Човекът – върховна привилегия
The Privileged Human Being

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with some basic ideas of the new socialist person project promoted in the Bulgarian philosophical thought (1945-1989). The post-World War II socialist expansion in Bulgaria was focused on the development of the new man as one of the main tasks of the socialist system. Stable guarantee of this were the documents of the Bulgarian Communist Party (the programs of the Party Congresses). Compared with the soviet social engineering, the Bulgarian attempts to remake human nature were much more realistic. The main hopes were set on the plan for radically improving the material conditions of life and that the appearance of the new man should come automatically. The created image of the new personality was considered as the greatest achievement of the socialist system. This was the concept of man as a heroic being, with strong energy, enthusiasm, etc. The fundamental differences between the city and the village, the people and the “working intelligentsia”, man and woman were supposed to be gradually eliminated. The member of the Communist party and especially the party secretary was considered to be the typical figure of the new personality. What made the Bulgarian new man project unique was Lyudmila Zhivkova’s theory of formation and development of a personality by the laws of beauty. As a daughter of the General secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party and as Minister of Culture she imposed a specific mix of eastern mysticism, Thracian mythology, Marxist ideology and so on. She was obsessed by the idea of man’s inner harmony and many of the “orthodox” social engineers of that time had to change their conceptions.

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