Crisis of the Memory – Two Monuments from the Socialist Era Today

The essay studies the sorrowful present of two landmark monuments of the socialist era: the memorial “1300 Years Bulgaria” and the “Buzludzha Monument.” Built to commemorate important events of Bulgarian history, today these significant historical masterpieces of architecture and art from the second half of the 20th century are abandoned and doomed to destruction. The need to rethink their historical role and to start a discourse on the threat of destruction of the cultural heritage of our country is brought to the front. I argue that it is necessary to inform and educate the community on the problems of protection and preservation of the national cultural values. By applying a semiotic analysis the essay aims to reveal the complex layers of meaning coded in the two monuments in order to establish criteria for aesthetic evaluation of the artistic qualities which are not subject to political bias and reflect the intransient values in architecture and art. The presented projects exemplifying the resurrection of the monuments for a new interactive life in the context of current conditions reveal how the contradictory symbolism of the past regime can be dealt with and how the knowledge of the historic and cultural past can be constructed.