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In: Ethnologia Balkanica, Vol. 15, 2012 (forthcoming)

Collective Memory and Justice Policy. Post-socialist Discourses on Memory Politics andMemory Culture in Bulgaria

Ana Luleva, Sofia

Abstract

A significant part of the post-socialist transformation in all Central- and Eastern Europeansocieties is the policy of justice. The implementation of transitional justice includes differentmeasures: criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparation programs, memorializationefforts. The concepts of justice, restitution, compensation and identification of victims, de-collectivization, and reconciliation are debated in Bulgarian society after 1989 as closelyrelated to memory – memory was turning into a key-organizing concept for those processes.The article shall discuss the relation between discourses of justice and remembering inBulgaria after 1989 focusing on one aspect of transitional justice – memory politics and theconstruction of collective identities of victims and heroes after 1989.It is based on an ethnographic study of two groups of victims of political regimes – forcedlabourers before and after September 9th 1944, and on a field research in the small townBelene, the place where the biggest Bulgarian communist camp was built. The conclusion isthat the Bulgarian experience for establishing retributive justice was unsuccessful, uncertainand inconsistent. As a result, the trust of citizens in democratic institutions such as the court,the parliament, and political elite, was undermined. Historikerstreit is coming.

1. Introduction

At a meeting in January 1990 in the Ministry of Interior, the Minister of Interior of Bulgaria,Atanas Semredzhiev (he was an ex-partisan, after the retirement of Todor Zhivkov inDecember 1989 he became a Minister of Interior and later in August 1990 following anagreement between BSP and the opposition, became a vice-president), said the following:“ ... again I put forward the question: Belene should vanish from our public life, from the faceof Bulgaria! We should think over that issue. Belene should vanish as a symbol of therepressive system” (http://desebg.com/2011-01-13-09-25-08/ 12. 03. 2011). At the same meeting the leadership of the Ministry of Interior discussed theurgent need to “clean” the documents testifying to the repressive nature of the communistregime.

In January 1990 “the transition”, as it is generally called, had started in Bulgaria. The questionhanging in the air was how to come to terms with the past. The camp theme was at the core ofthe discourse on the repressive nature of the communist regime. The issues of guilt, apology,responsibility, punishment for the injustices during the communist period appeared. How isthe political justice experienced and reflected –– by the people today – 20 years after thebeginning of transition? How is the transitional justice realized in Bulgaria? Fromanthropological perspective these are questions of importance. In this paper I will discuss oneaspect of transitional justice – memory politics and the construction of collective identities ofvictims and heroes after 1989. My conclusions are based on the research I did together withmy colleagues in the last three years in the framework of a research program, supported by theFoundation “Memory, Responsibility and Future”, Berlin. We studied the memory culture of

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the forced labour in Bulgaria – a practice used by the two political regimes – before and after9. 09. 1944. We recorded over 50 interviews with victims of the forced labour in the workcamps from the period of the WW II and with others who were sent in “Work - re-educationfacilities” after 9. 09. 1944, until 1962, when the last and the most sinister work camp – thecamp in Lovetch – was closed down (Luleva et al 2012).The people we met are among the last representatives of their generation who could testify tothis traumatic experience. Besides we did a fieldwork in Belene – a settlement on the DanubeRiver where in the war period (1941-1943) a dike was built on the river by forced labourersand where after 9.09.1944 the biggest communist camp was established.

2. The concept of Transitional Justice

Transitional justice can be defined as the conception of justice associated with periods ofpolitical change, characterized by legal responses to confront the wrongdoings of repressivepredecessor regimes (Teitel 2000; Kritz 1997). Transitional justice refers to the measures andpolicies adopted by governments and civil society actors to address, and possibly redress,legacies of widespread and systematic human rights abuse, mass atrocity, genocide or civilwar. In the growing scholarly literature developed during the last three decades and a half,"transitional justice" is often used interchangeably with terms and concepts such as "thepolitics of memory," "the politics of history," "coming to terms with the past," "reckoningwith the past" or "de-communization."

Transitional justice is a comparatively new multidisciplinary research field – an intersectionof legal studies, political studies, moral philosophy, and anthropology. “Justice” is a moralcategory directly related to the social order and collective identities. At the core of the conceptof transitional justice is a belief in universal human rights. Elazar Barkan underlines that theuniversal rights are locally negotiated. John Torpey writes about the formation of a newculture of rights; universal values and human rights, repentance and punishment are locallyrealized and local traditions have an impact on the development of this process (Torpey 2001:333-358). The increasing centrality of redress stems from the process of “localization ofrights” (Barkan 2001). In other words, redress brings human rights and conflict resolutiontogether by replacing a universal standard of justice with a standard of justice that isnegotiated among opposing groups of actors and parties. Global discourse of forgiveness andrestitution does not seem to be based on an absolute universal ethic. It is product ofnegotiation with the respective other.

