Atanas Slavov

At the beginning of 2016, Bulgarian National Television presented a film on the life and works of Slavov, coinciding with his 85th birthday, titled Atanas Slavov: The Man Who Put Bulgaria on the World Map.

In 2011, less than two months after the death of Slavov, the Department of New Bulgarian Studies at New Bulgarian University began to celebrate the writer's name day, January 18, as “Atanas Slavov Day” and commemorated the occasion with readings and small conferences held throughout the university's Sofia campus.

Slavov passed at the age of 80 from complications during a routine operation on December 4, 2010 in a Plovdiv hospital.

In 1986, the full version of the memoirs appeared in English (Occidental Press, Washington, DC) under the title With the Precision of Bats. Slavov's book, in which the particular political and cultural atmosphere of Bulgaria is recreated through the prism of autobiography and rich anecdote, won the Legerete International Writers Union Book award for best autobiography in 1986. The fate of the anti-communist and contra-Marxist memoirs in Bulgaria was radically different than their fate abroad, unfortunately. An investigation was launched against Slavov in 1978 by the Bulgarian government (investigation case No. 178) after the resumption of which in 1981 the author was sentenced to nine years in prison as an enemy of the state and political agitator. On February 1, 1991, the criminal case against Slavov was finally terminated, as the communist regime collapsed in Bulgaria.

After 1990 and at the End of Communism in Bulgaria (1989), Slavov returned to his birthplace Sliven, where he remained for the rest of his life, taking on an active and much-loved role in the local community.

Once in the West, Slavov's work took on many interesting forms. He spent time as a freelance author and speaker at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the BBC (London) in 1978. Then, in 1979, he consulted on Eastern European cultures at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. While in DC, Slavov also worked as a Bulgarian language instructor at the United States Department of State and at the Center for Linguistic Research in Maryland (1980–1983). Slavov's longest tenure proved to be his decade-long association with Voice of America in Washington, D.C. from 1980–1990, where he worked as a radio content writer, editor and broadcaster.

After leaving Bulgaria in 1976, Slavov began to write his memoirs, to which he owed much of his fame and notoriety in the West. The memoirs were written in English, but originally read out in Bulgarian (read by the author himself) in 52 weekly broadcasts on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty under the title Paths Under the Highways (1978–79). Later in 1983, the memoirs were published in Bulgarian under the title Overgrown with Grass by the Paris-based publishing house "Peev & Popov".

In 1975, while at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Slavov acted as executive on the project "Guidelines of World Culture Until 2000", in connection with which he went to the United States, which at the time was unprecedented for anyone in the Eastern Bloc. While in the US, and de facto labeled a Defection case by the Communist regime in Bulgaria, Slavov provided his expertise as it related to the "Guidelines" project at the International Research & Exchanges Board until 1976 in New York City.

Slavov's art studies are presented in the books Copper Vessels (second volume of the series "Bulgarian Art Heritage", in which the author examines the development of coppersmithing in Bulgaria and the artistic features of copper products, published in 1974), Traditions and Perspectives in Bulgarian Applied Art, The Woodcarvings of the Rozhen Monastery, and others. Related to the Copper Vessels work and to commemorate Slavov's 90th birthday, New Bulgarian University held a posthumous exhibition in early 2020 called "Shields and Goblets”; in addition to portraits of Atanas Slavov by photographer Yordan Simeonov, Slavov's own photography was on display from Copper Vessels.

In 1974, the Polish Academy of Sciences published Slavov's Essay on the Bulgarian Verse Composition (in Polish), in which with the help of the statistical method, Slavov tries to cover the Bulgarian verse tradition from the 9th century until the present day, and in 1987, his theoretical works were captured in the book Comparative Slavic Metrics (in Polish), which Slavov co-authored.

Slavov was involved in various creative associations: the National Council for Industrial Aesthetics of Bulgaria (1972–1974), the Art Council of the Studio for Animated Films (1971–76), the American Association for the Promotion of Bulgarian Culture (co-chairman), the American Association for the Development of Slavic Studies (co-chair), American PEN Club, PEN Club of Writers in Exile – American branch, and the Institute of Diplomacy in Arlington, Virginia.

