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In Bulgaria’s Balkan mountains, a gigantic structure was built under communism. An architect wants to save it from decay and oblivion.
The wind blows unabated over the peaks of the Bulgarian Balkan Mountains. Only a concrete UFO stands in his way. Architect Dora Ivanova unlocks its barred door and says: “The place on top of the mountain – it’s really impressive that such an impressive work has been created here.”
Legend:
Enter at your own risk: the roof of the former monument and museum no longer protects the building from wind and water.
SRF / Sarah Nowotny
Anyone who wants to go into the building must sign that he or she is entering the decaying semi-dark circle at their own risk. Brutalism, architects call this style. When the building called Buzluzdha opened in 1981, it was a homage to a brutal dictatorship, a monument to communism opened by Bulgaria’s chief communists.
Audiovisual show for the people
Even then, the jubilation of the people didn’t look real, Buzluzdha was expensive, the Bulgarians had to “donate” for it – that is, they had been deducted part of the meager wages for this palace of the people on the mountain. The mountain where Bulgarian freedom fighters once stood in the way of the Turks.
Legend:
Buzluzdha: Like a UFO from which a gray pillar is growing towards the sky.
SRF / Sarah Nowotny
After all, says Ivanova, people got the latest bang for their buck. “About 500 people entered the building every full hour. There was an audiovisual show.” That was technologically very advanced.
Working through the unknown past
Less than ten years later, communism ended in Bulgaria – and soon the propaganda slogans in the marble on the mountain, the huge mosaics with the heads of communist greats, were forgotten. “All the furniture, everything that could be stolen, was taken away or reused,” says Ivanova.
Legend:
Witnesses to the communist past: the badly damaged mosaic shows a hammer and sickle. Specialists have managed to ensure that the small, colorful stones no longer come loose.
SRF / Sarah Nowotny
Buzluzdha decayed, became a place for adventurers. Ivanova was then a child, later she studied architecture in Germany. She had never heard of this communist monument. And that’s not all: “I didn’t learn anything about communism or the history of the second half of the last century.”
Legend:
On the walls, the mosaics with the communist heroes tell of long-forgotten and repressed times.
SRF / Sarah Nowotny
That’s typical. Communism ended in Bulgaria when the government announced that democracy had broken out. The same people largely remained in power, under new names. But nobody talked about that. “The history of communism is a black box that cannot be opened,” Ivanova agrees.
Legend:
Architect Dora Ivanova collected donations. And brought international experts to the top of the mountain to save what is still standing.
SRF / Sarah Nowotny
The fact that Bulgaria today struggles with corruption and nepotism more than most countries in Europe has a lot to do with this turning point, which was not. When a German fellow student told Ivanova about the memorial on the mountain, she was gripped. «The process of coming to terms with that time didn’t really take place in Bulgaria. And I believe that this place can serve to do that.”
So that the hammer and sickle shine again
Jonas Roters, restorer and lecturer at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, stands on a swaying scaffold. He says: “The population is changing their attitude that this is no longer just a major stumbling block, but a reminder for never again.”
Legend:
Support from Switzerland: Bernese restaurateur and lecturer Jonas Roters.
SRF / Sarah Nowotny
Never again. And the Bulgarian UFO should not find its way back to its former glory. But it should be stable enough this year for visitors to be allowed in. You will see magnificent propaganda remnants. But also decay and new beginnings.
Since Dora Ivanova has been writing about her work, since people have been writing about her, about 500 people have come here every day. And times are changing in the valley too: school children in Bulgaria have recently been learning that their country was once a communist dictatorship.