operation thunder 
/ 2020

comissioned & supported financially by 
Sofia Municipality


curator vessela nozharova

at sofia history museum 


moving image piece speculating ideas around a women-led strike & a painting from the 1950s.












there is no smoke without fire interweaves official and unofficial history, socialist realism, collective and individual memory of the recent past. The film employs archival documents from the archive of the Bulgarian Communist Party Plovdiv and State Security, alongside archival photographs from the Bulgarian News Agency, together with research conducted by art historians, curators and academics, alongside materials collected from field trips. The film ties a solid historiological framework with speculative and suggestive methodologies, whilst it follows several narratives – the first workers’ & feminist strike in socialist Bulgaria in 1953 & its aftermath, alongside the history of the painting Strike of Plovdiv‘ tobacco workers (1959) by the painter Georgi Bozhilov-Slona, and the author’s
personal journey through these fragmented stories. 

The women’s strike in Plovdiv is a historical event absent from the state-led/run history & memory, as it is a disruption and protest against politics run by the communist regime. It however portrays the working conditions and rights of  workers in the 1950s and shines a light on the political violence and repressions enacted by the regime.






















"In her film “There Is No Smoke Without a Fire” Krasimira Butseva addresses what art
critic Vessela Nozharova called “The case of Bulgarians’ attitudes to archives and the past” – or
else, events about which there is much rumour but no actual evidence. The question of whether
there was at all a strike of the tobacco workers against the Communist rule as represented in
Georgi Bojilov-Slona’s painting from the 1950-s, subject to Krasimira Butseva’s study, is much like
the question whether historically there ever was feminism in Bulgaria."

- Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva
Art historian, critic and curator
Artistic director of Plovdiv - European capital for 2019



Bibliography & references:
Archival book of The City Art Gallery "Boris Georgiev" Varna

Forms of Resistance, Krasimir Iliev

After the Death of Stalin: The First Revolt - The Plovdiv Tobacco Workers' Strike, May 1953, Nick Heath

"Report on Disturbances at the Tobacco Depot in Plovdiv, Bulgaria", May 7, 1953, Wilson Center Digital Archive, Bulgarian National Archive - Plovdiv (Party archive), f. 235, op. 1, Arch. Unit 10, Il. 52. Obtained by Jordan Baev of the Bulgarian Cold War Research Group and translated by Nedialka Douptcheva.

Unrest In The Bulgarian Tobacco Industry, Central Intelligence Agency, 11th of September 1953; CIA-RDP80-00810A002300760010-2, 50X1-HUM

Regional state archive - Plovdiv: f. 1001B, op. 10, arch.unit 10. Protocols of the Bureau and Plenums of the District Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 8th of Jan - 27 of June 1953 

Decisions of the Bureau of the District Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party Plovdiv, 20th of February 1953 f. 1001B, op. 10, arch.unit 12

Decisions of the Bureau of the District Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party Plovdiv, 6th of January 1953 f. 1001B, op. 10, arch.unit 13

Decisions of the Bureau of the District Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party Plovdiv, 9th of May 1953 - 30th of December 1953

Women outside of the archive: Invisible stories of women in Bulgaria, Nurie Muratova

Bulgarian News Agency Photo Archive





With gratitude to BFW, City Art Gallery "Boris Georgiev" Varna, Lubov Cheresh, Vessela Nozharova, Lilia Topouzova, Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, Martin Atanasov, Danny Radichkov, Anna Komitska, Borislav Skotchev, Marina Genova, Vasil Vladimirov & Bayr(y)am Bayr(y)amali.