There is a marvelous photograph taken by Yevgeny Khaldei in Bulgaria in 1944. Soviet troops, having just entered the capital of Sophia, are looking in amazement at a monument to Alexander II in the city’s main square. The base of the monument reads, “to the Tsar Liberator.” These young men, having received a Stalin-era Soviet education, undoubtedly found it strange to see a monument to any monarch, to say nothing of one of the Russian tsars, all of whom their official history had put down as exploiters and tyrants. The Bulgarians, it turned out, saw things differently.
Like the man they commemorate, the numerous monuments to Alexander II have been buffeted by the forces of history. On March 1, 1881 the last in a series of terrorist assassination attempts finally succeeded, and a bomb thrown by one Grinevitsky, a member of the People’s Will (Народная Воля), tore the legs off Alexander II. The tsar who had liberated the peasants from serfdom, given Russia trial by jury, introduced a degree of local self-government in cities and villages, greatly relaxed censorship and abolished the brutal injustices of military recruitment and the 25-year term of service, bled to death a few hours later. The country was in shock, and throughout Russia monuments were erected to the fallen tsar. There was a monument in Moscow and a monument in St. Petersburg. There were monuments in provincial cities and even in villages.
When the Soviets took over, all the monuments were destroyed. The amazing Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (храм Спаса на Крови), erected on the spot where the tsar met his doom, was closed (supposedly for restoration) in 1930. It was boarded up and made inaccessible both to the faithful and to those who simply wanted to see its extraordinary mosaics and frescoes. The church was reopened in 1997, and only in recent decades have the memorials to the Tsar Liberator begun to be restored within the former Soviet Union.
Yet in two countries that did not fall into Bolshevik hands the memorials were never touched. The first was in Finland, and I still remember the sense of shock I felt when I first visited Helsinki. On the one hand, the architecture in the city center was strikingly similar to St. Petersburg, but on the other hand it was a completely unfamiliar city. And in the very center, in front of the city’s main church, stood a huge memorial to Alexander II, which struck me as incredible. Finland, which had been a part of the Russian Empire but had withstood the Soviet onslaught and remained independent, kept its memorial to the tsar of the country that for more than a century had ruled over it. The Finns had not destroyed it, had not branded the emperor an occupier or precursor of Stalin. On the contrary, they regarded Alexander with a sense of gratitude and respect.
The story behind the Bulgarian monument is even more intriguing. In Bulgaria, Alexander’s moniker of “Tsar Liberator” – gained for freeing Russia from serfdom – has a second meaning. The Bulgarians see Alexander as someone who helped them gain independence from the Ottoman Empire by launching the Russo-Turkish war in 1877. Today we well understand that it was not – as contemporary newspaper accounts would have had you believe – a sense of altruism or a desire to come to the aid of “brother Slavs” that guided Alexander II and Russian diplomats. Instead, Russia was engaging in that same struggle for influence in the Balkans that attracted the other great powers: everyone wanted to grab a piece of the Ottoman Empire as it fell, or, as Nicholas I put it, to “divide up the estate of an ailing man.”
This became clear soon after the Russo-Turkish War came to an end. At first, relations between newly independent Bulgaria and the Russian Empire were wonderful. Construction began in the center of Sophia on a huge cathedral named in honor of one of Russia’s most important saints – Alexander Nevsky. Furthermore, the cathedral was designed to resemble Hagia Sophia, the main cathedral in Constantinople, yet another nod toward the idea of unity between two Orthodox peoples, the Bulgarians and the Russians.
Yet it was not long before Russo-Bulgarian relations took a turn sharply for the worse. Russian diplomats and military officials in Bulgaria did such a good job playing the role of “older brother,” were so tactless in telling the Bulgarians what to do, that any notion of friendship soon vanished into thin air. Work on the cathedral stalled, Bulgarian politicians promoting rapprochement with Germany rose in influence, and the former allies approached the point of becoming enemies. Only toward the dawn of the twentieth century did Russian-Bulgarian relations begin to improve. As if on cue, in April of 1901 (May, new style), the Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky was finally completed, and a monument to Alexander II, Tsar Liberator, was unveiled with great fanfare.
A special competition had been held to design the memorial. It was won by Florentine sculptor Arnoldo Zocchi, and six years later the monument was dedicated in the presence of Bulgaria’s Ferdinand I and Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, son of Alexander II. Tsar Nicholas II did not attend the inauguration of the monument to his grandfather. For although relations with Bulgaria had improved, they still had not reached a point where a Russian emperor ought pay a visit. Bulgaria was still an ally of Germany and, strange as it may seem, fought against Russia in both World Wars.
Actually, the words “fought against Russia” are not quite right. During the First World War, Bulgaria did not really conduct any military operations, and they were not much of a force in the Second World War, when the Soviet-Bulgarian conflict lasted all of five days – September 5-9, 1944, and not a single life was lost. For Russians today, a visit to Bulgaria is a unique emotional experience. In all other former socialist countries – both those that were part of the USSR and those that were just members of the Warsaw Pact – Russians always feel a sense of trepidation. You are bound to encounter someone welcoming you by saying “It was you, Russians, who occupied us, who destroyed our monuments, who deported our people.” Just try to explain that this was done by Communists, some of whom were Russians, and others of whom were Jewish, Latvian, Polish, etc., and that Russians were also victims, along with Jews, Latvians, Poles, and everyone else.
Yet in Bulgaria Russians are greeted with enthusiasm and warmth. Everyone speaks Russian; everyone sings Russian songs; and nobody seems to bear a grudge over the fact that every Friday during the Soviet era, only programming from the Soviet Union was shown on Bulgarian television. In Plovdiv, the famous 17-meter-high statue of “Alyosha” – a memorial to Soviet soldier-liberators of the Second World War – still stands, and nobody is talking about tearing it down, unlike in Hungary or Latvia.* There may have been a few lonely voices calling for its removal, but the very idea turned out to be so alien to Bulgarians that it was never seriously considered. I myself have been witness to groups of misty-eyed Bulgarian history teachers singing Soviet songs about the Second World War. They sang with such sincerity that I resisted the temptation to ask, “Friends, do you remember whose side your country was on?”
It is worth noting that Bulgaria was the only European member of the Axis whose legislators officially rejected the idea of deporting Jews and did not allow Jewish Bulgarian citizens to be exterminated, so the alliance between Bulgaria and Nazi Germany could never have been all that strong. Pro-Russian feelings, on the other hand, despite the arrogance of nineteenth century Russian diplomats, despite the suspicious death of Georgi Dimitrov during the Stalin era, despite the rather insulting little rhyme bandied about Soviet Russia, «курица не птица – Болгария не заграница» (“a chicken is not a bird and Bulgaria is not a foreign country”), pro-Russia sentiment, or rather a warm and very touching love of Russia, survives.
The monument to the Tsar Liberator stood in Sophia’s central square throughout the First World War and the Second World War. It stood throughout the Stalin and Brezhnev eras. Now it stands squeezed between signs of a new era: behind Alexander there is now a Radisson Hotel, and he faces a fabulous Italian restaurant.
It seems Alexander will continue to stand there for a long time. It is awfully nice to be loved.
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