Comment by Alexander Andreev:
An Orthodox church named after "Alexander Nevsky" - this sounds like a brilliant oxymoron.
The beautiful church in Sofia, which is solemnly called the "patriarchal cathedral", and according to Patriarch Daniil is "the most magnificent in the Balkans", bears the name of a medieval commander who shed a lot of blood.
The Orthodox prince Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky became a vassal of the "Golden Horde" and with its help in 1252 dethroned his brother, the Orthodox Andrei, from the throne in Vladimir. At that time, the Tatar-Mongol Empire began to gradually accept Islam. Despite this, and despite the fact that it was Alexander Nevsky who actively contributed to the centuries-old domination of the "Golden Horde" over those lands, Russian Orthodoxy explicitly welcomed his collaboration with Khan Batu and later even declared Nevsky a saint. Which sounds even more absurd if we cite the hypothesis of a number of historians that Alexander himself converted to Islam and even changed his religion several times.
After this brief historical walk, let's mark a few starting conclusions:
Nevsky paved the way for the "Tatar yoke"
First, Alexander Yaroslavich shed a lot of blood, including killing thousands of Orthodox Christians, so that all of Christlike and peace-loving Christianity and even the not-so-peace-loving Moscow Orthodoxy should have turned their backs on him in disgust. But instead, wouldn't you like it, they gave him the halo of a saint and began to name churches in his name.
Second, Alexander Yaroslavich used a Tatar army to dethrone his brother and ensured the Golden Horde's centuries-old rule over Russian lands. In Solzhenitsyn's words, he condemned his homeland to slavery, which is still called the "Tatar yoke". Such an actor to be a Russian saint and patron of cathedrals? And if this is not complete absurdity!
It really sounds ridiculous and grotesque, but today's Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil continues to bow with awe before this "saint". Daniil recently even welcomed dear guests from Moscow for the anniversary of the consecration of the cathedral. In the spirit of the peace-loving tradition of Orthodox Moscow, the "foreign minister" of the Russian Orthodox Church came to Sofia, who - together with the entire institution and its patriarch - warmly supports the bloody Russian war against Ukraine. Well, it seems that it has always been like this since the times of Alexander Nevsky…
But even that is not the end of the absurdities. In an interview on Bulgarian National Radio, Daniil heatedly argued with those who question the cathedral's name, and even called them "rootless". Here one is literally paralyzed by cognitive dissonance. The Bulgarian Patriarch calls "rootless" those Bulgarians who want to remove from the main church of their country the name of a foreign commander who is alleged to have converted to Islam and killed thousands of Orthodox Christians? And at a time when this same Russia has declared Bulgaria an "enemy state"?
Not to mention that Daniil himself should have some minor problems with loud words like "rootless". No matter how devout and pious a Christian he is, he cannot escape worldly affairs and the recent past in the state of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, where his father was a colonel in the militia and an employee of State Security. Yes, of course, Daniel is not responsible for his father's actions - this is true even according to Christian canons. On the other hand, the Bible says that he owes his father honor and respect, love and obedience, and the father should be his spiritual guide and role model. Does the newly elected patriarch follow the biblical instructions in this regard? We will not interfere with him, that is his business. Let us just recall that the State Security not only persecuted the Bulgarian Orthodox Church with all its ideological whips, but had also infiltrated deep into its bowels - all facts that Daniel should have known. So what is the situation with the "revival", Your Holiness?
The name of the temple has already been changed
Here, in passing, we must recall another disturbing aspect of the worldview of the former Vidin Metropolitan, who as such ardently opposed the expulsion of three alleged Russian spies, and as patriarch, according to a number of observers, unequivocally sided with Russia in its war of conquest against Ukraine. In fact, there is a clear logic in all this, which, unfortunately, has nothing to do with traditional Christian values and Bulgarian patriotism.
In the aforementioned interview, the patriarch explains at length why the name of the main Bulgarian church cannot and should not be changed. If we put aside the canonical arguments and try to understand Daniel's logic in good faith, we can partly agree that the will of the donors for the construction of the church is of serious importance.
In this regard, there is hardly anything to add to the comment of the economist and analyst Evgeniy Kanev. "These arguments could weigh if there were no unfortunate presence of Russia in our history after the Liberation itself, which, through its blinded and paid agents, still makes it easy prey for its eternal imperial interests. Therefore, the question about the donors can be asked as a counterfactual - would they have donated for a temple with this name if they knew that Russia would wage war against Bulgaria twice and would keep it subordinate to its interests? ", he asks.
Kanev also questions the extent to which Bulgarians at that time knew the figure of Alexander Nevsky and the controversial moments of his biography. "In fact, the idea for the temple was Petko Karavelov - three times prime minister, who did not want this name at all. It was imposed by Prince Battenberg, because Alexander Nevsky was the patron of the Russian Tsar Alexander II, who was Battenberg's godfather. The original idea was for the temple to bear the name of Prince Boris I - the Baptist," specifies Evgeniy Kanev.
Kanev and a number of other observers point out that the name of the cathedral has already been changed once. In 1915, after Russia bombed Varna, both from the sea and from the air - bombings that killed civilians, the Bulgarian authorities unanimously decided to rename the church to "St. St. Cyril and Methodius", and the government of Vasil Radoslavov put the decision into effect. In 1920-1921, the previous name was restored for political reasons.
It is unlikely that the name will be changed
This brings us to another serious question that cannot and should not be answered hastily: Is it right for politics to make decisions in the field of toponymy? Let us just recall that this has happened many times in Bulgaria. For example, when Varna was renamed after Stalin and then back, or when Sofia's "Tolbukhin" boulevard ceased to bear its Soviet marshal name. To this day, discussions are ongoing throughout the country, and especially in the capital, about street names named after figures with a rather controversial or dubious historical role - such as Count Ignatiev, for example.
There is no clear and unambiguous answer to the question posed, but most historians and philologists I have spoken to believe that such decisions are permissible, possible and even desirable when there is sufficiently strong public pressure and broad political consensus. In other words, recalling the story of the ugly PSA in Sofia, changing the cathedral name requires a series of decisions at the municipal and national levels. But the name "Alexander Nevsky" It is unlikely to be changed, considering how strong Russian propaganda is in the country, what influence pro-Russian political formations exert, and how uninformed people in Bulgaria are about the history of Bulgarian-Russian relations (and about Alexander Yaroslavich himself).
Thus, the Bulgarian Orthodox will probably continue to worship the "saint" who helped with the "Tatar yoke", and the beautiful golden domes will radiate a bloody hue.