Department or Program

History

Abstract

The International Children’s Assembly Banner of Peace was one of the biggest and most ambitious events put on in late socialist Bulgaria. Held with great fanfare in Sofia in August 1979, Banner of Peace was a cultural event centered on amateur children’s art and the educational upbringing of young people. My thesis challenges the interpretation that Banner of Peace was just an elaborate coming out party for a small socialist state that was peeking out from behind the Soviet Union’s shadow and looking for new partnerships in the capitalist West or Third World. Instead, Banner of Peace was a happening that reached out to audiences both foreign and domestic. It was a mass event that was designed to include every Bulgarian child and to create a new image of the Bulgarian nation as progressive, modern, and central to global affairs. This thesis also looks at the messianic discourse that animated this movement. It explores how Banner of Peace should be understood as an attempt to use doctrines such as aesthetic vuzpitanie to transform Bulgaria’s role in the world, its citizens’ patriotism, and to refashion children into more enlightened and empowered agents of change. Lastly, my thesis seeks to distance Banner of Peace from the cult of personality that surrounds its chief architect: Lyudmila Zhivkova. Rather than reading this event solely through the prism of Zhivkova’s occult spiritualism, my thesis looks at the key role that mid and lower-level bureaucrats played in implementing this festival and overcoming the challenges associated with its hasty planning.

Level of Access

Open Access

First Advisor

Stephenson, Cheryl

Date of Graduation

5-2026

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Number of Pages

134

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