Photo: archive, BGNES
The dismantling of monuments of the Russian and Soviet heritage in Bulgaria and inciting hatred towards Russia will cause irreparable harm to the people of the republic itself, said the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, at a briefing in Moscow.
“The stake is to forcibly change the consciousness of one’s own population, to infect it with hatred, to poison relations between nations, but this, again, as in the situation with Ukraine and what we are talking about in the context for Moldova and many other countries, will cause irreparable harm to the people of Bulgaria itself,” stressed Zakharova, quoted by TASS.
The spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry noted that Russia will continue to monitor the situation with the memorial sites in Bulgaria and will react to facts of criminal encroachments.
“It’s a pity that they don’t understand there, I mean again part of the political elite of Bulgaria, what harm they are doing to themselves by essentially renouncing their own past and by devaluing it, devaluing the memory of their own heroes in favor of a dubious situation and on foreign order,” she added.
In mid-December, the dismantling of the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, erected in 1954 in honor of the 10th anniversary of the entry of Soviet troops into Bulgaria during the Second World War in 1944, began. The fate of the monument has been the subject of heated debate since the beginning of the transition to democracy and a market economy in 1989. In the end, the Bulgarian authorities made the decision to move it to the Museum of Socialist Art.
The monument to the Soviet Army has its place in the Museum of Socialist Art. He has no place in the center of Sofia. This was stated by Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov to journalists on December 18, who commented on the ongoing dismantling of the monument.
“This is a propaganda monument, it has no cultural value. It is not a military monument. This is part of the control of the Bulgarian state with the removal of democracy in it by the relevant occupying Soviet troops and then by the totalitarian state. It is high time to part with this past. It should go to museums, we are not saying it should disappear. It should be studied as part of our history,” Denkov pointed out.
After the beginning of the dismantling of the monument in Sofia, the debate about the fate of its equivalent in Plovdiv was renewed.
The municipal councilors from “Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria” (DSB) – Plovdiv, Vladimir Slavenski and Iono Chepilski, who are part of the group of “We continue the change – Democratic Bulgaria”, submitted a proposal to the Municipal Council of Plovdiv that the monument to the Soviet Army “Alyosha” be moved to the end of 2024. This was announced by the party’s press center.
In the draft decision, it is proposed that the monument be moved to the Museum of Socialist Art and that a competition be announced by the Municipality of Plovdiv for the renovation, restoration and renewal of the space around the monument, known as “Alyosha”. According to the DSB advisors, this space is currently neglected. The arguments of the proposal say that the monument is a symbol of the occupation of Bulgaria between 1944-1947 by the Red Army and is a symbol of suppressed national dignity, as well as that it misrepresents the historical reality. According to the petitioners, the removal of the Alyosha monument from the top of Bunardjika hill is a moral act that aims to honor Bulgarian history, national dignity and the victims of the totalitarian communist regime.
(BTA)
Working on the post:
2024-01-12 15:00:00
#Moscow #dismantling #monuments #Bulgaria #harm #Bulgarian #people
