The socialist monuments

The journalist Diana Ivanova talks to Valentin Starchev – the sculptor who made one of the most important monuments in Sofia.

Diana Ivanova: People say that Zhivkov disliked the monument and even turned away when passing by...
Valentin Starchev: At the unveiling ceremony, Zhivkov was reserved, and later on I heard that he had changed his route in order to avoid the monument. Actually, at the time of the ceremony the monument was not even completed. People worked till the very last moment. The project differs from the completed memorial. It was supposed to be covered in huge granite slabs with dry joints. Alas, thinner and smaller slabs were used, like in a bathroom. The joints between the tiles had to be filled with silicone but there was not enough time. In winter moisture got in and the tiles started falling. All that rush took its toll on the monument.
DI: I have never liked the monument. I have perceived it exactly through the imperfections you mentioned. Socialism bears a spirit which is embodied in the monument. Socialism as continuity: past-present-future. There is no such thing as continuity in which people move together into the future. This is fake. On the contrary, there were failures in time and we, inherited them. The very point of imperfectly completed details shows that this monumental idea is wrong and inhuman – to present the history of Bulgaria as continuity. Hannah Arendt spoke about the gap in time. There are things which are never the same after the gap. This monument does not pay due respect to the silence of the unfulfilled, to the victims, obliterated somewhere in history. This is also typical of the recent monuments, take the monument of St. Sofia – sticking out in the city centre, I do not like it either. I am more and more growing to like the monument you made as it is now: covered in graffiti, partially destroyed, half-ugly and half-beautiful.
VS: I would like to make something clear. At the time it was build, the monument did not bear the political suggestions of many other monuments. The sculptures it comprised were: the Golden Age of Bulgarian culture, embodied in King Simeon and the men of letters. The second figure is Pieta, symbol of the victims marking our history. I call the third figure the Creator. In spite of all the vicissitudes Bulgaria had been through, the Creator worked on and supported our culture and way of life. The monument starts from the deep, symbolizing our old history through reliefs from Pliska and Preslav and the words of our khans. People criticize the monument without even having had a proper look at it. Their argument is that there is no other monument of the kind. And that was exactly the idea: for it to be different from anything we have known. Have a look at the monuments of the socialist era – the Common Grave (Bratska Mogila), the monument of the Russian Army – they are flawless in their completion, but they narrate a political story. In the 1980’s things changed. The monument in front of the National Palace of Culture was something completely new for its time. Several avant-garde monuments appeared in those years. The ones of Krum Damyanov in the towns of Stara Zagora, Veliko Tarnovo and Shumen were among the most exquisitely completed. Velichko Minekov created the monument of Khan Asparuh in Dobrich, Emil Popov and Georgi Chapkanov – the soldiers’ monument in Silistra. They were all different from the scheme applied before – a pedestal and a figure – fully relying on the message of that figure. This scheme did not bring forward associations and symbols, but literally presented the person or event. 29 years have passed now. If I were to design it today, I would take a different approach. I am thinking of a partially visible dark brown structure, in harmony with the figures of the monument, quite the case now. A well-shaped volume which however allows the light to pass through thanks to the transparent surfaces.
DI: What you did is a step ahead from the point of view of architecture and sculpture, a step into modernity. This happened in 1980. Back then we lived in a pre-modern situation, while at the same time Europe was already in postmodernism. I like another type of monuments. In Berlin, for example, there are many protruding paving tiles which literally make pedestrians stumble. When people look down, they see the name of a person who used to live there before being burnt in the concentration camps of the Nazis (a project by Gunther Demnig http://www.stolpersteine.com). To my mind, this is the most touching memorial of the victims of the Holocaust. It is not monumental, such memorials are to be found all over the city, but it reminds me that a particular person lived in the past, engulfed by the historic tragedy. The absence of the victim as a gap, no filling it up with a monument.
VS: Is the monument of the Russian Soldier still there?
DI: Yes, it is.
VS: As far as I know, it has even been renovated. And the debris of the Wall became souvenirs. A block of it is exhibited in front of the National Palace of Culture.
DI: Berlin is an interesting example. First The Wall was pulled down, then turned into souvenirs. I think that the society in Bulgaria is more and more distinctly asking the question: what does removing the marks of the past give us? Why that striving to annihilate the tracks of time? Over the years, Sofia has changed tremendously, what is disappearing is not only monuments, but also the identity of the city. The mausoleum is not the only example. Sofia is full of the shadows of disappeared buildings. I will take the liberty to make a comparison. When somebody dies, the family usually throws away the belongings of the deceased and only preserves what is most precious: pictures, relics. Somebody is gone and the place changes forever. The same thing happens in society. It hurriedly seeks liberation from the symbols of the past and only later asks: did that memory have to be annihilated? But probably that is a human trait. A regime is dead and society is setting free from its memorabilia. The Wall in Berlin also disappeared, and the big debate now is: how come nobody thought of marking the spots where the events during its pulling down took place. There is something deeper to this reflex for destruction: we are ashamed and attack the things which remind us of the past.
