After communism fell in Bulgaria in 1990, the nation faced a choice over what to do with the hundreds of statues honoring heroes of the communist faith like Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin. The answer, at least in the capital city of Sofia, serves as a blueprint for how the US can deal with its Confederate statue problem.
Museum of Socialist Art In Sofia, Bulgaria
Even the museum’s name was controversial, with the original plan to call it the “Museum of Totalitarian Art” scrapped due to disagreement over that characterization. Instead, it opened in 2011 as the “Museum of Socialist Art” and houses busts, statutes, artwork, and digital records of the country’s communist period from 1946 to 1990.
The focal point of the museum is a sculpture garden containing dozens of statues that once enjoyed a prominent position in Sofia and surrounding cities. Multiple statues of Vladimir Lenin, a fixture of every city under Soviet influence. Todor Zhivkov, the strongman who led the People’s Republic of Bulgaria from 1954 to 1989 as General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Che Guevara, the murderous Argentine Marxist revolutionary.
Inside, was a temporary exhibit showcasing journalism in the communist period.
Something may have been lost in translation, but after visiting the temporary exhibit, I was expecting to find a more permanent exhibit… with a collection sort of like the massive painting like I purchased last year in Ukraine. But I was told there was nothing else. Perhaps part of the museum was closed? There was a little gift shop and movie room:
This is well worth a visit. It’s located at 7 Luchezar Stanchev Street in Sofia and open Tuesday thru Sunday from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Admission is 6 BGN.
I Like This Concept…It Provides A Roadmap For The USA
I quite like the idea of preserving historic statues of a different era, but clustering them in a museum rather than leaving them in a place of respect in the heart of the public square. Just like we don’t need veneration of treasonous men lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia so we don’t need statues of treasonous men who undermined basic rights and civil liberties in Bulgaria or other ex-Communist nations.
This whole thing reminds me of a story I wrote in August 2017 on the same matter during a time of particularly heightened tensions in the USA. As I wrote then in light of the removal of Lenin statues across the former Soviet Union:
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But I’m heartened that these societies have been able to recognize that just because a statue has immense historical influence and arguably even a certain beauty, it need not remain a symbol of division and a prominent reminder of subjugation.
I find that conclusion quite true still today.
The Museum seems like a fascinating window into Bulgaria’s art and public works projects.
The primary issue with Confederate statues was that they were primarily built and installed during the Civil Rights Era not directly after the war. They were installed to instill fear in the African Populace who were fighting for equal rights under the law. Tearing down cheaply made mass produced statues isn’t destroying history it is removing a perversion of history. The war was fought over state rights to pass laws to establish and uphold the enslavement of other men and woman.
Though I suppose the statues would have a good place in museums dispelling the lost cause myth and what the statues meant during the Civil Rights Era.
Actually they were built to celebrate people fighting for freedom from the oppressive U.S. government. The Southern states voted to leave the union and the Yankees believed in continuing slavery but with White Southerners being enslaved instead. Consent of the governed doesn’t exist if people can’t leave.
The civil rights era is actually the opposite of the name. That was when personal property rights to sell and rent to who you want were ended and freedom of association. Only in America can it be called freedom when the government bankrupts you for not hiring or not selling or renting to who you don’t want to. Now it has been extended to baking cakes against your conscience or being forced to have biological men in little girls restrooms. The civil rights movement destroyed big cities with normal people forced to move to the suburbs unless they are rich and can afford the affluent neighborhoods. From the civil war to WWII, I bet every soldier who fought would regret not turning their weapon on those giving them orders given how American cities and schools look today.
What should be done is all monuments in anti freedom areas should be donated to private parties with an agreement they preserve the statues. Pro freedom municipalities and counties should keep the statues, build new ones. and rename streets and public buildings for those anti freedom people hate.
Wow. Sometimes I wonder if people actually believe this shit or just say it to evoke some type of response.
Whether that character believes it or not, it sounds like talking points reminiscent of the KKK and that David Duke nut.
WTF???
Uh Oh Ricardo. Someone wrote something you don’t like. Time to throw a hissy fit and demand Matthew censor it right?
