Studies with Centre of Tracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
Abstract: It is familiar that since the 1950s, both Romania and Bulgaria have been building political prisons on the coast and on the islands of the Danube. After that, the Danube has turned into a dystopian place because of the numerous political cases of repression and martyrdom on both sides of the river. In their works Ana Blandiana, Ruxandra Cesereanu and Atanas Lipchev show some of the aesthetic ways to cope with that totalitarian violence against freedom and basic human values. The Lipchev novel Quiet Flows the Danube evidently ironizes the famous Sholokhov novel Quiet Flows the Don, which was one of the compulsory readings during the communist dictatorship in Bulgaria. Lipchev’s novel chooses the classic novel narrative, while Blandiana and Cesereanu’s novels are dystopian, grotesque and parodic, but all together are a literary testimony to the crimes of communism.
Keywords: Posttotalitarian literatures, Balkan literatures, Religion, Architecture, Fiction and Nonfiction