WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?

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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Fri, 11/11/2011 - 15:25

By now you are probably feeling inundated by all the monstrous Soviet Army monuments, the statues of "heroic" partizani and the other Socialist Realism constructions that dot the countryside from Vidin to Varna and from Silistra to Simitli.

where in bulgaria are you 61-62.jpg
© Anthony Georgieff

In fact, there is hardly a town or village in Bulgaria whose central square does not have some sort of "monument" designed to celebrate the 1944 Communist coup and the Communist camp system it generated. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these.

After the 1989 collapse of Communism, when it emerged that the Communist rulers were responsible for more deaths than Bulgaria had ever suffered in a war, a very different type of monument started to emerge. There are fewer of them and they are a lot less spectacular than the state-commissioned Communist stuff, yet they are here, a sombre reminder that in the 20th Century Bulgaria, supported by the Soviet Union, spent 45 years as a cog in the wheel of one of the world's cruelest social experiments.

In this picture you can see a simple mock-up of a chapel and two plaques commemorating hundreds of citizens shot or worked to death in a notorious Communist-run labour camp in northern Bulgaria.

Where in Bulgaria are you?

Issue 61-62

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