Depending on the relationship between the new and the old elites, the politics of thetransitional justice is realized between the poles of democratic stability (civil piece) andretributive justice. The goal is to reach a balance between the search for justice and the needfor civil and political stability. In eastern European countries a significant part of the politicsof transition are under the sign of “coming to terms with the past” and connect the realizationof retributive justice to memory. The concepts of justice, restitution, compensation andidentification of victims, de-collectivization, and reconciliation are closely related to memory– memory is turning into a key-organizing concept of those processes (Levy, Sznaider 2006:96 ). The mnemonic turn in legislation and „how much memory is necessary to democracy”,“aren’t we burdened with memory that divides society and hinders its unification aroundcommon goals” were debated (Luleva 2010: 77 - 93).

The researchers of memory in societies going through a transition from dictatorships orauthoritarian regimes to democratic systems write that the politics of memory that is traumatic

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divides society into conflicting groups. Basically memory politics could be practiced in twoways: the first could be named “reconciliation through forgetting” and the second in which thememory of the past is not pushed aside but actualized. In the latter case “coming to terms withthe past” has two varieties: 1/ legalistic which accentuates investigating past crimes andestablishing retributive justice and 2/ utopian-ethical which gives greater significance toforgiveness and repentance (Todorov: 2002; Ash 2002: 107 и сл.; Misztal 2003: 133-135;Ricoeur 2006: 424-514).

Concerning the choice of “reconciliation through forgetting” Paul Ricoeur, Barbara Misztaland other authors consider cases from different historical times about banning the memory ofthe past as a way of attaining piece and uniting the citizens. They point to the etymologicalconnection between “amnesia” and “amnesty”. The importance of forgetfulness for thenational cohesion is emphasized by Ernest Renan (Renan 1995: 3). This mode was acceptedin Poland at the beginning of 90s and gained popularity as the politics of the “bold line”(„gruba linia”). Much later, analysts ascertained that the Polish attempt to follow the Spanishexample did not bring the desired result. In Spain, pointed as a positive example for nationalreconciliation through forgetting by Bulgarian politicians as well, today are visible the signs ofnot-forgetfulness along with the desire to regenerate the memory of the vanished republicans.The battle for memory regeneration is fought in the field of jurisdiction. The Amnesty Lawfrom 1977 was attacked since it blocks any investigation and reaffirms the “pact offorgetfulness” exported as a model to Latin America as well. The activity of civil associationsthat require the establishment of “commission of truth” indicate that the question of memory isa central element in practicing democracy (De Brito et all 2001: 92-119; Ortis 2009: 5).

At the opposite pole of “settling the accounts” with the recent past stands East Germany andthe Czech Republic. Although the German experience of systematic and comprehensiveexposure of the past was the most radical among all postsocialist states, an attitude formed inthe society – “since only some of the guilty were punished, then after all the communistregime was relatively harmless” (Knabe 2009); the frustration provoked by the new situationwas expressed as “nostalgia” for socialism.

John Borneman claims that after the end of the Cold War there was a world movement forretributive justice: condemning criminals and rehabilitating the dignity of victims. In hisresearch dedicated to violence, justice, and responsibility in postsocialist Europe (Borneman1997), he underlines that the meaning of retributive justice in a contemporary context goesbeyond the destiny of individual victims and criminals; it is important as part of the globalritual of purging the core of political regimes that strive towards democratic legitimating.

Only in this way, as a purification by retributive justice, the regimes striving towardsdemocratic legitimating can obtain it. Borneman does not support the argument abouteconomic growth and reconciliation as legitimating the new democratic states and preventingthe violence in the period of transition. In his opinion democratic states need to reinforce theprinciples of responsibility in order to restore their moral authority and make the claim torepresent the entire society; the failure in correcting the past injustice would undermine thelegitimacy of the new states.

