“Glory to Ukraine”, “Assassins”, “Putler” (Putin + Hitler). The monument to the glory of the Soviet army that sits in the heart of Sofia was tagged by Bulgarian anti-war protesters in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Once again, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the monumental sculpture 45 meters high, completed in 1954 in the midst of Stalinism, in homage to the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany, is the subject of all the controversy over its becoming.
A dismantling already voted in 1993
On the very day of the outbreak of war, February 24, the city council of Sofia condemned the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, in a vote, by 41 votes for, 1 against and 2 abstentions. The next day, Traicho Traikov, the mayor of Sredets, the central district of the capital, announced that he was launching a procedure for the dismantling and relocation of the disputed monument, under a decision which had been voted by the city council. of Sofia in… 1993, but never realized.
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At the time, scaffolding had even been erected for the deconstruction before the construction site was interrupted by order of the then interior minister, recalls the Bulgarian press agency BTA. “The situation has changed with the war, this monument may finally disappear from the center of Sofia”, considers Antony Todorov, a political scientist at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia.
Soviet liberator against communist oppressor
Clashes are recurrent between pro-Russians and pro-Westerns on the future of the monument. For the former, like the Bulgarian Socialist Party, heir to the Communist Party, the sculpture pays homage to the Soviet liberator, recalling the victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany. For the latter, it embodies the repression of the Soviet occupation for nearly half a century.
The Russian authorities have always thrown their weight behind the maintenance of the memorial, indirectly or via their Bulgarian relays. The Russian embassy even offered twice in 2020 and 2021 to finance its renovation in exchange for its ownership or enjoyment, BTA still recalls. The agency clarified that Russia in 2020 criminalized the destruction or damage of memorial sites dedicated to Russian military glory during World War II on its soil and abroad.
Taken to task by opponents in the Kremlin
For ten years, the monument has been attacked by opponents of Kremlin policy. In 2014, already in support of Ukraine and its Maidan revolution, it was partly painted in blue and yellow, in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. As demonstrators in Slovakia and the Czech Republic have done again in recent weeks, coloring the soldiers of the Red Army blue and yellow, or their hands the color of blood to denounce the war.
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In Sofia, already in 2012 and 2013, the heroes of 1945 had been daubed, both by hooding them to protest against the Russian crackdown on the Pussy Riot musical group and by painting them pink to ask Bulgaria an apology for participating in the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968.
“Historical work remains to be done”
During the first artistic protest, which took place in 2011, the same soldiers had been transformed into heroes of American comics. It was then a question of addressing ironically both “To the ‘liberators’ of yesteryear than to the ‘leaders of the free world'”opposing “two ideological systems and two consumer societies”, journalist Anita Dimitrova was quoted in the daily newspaper at the time Sega.
Should we then move this cumbersome monument? “This place has a function, object of various actions. Can’t the monument be rededicated?, interrogates Antony Todorov. It is a tribute to the Soviet army and not to the Russian army, but we left all this heritage to Russia, yet Ukraine had its share in the war”, he raises. Sofia has no other monument commemorating the victory over Nazism. And, he concludes, “the historical work on the proper role of Bulgaria at the time, an ally of Hitler and which changed sides at the end of the conflict and entered the war, still largely remains to be done”.