I agree with David Arnett insofar as he says that Consent of the Governed doesn’t exist if people can’t leave. I consider the institution of slavery to be reprehensible. That said, Abraham Lincoln’s war to force the Southern States back into the Union is no less reprehensible as Khrushchev’s military intervention to force Hungary back into the Warsaw Pact. What happened in 1861-1865 is a classic case of “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Don’t forget that Lincoln and his administration acted in a tyrannical way toward those who were dissidents (copperheads) in the Northern States.
The USA cannot be a truly free country as long as states cannot peacefully secede. The federal government has morphed into a monstrosity that the founders of the republic would not recognise today. Instead of a constitutional republic with few and defined powers delegated to the federal government with all other powers reserved to the states and the people (Amendments IX and X), the federal government has morphed into a massive National Security State and is now intervening in almost every aspect of private and public life in the USA but the USA has become a de facto empire dominating much of the world, thanks to Woodrow Wilson getting the USA involved in World War I. Today the state of Texas is in an abusive relationship with the federal government and the same could probably be said of all states at least to some degree.
All the foregoing could be remedied if enough states were to get up enough gumption and call an Article V convention. An Article V convention is another way to amend the Constitution and Congress is bypassed and has no say about the matter. I would like to see an Article V convention to dissolve the Union and abolish the federal government and extinguish the national debt.
A generation ago in Europe, the USSR broke up in a mostly peaceful manner. Czechoslovakia broke up in a totally peaceful manner and the Czech Republic and Slovakia have had friendly relations ever since. Yugoslavia broke up and while some parts of the breakup were peaceful (e.g. Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro) other aspects of the breakup (e.g. Bosnia and Kosovo) were anything but peaceful.
I think our turn is long overdue. I am in favour of the dissolution of the Union and the (hopefully) peaceful breakup of the USA.
So I thought might take apart your statements, bit by bit David.
“Actually they were built to celebrate people fighting for freedom from the oppressive U.S. government. The Southern states voted to leave the union and the Yankees believed in continuing slavery but with White Southerners being enslaved instead. Consent of the governed doesn’t exist if people can’t leave.”
Ah so a mixture of the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy mixed with modern small government theories. An interesting combination of historical revivisin and well political thought.
The foundation theories behind the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, is that the Confederacy was fighting for State Rights, particularly states rights to have slaves and to enforce their laws regarding slavery on states where slavery was illegal. The Northern states had mostly chosen to ban slavery, for various reasons and many disliked the passage of the Fugitive slave act that stripped suspected escaped slaves of the right to a trial, so slave catchers could go up to a black man in a free state and claim he had escaped and well enslave him with little to no proof or trial.
The “southern states voted” is a lovely euphemism for southern militias attacking fort Sunter, and trying to succeed from the Union. Per your logic, “The consent of the governed doesn’t exist if people can’t leave” thus since the people of the south couldn’t leave they were slaves to the Federal Government and the North. I am curious if that quote’s logic extends to the actual slaves in the confederacy, you may recall ALL the enslaved men and woman forced to labor for their masters, when exactly did they get to vote or have consent. So in this view, the men and woman of the south were the true slaves, as they or those in their employ whipped and worked their actual slaves providing them with minimal food, shelter under threat of torture and death. Out of curiosity when did the South’s slaves consent to being slaves? was there a check mark when they were born that they pressed? or did they consent when their ancestors were kidnapped or sold into slavery? Or do they not just count in mind?
So the South tried to leave the union due to their fears of being enslaved so the first thing they did was legalize enslaving others in their state constitutions and banning any form of abolition? That is really the logic you wish to present. The south rebelled simply because they were angry at losing the 1860 election, due to worsening economic conditions since southern states failed to properly industrialize and invest in modern infrastructure and industrialism.
The civil rights era is actually the opposite of the name. That was when personal property rights to sell and rent to who you want were ended and freedom of association. Only in America can it be called freedom when the government bankrupts you for not hiring or not selling or renting to who you don’t want to. Now it has been extended to baking cakes against your conscience or being forced to have biological men in little girls restrooms. The civil rights movement destroyed big cities with normal people forced to move to the suburbs unless they are rich and can afford the affluent neighborhoods. From the civil war to WWII, I bet every soldier who fought would regret not turning their weapon on those giving them orders given how American cities and schools look today.