Various dating for transitional justice was made. John Elster claims that the Atheniandemocracy from V c. BC presents the first example for transitional justice: with the change ofthe political regime, a law was passed for forgetting the crimes committed by the oligarchy topreserve the peace. Ruti Teitel makes a genealogy of transitional justice and distinguishes 3

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periods in the new European history: 1. After WW I to 1989. Typical for this period is toseek responsibility from the guilty for the catastrophes and suffering of people; the mostemblematic example is the Nuremberg Trials; 2. The second period begins after the end of theCold war. The leading model in this phase is known as the restorative model. In this phase,the main purpose of transitional justice was to construct an alternative history of past abuses.3. The contemporary normalization of transitional justice – what was historically viewed as alegal phenomenon associated with extraordinary post-conflict conditions now increasinglyappears to be a reflection of ordinary times (Teitel 2003: 69 - 94).

3. The Bulgarian Case

The two extensive political transitions in Bulgaria (after 1944 and after 1989) differ from eachother according to their politics of transitional justice. The first period, after September 9,1944, is dominated by retribution. The punishment of “peoples enemies” and retributionmotivate the verdicts of the People’s Court, for destroying political opponents, forimprisoning people in work camps without a court trial and conviction (Scharlanov 2010;Luleva et al 2012). As early as October 1944 a Law for supporting the victims of the fightagainst fascism and capitalism was passed. It provided for compensating the participants inthe Resistance Movement. After some time the idea of compensations was replaced with theidea of rewards and privileges for “merits” (not for incurred losses, as was the case in thebeginning). Those who got recognition as fighters had privileges (pensions, services, accessto goods) that distinguished them as a group according to a paternalistic model (“gratitude andcommitment to BCP and USSR” were emphasized). The Resistance was the Gründungsmythof the new socialist state. In the new pantheon of heroes next to the heroes from the NationalRevival stood the partisans and those perished during the “people’s” revolution.

In the second transitional period, after 1989, two arguments on the memory of the recent pastwere advanced in the Bulgarian public discourse. The democrats often repeated Santayana’swords – a person who doesn’t learn from the past was destined to repeat it. This argument isrelated to the understanding of memory as a duty – preserving the memory of past injustices isseen as a responsibility to the coming generations and a guarantee of the democratic order.This is the dominant idea of the antitotalitarian discourse according to which Communism isequal to Nazism, the camps in Belene and Lovetch are compared to Gulag and Auschwitz.The memory and condemnation of the crimes committed by this regime is a question of moralposition and humanitarian values. The other argument – about national reconciliation andagreement – was voiced for the first time in a Declaration read at the First plenary meeting ofthe Round table on February 12, 1990. In the years of transition the idea about nationalagreement and reconciliation is supported by the political Left. The memory politics of therecent past is realized between the poles of these two opposing arguments. It reflects thepositions of the leading political forces and the opportunities for different social groups toachieve recognition for their status and legitimate their collective memory.

The political transition in all postsocialist countries, is closely related to the idea of newpolitical justice (Kritz 1995; Stan 2006; de Brito 2001; Teitel 2001). In Bulgaria it is realizedas retroactive and retributive justice that gives a great symbolic significance to the politicalrehabilitation of groups treated as enemies by the past regime. An expression of suchretrospective justice is the Law for the political and civil rehabilitation of repressed personspassed in 1991 (DV, issue 50, June 25, 1991). The Law defines the people who fall in thecategory of “repressed” due to their origin, political convictions or religious beliefs (in the

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period 09. 09. 1944 - 10. 11. 1989). These are: convicted in criminal cases; convicted by thePeople’s Court whose verdicts were cancelled after 1990; imprisoned in re-education andwork facilities and camps, as well as mobilized for forced labour; internees and exiles;dismissed University students and school students; repressed in connection with the forcedchange of names. With the amendments from 2004 and 2005 included were “missing withouta trace; killed during attempted border crossing; perished in work camps, prisons; people withUniversity and college education; dismissed from work or forced to work at construction sites,in the system of public cleaning or in agriculture; deprived of the right to a pension”. Thepersons belonging to any of these groups or their descendents are entitled to singlecompensation for incurred material and immaterial damages. The Lawmaker provides for thecompensation claim to be brought to the regional governor according to permanent residenceaddress. In turn the governor pronounces on the merits of the request after evaluating thepresented evidence on the type, character and duration of the repression and the quality of theentitled person. Thus the personal biographical experience is normatively defined or not as a“repression due to political reasons, religious beliefs or origin”. The subjective experience ofrepression is confronted with the opportunity to be proven as such with evidence having ajudicial value – documents, testimonies, etc. The experience, the memory of the repressed ortheir families have no value before the state authority reviewing only the presenteddocumental evidence. The rulings of the Supreme Administrative Court on citizens’complaints against orders from regional governors indicate that the latter sometimesunreasonably denied the right of citizens to receive compensation and a respective recognitionas repressed for political reasons, origin, etc. The problematic court procedures reinforce thelong-standing distrust towards the state authorities; the ungrounded rejections create a beliefthat the new state does not differ from the old one and “everything is the same”. Theorganizations of the repressed provide protection for their members, but it doesn’t change thefact that the repressed have limited social influence and are a marginalized social group withminimal pensions. With the exception of those who have regained their seized property, theyare at the social bottom. The rehabilitation does not change their social status; it has primarilya symbolic value.

