People of culture, state money makes you unfree

Where are the people of culture? Why aren't directors of museums, galleries, and theaters protesting as well? The obvious and logical question with a clear – but ungiven – answer has been circulating on social media in recent days. Here we will provide that answer.

There are people of culture who support the ruling party. This should not surprise us. Kalin Veliov, Hristo Mutafchiev and other well-known and relatively successful artists actively defend GERB. And this is quite normal. In every political circle there are people of culture, talented or not artists, who support a given party. There are those who support the BSP, those who support the VMRO, Vazrazhdane, Slavi, Democratic Bulgaria and, I suppose, although I don't remember, the MRF.

The question of why museum directors are missing from the protests (I use the expression metaphorically, we are talking about a much wider circle of artists, of course) exists because many people in culture and art actually consider themselves independent.

However, this is not the case. In the current political-economic system, artists – especially those who constantly want the state to give more and more to culture – are not free. They are dependent. Whether they want to or not, intentionally or not, willingly and depending on state money, all these institutions are becoming controlled structures. Are you going out to protest? We will fire you. Are you writing comments against Borisov? We will stop your money.

The situation is obvious. Your entire budget, as the director of a given institution, depends on the favorable attitude of the authorities. And everyone gets themselves into this dependence, wishing, lobbying and promoting the idea that "The state should give more money to culture". And this is extremely harmful.

Freedom in culture – and not just for protests when protests are necessary, but in general – will exist if the relevant institutions have their own budget, independent of which direction in bed the Prime Minister of the country woke up, generously handing out money from the budget surplus with Council of Ministers Decrees.

A true right-wing policy in culture would demand precisely such freedom. Unfortunately, there are no such demands in our country, and we see this constantly in political debates: everyone wants to increase money for culture. Regardless of whether “cultural” is placed on the progressive or conservative spectrum, in Bulgaria everyone’s desire is to receive money to sow their own vision of the world.

The horizon of all political thinkers, put in front of a television camera to talk about culture, is limited to the elementary: "If the state does not give for culture, then there will be no money for theaters, operas, there will only be chalga". This is one of the most limited things you will hear on television, as well as one of the most unfamiliar with world politics and culture, and in general, amazing nonsense is spoken on television all day long.

The reality around the world is that even in moderately centrist governments, business has opportunities and incentives to give money to culture. We don't need to go into details here, but there are many options: to waive taxes, to consider them as company expenses, and so on. This doesn't happen in our country. Not because companies are greedy, but because compared to the rest of the civilized world, centralization and leftism in culture reign supreme here. And metaphorically speaking, the rich factory in Sevlievo gives money to the museum in Sevlievo, but instead of giving it directly, it goes to Sofia and is redistributed - and only if the museum in Sevlievo has listened - and a certain percentage of it is returned back to the museum, of course, after enough people along the chain have received money for their bureaucratic activities. Who are also victims: since officials in ministries also find it difficult to protest, unless the director is covering them up.

Of course, someone will say that if we put the right people in the right places, these things won't happen. Alas, there are no positive examples anywhere - we have wonderful examples from countries with more conservative governments, where they stop performances because they are too progressive and make people gay; we also have countless times more progressive governments in Western Europe, where they stop funding or fire managers of cultural institutions because there are not enough paintings of artists with the appropriate skin color on the walls of the museum.

If we look at all these examples, we will see that the issue is not cultural. It is not that Bulgarians are corrupt. Or Westerners are brainwashed. Or Russians and Hungarians are stuck. This is a very basic rule – if you depend on only one source of funds, you are dependent on that source.

If you depend only on the state, you are dependent on the state (and the government).

And the saddest thing is that the most popular opinion in cultural circles is that the state should give more and more, that is, put the most intelligent part of society into more and more dependence.

And it should be exactly the opposite. The struggle of people of culture should be for freedom, not for dependence. The struggle of people of culture should be for politicians not to interfere at all with money for culture.

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