site.btaAugust 27, 1999: Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum Is Razed

The demolition of the mausoleum of Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov in central Sofia was completed on this day 26 years ago. The operation required four attempts over seven days – longer than it had taken to build the tomb.

Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949) first came to the international limelight as the key defendant in the 1933 Reichstag Fire Trial. After his acquittal in that cause célèbre, he was deported to Moscow, where he became Secretary General of the Comintern and, after the 1944 Communist takeover in Bulgaria, prime minister and first secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party until his death. Revered by some as "the leader and teacher of the Bulgarian people", he is reviled by others as a ruthless dictator taking his cues from mentor Stalin.

Modelled on Lenin's

The mausoleum was erected by a Council of Ministers decision adopted on the night of July 2 to 3, 1949, ten hours after the leader's death at the Barvikha Sanatorium near Moscow. A 1 hectare lot in the City Garden, opposite the former royal palace, was allotted for the project. Two days were given for the design and eight days for the construction of the tomb. Architects Georgi Ovcharov and Racho Ribarov, however, were ready with the blueprints in less than 24 hours. Working non-stop in three shifts (the site was floodlit at night) and sustaining three fatalities in the process, 350 Construction Corps conscripts completed the above-ground 320,000-brick structure in six days, starting at 8 p.m. on July 3. The coffin was transported by train to Sofia. The funeral ceremony took place on July 10, continuing until 4 a.m. on the 11th. On the evening of the same day, the body was transferred to the Vrana Residence and finishing works at the tomb proceeded for another six months. A roof was built in the place of a canvas canopy, and the interior was equipped.

The windowless white Vratsa limestone-faced rectangular structure was 12 m high and occupied 320 sq m. It had a three-step cornice, an upper level bounded by four square columns on each side, and a granite-clad reviewing stand projecting from the northern facade over the main entrance 3.5 m above ground level.

The structure was overhauled in 1974-1975, with mosaic panels by Dechko Ouzounov (discreetly implied five-pointed stars, hammers and sickles) added on the upper-level facades. A double door sculpted by Ivan Neshev and Valentin Starchev in cast bronze, featuring laurel leaves and the years of Dimitrov's birth and death, was fitted in the main entrance. The wooden sarcophagus was replaced by a cast bronze one, made in the USSR, with ornamentation by Vassil Simitchiev. A new air conditioning system was installed, and the below-ground space was expanded. During the overhaul, the body was secretly evacuated to the Lozenets Residence.

The tomb must have been intended to double as an artillery-resistant bunker and nuclear-proof shelter: beneath the facing, the chamber walls consisted of two shells: an outer shell of 40-50 cm extra reinforced high-strength concrete, separated from an inner 50-70 cm brick shell by a 10-20 cm air cushion. The inner shell was lined with 7-8 cm impregnated cork and another 12 cm air-placed concrete. The two massive concrete roof slabs were 60-80 cm thick altogether.

A carpeted underground passage, leading from the mausoleum to the Communist Party headquarters across the square, an emergency escape on the side of the Defence Ministry building, and a back door on the side of the National Bank were thoughtfully provided, just in case the cheering crowds turned nasty.

18 Million Visitors in 41 Years

The mausoleum opened to the public on December 11, 1949. Three afternoons a week, reverential citizens would file past Dimitrov's death mask (sculpted in marble by Mara Georgieva) on the wall facing the main entrance, through antiseptic, ventilated 2 m wide corridors running round the lower level, and into a dim burial chamber (a cube sized 10 by 10 by 10 m – exactly as large as Lenin's) of polished black gabbro and red breccia, designed by Ivan Penkov. There, Dimitrov's corpse was displayed on a marble pedestal, laid out in a hermetically sealed ornamented sarcophagus with side walls of three-layer glass. Soft cold light was focused on the face and hands. The temperature in the building was controlled at 16°C, and the humidity at 75%.

A total of 18 million admissions were counted during the 41 years in which the mausoleum was opened to the public. Visitors included Alexei Kosygin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Yuri Gagarin, Fidel Castro, Angela Davis, and Indira Gandhi.