Only in August 2010 after a 20 year delay the Parliament passed the last amendment to theLaw and in addition proclaimed as repressed the victims of the terror from the first three daysfollowing the entry of the Red Army in Bulgaria – 9th, 10th and 11th of September. UntilAugust 2010 according to the Law repressed were the persons who suffered after September12, 1944. In the debates for reviewing the initial date of repressions the political Left and theParliamentary majority in the past Parliament supported the argument that persons killed forpolitical reasons in the period 8-11 September should not be rehabilitated defining them as“murderers and thugs” caught up in “the just people’s fury” (Stenogramme of the NationalAssembly).

In 1990 lawsuits began for reviewing the overseeing order of verdicts issued by the People’sCourt (according to Regulation-law for the People’s Court / RLPC from 30.09.1944г./ Decree№ 22 from 4.10.1944). The realization of the retroactive justice in the case of reviewingseparate rulings of the People’s Court demonstrates the democratization of the judicial systemand its separation from the old one. Additionally it provides the opportunity for cancellingmany unreasonable and ungrounded convictions of the People’s Court, and has a symbolicand material effect on the victims (they are recognized as innocent and given the opportunityto regain ownership over seized property). At the same time it is indicative for thecompromising way in which the justice of the transition is realized – by implicit agreementamong the major political actors, without announcing the Regulation-law for the People’s

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Court as anti-constitutional and its verdicts cancelled en bloc, and supporting the belief thatsome of its rulings are right and just.

It is hardly a surprise that 10 years later the political forces haven’t reached a consensus intheir evaluation of the People’s Court. The ruling of the Council of Ministers (from19.01.2010) to pronounce the 1st of February as a Commemoration Day for paying homage tothe victims of the communist regime was an occasion for the next and the last (until now)conflict. This ruling was accepted after a proposal made by the ex-presidents Zheliyu Zhelevand Peter Stoyanov. The motives of the Council of Ministers indicate that “the 1st ofFebruary, 1945 is the day in which regents, deputies, officers, ministers, social figures weremurdered – all victims of the First establishment of the so called People’s Court. This daybecomes a sign in our history because it is a starting point of the blood repression against theBulgarian people”. (http://www.government.bg/cgi-bin/e-cms/vis/vis.pl?s=001&p=0228&n=1881&g=).

The Left and its satellite civil organizations protested declaring that the People’s Court wasnot established by the communist state since during that time Bulgaria was still aconstitutional monarchy. It was not a “Bulgarian vagrancy”, but a duty in accordance to theReconciliation Agreement which Bulgaria had signed on October 28, 1944 along with theUSA, the USSR and the UK. According to this Agreement the country was obliged “todismantle all fascist organizations and bring to court and justly punish the people guilty ofaffiliating Bulgaria to the Tripartite Pact and those who committed war crimes”. Accordingto the Declaration of the Fatherland Front, the People’s Court had created conditions for“terminating the acts of wilfulness and revenge in the first days after 9.ІХ.1944. The ruling ofthe Council of Ministers from January 19, 2011 distorts the historical truth (emphasis byauthor), discredits Bulgaria before the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and again dividesand opposes the Bulgarian nation” (http://www.os-bulgaria.org/actualno.html; 2.2.2011).

In April 2000 during the rule of the United Democratic Forces the Law for pronouncing thecommunist regime in Bulgaria as criminal was passed. This act has a meaning as a moral andpolitical message, but has no legal consequences for society. It illustrates the desire of thepolitical Right to support its identity as anti-totalitarian political force while at the same timerestrain the politics of retributive justice accepted in other post-socialist states.

