/ world today news/ The controversy that flared up in recent weeks in connection with the new interpretation of the events of the period 1944-1989, which appeared in the “History and Civilization” programs for tenth-grade students in Bulgarian schools, shows that relapses from the Bulgarian civil war that started almost a hundred years ago are still alive in our “democratic society” today.
The beginning of the civil war in our country, which is an expression of the deep division in society and the search for a culprit for the collapse of the efforts to achieve the national ideal – unification of all territories with our compatriots with a compact population within the framework of the Bulgarian state, was set in the autumn of 1918 with the so-called Vladai (or Voynish) Uprising. The next stages in it were the repression of the government of the left-wing farmer Alexander Stamboliyski against the old “bourgeois” parties and the coup organized by the latter and the army on June 9, 1923, which led to mass murders of supporters of the agrarian regime, including the Prime Minister. In the fall of 1923, however, an uprising broke out, organized by the Communist Party at the suggestion of the Comintern, which was also brutally crushed and followed by the banning of the party itself and by new mass repressions. Terrorist attacks by leftists followed, culminating in the grisly bombing of Sofia’s St. Nedelya Church by the Communist Party’s military organization, and the government’s response included mass murders of left-wing intellectuals that outraged what was then a democratic Europe.
The civil war continued in the thirties, and in 1941 it again entered a hot phase with the partisan movement organized by the BRP (k) against the regime and the German military units located in the country. The reaction of the authorities (which meanwhile declared war on Great Britain and the USA) included mass repressions (including murders of women and children), creation of concentration camps, etc.
After the coup in September 1944, which led to the gradual total control of all levers of power by the Communist Party, the civil war continued. The totalitarian regime deals with its political opponents, including renewing the practice of concentration camps, and the resistance against it includes an armed struggle carried out by the so-called “goryans”, and then – the sporadic appearances of the so-called “dissidents”.
After the collapse of the communist regime in 1989 and the beginning of the transition to democracy and a market economy, many hoped that this fratricidal “civil war” would finally be put to an end. That is, the crimes committed during all these 70+ years will be explained to the public, the page will be closed and division will be replaced by national reconciliation.
However, it turned out that things did not develop that way and the division in Bulgarian society continues to be artificially stimulated, probably because this way the society itself is easier to manipulate in one direction or another.
Another example of this is the questionable new interpretation of the “communist period” of Bulgarian history, which unfortunately turns out to be not so much “new” as it is one-sided. Probably because most of the authors are from the American University in Blagoevgrad and the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, and have more than once demonstrated clearly expressed political biases. At the same time, the opinion of a number of authoritative Bulgarian historians, including from Sofia University and BAS, was ignored.
Besides, this attempt to impose a single opinion on such a large period of the new Bulgarian history is suspiciously reminiscent of the situation with history textbooks during this same period (ie until 1989), which were also dominated by a single vision of events ( especially for those from the previous period 1878-1944), it can lead to the heroization of individuals and ideas who – apart from being staunch anti-communists – supported the regimes in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Among the examples of this is the so-called “Onion March”, i.e. the mourning torchlight procession in memory of the leader of the Union of Bulgarian National Legions killed by communist militant groups, which is traditionally organized by several extreme nationalist organizations in our country in February. As is known, for several years now the Metropolitan Municipality has refused to allow it to be held, and both the US and Russian embassies are simultaneously protesting against it. A number of Bulgarian historians believe that the general and the organization he led were conductors of anti-Semitic ideas and maintained close ties with the National Socialist regime in Germany. Others, however, claim that Lukov cannot be defined as professing the ideology of fascism or Nazism. It is significant that among the latter is one of the main lobbyists for the rewriting of the history textbooks – Associate Professor Lachezar Stoyanov from the New Bulgarian University.
The truth is that General Lukov was considered too close to Nazi Germany even by the circles around Tsar Boris III. They suspected, not without reason, that he and the organization he led could be used by Hitler to establish an openly Nazi regime in Bulgaria and dethrone the monarch. As is known, this scenario was realized by the Nazis in Hungary in 1944, when the regent of the country, Admiral Miklós Horthy (a conservative politician trying to organize his country’s exit from the war, as did Tsar Boris III, immediately before his death) was overthrown in 1943) and power passed to the outspoken Nazi Ferenc Salassi and his Party of Crossed Arrows. It is no coincidence that immediately after the assassination of General Lukov, many believed that it was carried out at the behest of the Palace. By the way, it seems strange that in some of the mourning marches in his memory VMRO sympathizers also take part, although it was General Lukov, in his capacity as Minister of War in the government of Georgi Kyoseivanov (1935-1938), who was among the most active supporters of the liquidation policy of this organization (1).
And yet, the main danger of recent attempts for a one-sided and ideologically colored interpretation of a key period of the new Bulgarian history is not related to the fact that they can lead to the heroization of people who professed anti-human ideas and worked in the name of foreign interests (exactly as it was during the communist dictatorship, among others), but that they will encourage the division of the nation and may resurrect, in one form or another, the civil war that was fought in the period 1918-1989 and led to disastrous consequences for our country.
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Notes:
1. See, Three coups d’état or Kimon Georgiev and his time. Sofia, “Siela”, 2007. pp. 333 – 334.
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