Civil Initiative by journalist Hristo Hristov and the “Konrad Adenaeur” foundation

The site “Memory 1944-1989” is a joint project between journalist Hristo Hristov, founder of the internet sites desebg.com and agentibg.com and the Sofia bureau of the "Konrad Andenauer” foundation. It was developed between June and November, 2015, and has been operational since the middle of December, 2015. It will be officially launched at the end of January, 2016.

Project aims

The project aims to preserve the memory of the victims of the totalitarian communist regime in Bulgaria between 1944 and 1989, notwithstanding their views, convictions, political affiliation, social status or religious confession. This is achieved by means of creating a special site (pametbg.com), a modern online platform with broad capabilities to systematise the crimes of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) and the construction of a single data base for data and information about the victims. With the aid of an inbuilt expanded search system, it can be used freely in a rapid, easy and accessible way.  

At the beginning of the transition to a democratic regime, the victims of the communist regime were hastily shifted to the periphery of public attention, not only because of the uncomfortable truth about the repressions of the totalitarian dictatorship, but due to the lack of culture and tradition in Bulgarian national memory and are in danger of being forgotten.

The political and social debate during the next two decades has become corrupted and perverted, to the extent that the real victims have been forgotten, and the public media have become comfortably and enduringly occupied by collaborators of the former State Security Services. They have manipulated the past and presented themselves as “victims” of the legal process of access to the archives revealing their secret operational or agent activity during the communist regime.

The few inconsequential legal and civil initiatives aimed at overcoming the communist heritage in Bulgaria have been insufficient to create a culture of memory for the thousands of people who paid with their lives and other thousands who endured physical and psychological repressions due to their convictions, views, belief and free will contradicting with the totalitarian communist ideology and regime.

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