After 1989 in Bulgaria attempts were made at accomplishing retributive justice throughaccusations brought against former members of the high state authority. The contrast betweeninitiated “mega-trials” and those ending with a verdict is impressive. Among the mostdistinguished trials of social importance were the so called trials “for camps”, “Chernobyl”,and “about the Revival process”. Grigor Stoichkov, deputy chairman of the Councils ofMinisters and chairman of the government Commission for overcoming the consequences ofdisasters, catastrophes and breakdowns, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the“Chernobyl” trial. He was set free earlier in 1996. The press presented him as a victim of apolitical trial, and Chernobyl was hardly mentioned. The trial about the Revival process hasbeen many times initiated and stopped to this day. Almost 20 years after its initiation, it wasblocked, with no convictions. The legal persecution of culprits for crimes committed in thecamps of Lovetch and Skravena was initiated, amidst great social interest and then wasstopped as overdue. The haphazard development of these trials is indicative of the inability toaccomplish retributive justice in postsocialist Bulgaria.

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The future will show whether or not the attempts at penal persecution for human rightsviolations during communist regime will succeed and provoke social interest. Theunsuccessful end of loudly initiated trials, the lack of convictions and adequate exposure ofcrimes have created cynical social attitudes towards such trials as being tainted politically.Supporters of the Left say the trials make unjust accusations. The trials provoke the supportersof the Right to mistrust their leaders for the way they have handled them.

The victims of the old regime experience the retributive justice of the transition as injustice. “Nobody was punished for these crimes. Nobody was punished. Even the compensations

were distributed selectively. The events were not authentic – no justice was accomplished.”So said our disappointed interviewee, a 78 year old man. As a student of French literature hewas expelled from the university and forcibly sent to a labour camp for four years. After hisrelease he was deprived of student rights, and had to work as a builder in constant fear. Hewas recognized as repressed by the Law for political and civil rehabilitation of repressedpersons from1991, and so he received a symbolic compensation for the camp’s years, as wella symbolic allowance to his pension. However, that did not change his financial, substantialand social status.

Thus the goal of the retributive justice – unification of society around democratic values –was not realized. Alongside the unsuccessful attempts in the court, the memory of the campsis trivialized; moral relativism became prevalent in the public discourse reducing the issue ofcamps to a media problem and an unsuccessful pre-election approach (the so called “skullmap”). According to G. Lozanov “the camp theme – with the exception of sporadicpropaganda use of it – did never gain essential publicity, was never a lead story in the media”(Lozanov 2009 : 5).

4. Belene as a memory place

Belene as a memory place is an exact illustration of the development and the results of thememory politics after 1989. Today the landscape of the island of Belene1 does not remindpeople of the communist camp (called “work – re-education facility – WRF”) - a place ofslave labour and human suffering. Today the island is accessible for only one day during theyear – Commemoration Day. For the rest of the year it is unreachable because it is part of theterritory of a still functioning prison.In the morning of the last Saturday of May 2010 elderly people gathered before the prisongates. They had come from all over the country by bus. The residents of Belene, as inprevious years, did not show a particular interest. The announcement on the local cable TVchannel about a special bus provided by the municipality for those willing to attend “theGathering” failed to get the attention of the locals. The bus was needed because after crossingover on foot via the pontoon bridge, there is a road 10 km long leading to the place ofhomage; usually the available buses and minivans transport strangers as well. The residentsof Belene were “represented” by the researcher of the locality and his friends, a grandmotherand her grandchild and a couple of friends with their families who had decided to takeadvantage of the access to the island for a picnic on that sunny Saturday. Taking no interestin the event itself, but intrigued by the inaccessible island, a small group of Russian citizensworking in the Nuclear Power Station – Belene crossed the bridge with their minivan. By the

1 Belene (or Persin) is the name of the biggest island of the Belene archipelago in the Danube river. In 1949there was located the labour camp, which since 1959 was transformed in “Belene” prison. Along the river,opposite to the island is the village of Belene. In 1964 it was declared a town. Nowadays Belene is a smalltown with about 8 000 inhabitants.

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prison entrance a small group of men were waiting (apparently younger than the repressed),actively sharing memories for the island “as before”. To my question if they had ever beenthere, one of them responded with a vague smile, “No, never.” Another one started tellingthat he had worked there as a tractor driver during the time when affluent produce wasacquired from the cultivated island. “Thousands, thousands of tons of produce – suchwatermelons, eggplants, peppers, corn, wheat, everything there is in farming, was produced”.

