Bulgaria's slow path to commemorating victims of communism

Mihail Marinov, director of the Belene Island Foundation, has a vision. His dream for Persin, an idyllic island on the Danube River, which is located on the Bulgarian-Romanian border, has nothing to do with nature conservation though the area is home to more than 470 species of bird, including eagles and pelicans.

The region is famous for its rich ecosystem, but also notorious for another reason: Between1944 and 1989, approximately 15,000 people considered as enemies of the communist regime were interned here.

Many perished from forced labor and malnutrition and Marinov's NGO wants to honor theM: "Our wish is for this site to become part of the European network of memorials, attracting not just Bulgarians but people from across Europe," Marinov told DW.

Across the Danube lies a former labor camp

Even 35 years after the fall of Bulgaria's communist dictatorship, this goal remains a challenge. Visitors to the ruins of the Belene camp must first cross the Danube via a pontoon bridge, and then undergo a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) drive on a narrow, pothole-riddled road.

"We want to restore the entire camp infrastructure as it was in the 1950s," Marinov said. This includes rebuilding the wooden barracks for inmates, for which there are no photos. But secret drawings made by a former inmate could be used to direct the reconstruction.

Marinov is well aware that it will take years for his foundation's vision to become a reality. Louisa Slavkova of the Sofia Platform Foundation, an education center that explores Bulgaria's communist past, has a similar view. "Almost nothing is happening at the state level," she told DW. Although communism was officially condemned as a criminal regime in the 2000s, she said, no substantial support has been offered to its victims."

'Young people now know more'

The Sofia Platform is particularly focused on education, as Bulgaria's communist history was not on the curriculum before 2018. For many years, communism was not discussed by families either.  One of the key findings of a 2014 Sofia Platform study found that parents had spoken very little with their children about the dictatorship.

But Slavkova was optimistic, noting that communism is no longer a taboo topic in Bulgarian schools. "Young people now know more," she said, referencing to a recent study showing some progress. The foundation's modern forms of educating people about history, including an oral history project, have contributed to this shift.

Launched in 2021, the oral history project comprises extensive video interviews with survivors from the Belene camp. They are also available in English and German at belene.camp.

Overcoming silence through literature

However, many sensitive topics remain taboo in Bulgarian society, Slavkova regretted. She said that she hoped academia and the world of culture would encourage new approaches to examining Bulgaria's communist past. She mentioned the writer Georgi Gospodinov, who won the International Booker Prize in 2023 for his novel Time Shelter.

"Personal history cannot be separated from larger history,"  Gospodinov, who lives in Sofia, told DW. He pointed out that there were no significant resistence movements in Bulgaria during the communist dictatorship — in contrast to popular uprisings seen in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Poland (1980).

Bulgaria's missed moment of revolution

"We missed out on critical years," said Gospodinov, 56, reflecting on the widespread passivity in Bulgaria. The country experienced neither a peaceful revolution nor a violent one. Instead, the communists forged a path to benefit from Europe's transformative moment.

On November 10, 1989 — just one day after thefall of the Berlin Wall — Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's head of state for 35 years, was forced to step down. The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) was rebranded as the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and went on to secure an absolute majority in Bulgaria’s first democratic elections in October, 1990. By comparison, the former communists in reunified Germany won only 2.4% of the vote in that year’s December election.

For Gospodinov, the rapid resurgence of the old elites after the dictatorship has a simple explanation: "We didn't know how to protest. No one had taught us how to be free." Thirty-five years later, the shadows of the past still loom over Bulgaria.

This article, which was translated from German, was written as part of a weeklong study trip to Bulgaria organized by the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in East Germany, which promotes the reappraisal of the former Communist dictatorships in Germany and other countries.