site.btaBulgaria Honours Victims of Communist Regime, Parliament Divided over Day's Significance

Bulgaria marks February 1 as the Day of Homage to the Victims of the Communist Regime. It was instituted in 2011 on the initiative of former Bulgarian Presidents Zhelyu Zhelev (1990-1997) and Petar Stoyanov (1997-2002).

On February 1, 1945, three regents, 22 ministers of five governments (in office between February 11, 1940 and September 8, 1944), 8 royal advisers, 67 MPs of the 25th Ordinary National Assembly and 47 senior military officers were executed at Sofia's Central Cemetery after being sentenced to death earlier that day by the People's Court. In four months, the People's Court issued nearly 11,000 sentences, more than 2,800 people were sentenced to death and more than 300 to life in prison.

The Bulgarian Parliament kept a moment of silence for the victims of the communist regime. The MPs of Vazrazhdane did not rise to their feet, which led to recriminations of manipulation of the historical truth. BSP for Bulgaria walked out.

Parliament's Deputy Chair Nikola Minchev read out a declaration on behalf of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), recalling all the innocent victims of the communist regime. The parliamentary group called for preserving the historical memory so that "we would not fall into the same traps under a different guise but of an identical nature".

Talking about the number of victims, Minchev said that by comparison, 24 people were tried at the Nuremberg trials against the Nazi regime and some of them were acquitted. The People's Court is not a precedent for post-war Europe, but Bulgaria's experience is unique. The very existence of an extraordinary court was against the Tarnovo Constitution, and its political purpose was criminal, CC-DB said.

The extraordinary "efficiency" of the People's Court is a clear sign that defendants were presumed guilty by default. Minchev recalled that Dimitar Peshev, who, as Deputy Chair of the National Assembly between 1938 and 1944, contributed to the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps, was convicted of fascist activity and antisemitism.

Minchev stressed the importance of keeping the truth alive, as there can be no reconciliation without truth and memory. "We must reaffirm our resolute united stand against any form of totalitarian rule, regardless of the ideological context," he said.

GERB-UDF said in a declaration read out by Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) leader and GERB-UDF Deputy Floor Leader Rumen Hristov that attempts to falsify history continue, which is disgraceful for an EU Member State. "Throughout the 34 years of the transition, the Bulgarian Communist Party - Bulgarian Socialist Party did not apologize, and in this case did not repent for the atrocities of the communist regime, for the death camps, for the lost lives and destinies, for the shameful revival process. Moreover, the attempts to distort, neglect and falsify our history in this dark period continue. These attempts are a disgrace in an EU Member State that has accepted the values of the democratic world and condemned the regime as criminal by a law adopted by the 37th National Assembly," Hristov said.

For the democratic community in Bulgaria, February 1 symbolizes the criminal nature of the communist regime, imposed with the help of the occupying Red Army, which cost Bulgaria over BGN 130 billion and cut the country off from the free world for half a century, Hristov said.

"We will not forget the massacred and we will always honour their memory, not only on February 1," he said.

Vazrazhdane Chair and Floor Leader Kostadin Kostadinov said Bulgaria needs a day of national reconciliation when all together will pay homage to the victims of the regimes both before and after the 1944 communist takeover.

"Now we have to ask ourselves if, by honouring people who cut off heads, we are not actually rehabilitating fascism. Perhaps what has been happening in recent years is precisely this - a rehabilitation of fascism," Kostadinov said. "That is why we call for a day of national reconciliation and commemoration of all victims of the bloody, albeit undeclared civil war in Bulgaria, which began in 1918 with the Soldiers' Uprising and ended with the sentences passed by the People's Court."

"This is whom we have commemorated now - the murderers who killed or condemned to death 3,055 people between 1941 and 1944," Kostadinov said and showed graphic photos allegedly of beheaded partisans. "By comparison, the People's Court sentenced to death 2,730 people."

"We can argue whether there was classical fascism in Bulgaria or not (...) but one thing is clear - there was a fierce civil war and there were victims on both sides. If a nation wants to heal the wounds of the civil war, it must honour all victims," Kostadinov said.

Reacting to Kostadinov's statement, Rumen Hristov said that August 23 is a day of tribute to the victims of all regimes, including the Nazi regime.

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Members of the public paid floral tributes at the Memorial to the Victims of Communism in downtown Sofia. Parliament Chairperson Rosen Zhelyazkov, former President Rosen Plevneliev (2012-2017), MPs and Ukraine's Ambassador in Sofia Olesya Ilashchuk also paid homage to the victims. Victims of communist repressions were among those present.

Zhelyazkov said: "Today we are paying tribute to the victims of communism, but we also commemorate the dark period in Bulgarian history, which began almost 100 years ago and which went through the red terror immediately after September 1944." In his words, that period marked the lives of generations of Bulgarians who were not only denied the right to have their own history; their present was re-invented and their future was forbidden. He also talked about "timid attempts to restore communism" and "calls for forgetting the victims and their history".

Commemorative events were held in other Bulgarian cities and towns.