Post-Mortem Interpretations of WWI in Bulgaria

CHAPTER 10 Commemorating the Dead and the Dynamics of Forgetting: Post-mortem Interpretations of WWI in Bulgaria Nikolai Vukov The history of modern Bulgarian literature offers an unusual case of the identification of mortal remains. In January 1954, during construction activi- ties near the Iliyantsi Fort, a residential neighborhood of Sofia, several earth pits that had once served as mass graves were accidentally discovered. The graves, that contained between two and three hundred human skulls, were soon recognized as holding the remains of victims in the bloody repressions that followed the terrorist act at the Sveta Nedelya Church on April 16, 1925.1 In the skull bearing the number seventeen, excavators and forensic experts found a blue glass eye, which was identified as belonging to the famous Bulgarian poet, translator, and journalist, Geo Milev (1895–1925).2 Additional proof for the identification was that the skull bore the marks of a series of trau- mas that were consistent with the wounds that Milev had suffered in the battle 1 The Sveta Nedelya attack took place on Great Thursday, April 16, 1925. A group of radical left activists of the Bulgarian Communist Party set an explosion on the roof of the church in the center of Sofia. The attack was a response to the official banning of the Bulgarian Communist Party after the September 1923 Uprising, the persecutions and murders of its members, and the introduction of the Law for the Protection of State in the spring of 1925, which legal- ized the repression of communists and their supporters. The explosion was planned to take place during a burial service of General Konstatin Georgiev who had been killed by communists several days earlier. The intent was the murder of the military and political elite of the state, including King Boris III, who by chance did not attend the service. During the explosion, 134 people were killed and five hundred wounded, some of whom died subsequently. The majority of the victims were high army officers, but the explosion also claimed the lives of politicians and ordinary citizens. The terrorist action was followed by the mass arrests of communist party members, their supporters, and also many ordinary citizens. Those who were arrested were tortured and imprisoned, and around one thousand of them disappeared without a trace, presumably killed by the police. A period of martial law prevailed for the next half year. 2 Geo Milev (Georgi Milev Kasabov, born 1895) was a Bulgarian poet, journalist, and translator, and the main figure of expressionism in Bulgarian literature; editor of the influential literary journals Vezni (Scales, 1919–1922) and Plamăk (Flame, 1924–1925). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi ��.��63/97890043�6�3�_0�� Commemorating the Dead and the Dynamics of Forgetting 163 of Doyran in April 1917.3 The identification was not difficult to make, because among the thousand people who mysteriously disappeared in the month fol- lowing the Sveta Nedelya terrorist act, no one else had an artificial eye made in Germany, the final result of twelve separate surgical operations. The identification of the skull ended the uncertainty that surrounded the fate of this great figure in Bulgarian twentieth-century literature and confirmed the suspicion that the poet had been among the victims of the white terror that ensued after the coup d’état of 1923. Such suspicions had persisted because of a series of articles he had written against the political regime of Alexander Tsankov,4 and especially because of the publication of the poem “September” dedicated to the September 1923 Uprising5 in the journal Plamak that Milev 3 The battles near Doyran in 1915–1918, known as the Doyran Epic in Bulgarian historiogra- phy, were considered to be among the most glorious episodes in modern Bulgarian history. The German command ordered a pause in the successful progress of Bulgarian troops in the southwestern Balkan peninsula at Doyran, a small town in Macedonia. The Bulgarian army built a strong defensive line in the area that withstood the systematic assaults of the Entente troops for several years. In Doyran, the Bulgarian army fought against French, English, Italian, Algerian, Moroccan, Senegalese, Zuavi, and Indo-Chinese soldiers, but never gave up the fortified line. Thousands of Allied soldiers lost their lives in an effort to break the line, but it remained impermeable, preventing the occupation of Bulgaria by the Entente forces. Only after the breakthrough at another location on the southwestern Bulgarian front—at Dobro pole—did General Vladimir Vazov, the commander of the Bulgarian troops in Doyran, receive an order to withdraw. Thus, he remained undefeated during three continuous years of battles. For more about Doyran epic, see especially Deliyski, Doyranskata epopeya, 124. 4 Alexander Tsankov (1879–1959) was a Bulgarian economist and politician, leader of the party Demokraticheski sgovor (Democratic Alliance), and later of the pro-Fascist and pro- Nazi national social movement. He was Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 1923 to 1926 and his rule is associated with the brutal suppression of two uprisings, one in June 1923 and one in September of the same year. He is also associated with the so-called white terror that followed the attack at the Sveta Nedelya Church in April 1925, during which political oppo- nents and intellectuals were persecuted and some killed. Among the latter were figures from Bulgarian intellectual life such as Geo Milev, Sergey Rumyantsev, Hristo Yassenov, Iossif Herbst, all of whom had fought during WWI. 5 The September 1923 Uprising was organized by the Bulgarian Communist Party with the aim of bringing down the regime of Alexander Tsankov, which had risen to power during the June 9, 1923 coup d’état against the agrarian government of Alexander Stamboliyski. The uprising took place mostly in the northwestern and south-central parts of the Bulgarian territory, and was carried out by communists, agrarians, and anarchists, as well as peasants protesting the miserable social and economic conditions. Army and police units suppressed the uprising in the most brutal way possible, killing many participants and provoking a sharp reaction from much of Bulgarian society, particularly intellectuals. This was reflected in numerous influential pieces of literature and art from that period, Geo Milev’s poem “September” .

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