Under communism, the mausoleum was the focal point of all state ceremonies. Top shots took the salute from the reviewing stand of that latter-day pyramid as placard-bearing and slogan-chanting mere mortals marched past on state occasions. Visiting foreign dignitaries paid floral tribute. Guardsmen stood sentry at the entrance, and the hourly change of the guard of honour, goose-stepping from their guardroom in the ground floor of the National Bank in Knyaz Alexander Battenberg Street and back, was a major attraction for camera-clicking foreign tourists. In one of the two rooms flanking the main entrance, the mausoleum superintendent had his office. In the other, larger room, the VIPs rested and took refreshments during boring march-pasts.

Immortal Remains

A Russian team under Prof. Boris Zbarsky (Lenin's embalmer) embalmed Dimitrov's body several hours after he expired, following a rushed and rather incompetent post-mortem, probably as a cover-up of alleged slow mercury poisoning. Until 1955, Russian experts maintained the mummy. A seven-member Bulgarian team then took over, led by Prof. Dr Georgi Galabov until his death in 1982 and then by his son, Assoc. Prof. Dr Petar Galabov, until 1990. At the first below-ground level, there is a laboratory to which the body was lowered by a special lift twice a week (on Tuesday and Friday) for examination and moistening of the visible portions. Once every 18 months, the mausoleum was closed "for repairs". In the subterranean laboratory Dimitrov was immersed for 35 days in a 300-litre bath tub filled with an embalming solution of alcohol, glycerine, distilled water and potassium acetate to freshen up his skin. To overcome the cadaver's buoyancy, its cavities were filled with glass pearls. After this procedure the 48 kg immortal remains were dressed in new cotton underwear, two latex body stockings, and a new suit made by the same tailor who took care of Dimitrov's garments while he was alive. The deceased leader was then hoisted back to the sarcophagus, with the hands in a strictly fixed position. Assoc. Prof. Galabov said that of all eleven communist mummies (in Russia, Mongolia, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Angola, Guyana and North Korea), Dimitrov was preserved best and his skin colour looked most natural. The Bulgarians were the first with whom the Russians shared their top secret mummification expertise.

The lowermost level of the building housed a sophisticated air-conditioning system, electric and electronic equipment, a repair room, and a control room. Also there, a mini hydroelectric power station with two large and four small turbines, harnessing an underground river which runs beneath, provided a back-up self-contained power supply.

Maintenance of the mummy cost the public purse some USD 20,000 monthly.

Empty and Redundant

After the fall of the communist regime the mausoleum was closed to the public in early 1990. At the request of Dimitrov's family, who feared desecration by anti-communist protestors besieging the mausoleum, and under a July 17, 1990 decision of Andrei Lukanov's Socialist government, the embalmed body was hastily removed through the backdoor on July 18 for cremation later that day. According to another version, the underground passage was used for the evacuation. The ashes were buried next to the leader's mother's grave in the Protestant section of Sofia Central Cemetery on July 23.

Thereafter, the building was defaced by multi-coloured graffiti and was used as a public toilet during the political demonstrations which took place around it.

Proposed conversions of the mausoleum never materialized. They ranged from the utile (a vault for the National Bank, a paintings depository for the National Art Gallery, a warehouse, a solid state physics laboratory, a planetarium, a repository for the standard of the metre, or a cheese fermentation workshop) through the sublime (a memorial to the war dead, a pantheon of the architects of modern Bulgaria, a museum of European anti-fascists, a hall of battle fame, a memorial church dedicated to Prince Boris I, a museum of Bulgarian sculpture, or a multimedia art centre complete with a "virtual time machine") to the bizarre (a Madame Tussaud's-like exhibition of waxworks or a Christo-wrapped object) and the profane (an amusement centre with 150-place restaurant and night club or a graveyard for dead Tamagotchis).

In 1997 and 1998, the empty white sepulchre provided a setting for Sofia Opera Director Plamen Kartalov's extravaganza open-air stagings of several operas and ballets, including Verdi's Aida, complete with chariots drawn by 18 real horses and 800 chorus singers and supernumeraries. The set designers then irreparably damaged the facade mosaics by black paint and glue.