Honestly this entire statement is pure vile racism rhetoric wrapped up in a mediocre understanding of free-market economics written by someone controlled by their fear and hatred for those who may be different themselves. By your logic, would you prefer we go back to putting up signs stating “Irish need not apply”, “lynching random young African Americans for looking at a white girl”, “legalizing beating of people who are physically different than you”, heck why not force everyone to go to the same church?.
The civil rights movement didn’t destroy American cities, it did hasten what most historians now refer to as “white flight” in some cities in the United States, due to a mixture of fear and government redlining. This led to the decline of American cities and well more suburbs, which are slowly bankrupting the United States due to the cost of maintaining so many roads but that is an argument for a different day.
“What should be done is all monuments in anti freedom areas should be donated to private parties with an agreement they preserve the statues. Pro freedom municipalities and counties should keep the statues, build new ones. and rename streets and public buildings for those anti freedom people hate.”
The issue with that is a vast majority of the confderate statues were mass produced and placed throughout the country. Primarily when African Americans worked to better their lives in attempts to gain equal rights, there were mutliple movements but the most successful attempt was in the 1960s. The statues were well used as an ever present reminder of their oppressors. There is very little historical value in keeping them around to celebrate generals who were well mostly terrible at their job of fighting a war, and in one General’s case desiring to be in a relationship with his horse. As for proof, Why is it that in a vast majority of these statues, none of them actually depict noted Confederate General Longstreet, General Lee’s right hand man. Could it be due to him accepting a post in the Union post war? Or maybe his offer to kill the KKK.
Honestly after reading the drivel that came from, I genuinely do believe that you would be better off stop reading your preferred brand of hating / fear mongering, go out to a city like Detroit, Chicago, New York, DC, explore some museums, walk around, touch grass and experience how others live. And I shall leave you with this quote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts” — Mark twain.
“The primary issue with Confederate statues was that they were primarily built and installed during the Civil Rights Era not directly after the war. ”
Without touching on broader issues, they were atually installed generally in the 1890 to 1910 “lost cause” era by people who had not experienced the civil war first hand.
Referring to Che Guevara as “murderous” is an interesting word choice coming from someone currently cheering a genocide.
Are you one of those sycophants who wears a Che shirt and celebrates his concentration camps built to imprison homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests, and others deemed unfit? The one who thought blacks and Mexicans were inferior? The one who tortured animals for sport? Spare me.
You probably think Israel “got what it deserved” too. The only genocide is the stated goal of Hamas toward the Jews of Israel.
Have visited the Museum of Communism in Prague. Lots of art, some statues, wall panels, photos, etc. More focused on the impact of Communism on the Czech Republic (some good, lots & lots of bad) during the 40 year reign.
Also have visited the DDR Museum (Communist East Germany) in Berlin. This one focuses more on the day to day impact on individuals during oppressive Stasi surveillance.
I understand there is a tour in the actual Stasi headquarters in Berlin which is on my bucket list, as well as to visit the Soviet war memorials in Berlin with examples of Communist statues, architecture, etc.
My father was a European Theater WWII vet, so European history is on my radar scope.
Can vouch as well for the museums in Prague and Berlin. Both are fascinating and worth a visit.
@Exit Row … Having been to actual DDR on three occasions , seems to me those were Very Evil systems and nothing to keep around . Churchill was correct about the Iron Curtain , and what went on behind it .
The current gaza defenders who are protesting seem uninformed about evil .
If I want to appreciate actually fine visuals , I will visit films with Claudia Cardinale’s smile , thank you .
Churchill also stated in a 1948 speech to the British House of Commons, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
If you asked a kid today what the “Warsaw Pact” was, he would probably think its a new video game (NATO vs Warsaw Pact…Call of Duty). Need to visit Central Europe to understand what life was like and to appreciate American freedoms.
@Exit Row … +1 . Many Dittos . Psychotic Ideologies are Inflicted upon innocent people . Cambodia comes to mind .
We don’t have a Confederate statue problem in this country. We have a brain-dead woke mob that knows nothing of history problem.
