site.btaArchives Agency Launches Website Focused on Soviet Occupation in Bulgaria in 1944-1947

The Archives State Agency Monday announced the launch of a new website with documents and photos focused on the Soviet occupation of Bulgaria in 1944-1947. It is part of the digital thematic collection of the Archive Agency.

The website shows 1,472 documents with 2,670 images, the vast majority of them published for the first time. 

Among the indisputable contributions of this platform is the list of victims of the Red Army in Bulgaria, whose names and cases were extracted from the archival documents, says the Archives Agency. It enables their relatives and fellow citizens to learn more details about what exactly happened to these people.

In the words of the Archives Agency, this website seeks to fill a void in the knowledge of the Bulgarian society about the not-too-distant past and help researchers, documentarians and journalists. The team that produced the new website is determined to regularly broaden it with new documents.

In an introduction to the new website, Archives State Agency Chair Mihail Gruev writes, "The most well-known and generally studied facts of the Red Army's early military presence in Bulgaria were subject to extensive mythologization during the years of the communist regime, were skillfully yet selectively woven into its official historical narrative, and were subjected to extensive memorialization. Practically every major Bulgarian city built a monument to the Soviet liberator army, soldiers who died in military infirmaries and for other reasons were put in well-maintained cemeteries and ossuaries, and hundreds of memorial plaques were put everywhere. Even the first Soviet tank to cross the Bulgarian border was turned into an object of veneration. It is an undeniable fact that the impact of this large-scale and complex ideological impact on generations of Bulgarians has remained to this day and the debate about the role of the Red Army in Bulgaria continues".