New Europe College Regional Program Yearbook 2001-2002

NIKOLAI VUKOV
FIG. 2 – MONUMENT OF THE BULGARIAN-SOVIET FRIENDSHIP IN VARNA, BULGARIA.
PHOTO: N. VUKOV, 2002.
accompanied by representatives of national communist traditions. The
monuments of the Soviet army in Sofia, Bulgaria (1954, [fig. 3]), for
example, and Arad, Romania, (1959) – both very similar in composition
and visual language – represented unity in the struggle and again employed
the idiom of “liberation from fascism” 12 as a launching pad from where
to emphasize the idea of post-war revival under the protection of the
Soviet army.
Monuments did more than simply “commemorate” historic events –
death had to be celebrated as overcome and defeated, with military
parades, manifestations and festive celebrations taking the place of the
cemetery pilgrimages that were the typical memorial-day activites of
the First World War (Gillis 1994:13). Every year, monuments provided
the venue for celebrating, with full military honors, the anniversaries of
the “liberation from fascism”, of the Great October Socialist Revolution,
of the dates when the Red Army victoriously entered the countries of
Eastern Europe, etc. As they held special importance throughout the period
of socialism, anniversaries regularly witnessed a wave of new monument
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