In her lifetime, Zhivkova published a volume of "collected works" (mostly edited speeches) which was translated into major world languages; her trademark ideas about the need to bring up and educate "rounded personalities" and "imbue public life with beauty" sat awkwardly alongside militant Marxism–Leninism.

[3] Lyudmila Zhivkova's office as the de facto head of Bulgarian culture brought the nation's artistic community increased freedom at a time when, after the crushing of the Prague Spring, Soviet-bloc Communist orthodoxy was otherwise stricter than ever.

Thus, Zhivkova and her second husband Ivan Slavkov held renowned Friday soirées at their central Sofia apartment, offering opportunities for those with a cause to lobby her father indirectly.

While her zeal was disturbingly notable on the glacial and ultra-conservative Soviet Bloc scene of the 1970s, today it appears to have brought nothing but minor (and moreover transient) advances, and to have prompted many to "raise their heads above the parapet" only to expose themselves to later persecution.

[8] A point of view which emerged in the 1990s cites Zhivkova's marriage to earthy, hard-nosed, hard-drinking, bon-viveur Ivan Slavkov and her association with the widely compromised 1300 Years of Bulgaria Foundation, ascribing to her features of the post-Communist embezzlers, fraudsters and "kleptocrats" who shared out the spoils of Communist rule in the privatisation campaigns after the 1989 fall of Todor Zhivkov.