To me, as a southerner (for better or worse), I view the comparison as a false equivalency. The Confederacy lasted less than 5 years, and is now nothing but a part of history The Confederacy didn’t contribute anything culturally or artistically to the people of the United States.
There are many bad things to point to in Bulgaria’s communist era, but it’s undeniable that there was art, music, and architecture that resulted from that era. This era had a profound effect on the simple idea of what it means to be Bulgarian. It’s is still evident in many aspects of Bulgarian society today. And while Bulgaria is a fully integrated European state today, their history cannot be taught without learning about this long era.
The Confederacy was a short-lived failed rebellion. Confederate statues are not from that era, but from the Jim Crow days. As has been commented already, they were put up to honor an era that nobody remembered, and to intimidate Black Americans. They are neither historical, nor accurate, and displaying them in a museum or not, doesn’t teach an accurate version of history.
Bulgaria is willing to admit their country’s wrongdoing, but for some reasons, the US isn’t. Personally, I don’t see any reason to have a “museum” that educates people about a 1910s racist memorialization of events that occured in the 1860s
They’re put up to remember history (And yes, it was a hugely influential period of history and people remembered it),
And history isn’t about wrongdoers and good guys – It is the events and people that shaped the world as it is today. You seem to have an overly simplistic and ignorant understanding of it.
You are correct most of the statues were put up to remember history. They were put by southerners to remind African Americans, of their place in society. They were placed twenty years after the war, funded mostly by racists as a way to intimidate, inspire fear, and remind them of when the South fought a brutal war to oppress them. So of course they were placed up after reconstruction ended, when the union army no longer occupied the south, and was there to protect freemen.
I do agree with you in that we do have a problem with mobs of braindead idiots running around this country spouting historical lies, such as yourself. Hopefully you will one day be able to recognize within yourself, reflect on it, and grow as a person.
@Jerry, I very much disagree. Indeed, the fact that most were put up during the Jim Crow era and used to intimidate makes them all the more powerful symbols and an important reminder that it took 100 years after Reconstruction for racial reconstruction to truly began, despite an initial flourish before the Hayes-Tilden compromise. Indeed that work continues today with incredibly recent changes like removing the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag. These signs are every bit as historical and accurate as Soviet-era propaganda (and I condemn these a Confederates as traitors).
You’re wrong Matthew, as usual. Also “treasonous traitors” is redundant.
Beyond my grammar, what is it that you disagree with?
I would disagree with your calling the Confederates “traitors”. The US was much more decentralized at the time of the civil war. Most people felt more loyalty for their own states than the country itself. This idea seems bizarre in modern times, but it was the prevailing thought in 1860. Most soldiers signed up to defend their home towns and states.
For example, Robert E. Lee opposed succession but joined the Confederate Army because he felt he had to defend his home state of Virginia. He was a soldier in the US Army at the time and it was a very hard decision for him. He could have remained in the Union Army, but that would have meant going to war against his home town, his friends and family, and his neighbors. Could that not be seen as treason as well? To whom did he owe his loyalty – to those closest to him or to the federal government? Many southerners felt the same.
If we were to compare him to someone like Benedict Arnold, who tried to surrender West Point to the British during the Revolutionary War, the difference is quite obvious. Arnold had developed a hatred for the American cause because he felt his achievements in the war had been ignored (His actions made the victory at Saratoga possible, but he was terribly injured and received no credit). He was therefore motivated by jealousy and anger, and promises of advancement in the British Army. This is a clear example of treason, and there is good reason by he is one of history’s most notorious traitors.
My problem is that you don’t seem to take into consideration the historical conditions and just simplify the whole thing with modern day groupthink. I’ve heard this “The confederates are traitors, racists, etc” line thrown around over and over in the last few years, mostly by people who obviously don’t even study history (like Jerry) and it gets so old after a while.
Chi, you took some time to respond and offered a thoughtful response. I appreciate it.
I minored in 19th Century US History and studied the Civil War extensively during my undergrad studies, researching alongside Joan Waugh, one of the country’s leading Civil War and Gilded Age historians.
So yes, I was being simplistic in terms of responding to a blog comment, but you point out several truths about the period that I would agree with. Indeed, the United States was much looser than today and it was said “The United States ARE” rather than “The United States IS.” And yes, a Civil War is different than a war against a foreign invading power.
