Sofia: Bulgarian history teacher Tsvetomira Antonova is trying to educate students about the dark side of the Communist era, as a disinformation campaign ahead of national and European elections portrays it as a glorious era.
Ahead of parliamentary elections in Bulgaria and European elections on June 9, Eurosceptic and pro-Kremlin parties have stepped up efforts to win over young Bulgarians who have limited knowledge of the past.
Current Bulgarian school textbooks depict an idealized Russia that “highlights the negative aspects” of its role since the end of the 19th century, according to research by the Institute for Global Analytics in Sofia.
The Bulgarian school curriculum has been revised in recent years to devote more hours to the study of the Communist era, but fewer teachers.
Antonova is one of the exceptions, teaching her high school students in Sofia about the labor camp on the Danube Island of Belene, where thousands of people were imprisoned.
Hundreds of people are said to have died there.
Similar to the Soviet Kulag, Bulgarian labor camps were established to re-educate the “enemies of the people”, many ordinary people were imprisoned or condemned to a “bourgeois” education.
Labor camps remain unknown and are rarely included in the school curriculum, laments the fifty-year-old teacher.
Antonova continued: “This is one of the reasons why the myth of the ‘Russian brothers’ who came to save Bulgaria has been ‘perpetuated’.
