The “Natural Ally” of the “Developing World”: Bulgarian Culture in India and Mexico

Abstract

This article examines Bulgarian cultural relations with India and Mexico in the 1970s to explore the role of cultural diplomacy in the relationship between the Second and the Third Worlds during the Cold War. In 1975, Liudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the Bulgarian leader, became the head of the Committee for Culture; under her patronage, Bulgarian officials organized literally hundreds of exhibitions, concerts, academic conferences, book readings, cultural weeks, and visits that involved the three countries in an intense cultural romance. Even though Bulgaria was known as the “Soviet master satellite,” culture provided a considerable level of independence in Bulgarian dealings with international actors, which often caused Soviet irritation. In the end, by using culture, in addition to political and economic aid, Bulgaria managed to forge its role as an intermediary between the Second World and the Global South, and to project its notions of development on a global scene.

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“…Early Cold War Studies divided the world into two antagonistic and separate parts, the West and the East, offering on one hand a little nuanced view of the differences within one bloc, and, on the other hand, paying little attention to the process of decolonization and thus to a growing number of countries which did not necessarily belong to either of the two camps. The newly independent states of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, together with Latin America, which had mostly obtained its independence earlier, in the first decades of the 19th century but showed similarities in dependency, marginalization and colonial past, came to be known as the Third World (Dragostinova, 2018, p. 666; Westad, 2007, pp. 2–4).…”