Bulgaria’s capital takes last-minute steps against pro-Nazi Lukov March
Bulgaria’s Sofia municipality took last-minute steps on February 22 against the Lukov March, an annual event organised by extremist organisations in honour of Hristo Lukov, leader of the fascist pro-Nazi Union of Bulgarian Legions at the time of the Second World War.
Like his predecessor Yordanka Fandukova, Sofia mayor Vassil Terziev had ordered a ban on the Lukov March, but the Sofia Administrative Court, faced with a court challenge by the organisers, referred the mattter back.
This prompted the municipality to issue an order for a new assembly point and route for the march, but the organisers did not agree.
Reporters at the scene on February 22 said that those who gathered, mostly young men in dark-clad clothing, wanted to march in a body to Lukov’s house in central Sofia, but police divided them into smaller groups, under escort.
Unlike previous versions of the fascist parade, participants did not carry lit torches, on the grounds that in 2025, February 22 is the Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s All Souls Day, in commemoration of the dead.
The organisers of the Lukov March claim that Lukov was not an antisemite – though he led an organisation with nakedly antisemitic stances – on the hoary grounds that “Jews were among his best friends”.
Organisers never have offered any plausible explanation why they honour a general who headed a pro-Nazi organisation, to the exclusion of any other Bulgarian generals of the 20th century.
Bulgaria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement on February 21, said that it firmly opposed the planned holding of the Lukov March and called for all lawful actions to be taken to prevent it this year as well.
“Bulgaria, even less its capital, cannot be a place for the manifestation of extremism, intolerance, discrimination and hatred,” the Foreign Ministry said.
“Such manifestations are incompatible with the values and traditions of the Bulgarian people and purposefully divert attention from the achievements and positive agenda of Bulgarian society,” the ministry said. For years, the Lukov March has attracted neo-Nazis from elsewhere in Europe and other parts of the world, in honour of Lukov as a supposed “Bulgarian patriotic hero”.
On February 22, a few hours before the Lukov March, it was opposed by the by-now equally traditional protest, “No to Nazis on our Streets”.
In a joint statement on the evening of February 22, the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria Shalom, the Federation of Zionists in Bulgaria, the American Jewish Committee for Bulgaria and North Macedonia and Bulgaria’s Central Israelite Spiritual Council said that for more than a decade, they had opposed the holding of the Lukov March.
“We congratulate the Bulgarian institutions for doing everything possible to not allow this year this unacceptable manifestation, which under the guise of celebrating historical events, is actually a gathering point of far-right activists from Bulgaria and Europe – people who want to revive the ideas of the inhumane ideologies at 20.
“We are outraged that the law order and constitutional freedom of expression today have been used to plant hate speech and division and we issue a reminder that all of us, as Bulgarian citizens, must oppose our society and urban environment being used to propagate anti-democratic ideas,” the joint statement said.
(Archive photo, from 2021: Belish/ shutterstock.com)
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