The first man, apparently not willing to talk about the past, deviated from the topic whileinsistently asking what the reason for my interest in “the prison” was. My explanations didnot satisfy him and he made it clear that he was not willing to talk with me. The behaviour ofthis resident of Belene indicated anxiety. My questions and the dictaphone made him feeluncomfortable and threatened. He and his silent friends had worked at the sites (only one ofthem said he was “a civilian tractor driver”) when political prisoners and camp prisoners werebrought over. They came to see “what is there now” but were not willing to share what theyremembered from “those” times to a stranger like me. This conversation, as well as themeetings with residents of Belene during fieldwork, created the impression that before andafter 1989, the locals who worked on the island were not willing to talk as eyewitnesses ofthe camp regime. Before they would not talk because they were scared and had signed adeclaration to keep secrecy, working at a site important for “state security.” “When the topicis brought up, they are reserved, keep secrecy”, said the researcher of the locality, TodorGospodinov. Now they will not talk because they feel implicitly accused as accomplices ofthe repressive apparatus.

In fact, the prison was the primary employer of the locals (see Koleva 2010: 17). Probablyback then, as today, they tried to “made it look normal”, talking about their work there – inthe fields or in the administrative building – as if it were regular work. Part of this strategy,which makes them feel “normal” people, is the version they had adopted for the imprisoned(“criminals, radicals… thugs deserving their punishment for some reason”). At the same timeback then some residents of Belene, considered to be “more eager/earnest as supervisors”,paid for their sins with disease and agonizing death (“one was afflicted with cirrhosis,another one was paralyzed; the person who transported them with a boat had become analcoholic, he was in pain because of that”). Their unwillingness to remember the camp andthe cover of silence they placed over it speak of the desire this past to be forgotten, because itis conceived as sinful. This is a desire to push aside the traumatic memory producing thefeelings of guilt and shame. In contrast, the repressed transform their traumatic memory intoa source of positive self-identification and a sense of moral authority.

Paying homage on the island of Persin near Belene provides an opportunity for the repressedto meet each other, “to count” and declare their political stance. The commemoration is doneat the place where there used to be a “Second Site” of the camp. There is no trace of it left2.The remains of a massive building stand in a field overflowing with abundant greenery. Thebuilding was erected in the 1980s when Bulgarian Turks, convicted as being “enemies” of theRebirth process, were imprisoned there. On its wall there is a small commemorative plaquereminding that this was the place where a “Second site of the Belene camp” used to be andthat on June 1, 1990 at that location the first meeting of camp survivors took place in order“to pay homage to the thousands of victims of the totalitarian regime”. The plaque was

2 „Without a trace” was the title of an exhibition dedicated to the Belene camp. It was organized by associatesof the Institute for studying the recent past and presented at the National Art Gallery in 2009 for the occasionof the 20th anniversary of November 10.

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placed in 2005 by Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU), the district of Pleven. Thisinscription, as well as the wooden cross attached to the building, is the only indication of thecamp. Over the last years a memorial has been constructed – it will bear the names of thecamp and political prisoners who were kept there. Nevertheless, the work is slow due to therestricted access to the island. The concrete stele is empty while the organizations of therepressed still compile “their” lists.

It is the general opinion that with each subsequent year the number of those paying homagedecreases. After initial enthusiasm and hope that their voice would be heard, the repressedcollapsed into internal fights, conflicts, trapped in the “narcissism of petty distinctions”.

“In the beginning there was great enthusiasm, a great joy that we meet at acondemned place where we shared our bread… it was a joy for us to go as freecitizens, with hugs… with greetings”. “At the first gathering in 1990 we wereabout 80 thousand people, and more maybe. There were 12 buses from Pleventhat drove us to site 2, then returned and took the next passengers… Now if thereare 150 people, it is still good”. “In the first years we were happy, we had about60 people, members of the parliament, from the repressed due to the benevolenceof the democratic forces and the Party, regrettably, arranging those things… Wethought the people would change, would have stable views, would see who hascontributed to democracy in Bulgaria. This did not happen. Only our memoriesremained. But initially there was enthusiasm. We went to Belene from all overthe country”.

In May 2010, in Belene one hundred people gathered - camp survivors, their relatives andmembers of the Unions of the repressed. The political parties, traditionally claiming moralallegiance to the memory of the victims of communism, did not send representatives of theircentral leadership. After the usual prayer commemorating the victims of communism, thespeeches of the leaders from the organizations of the repressed followed. A representative ofthe Movement for Rights and Freedom spoke of the imprisoned Bulgarian Turks during theRebirth process. The leaders of the repressed emphasized that Belene was a sacred place –“the Bulgarian Golgotha”, “the Bulgarian Gulag” through which the Bulgarian “martyrs andfighters” had passed. The inhumane conditions in which the victims of the regime wereplaced were remembered. Everyone expressed their disappointment that Bulgarian societydid not know about and was not “grateful to these martyrs and victims”. Once again it wasmentioned that the repressed should unite to make their voice heard.

