Bulgaria pays annual homage to victims of communist regime

With wreath-laying ceremonies and statements, various Bulgarian political leaders and members of the public marked February 1, the day of homage to the victims of the communist regime.

On February 1 1945, as the communist regime tightened its grasp on Bulgaria, the “People’s Court” sentenced to death three regents, 67 MPs, former cabinet ministers, officers and others, with the executions carried out immediately.

The “People’s Court” was a key turning point as Bulgaria entered more than four decades of communist rule, which came to an end 35 years ago.

The “People’s Court” handed down about 2700 death sentences, hundreds of terms of life imprisonment, while the regime also sent large numbers of people to labour camps where conditions were extremely harsh, sometimes fatally.

In a symbolic move, Bulgaria’s supreme court issued a ruling in 1996 overturning the convictions handed down by the “People’s Court”.

In 2011, the Bulgarian government of the time declared February 1 an annual day of commemoration for the victims of the communist regime, following a proposal by former presidents Zhelyu Zhelev and Petar Stoyanov, the first two heads of state elected in Bulgaria’s post-communist democratic era.

A February 1 2025 statement by the Bulgarian government information service quoted Prime Minister Rossen Zhelyazkov – of centre-right GERB-UDF, the majority partner in a coalition government that includes the lineal successor of the Bulgarian Communist Party – as saying “It is our duty to remember history, because oblivion gives birth to new tyrannies. Freedom and democracy are never a given – they are the responsibility of every generation”.

Sofia mayor Vassil Terziev, who comes from a family that included members who worked for communist-era secret service State Security, said that the death sentences issued by the “People’s Court” were an “act of political violence not only destroyed a large part of the country’s intellectual and political elite, but also imposed a fear that marked generations in Bulgaria for the next 45 years”.

“Bowing our heads before the memory of the victims, let us not turn history into an arena for political battles – it is a lesson and a responsibility that we bear together as a society,” Terziev said.

“Freedom and democracy are not a given. They require efforts every day, from each of us, to prevent the past from repeating itself,” he said.

In Bulgaria’s Parliament on January 31, the eve of the commemoration, the reformist We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria coalition issued a declaration saying that it would resist any attempts to downplay or forget the atrocities committed by the communist regime.

Democratic Bulgaria said that it was tabling amendments to the law that declared the communist regime as criminal, directed at removing monuments symbolising the communist regime in Bulgaria.

(Archive photo, of the monument in central Sofia to the victims of the communist regime: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)

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