From 1971 to 1976, Slavov co-founded and chaired as a member of the international group for comparative Slavic metrics at the Institute for Literary Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

From 1966 to 1976, Slavov dedicated his time to working at the Institute of Art History at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. While there, he established departments for design, informatics, and co-founded a group which focused on the study of Bulgarian Applied arts. Slavov also became a fellow specializing in Folklore and folkloric Art theory from 1974 onward.

Slavov first published poems in 1962 in Literary News newspaper, which received public denunciation in Communist leader Todor Zhivkov's speech targeted at intellectuals on April 15, 1963. Slavov's poetic work after leaving Bulgaria found expression in the collections Poems 1962. Pornographic poem 1968 (published in Bulgarian in Munich, Germany), Mr. Lampedusa Has Vanished, and The Dough of America is Rising Me. In 1988, under the pseudonym Al Santana, Slavov published a grotesque parody called Handling Vegetables.

From 1961 to 1971, Slavov taught English literature at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, where he delivered an assortment of lectures to his students – from seminars on the poetry and drama of the English Renaissance and England in the Middle Ages to courses on the British prose of the 19th and 20th centuries. During this time, Slavov successfully defended his doctoral degree at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences on the dissertation topic of “Functions of Rhythm in Artistic Poetic Speech” (1965).

Slavov was married three times. His first wife was Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra violist Elisaveta Arnaudova, with whom he had one son (the poet Vasil Slavov); they were married in 1955 and divorced in 1960. Vasil's daughter Ellie Slavova is the founder of Thraix Group, an art collection agency based out of New York City specializing in Bulgarian art. Slavov's second wife was the writer and historian Vera Mutafchieva; they were married in 1961 and divorced in 1968. His third wife was Snezhana Dimitrova, with whom he had two children; Penka Slavova (Philadelphia-based educator) and Ivan Slavov (New Zealand-based video director). Snezhana Dimitrova and Slavov were married from 1969 until her death in 1984 in Washington D.C.

Vasil worked as legal counsel to his brother Kiril for the latter's varnishing factory (which was one of the first Bulgarian industrial enterprises to export to England) and alongside his brother-in-law Vladimir Atanasov, Vasil founded а flooring textiles factory in Omurtag (town). During the postwar hysteria and the establishment of the communist regime in Bulgaria, Vasil was wrongly accused of being an English intelligence officer and starting in 1953, he spent six years in jail as an enemy of the state. Meanwhile, his brother Kiril was arrested by Stalinists in 1948 for his efforts, alongside Traicho Kostov, to keep Bulgarian industrialism and export entrepreneurialism independent of the communist grasp. Kiril was also accused of working for English intelligence and in 1949, during an interrogation, he was killed by the Bulgarian State Security Service.

From 1953 to 1965, Slavov worked various jobs. First, as an instructor of Russian linguistics for a set of courses organized by the United Committee for Bulgaro-Soviet Cooperation; second, as a librarian at the SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library; third, getting involved in various programmes on Radio Sofia; and finally, as a cartographer in the Rhodope Mountains.

Atanas Slavov initially enrolled at the American College of Sofia and attended until its closure in 1941. In 1953, he graduated from St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia with a specialization in English Philology.

Slavov's father, Vasil, studied law in Belgrade and practiced in Sliven, before dedicating his time to co-found a Masonic lodge in the city; his interests spanned from Theosophy to Transcendentalism. In 1938, Vasil moved to Sofia and built his house in the Izgrev, Sofia district, popular with followers of the esoteric spiritualist Peter Deunov. The Slavov family were close to the spiritual leader Deunov and he often visited their home in the Izgrev district.

Atanas Vasilev Slavov (Bulgarian: Атанас Василев Славов, July 25, 1930 – December 2, 2010) was a Bulgarian writer, art critic, semiotician, poet, and screenwriter. He was a well-known public intellectual in Bulgaria and one of the prominent Bulgarian anti-communist dissidents of the 20th century, along with Georgi Markov.

Slavov was born in Sliven on July 25, 1930 to Vasil Atanasov Slavov (1889–1980) and Penka Ruseva Slavova. Slavov was the youngest of three children, growing up alongside his older sisters Maria and Lilliana. Slavov was named after his paternal grandfather, Atanas Slavov (1860–1932), who was a lawyer and mayor of Sliven, as well as head of the Bulgarian Winemakers Association; his house in Sliven, built in 1930, is currently a landmarked building.