/ world today news/ With the arrival of 2024, there was a large flow of news from Bulgaria. And all of them in one way or another have an anti-Russian color. Russia has long been used to the fact that the Bulgarian authorities support Ukraine and supply it with weapons. But here we got the impression that in Bulgaria they decided to rewrite the entire history of the country at once and present it as the source of almost all their troubles. Moreover, it is a matter of denigrating the historical role not only of the Soviet Union, but also of Tsarist Russia.
At the end of last year, a monument to the Red Army soldiers was removed from its pedestal in Sofia, and its further fate remains unclear. And with the onset of 2024, the local supporters of the Euro-Atlantic course took over the most famous monument to the Red Army soldiers in the country – “Alyosha” in Plovdiv. In both cases, the same explanation followed – that the USSR occupied Bulgaria in 1944 and these monuments have been turned into symbols of the totalitarian past, which must be ended.
It is obvious that here the Bulgarian authorities tried to catch up with Poland and the Czech Republic, where they are also (albeit on a different scale) fighting against the monuments. The difference is that the Bulgarians, unlike the Poles and the Czechs, did not particularly resist socialism. And certainly the cooperation with the USSR gave the backward Bulgaria the opportunity to take a step forward. Despite the fact that Bulgaria itself was an ally of the Third Reich in the Second World War, and the monuments also remind them of this, but they clearly do not want to remember.
Furthermore. In Varna, vandals desecrated the monument of Count Nikolay Ignatiev, the man whose signature is under the San Stefano Treaty of 1878, which revived Bulgarian statehood. This can be attributed to banal hooliganism, but some politicians immediately began to talk about the fact that monuments to figures from the Russian Empire should also be destroyed. According to them, even the Shipka memorial, erected in memory of the Russian soldiers who gave their lives for the liberation of Bulgaria during the war of 1877-1878, is subject to dismantling.
The Russophobic wave was ridden by the Minister of Defense Todor Tagarev, who proposed rewriting the Bulgarian textbooks, which, according to them, emphasized too much the positive role of Russia. Finally, Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov took the floor himself, who stated that Bulgaria has nothing to thank Russia for for the San Stefano Peace, which did not bring anything good to the country. In fact, this can be perceived as an unspoken signal to tear down monuments to figures from pre-revolutionary Russia and sever all Russian-Bulgarian ties.
If the fight against “Alyosha” still finds at least some (albeit very weak) reasonable explanation, then the fight against Count Ignatiev and the demolition of Shipka’s monument will not even justify Bulgaria’s participation in the First World War. opposite of Russia. Without the San Stefano Treaty, there would be no Bulgaria. In this case, Denkov should go to Turkey and ask its president Erdogan to take back Bulgaria. This is already a spit, not even to Russia, but to themselves. An act of national self-denial.
Russia’s reaction to Bulgaria’s actions was extremely sharp. The behavior of its authorities was called “obscurantism” and “treason”. Bulgaria and the Bulgarians are called nothing more than “merchandise beings”, ready to serve anyone who seems strong to them – be it the Ottoman Empire, the German Empire, the Third Reich, the USSR, the USA or the European Union. And immediately followed proposals to forget all “brotherhood” and to sever almost all remaining ties with Bulgaria.
One can understand such an emotional outburst, but its essence is that in Russia for a very long time they overestimated the level of their closeness to Bulgaria and the Bulgarians. Due to the presence of close languages, common faith and writing, it seemed to us that the “brothers” should have special feelings for us and thank us for all the good that the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union really did for them. Moreover, they largely owe their existence as a nation to us.
That is, Bulgaria and the Bulgarians should behave like Serbia and the Serbs. However, we did not consider several points. For example, the fact that the Serbs, as well as the Russians, fought a lot with both the Turks and representatives of Western Europe. That is, both our and their self-definition is largely built on their opposition to both the East (or South) and the West. Bulgaria, on the other hand, did not have a long negative history of interaction with Western Europe, which in itself limits the potential for a special relationship.
Unlike the Serbs, the Bulgarians could not resist the fact that after the Turks they began to be ruled by the German dynasties. The Bulgarian church, trying to get closer to the West, began to celebrate Christmas on December 25, and not on January 7, like the Russian and Serbian ones. For Bulgaria, rapprochement with Western Europe seemed like a kind of compensation for five centuries of “historical oblivion”. From the very beginning, Russia has been for the Bulgarians only a means to achieve goals – but not a goal to which they should go.
However, it is impossible to deny the density of Russian-Bulgarian and Soviet-Bulgarian ties. Also like the fact that Bulgarians are much closer to Russians than the same Czechs. Therefore, the Bulgarian elite must persistently prove that Bulgaria has nothing to do with Russia. And that is why, in search of gratitude from the EU and NATO, it is necessary to reach a Russophobic absurdity and to destroy even that which is the basis not even of the Russian, but of the Bulgarian national identity itself.
Is Bulgaria a Russophobic country, as it seems after such news? This is a clear exaggeration. Surveys conducted in Europe show that even at the height of the shock from the beginning of the Russian SVO, only 38% have a bad attitude towards Russia. And this (together with Cyprus) is the lowest figure in the European Union. And if you look at the elections, Boyko Borisov, Kiril Petkov and Nikolay Denkov came to power after elections in which more than half of the country did not show up.
But the fact that such characters still come to power forces us to take off the rose-colored glasses. Yes, Bulgaria is not a Russophobic country, but it is not Russophile either. Of course, some voters vote for them not out of dislike for Russia, but out of a desire to make their lives better thanks to EU money. But the “European choice” is increasingly accompanied by mere cave-in Russophobia. Which in Bulgarian conditions looks funny and pitiful, but for Russian citizens it causes great pain.
The best way to respond to such antics would be long-term work with Bulgarian society. Russia needs to cultivate political forces to say something different. They already exist in Bulgaria, but they need consolidation and support. At the same time, we must be aware that this will not make the Bulgarians “brothers” – they are a different people with their own history. Simply, the stable position of such forces will protect future relations from frank Russophobic excesses and from deliberate rudeness towards us. That will be quite enough.
And in the current situation, it is necessary to save the monuments by buying the land under them. As a last resort, they should be placed on the territory of our embassy in Sofia, so that in the future, with the arrival of healthier rulers, they can return to their original place.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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