Haunting Images of the Past: WWII Monuments in Post-Communist Bulgaria
Haunting Images of the Past: WWII Monuments in Post-Communist Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: The pivotal role of the Bulgarian Communist Party in the anti-fascist resistance movement and of the Soviet Union in liberating Bulgaria from fascism were the two central pillars of the narrative of the history and memory of Second World War in communist Bulgaria. The end of communism marked the beginning of a new reading of the past and an increased public interest in topics and personalities, whose historical evaluation had been caught in the grip of the established ideological canon for decades. The reassessment of Bulgarian national history also referred to the period of the Second World War. The new historical narrative necessitated also re-evaluation of the memory of the period and its visual representation. In the new political environment after 1989, when Bulgarian society was desperately seeking to break away from its recent past, the presence in public space of the ideologically grounded monuments built during the previous regime became problematic, because they represented the most visible part of the communist legacy. The question of the fate of World War II-era monuments in Bulgaria is part of the larger issue of the fate of the communist legacy, which is relevant to the whole of Eastern Europe. The aim of this article is to present in a synthesized form the changes that took place in the memory of World War II and its visual representation in post-communist Bulgaria with a major focus on the fate of the monuments devoted to the war that were built during the socialist period.

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