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I have been to Israel once - in 1982. I gathered with my old friends there as if we hadn’t been separated at all. I visited all my classmates and friends whom I used to live in Bulgaria with many years ago. Then I had relatives there – they were alive; my aunts and uncles, too. I haven’t been there after that first visit, because as a poor relative of theirs I felt awkward about visiting them again. Now my aunts and uncles are dead. My wife wanted to go there very much, but it simply didn’t happen. My uncle David used to come to Sofia every two years or so. We communicated through letters, telephone calls. Now I have only one cousin there, other two of my cousins are living in Ecuador, but I don’t keep in touch with them. Unfortunately, I don’t know any further details about them.
The democratization of the country after 1989 had a negative effect on me. The way we live here now is the worst that ever happened to Bulgaria. We live in an insecure society. People are scared when they come back home from somewhere – people are afraid even when they are in their own homes. Because of that criminal deed, that Bulgaria has never experienced before. I’m speaking not only about the socialist period, but also of the times before it when we were wearing yellow stars and were in conspiracy activities. Even then we felt safer than we feel now. There was order in the country. Now – this democracy that we are now living in is no democracy at all, it is rather DAEMONcracy. And if I have to explain this situation to myself – it is perhaps because there hasn’t been such a phenomenon in the human history before. We know how capitalism stems out of the feudalism, how capitalism became socialism – but this phenomenon – from socialism to go back into capitalism we experience for the first time here. [Editor’s note: A reference to the perception of History along the lines of Marxist ideology. According to dialectical and historical materialism, official and exclusive in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe before 1989, the structure of society is in continuous development in the scene or World History, starting from the primitive prehistory, reaching the most developed and socially advanced Communism through the stages of Antique Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism.] I call it DAEMONcracy because of the daemons – because people live in fear. Its is a stressful situation.
The democratization of the country after 1989 had a negative effect on me. The way we live here now is the worst that ever happened to Bulgaria. We live in an insecure society. People are scared when they come back home from somewhere – people are afraid even when they are in their own homes. Because of that criminal deed, that Bulgaria has never experienced before. I’m speaking not only about the socialist period, but also of the times before it when we were wearing yellow stars and were in conspiracy activities. Even then we felt safer than we feel now. There was order in the country. Now – this democracy that we are now living in is no democracy at all, it is rather DAEMONcracy. And if I have to explain this situation to myself – it is perhaps because there hasn’t been such a phenomenon in the human history before. We know how capitalism stems out of the feudalism, how capitalism became socialism – but this phenomenon – from socialism to go back into capitalism we experience for the first time here. [Editor’s note: A reference to the perception of History along the lines of Marxist ideology. According to dialectical and historical materialism, official and exclusive in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe before 1989, the structure of society is in continuous development in the scene or World History, starting from the primitive prehistory, reaching the most developed and socially advanced Communism through the stages of Antique Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism.] I call it DAEMONcracy because of the daemons – because people live in fear. Its is a stressful situation.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Mois Natan