The rhetoric of commemoration, evident at other public events of the repressed as well,indicates that the anti-totalitarian discourse on the democratic values and justice providesthem with the opportunity to construct a positive and, in many cases, heroic image andmeaning of their lives as “fighters against the totalitarian regime”: “We fought for thefreedom of Bulgaria… In the prison and in the camps we learned to become pastors of justicein our country… We struggled for a just society”. In parallel, the individual traumaticexperience is integrated into the collective cultural trauma of the “martyrs of Belene”, turninginto a source of collective identity, evoking a sense of pride. Almost every one of thosepaying homage with whom we spoke in Belene, as well as our respondents, had the awarenessthat they are “the last witnesses” of the camp regime. In some sense this fact made theirstatus and stories sacred. Many of them regarded other activists of the organizations of therepressed with condescension and distrust because they did not suffer “such repression” – inthe sense that they themselves had not been to a camp or a prison, but had “only” beenexpatriated or deprived of student rights. There was a visible effort to make a hierarchy of

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the “repressions” and the victims, and a competition among them3. One respondent pointedout, “All of them had been to camps, prisons, but they cannot stand each other. The sufferingdoes not bind them together”. According to former prisoners and camp survivors, there wasconsiderable distinction among them surfacing from the past and their political affiliation thatcaused their imprisonment. According to the supporters of the BANU, “those people (theformer members of the legion – A. L.) had sinned: the People’s Court had convicted them…and that is why there existed two unions of the repressed”. They were rehabilitated afterlawsuits which reviewed the overseeing order that cancelled some of the verdicts issued bythe People’s Court. This fact did not lessen the feeling of moral superiority among thesupporters of BANU who had not been convicted by the People’s Court, but consideredthemselves to be persecuted as political opponents of the communists (“I do not need arehabilitation court case. I was punished as a human being; I had my land taken away”). Fortheir part, the members of the legion have accused the supporters of BANU of supporting theLaw for the People’s Court and participating in its proceedings.

On the stage of the public events the memory of the last witnesses is made sacred and thedistinctions among the groups of the repressed are demonstrated – distinctions rooted in thepast and in the reasons behind “the repression”, but also in the dependency of the repressed onthe political conjuncture and – according to their general opinion – on the communist Statesecurity. The speeches, made from the speaker’s stand on the island of Persin, containedmainly moral and political messages. Overall the commemorative ritual told much moreabout the present, about the state of the community of the repressed as a memory-organizedand political group rather than about their past. The disappointment that the repressed had nopolitical influence and significance, shared by respondents in their biographical interviews,was also publicly expressed during the homage (“we, the martyrs, we, the fighters, are held inlow esteem”). The repressed considered themselves to be “backbone of the right democraticforces”, but realized with bitterness that they were not supported by the same political forces.In general opinion the latter were interested in them only before elections, counting on theirvotes as “hard electorate”. The lack of such support was visible in the condition of thememorial place – abandoned, not maintained, seemingly unnecessary.

In the first years after 1989, when there were still living survivors of the camp and the prison,the idea of freeing the island from the functioning prison came forward. A museum of thevictims of communist repressions was to be created. Krum Horozov, former camp prisoner,supporter of the BANU and a member of the Great National Assembly fought for this causeon behalf of the repressed and sent such proposal to the institutions (the President, theNational Assembly). For him and his followers it was important that the camp beremembered as related to the struggle against the regime:

“I wanted a museum to be established in Belene, but as long as there is a prison, itwon’t work. There should be an open access, a shrine should be made, areconstruction should be done… a port, passing ships should stop, a beautiful alley, toenter the site, to see and light a candle… Belene was a prison for political opponents; itwas a labour camp for politicians, for the new intelligentsia of rural Bulgaria –deprived of the right to study, driven out of Universities, out of the state administration– we were tortured there to remove the humane from our souls and made us accept thisanimal like, cattle like obedience - „молчать и не рассуждать”[in Russian: “Be silentand not think” - A. L.]. There we fought for the freedom of Bulgaria, against the

3 For the competition among the victims of Nazism in Germany, see Plato 1999.

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dictatorship and there a prison for criminals still remains now. There is no place toenter and pay homage – it is a disgrace”.

