Thu, Mar 22, 2012 page6

• FEATURE: Mega-monuments put Bulgaria in quandary

  • AFP, BUZLUDZHA, BULGARIA
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  The crumbling oval skeleton of the House of the Bulgarian Communist Party perches like a deserted flying saucer atop Mount Buzludzha in central Bulgaria, visible from kilometers around.

  It is one of a number of enormous communist relics still standing more than two decades after the toppling of the regime they glorified, putting the Bulgarian authorities in a quandary since they can neither maintain nor dismantle them.

  “This monument is unique in Europe and, if restored, it can attract tourists, especially Western, and bring money,” said Boycho Bivolarski, the Socialist (former communist) party chief from the nearby city of Stara Zagora.

  

  A man walks inside the crumbling oval skeleton of the House of the Bulgarian Communist Party on mount Buzludzha in central Bulgaria on Wednesday last week.

  Photo: AFP

  Neglect has left the once imposing structure in ruins. Thieves have stripped its roof of most of its paneling, leaving only a hammer-and-sickle emblem hanging sadly at the center of a ceiling riddled with holes.

  A wall mosaic depicting former Bulgarian communist president Todor Zhivkov has been destroyed, while those of communist heroes Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin have been damaged, but are still recognizable.

  Most of the letters have fallen off the verses of the left-wing anthem The Internationale flanking the main entrance of the memorial, inaugurated in 1981, where a graffiti artist has scrawled in huge letters: “Forget Your Past.”

  Still, destroying it would amount to “vandalism,” National Academy of Art professor Chavdar Popov said.

  “The monument could interest the young, who otherwise ignore socialism,” he said, adding that some of Bulgaria’s best artists from the era designed the concrete and stone mega-monuments still dotting the country.

  However, finding an estimated 30 million leva (US$20 million) to repair the Buzludzha memorial to its former glory is next to impossible, right-wing Stara Zagora Governor Nedyalko Nedyalkov said.

  Instead, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov decided in November last year to transfer ownership to the BSP Socialist party.

  “Let them take care of it if they’re so proud of it,” he said.

  However, the BSP managed only to safeguard the entrances of the building against intruders and install warning signs about falling debris to prevent accidents.

  Only a handful of the scores of other gigantic monuments from communism have had a better fate.

  One example is a 200-tonne stone Soviet soldier standing 17m tall in Bulgaria’s second city of Plovdiv. Nicknamed Alyosha, it was on the verge of being dismantled in 1996, but opposition from the Russian embassy kept the figure in place.

  “The question of whether to keep it has been resolved. For us, the monument also symbolizes all our soldiers who lost their lives in World War II,” Plovdiv Mayor Ivan Totev said.

  In an example of one of the ways in which these monuments can escape the wrecking ball, he said an additional commemorative plaque is due to be placed next to the monument to honor the 30,000 Bulgarians who died in that war.

  However, while Alyosha has been saved, controversies occasionally flare up around another key monument to honor the Soviet army in downtown Sofia.

  Last year, the massive bronze relief sculpture received a witty overnight facelift when unknown street artists painted its nine figures as pop art characters such as Superman, Captain America, Santa Claus and Ronald McDonald.

  The caption “Abreast With the Times” adorned the short-lived creation that drew crowds, before it was slammed by the Russian embassy as “an outrageous act of vandalism” and cleaned within days.

  Sofia’s Socialist Art Museum chief Bisera Yosifova said she appreciated “the sense of humor” of the unknown painters, who “alienated the monument from its ideological context.”

  However, she nevertheless advised them to leave the original alone, while adding a copy of the wittily repainted frieze at its side.

  Anti-communist organizations have kept pressing for the monument to be demolished, but art historians are opposed.

  In 1999, Sofia blew up the mausoleum of former communist Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov, built in 1949 on the model of Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow.

  The building was one of the few of its kind in the world at that time and tearing it down was “a mistake” and “a lack of perspicacity,” Yosifova said.

  “It could have been transformed into a Socialist art museum,” she said.
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