If the Bulgarian public knew what really happened between 1944 and 1948, when we remained under Soviet occupation, it would not have been so difficult to part with the monument of the Soviet Army. We are champions in Europe – the only ones guarding 185 monuments of the occupying Red Army. There is no other country like it in Europe. They keep giving false examples with the monuments in Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, but these are monuments built in places where there was a battle. There is no battle here - we are occupied for no reason. These are the metastases of a communist propaganda that poisoned our society for so many years.
This was stated in the show “120 minutes” the historian Evelina Kelbecheva.
"The most frightening is the reaction of people who are factually ignorant of real history, but who continue to serve heavy propaganda. I am not surprised by this fact, but I am ashamed that, according to research, the percentage of these people is so high. We don't have civil education in Bulgaria," Kelbecheva explained.
According to her, Bulgarians have an extremely heavy mental heritage.
"The propaganda we are still witnessing today did not stop with the fall of the regime and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. We are the most impure from the fact that we are subject to 77 years of propaganda, which began as early as the 18th century with Russophilia, with the mythology of the liberators, folklore, literature and then the poet of history," the historian added.
Regarding the controversy surrounding the personality of the mayor of Sofia, Eng. Ivan Ivanov, and whether his monument should be built in the capital, Evelina Kelbecheva said that for her this is a completely pointless dispute.
"Eng. Ivan Ivanov is undoubtedly the mayor of Sofia, who continues the great modernization work of the builders of New Bulgaria. The fact that he was hunted down after 9/9 but brought back to help preserve the infrastructure of the grand idea of a modern Sofia means that he was indispensable in some way. The accusation that in his time we have a boulevard named after Hitler is very elementary. Due to the fact that on a global scale communism was not denounced by international law," she explained.