But most of the statues and monuments were put in place decades after the Civil War (post-Plessy, which I hope you find horrible law functionally overturned by Brown) and that is significant. That means they are not benign, though I stop far short of Jerry’s contention that there is no sufficient historical significance to them to justify their preservation. Indeed, they were symbols used to solidify white rule after a brief period of more equal rights when the so-called “Radical Republicans” ran the show, including military rule in the Southern Cities and the passage of the Civil War Amendments. Blacks were compromised to bring whites back together and unify the country, which still did not really occur until World War I.
The Civil War was about slavery far more than it was about this broad notion of states’ rights and the strained compromises in the decades leading up to the Civil War demonstrated that there was no compromise possible that could allow the two sides to live side-by-side, even as sovereign powers.
So I do think the Confederates were traitors to the 1776/1788 American experiment, and many were racists (though many in the North, if not most, were racists as well).
My pleasure, and I did not realize that about you. I never studied history in school myself, my degree and subsequent doctorate were in biochemistry, but I have been a lover of history since middle school and have read hundreds of books on various periods.
To be clear, I am not arguing that states rights was the primary cause of the war. It was most definitely slavery and the role of slavery as the country expanded. Rather, I am making a distinction between the political causes of the war and the motivations of the men who fought it, from the famous generals down to the common soldiers.
To this I have to disagree with your assertion that the Confederates were traitors to the American Revolution. Politically yes, the Confederacy was at odds with the Enlightenment ideals of 1776. However I think we can clearly separate the participants from the politics. Most Confederate soldiers were too poor to even own slaves. For them it was simply a matter of defending their country which, due to the decentralized environment at the time, meant their home states. Speaking in general terms, they did not intend to commit treason, but rather to defend themselves.
As for the racism, I think that is irrelevant. You mentioned yourself, that almost anyone at the time could be considered a racist by today’s standard. In fact, we could even consider almost anyone in history to be a racist since those were the conventional attitudes throughout most of human history. To judge those who lived in the past by our modern belief systems is not reasonable because humans adopt the beliefs of their environment. If we had lived in Mississippi during the 1860’s, then we would almost certainly be racist by modern standards. Would that make us villains or traitorous racists not worth remembering? Of course not.
This is the most disgusting idea in leftist history – the need to separate historical figures into good and bad, oppressors and oppressed. Nuance and serious thinking go out the window in favor of buzzwords and simplistic group think. This won’t stop at the Confederates either. NYC last year removed a statue of Thomas Jefferson because he was a slaveholder. Never mind his many accomplishments or the fact that he realized in his lifetime that slavery was wrong.
I would not argue that the Confederates were heroes and therefore should keep their statues. I would argue that they are part of American history and should be remembered in an objective way. We should take lessons from the past, not reduce them to cartoonish villains. Tearing down their statues and trying to erase them from history not only obscures the truth of our past, but prevents us from learning from it when all we can see is “dead racist white men bad”.
I guess they’re historical, but their original implementation was a perversion of history. Mississippi didn’t add the battle flag to their state flag until 1894, and of course the Battle Flag wasn’t even the national flat of the Confederacy. 20th and 21st century usage of the battle flag is also a perversion of history.
My issue with memorializing all this stuff, it that they’re not actually symbols of the era they’re purported to honor. You can certainly educate people on the Confederacy, or more accurately the Civil War, but these symbols are not that. Throwing Confederate memorials in a museum doesn’t educate about the Confederacy; it educates about the hurt feelings of some racists that lived more than a generation after the Civil War. I guess I just think it’s culturally less significant than art, music, and architecture that shaped multiple generations, persists to this day, and wasn’t entirely evil at its core.
Though, who am I to argue? If they rip all that garbage down and throw it in a “museum,” I’d say we’re all better off, even though the “museum” would likely be a place of pilgrimage for racists.
What about Southern Bulgaria … don’t the Southern Bulgarians have their own “art , music , and architecture” separate from that of Northern Bulgaria ?
@Matthew, you might want to fix “Confederdate” from your heading…
I fixed it. Stupid error.
Please spell confederate correctly!