/ world today news/ Interview of Krasina Krasteva with Academician Geori Markov
– What date is September 9, 1944, Acad. Markov? Shame or glory?
– There should finally be an objective assessment of these events. And for before September 9, 1944 and for after September 9. Don’t put everything under one denominator. There must be reconciliation, we must stop wasting our time and wasting our energy arguing about the past. It is irreversible, leave it September 9! In Bulgaria, murders and kidnappings take place every day, and politicians deal with September 9 and the April Plenum. To leave history to the historians, not to touch it with dirty hands!
There should be some kind of national agreement on the Spanish model. Not everyone can cry at their grave. Reconciliation is needed! It should be understood that Bulgarians were killed on both sides. Passions should not be exacerbated. This is a civil war, and there are no winners in a civil war!
– Yes, but passions intensify. The political clash around September 9 is not diminishing, on the contrary, it is increasing, even as we move away from the events. Why?
– May I remind you that in the early 1990s, under Philip Dimitrov, they wanted to rename the streets named after Geo Milev. This is a civil war – before September 9 there was white terror, after September 9 – red terror. There are innocent victims on both sides. What can we say about Geo Milev and Joseph Herbst?! Before 1989 we denied red terror, then they started denying white terror. We need to wise up at last. I will say again, let’s look at Spain, 680,000 thousand people died there in the most brutal civil war. How Generalissimo Franco managed to reconcile them, erected a monument in the Valley of the Fallen, buried all – communists, anarchists, Francoists and wrote “They died for the good of Spain”. In Greece, they killed each other for three years – from 1946 to 1949, and reconciled. And here the politicians keep digging.
– Doesn’t the attitude towards dates like September 9 become a code to mark geopolitical belonging?
– This is a historic event. It is true that overnight a coup, a revolution takes place, but there are consequences of the revolution. The system is changing – socio-political, economic. And with the entry of the Red Army. This is an event that was predetermined by the Big Three (Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt). They are dividing Europe. Stalin and Churchill reach an agreement. Churchill says to Stalin: Leave Greece to me, I need it, take the guilty Bulgarians and punish them! Why? Because he hates us since the Dardanelles operation in 1915. Churchill gave Bulgaria to Stalin and Stalin took it, it’s a matter of geopolitical game. Then Europe was divided as a result of the Second World War and this predetermined the start of the Cold War. It started right away – back in 1946 with Churchill’s Fulton speech. So September 9 could not be avoided with Bulgaria being designated in the Soviet zone. After the Red Army entered Bulgaria, it was not the agreed occupation of 1918 – 1918. No! The Red Army enters here, but it also changes the system on the Soviet model. Of course, there is a connection with the internal resistance, there is a swing of the pendulum – innocent people are being killed for about a month after September 9. In most cases, it is about self-talk. Someone has a tooth of someone for three generations and says – here is this fascist! He kills him and raises his fist: “Death to fascism!”
After that, people were tried by the People’s Court. This is the revenge of the Communist Party. But we must understand that there are no winners in civil war. For a long time, September 9 was a national holiday. But he cannot unite Bulgarians, he divides. Another date unites us – September 6, the Unification, September 22 – Independence Day. And they perceive them simply as days off. No, these are not days off, they are holidays! Real holidays!
I’m tired of politicians dictating to historians. Colleagues are rewriting the textbooks and my children say – we love history, Acad. Markov, but we don’t trust historians.
– How do you explain that the GERB party, in which there are many ex-communists or their successors, now meets with the Union of the Repressed and condemns the communist regime?
– This is a political game! I’m tired of ex-communists pretending to be anti-communists! They are all like that – led by Boyko Borisov, Rosen Plevneliev and Tsetska Tsacheva. And because they have burdens, they overdo it. On November 10, 1989, there were one million communists. My grandfather did not say communists, he said party members. He said – the communists were before September 9, 1944, when they were persecuted. They were few then. 14,000 were the communists in Bulgaria on September 9, 1944, then in three years they became 350,000 to reach one million in 1989. After 1989, party books were thrown away en masse. Because before 89, membership in the BKP was not a matter of conviction, it was a matter of career, a way of survival. That is why so many people from former communists became anti-communists. Rosen Plevneliev’s father is a member of the Blagoevgrad District Committee of the BKP, Ivan Krastev’s father is a member of the Central Committee of the BKP, Evgeni Dainov’s father was a correspondent in London for “Rabotnichesko Delo” and from there he reviled American imperialism. I lived in that era, and that’s why I resent it today. GERB now started to fight against communism. There was a threat! Let go of that mantra, there’s no going back!
– Who instigates this mantra, why does it exist?
– To deliver to Uncle Sam. There was a Grandfather Ivan, Uncle Sam expelled him from politics, from the economy, now he wants to expel him from history. Today’s anti-communist fighters are overdoing themselves without anyone urging them because they are burdened by communism. I remember how Tsetska Tsacheva played a performance about I-don’t-know-who-is-grandfather, she even cried during the dispute with Gen. Rumen Radev. It is artificial. There are victims of communism, I know such people. But these are not victims! Neither Kuneva is a victim, nor Plevneliev, nor Tsacheva. Those who lay in prisons and camps, their heirs, the heirs of those who disappeared without a trace after September 9, are more noble than former communists who became anti-communists. These should not be made victims. Kuneva will offer lessons on communism with two faces! I was in one such lesson. And the teacher put on one side a photo from the camp in Belene. I suggested from the other side that they put a photo of the National Palace of Culture. Because there was Belene, but there was also NDK. They haven’t destroyed it like a mausoleum yet, thank God! Where would they hold the presidency?!
– Immediately after November 10, there were such appeals. It is often said that we do not need such grandiosity.
– They wanted to demolish! There was one Fori the Firefly who wanted to overthrow the Party House, held vigils to expel the ghosts of communism from it. Yes, but now the Party House is the home of the National Assembly and every MP has an office in it. Now they feel very comfortable in this Stalinist-style building.
I’ll say it again – you can’t put everything under one denominator. Because there are Builders of Bulgaria – there were them in the Kingdom of Bulgaria, there were also in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Many things were built.
– Simeon himself, King Simeon, who lost everything on September 9, repeatedly said: I remember, but what is the point of hatred?
– The king was a small child then, he suffered a lot. His uncle was shot by the People’s Court. When he returned in 2001, blue and red were neck and neck. Whatever history writes about him as Prime Minister, he has one great merit – he tamed that hatred. He said – everyone is Bulgarian, let us work for Bulgaria. He tried to implement the Spanish model of reconciliation because he comes from Spain. But that’s because the king has an 800-year-old family tree.
#tired #excommunists #pretending #anticommunists