It Just Won't Fall

On March 18, 1993, the Sofia Municipal Council passed a resolution, giving the competent authorities until May 1 to dismantle the sculptures and bas reliefs of the Soviet Army Monument and until June 30 to demolish the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum. Neither deadline was kept.

The fate of the building's above-ground part was sealed by an order issued on behalf of Regional Development and Public Works Minister Evgenii Bakurdjiev on August 9, 1999. The formal pretext was that the structure had been erected illegally, without a proper building permit. The tomb was stripped of everything valuable, and on August 21 an attempt was made to demolish it in two controlled explosions with the help of 300 kg of ammonite, but the structure only sagged on one side, remaining apparently intact. Another blast, of 350 kg explosives, followed on August 22, destroying the 1.3 m thick outer wall of the mausoleum but again failing to bring it down. The ruin was then attacked with bulldozers, air hammers and power loaders. A third explosion, on August 25, detonated the roof brackets with 150 kg of ammonite. Finally, the last remaining wall of the chamber collapsed shortly before midnight on the 26th.

The botched battering drew sarcastic comments from the media.

The destruction of the mausoleum came as a shock to many not only because of its symbolic stature but because it had become an integral part of the cityscape, a landmark of Sofia under communism. Even within the government that ordered the razing, there were opponents to this initiative, and most of the public opposed it as well according to opinion polls. Nevertheless, the decision of the authorities to obliterate the empty tomb was intended as a symbolic renunciation of the Communist past.

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Following are excerpts from the original English-language coverage of the demolition of the mausoleum in August 1999 in the BTA External News Service bulletin:

August 23: "The demolition of the mausoleum of former communist leader Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia's central square is likely to absorb more than the envisaged 40,000 new leva (the equivalent of 40,000 Deutsche marks), Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works Vanya Zegova said on Monday. The extra amount can be raised through donations, added she. She would not specify the sum collected so far but said that a lot of donors have turned up. […] Zegova described press reports about 'unsuccessful attempts' and 'failure' to demolish the building as insinuations. The explosions aimed at partial weakening of the building which was to be fully torn down by machines. […] Major problems before the implementation of the project included the lack of documentation on the building's design, the solidness of the building and the need to preserve the surrounding buildings. "

August 21: "The mausoleum of former communist leader Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia's central square, a one-time Sofia landmark, survived three demolition attempts."

"Police had cordoned off a large area around the mausoleum and major streets were closed to traffic and pedestrians from early morning. The operation was observed by officials, including Prime Minister Ivan Kostov and Deputy Prime Minister Evgenii Bakurdjiev, standing on the roof terrace of an adjacent building. The press was allowed on the roof of the nearby Transport Ministry and a small group of photographers and a TV crew were positioned on the roof of the central bank just by the mausoleum. There were other onlookers as well."

"Socialist MP Georgi Pirinski was the first to make a public address in the square after the unsuccessful demolition. Eyewitnesses say he described the result of the operation as 'evidence of the impotence of the incumbents'. People in the crowd shouted back 'red scum'."

"'We are all for the demolition. Georgi Dimitrov ruined the lives of three generations,' said Maria Lozanova, 43, and father Assen Tsvetkov.

'It is a rule of democracy not to destroy,' said Maria Tsolova, 43, who made it clear she is a supporter of the ruling Union of Democratic Forces and is therefore against all old things but against the demolition as well. Prime Minister Kostov was seen to leave first the observation point about 15 minutes after the first explosion. Speaking for Bulgarian National Television he said the mausoleum had to be removed because it does not give any idea about the Bulgarian national character and there is nothing in it of the Bulgarian identity.

'The mausoleum is the symbol of autocratic totalitarian power, a negation of parliamentary democracy,' said he. 'The building also conflicts [with] the essence of the European road Bulgaria has embarked on.'

'It is hard to part with the past,' Bakurdjiev commented before the press."

August 27: "The mausoleum of Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov was torn down after demolition workers had fought for seven days with its solid construction. […] The opening to the underground part of the building will be sealed with a reinforced concrete slab, BTA learnt from Deputy Labour Minister Teodor Dechev."