VS: The answer is in politics. Not the people, but the new regime is seeking to remove the marks of the old one. The change is accompanied by euphoria. For example, the garden of the National Gallery was full of statues. They were all removed, no matter what they symbolised. Somebody poured green paint over the statue of Vladimir Dimitrov – The Master. Pomona, the symbol of fertility, sculpted by Ivan Founev, was pulled down. Do politicians have the power to harness the element? Or do they encourage the process?
DI: That is exactly the debate, what stems from our national culture and what is a political sign?
VS: I made a bust of Captain Petko Voivoda for the Garibaldist Alley in Rome. While going to Garibaldi’s monument, I passed along a beautifully maintained alley flanked by columns. It turned out that it is from the times of Mussolini. Italy is full of monuments, from antiquity to present, half of them dedicated to different tyrants, and everything is preserved. It is a matter of the general culture of the people.
DI: I think that people raised in the time of socialism were not used to respecting their history and that is where the problem lies.
VS: The problem was in the theory of socialist realism which was brought in from abroad. Bulgarian artists worked in line with it because nothing else was brought into the daylight. Foreigners, however, appreciated our efforts. When Herbert von Karajan came to conduct in Sofia, he told the Minister of Culture, Georgi Yordanov, that nowhere else had he seen a monument such as “1300 Years Bulgaria”. He even asked to have one of my sculptures. I gave him an Orpheus as a present. Only in those years did we see some breaking up of the settled ways.
DI: To this day, we are slaves to the idea of monumentality. Have a look at the enormous “Mother of God” in the town of Haskovo. It is a continuation of that same way of thinking, only we are not making statues of Georgi Dimitrov, but of Virgin Mary. This is said to be the biggest monument of Virgin Mary in the world and it would become a part of the Guinness World Records. This is not a monument of our gratitude, but again something inspired by the wrong concept of being the biggest, the greatest. People living in towns do not identify themselves in the urban environment. That is why I gave the paving tiles as example in Berlin.
VS: This is a new way of thinking, a new concept.
DI: Yes, it results from a new way of reading history. We destroy monuments because we feel they were not made for us. People are alienated from official culture. It is monumental and ideologized. Culture has a social purpose, it has to provoke.
VS: However, who is to tell what, how and where? Have a look at the monument of the Samara flag in the garden behind the Military Club. It was erected with the support of a significant committee. But how did that committee choose the place among all others? The garden was an outdoor gallery of Professor Lyubomir Dalchev. The significant committee kicked Dalchev’s works aside and put in a monument the middle which has nothing to do with the surroundings. Professor Dalchev was the only active proponent of New art in Bulgaria and he trained some of our best sculptors: Krum Damyanov, Galin Malakchiev, Michail Simeonov, Penka Mincheva, Ivan Neshev. The new monument neither matches its environs, nor is it good artwork, and its composition is directly taken from Jaroslav Vesin. By the way, the monument of the people repressed by communism, in the garden of the National Palace of Culture, is also a copy of the Washington monument of the victims of the Vietnam War.
DI: I remember the pathos of the changes after 1989. Street names were changed, we believed that thus we are entering new times. The regime was changing and the architecture was changing. Everywhere the process runs in similar terms. That is why I am starting to like your monument embellished with graffiti, because I feel the marks of time.
VS: It is true, the architect considers the smallest of details. Then comes a youth and scrawls over the building or the monument. This is the picture of the time. Both parties coexist in it.
DI: I can notice a change in young people. The people who are my age agreed with the removal of the mausoleum. The young people of today are painting. That is better. There is not a country in the world with perfect continuity. A place which does not suffer losses. Naturally, we should not destroy indiscriminately, but when revolutionary change is present, spontaneity takes the upper hand over considerations. In Hungary a sculpture park of socialism was made. This seems to be a good solution. The sifting out of culture and the reformulation of the political context cannot happen simultaneously. First, we throw something away, and only then do we find its place in our memory.
VS: It’s the politicians’ fault, as they are in a hurry to assume power, and things have to settle down, so that there is a valid moral and aesthetic assessment.
DI: It was mentioned that the mausoleum formed a void. I think that the new generations will notice that absence and noticing would make them different. We will transfer the feeling to the next generations. Perhaps that is the use of annihilation. We see the past differently, but are all hurt by the way we destroy the monuments. We realize that this diminishes our awareness as humans and Bulgarians, it infringes our identity. We are ashamed by our history and try to erase it by destruction. The Ottoman layer, for example, has almost been erased. Kiril Hristov has written a book, “The Piled up Sofia”, which considers exactly that matter. This layer of shame does not seem to torment the Italians, the French, or other nations.
VS: The people in Italy live immersed in their history. That is why they do not infringe upon their monuments. In our case, many styles have been imported to Bulgaria without much thought. Let’s take the Party’s Headquarters as an example. This is a building for a cold climate, featuring thick stone walls, suitable in the North (of Russia), but not for Bulgaria.
DI: Berlin has a public council with competent people from all fields – architects, urbanists, sculptors – they provide recommendations on all decisions concerning the city. This council is a voluntary body but it has acquired a position of authority. This is the way for the city inhabitants to have their say on the political decisions.