The state institutions do not respond to the proposals by the Union of the repressed. They didnot close down the functioning prison on the island of Persin, did not support the repressed inestablishing a museum or memorial of the victims from the communist camps on the island.Creating the impression for a symbolic continuity, the prison is still operating; the islandremains its territory and “absorbs” the old WRF-Belene.

According to Alexander Etkind, museums and memorials comprise the “hardware” ofmemory culture and together in cooperation with the “software” – narratives and films –relive the memory culture. The two kinds of memory co-exist. While creating films andmemoirs for the camps is done by private persons and can be done without the sanction of thestate institutions, the building of a memorial or museum on the island could not take placewithout the support of the state. The state’s reply until now (or more precisely the lack of it)indicates a lack of political will and social consensus for preserving the camp on the island ofPersin as a symbol for the communist camps in the memory culture of the nation.

Until now the memory of the work camp in Belene is kept only in texts: numerous memoirs,among which stand out “Saga on Concentration-Camp Bulgaria” by Stephan Bochev, thepoems by Joseph Petrov and Ivan Selanovski, the films by Atanas Kiriyakov, StanimirTifonov, Iliya Troyanov, the book and the exhibition of the Institute for researching the recentpast (Koleva 2010). With any passing year the number of pilgrims decreases, restricted to thecircle of their relatives. The media and other institutions do not show interest, the camptheme slowly passes into the zone of the public amnesia.

An attempt at updating the memory for the Belene camp was a conference under the title “TheSuffering European Dream of Bulgaria, 1944-1989” organized by the deputy, AndreyKovachev, in the European Parliament in November 2010. Representatives of the campprisoners and political prisoners were invited to the conference. His idea was to demonstratethat Bulgaria is part of the transnational discourse on the resistance against the communistregime as well. The event was more oriented outwards, directed towards the partners fromthe EU, rather than towards the Bulgarian society. This idea corresponds to the desire of thecamp and prison survivors to be recognized as fighters, participants in the resistance againstthe communist regime in Bulgaria.“Everywhere people were saying – in Bulgaria there was no resistance movement, only in theCzech Republic and in Poland, not in Bulgaria. Perhaps 50-60 thousand political and campprisoners passed through the prisons and camps. Including their relatives, it amounts to 150-200 thousand people... ‘There was no resistance’ - this, of course, is not true”.

The memory of labour camp in Belene could be regenerated, if a memorial is built and thecamp becomes part of the cultural-historical tourist routes in the settlement. What is seen nowis far from such perspective. The institutions working for the memory – the school andmunicipality - ignore the camp theme as part of the town’s past. This is so because theresidents of Belene have distanced themselves from this history. The building of the dikesand reclamation started before WW II and were part of a positive story for “the reclaimedland” and victory over malaria in the region. The forced labour of the youth mobilized therein 1942 is not remembered, WRF – Belene is not mentioned. The local cultural memory isconstructed upon the pillars of antiquity (archaeological excavations are made at the Dimumfortress) and the three churches.

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Since 2000 the Belene islands on the Danube are included in the Natural Park “Persina”. TheDanube wet zones are restored as unique ecosystems with the help of European programs andthe World Bank. The restoration of the ecological balance goes opposite to the reclamationdone for many decades at the price of hard forced labour. The dike in the eastern part of theisland of Persin has been destroyed so that water may flow in again and form natural wetzones. The ecotourism routes include Roman excavation sites and cruise tours around theislands. The camp is not included in this picture, no sign of it. It is destined for oblivion. Itseems that the order of General Semerdzhiev from January 1990 is about to come true.

5. Conclusion

In the post-socialist period the universal discourse on the human rights dominated. The voicesof victims were heard in public, the Bulgarian labour camps were compared to Gulag andHolocaust (as genocide). The privileges of the ex-fighters ‘against fascism and capitalism’were taken away; they were taken down from the pedestal of heroes and felt like victims of‘the democracy, globalization and neo-fascism’. New groups appeared searching recognitionas victims of the communist regime; their trauma was a basis for a new collective identity.They were rehabilitated with a law, recognized as victims of the regime, but the fact thatnobody was punished as guilty produced the impression of unaccomplished retributivejustice. De-communization and lustration have even less supporters, because the communistregime was not so repressively hard in the last years and the current economic crisis displacespriorities. The conclusion is that the Bulgarian experience for establishing retributive justicewas unsuccessful, uncertain and inconsistent. As a result, the trust of citizens in thedemocratic institutions – court, parliament, political elite – was undermined. Historikerstreit iscoming.

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