/ world today news/ It recently became clear that the Supreme Administrative Court rejected all appeals against the intentions to demolish the monument “1300 years of Bulgaria” in front of the National Palace of Culture. This final decision opens the way to the removal of a capital monument of national importance, which, due to its neglected state, has turned from a symbol of the survival of our thousand-year-old Motherland into an emblem of its decline in recent decades.
Lawyers may have something to say about the reasons of the court, about the independence, impartiality, objectivity of the decision. To be honest, the legal aspect is an idea more incomprehensible to me and I will not comment on it. However, as a Bulgarian citizen, I am obliged to express my personal opinion. Not only do I not share, but I simply do not understand the desire of our fellow citizens, of self-appointed voices of civil society, of ambitious politicians or self-forgetful officials to constantly look back at our history, not to learn anything, but because they get carried away by the friction of lines and symbols from her pages – they are ashamed of her, they always want to edit her, to delete what they think makes them complex, instead of writing their own page, worthy of content.
Yes, the Sphinx of Giza is a pagan symbol, unacceptable to monotheistic religions, and the Pyramid of Cheops – an expression of a personality cult, incomparably larger than the “throwaways” of totalitarian regimes of recent times. Yes, the calendar on any Android smartphone is more accurate and functional than the Druids’ Stonehenge. Yes, Mannequin Peace is a statue of a naked child in the center of Brussels… so what? All these monuments stand to this day, preserved by the heirs of their creators, despite the differences in the taste of generations and regardless of the cost of restoration. Let’s also note that they evoke, if not the worship, then at least the interest of tourists, although the historical memory is much more important than the mercantilism behind it.
Does it matter whether we are talking about the still standing, guiltily “communist” monument “Thirteen Centuries Bulgaria” or about the memorial plaques of the dead from the 1st and 6th infantry regiments, placed during the Tsar’s time and removed by some previous political esthete ? I can think of at least 1,300 reasons why we shouldn’t scrawl and paint over, desecrate and tear down our monuments, urinate in their gardens and put our graffiti signatures on them… don’t look like some modern-day barbarians who provoke the disgust of modern civilization – with pickaxes and Kalashnikovs…
The monument of ancient Bulgaria was ugly… And I am not beautiful. I can even be ugly, in that Old Bulgarian, Old Slavic sense of the word. But that’s who I am now, that’s my gene… I’m not giving it up if I’m going to look like anything. I’m not giving up on Bulgaria, nothing, it doesn’t look like anything. I’m not giving up on her story – few foreign stories are like hers… I’m not giving up on these 1,300 years – how many bones lie beneath them?! I do not give up the symbols that glorify them either – beautiful, ugly… let the next generations judge! Let them tear down if they are ashamed… more precisely – if they are not ashamed, let them tear down!
And you, “gentlemen” contemporaries with “comrades” fathers – as long as you have instilled your complexes on an entire nation. Dismantle them, not the monuments!
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I would end there and maybe that would be enough. But I can’t… I can’t, because there is more to say on the subject of “Bulgarian memory”. And the most important thing, I think, is to accept that memory is something objective. It can’t be a shameful thing, it can’t be a decorated or colored thing, aesthetically passé or tasteless. It can only be there or not – 0 or 1. It’s that simple.
A flying saucer, a toilet bowl, an ideological or historical monument – the Buzludzha Monument has it all! It is part of our memory and should not just remain, but also be restored, if we respect ourselves, of course. Well, it wasn’t so long ago that a million party members admired him – it’s true, many of them no longer want to remember and be reminded of the party ticket. Even today, tens of thousands of those who have not thrown away their membership cards, together with their children, relatives and friends, gather at its foot every year. So many people believed, fought, died for an idea that gave Bulgaria social, health, educational and economic standards that today seem unattainable, they really seem like a utopia. The protection of the monuments is not ideological – those of the “living torpedo” Spisarevski must be there and be maintained. And now… he is neither a Russophile, a communist, nor a Russophobe, a fascist… If he lived today, he probably wouldn’t be a Putinist or a Euro-Atlanticist… Just a Bulgarian pilot who sacrificed himself high in the sky so that they wouldn’t perish other Bulgarians down on earth. There is no ideology in this, but masculine behavior, heroism, self-sacrifice – we must remember that… Heroism was also shown by those dirty, hungry and lousy boys, Bulgarians included, who “cured” Europe from the brown plague – those who died on the Drava, for example… The “Alyosha” monument is for them, not for Stalin.
It is a pity that the killing of complexes continues to push us to destroy monuments instead of erecting new ones. It is true that we do not have many merits and candidate heroes today. That’s why we have ministers who seem to be ashamed of Bulgarian. We hear how the foreigner wanted the Turkish side to “address” the “misperceptions” created in the Bulgarian society by “individual small incidents” related to the behavior of the Turkish ambassador… And his military colleague, a test pilot, declared some time ago his readiness to throw himself against An “Islamic state” when the Bulgarian state is not ready to protect its own skies… For the connoisseurs of the “unique Bulgarian nature”, illustrated with a landscape from Colorado, there is no point in mentioning it at all… It is about some huge “misperceptions”!
In the interest of objectivity, it’s good that there is someone to embarrass these Bulgarian officials a little. It is true that we are talking about a Bulgarian whose name does not sound ethnically Bulgarian (is this some kind of “trend”?). I quote: “The preservation of the monument “1300 years of Bulgaria” and the restoration of the memorial plaques of the 1st and 6th infantry regiments should not be opposed”… “The theme includes them in the glorious history of Bulgaria”… ” The monument “1300 years of Bulgaria” was built in honor of the anniversary of the creation of the Bulgarian state and in the spirit of preserving the national memory and history”… It represents “an avant-garde solution with stylish plastic and is a key element in the overall urban planning composition, and the encroachment on it, it will disturb the urban space”… And also: “It is necessary that it remain and be restored in the form in which it was erected or changed at the discretion of the author”. And above all: “The political wisdom and creative potential of Bulgarian artists can find a solution on the path of creation and reconciliation, and the public debate about the fate of the two monuments provides us with a chance to prove that the Bulgarian people have a historical feeling and values that are above the conjuncture of the day”. End of the quote from Vezhdito. At least he’s an expert in what we’re talking about.
There are 1300 reasons not to listen to those who want to erase, smear or dismantle the historical memory of Bulgaria… In fact, there are already more than 1330 reasons!
#reasons.. #View #Info
