Liudmil Stoianov

(pen name of Georgi Stoianov Zlatarov). Born Feb. 6, 1886, in Kovachevitsa, Blagoevgrad District; died Apr. 11, 1973, in Sofia. Bulgarian writer and public figure. Academician of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1946). Hero of Socialist Labor of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1963); People’s Cultural Worker (1963). Member of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1944. Director of the Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1949–59).

Stoianov began his literary career in 1905. At first a symbolist, he published the collections Visions at the Crossroads (1914) and The Sword and the Word (1917). Under the influence of the revolutionary upsurge after World War I, he turned his attention to social themes, for example, in his collection Holy of Holies (1926). His espousal of realist principles and ideas of civic duty are most fully expressed in his poetry collection This Earthly Life (1939). Stoianov also wrote the short-story collections The Scourge of God (1927), Women’s Souls (1929), and On the Front Line (1939). His most significant novellas are The Silver Wedding Anniversary of Colonel Matov (1933) and Cholera (1935), in which he condemned reactionary militarism and advocated humanism.

Stoianov took part in the antifascist movement, beginning in the early 1930’s. His articles from this period were published in the collection The Swing of the Pendulum (1946). His other works include the novel At Dawn (1945) and the autobiographical novella Childhood (1962), as well as several works of literary criticism and publicist articles. By translating and popularizing Russian classics and works of Soviet writers, Stoianov made a great contribution to Soviet-Bulgarian cultural relations.

Stoianov was chairman of the Writers’ Union of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 to 1948. He was a deputy to the Grand National Assembly in 1946 and to the third convocation of the National Assembly. A member of the World Peace Council from 1950, Stoianov was awarded the Dimitrov Prize (1950), the Gorky Prize (1972), three Orders of Georgii Dimitrov, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.