In the cafes, breweries and offices of Plovdiv in 1882, the great Bulgarian writer Ivan Vazov saw not just young civil servants, but a new social type. For him, bureaucracy gradually acquired “self-confidence, carelessness, selfishness and stupidity“, which, according to the writer, turned the service from responsibility into a comfortable way of life.
The excerpt is dated April 28, 1882 and was published in the newspaper “Narodniy Glas“ - a publication with which the writer was closely associated during his Plovdiv period. Vazov participated in the editing of the newspaper in the early 1880s, when Plovdiv was the center of the political and cultural life of Eastern Rumelia.
The Chancellery as a Terminus
Vazov does not attack the very existence of the administration. He attacks the attitude that once in office, one no longer needs to develop. In the text, the clerk is presented as a young person, who came from a shop, a grocery store, a student's rank or idleness, who quickly begins to consider his position enviable.
After the appointment, books remain in the background. Reading, mental activities and everything that can raise a person's morale are replaced by the “stereotypical and lifeless phrases of the chancellery“. With this painting, Vazov contrasts the former grocer, who kept books between his notebooks, with the new clerk, who has neither the time nor the will to open a book.
The criticism is particularly harsh towards idleness. Constantly spending time in cafes and taking walks, according to the author, leads to “mental and moral waste“. External complacency conceals an inner emptiness, and a secure job becomes an excuse for a lack of initiative.
Warning for the future
Vazov warns that the phenomenon has not yet acquired a “threatening character“, but it may increase. His fear is that a whole layer of uneducated and complacent officials will emerge, incapable of either independent thinking or social progress.
Our bureaucracy does not think.
It is this short final sentence that turns the text into more than a momentary newspaper polemic. It summarizes Vazov's understanding that the problem is not in the profession, but in the refusal of development, responsibility and personal initiative.
That is why the excerpt continues to be remembered today - as a mirror of public disputes about the administration, dependencies and the quality of the public service. The modern reading, however, must remain accurate: Vazov describes a certain social type and issues a journalistic warning, rather than passing judgment on every civil servant.
More than a century after it was written, what remains most powerful is not the description of the cafes, but the question behind it: what happens to a person who receives a job but stops seeking knowledge.
Here is the full text of Vazov's article:
"The bureaucracy in our country is taking on a more special and peculiar character day by day. Most of the young people who have had the honor of once returning to the service gradually, but obviously, acquire the distinctive features of the civil servant: arrogance, carelessness, selfishness and stupidity. Their constant occupations in offices and their constant stay in cafes contribute in a fatal way to their mental and moral waste. The evil is not yet very great and does not have a threatening character, but in time it will take on greater dimensions and we will have a whole nation of uneducated, but self-enlightened clerks, who, by the narrowness of their concepts and their underdevelopment, will constitute an unreliable, windy intelligentsia, incapable of any initiative and progress.
To convince ourselves of the truth of this sad assertion, it is enough to cast a cursory glance at the countless swarm of clerks and clerks in the capital, who fill the cafes, beer halls, public walks and all the places where money and time are wasted. Look at the faces of these officials, at the smug expression on their faces, the dull, grateful glances they cast at the audience, and you will immediately penetrate their inner world and perceive the emptiness that exists in their hearts and minds.
Yes, these young people, who have passed through the office, some from the dry cleaner's shop, some from the grocer's shop, some from the school cafeteria or from the field of vagrancy and idleness, already feel that their position is worthy of envy and that they do not need any further development. Mental exercises, reading, books and everything that contributes to their moral uplift and humanization is neglected by them. The grocer of the past had a few books to read, mixed with his notebooks, today's clerk has neither the time nor the will to open the book to get some light and learn something more from the stereotypical and lifeless phrases of the office, with which his head is full.
Our clerks do not read.
Our clerks do not think".
Plovdiv, Wednesday, April 28, 1882
Ivan Vazov