site.btaAugust 26, 1990: Communist Party House Arson Motives Veiled in Mystery to This Day

August 26, 2025, marks 35 years since one of the most emblematic events in Bulgaria’s post-communist history - the arson of the former Communist Party House in Sofia. The fire started after Plamen Stanchev, a member of the Civil Discontent Initiative movement, warned that he would set himself on fire if the five-pointed star, which he considered a symbol of a foreign country, was not removed from the Party House. At 8:40 p.m., Podkrepa Confederation of Labour chair Konstantin Trenchev, gave an ultimatum that the star must be removed within an hour, otherwise the building would be stormed. At 11:00 p.m., almost the entire building was already on fire. Radio Sofia broadcast an appeal by President Zhelyu Zhelev to all political forces to refrain from violence. The fire was finally extinguished at 3:18 a.m. Forty rooms were completely burned down. Property in 94 rooms was destroyed and looted. There were no casualties. At 5:30 a.m., law enforcement officers dismantled the City of Truth, which had been set up after civil protests began in the summer of 1990.

A criminal case was launched. In 1991, the investigation concluded that this was a case of "non-committed behaviour by individuals" and that the arson and destruction were carried out "spontaneously and in an unorganized manner by excited extremists." The court returned the case four times. Thirty-eight people were charged. Among them the head of the Podkrepa trade union, Konstantin Trenchev. The indictment cited damages amounting to BGN 7,947,963. On March 14, 1994, the Sofia City Court terminated the arson of the Party House case and returned it to the Sofia City Prosecution Office for further investigation. On August 23, 1996, the investigation of the arson of the Communist Party House was discontinued.

The building of the former Bulgarian Communist Party was built between 1948 and 1955. Petso Zlatev led the team of architects. One of Sofia’s prominent landmarks, with its colonnaded neoclassical façade, it encompasses 40,000 square metres of space and stands at the intersection of three squares and two major boulevards, at the Largo, a complex of buildings in the centre of the capital. The massive red star that once topped the building’s spire was removed in October 1990, and is now at the Museum of Socialist Art, replaced by the Bulgarian national flag.

The National Assembly moved its operations to the reconstructed building in September 2023 due to renovations in the main building.