The major criterion for acceptance is the ideological soundness of the work in question. According to a refugee playwright from Bulgaria, "The journalist must praise the party, and government, and criticize the West. The poet, the playwright, the novelist must uphold the communist ideal." Since the works of leading Communists are almost always accepted for publication, one writer has stated; "In Bulgaria dead communist heroes are the safest bet."
The government is actively engaged in attempting to promote Bulgarian books abroad. In the late 1960s and early 1970s books by native authors—although in relatively small numbers—were published in such diverse countries as Great Britain, Japan, France, Turkey, Italy, Iran, Austria, Argentina, and Finland. According to the latest available source on the promotion of Bulgarian books abroad, plans also have been formulated for the publication of books in the United States, Belgium, Brazil, and Syria.
One of the most serious problems in the publishing industry, other than the broad issue of freedom of expression of the writers, is that of a shortage of textbooks. In 1970 the Committee for State Control discovered that courses in 1,013 subjects at the university level had no textbooks whatsoever. In the University of Sofia alone, where approximately 317 subjects were taught, textbooks existed for only 216 of these subjects; roughly half of the books for the 216 subjects that used textbooks were out of print.
LIBRARIES
When the Communists took power in 1944, they began to allocate relatively large sums of money to develop new libraries in both large cities and small villages. By 1971 the country had over 10,000 libraries, whose collections numbered nearly 50 million volumes (see table 14).
The Committee on Art and Culture maintained a number of libraries, including the country's largest, the Bulgarian National Library. Founded in 1878 in Sofia, it contained 814,000 works in 1971, including about 13,000 old and rare volumes, approximately 17,000 graphic works, and some 20,000 photographs and portraits. The library published both a yearbook and a monthly periodical.
The committee maintained two other libraries. One was the Ivan Vazov State Library, situated in Plovdiv, whose collection included a wide variety of periodicals, old and rare books, and archives. The other library under the committee was the Elin Pelin Bulgarian Bibliographical Institute, which maintained a record of all printed works in the country and published a monthly bulletin listing all of its publications, an annual yearbook, and a monthly list of all articles published in reviews and journals.
In addition there were research-related libraries maintained by the Academy of Sciences; public school libraries; university libraries; libraries organized in state plants, factories, and cooperative farms; regional libraries; and local libraries.
The major regional libraries were located in Burgas, Ruse, Stara Zagora, Shumen, Varna, Velsko, and Turnovo. The best known local library was the City Library of Sofia, which contained about 452,862 volumes.