Bulgaria says leading intellectual Julia Kristeva was communist agent
SOFIA (Reuters) - Renowned Bulgarian psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s, worked as an agent and collaborator with the Balkan country’s secret service during the communist era, a state commission said. The Paris-based Kristeva, now 76, is the author of more than 30 books and worked alongside other leading French intellectuals such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes. The Bulgarian commission which identifies people who worked for the communist-era secret services said Kristeva had worked, under the code name "Sabina", as a collaborator for the first department of the State Security agency. The department oversaw intelligence in the area of the arts and mass media. It said she began working for the State Security organization in 1971. She had moved to Paris in 1965 on a French government scholarship. The document did not say how long she worked for State Security or whether she received any payment. Kristeva was not immediately available to comment on the matter. In its heyday Bulgaria's State Security, working closely with the Soviet KGB, operated a network of some 100,000 agents and informers. It was dissolved in 1989 following the collapse of the communist regime. The issue of access to, and publication of, its files has continued to raise powerful emotions in Bulgaria during its difficult transition to democracy. Foreign Policy magazine has ranked Kristev as one of the 100 greatest thinkers of the 20th century. As well as books on psychoanalysis and philosophy, she has written extensively on cultural and feminist issues and is also a novelist. She is an emeritus professor at the University Paris Diderot and a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. (Reporting by Angel Krasimirov; Editing by Gareth Jones)
