Traces from the communist era

The weekly Kapital comments on Bulgaria's new "Sleda" (Trace) project for monuments built in the communist era: "All these monuments resemble each other in that regardless of their age they were meant to cultivate national pride. But now we are trying to 'erase' them out of a sense of shame - [either] in a loud and graphic manner, as in the case of Georgi Dimitrov's [former head of Comintern and Bulgarian prime minister] mausoleum, or by simply ignoring them and in this way condemning them to oblivion and decay. Monuments are places of remembrance - they create associations, both negative and positive, between people and their past. The destruction of monuments is a failed attempt to suppress complexes which have their roots in the past; it is not a solution. If one leaves them standing and adds a notice explaining why they were built, with what funding and during which political era, these monuments might help us to perceive communism as a piece of our past that differs from our present but does not overshadow our future."

» full article (external link, Bulgarian)
More from the press review on the subject » Architecture / Cities, » History, » Bulgaria