Speaker
Description
The monument of Lenin and Georgi Dimitrov is one of the landmarks that are left from the communist regime. It is situated in Banya, which is close to Razlog. The monument was built in celebration of the 85th birthday of Georgi Dimitrov. The emigrant Kostadin Kalchov sponsored the creation of the monument with 36 000 USD, even though his wish was to be created something tremendously bigger than today’s monument. Moreover, he wanted to create a community centre, in which there would be 12 meters long statues of Georgi Dimitrov and Lenin. Those statues would have been the biggest communistic monuments on the Balkans. On the monument itself there is graffiti that actively demonstrate people’s behaviour, which is strongly suggesting that people should open their eyes about the crimes done by the Communist regime. In addition to the monument, there is one next to it- a massive marble stone, which on it has engraved the poem of Geo Milev- September. The poem is not written during the regime, but is used as propaganda, since it has a lot of motives supporting the regime itself. The poem is suggesting ideas of Bulgarian people struggling for justice and freedom, shaping the whole nationalistic inducement. In the conducted research, there are different generations that blast into one another’s mindsets. Some people seem to be ignorant about the past, and some seem to like the regime. What was actually the question behind the monument wether the two leaders had met, or it is another tool used for shaping people’s mind. Therefore, the issue is: Are people living on false beliefs or it is actually true and history is not manipulated? Or are people living on those false belief because they are told to do so or they like them?
