Buzludzha was the most lavish political monument Bulgaria ever built, but after the transition to democracy it became one of the world’s most infamous modern ruins. This project, spanning almost a decade, aimed to re-evaluate the building and improve understandings about its history, significance, and potential.
Georgi Stoilov’s Brutalist masterpiece, the Buzludzha Memorial House in Bulgaria, was opened in 1981 and it served as a symbolic ceremonial venue: a physical celebration of Bulgarian communism placed atop a mountain peak in the very heart of the country. Such a symbol served no purpose, however, after the political changes that began in 1989. At first the monument was closed and guarded, but sometime in the 1990s those guards were dismissed and the full-scale looting of Buzludzha began. The building was stripped of valuable materials, and its intricate mosaics were left exposed to the fierce mountain climate.
My interest in Buzludzha began a decade later, when I spotted the concrete saucer on the horizon during a holiday to Bulgaria in 2006. From 2012 onwards, when I was living in Bulgaria, I began regularly visiting with Bulgarian friends and learning about its significance through their eyes.
In 2013, I got to know the monument’s architect, Georgi Stoilov, and from 2015 onwards, I became closely involved with a local campaign to preserve the building. I created the project’s online platform, texts and media, while my doctoral field research informed strategic planning and grant applications. As a result of our bid to the Getty Foundation, the monument was awarded $185,000 in 2018 towards formal conservation planning, with the first on-site work beginning in autumn 2019. My subsequent dissertation used the monument’s trajectory through the 2010s as a case study to explore the theory, challenges, and potential outcomes of socialist heritage conservation in post-socialist countries.
My Research
The Buzludzha Memorial House and the Precarious Fate of Communist Monuments in Post-Communist Space. University of Central Lancashire, 2022. [Doctoral dissertation – PDF]
Vechna Slava: Bulgarians and their Monuments
(Archival / ethnographic project, 2014–2015)
Interview with Georgi Stoilov (2015)
Interview with Alyosha Kafedzhiyski (2015)
Interview with Georgi Stoilov (2018)
Interview with Valentin Starchev (2023)
My Articles
Greyscape, August 2020 – What Should Bulgaria Do With the Buzludzha Memorial House?
The Calvert Journal, November 2017 – Buzludzha: The Conflicted Past and Uncertain Future of Bulgaria’s ‘Communist UFO’
Other People’s Writing
Noema Magazine, June 2023 – What To Do With Communist Decay
Explorabilia, September 2021 – Madonna, Mother and Whore: Notes on vandalism at Bulgaria’s most photographed monument
Jacobin, April 2020 – Saving Bulgarian Communism’s ‘Concrete Spaceship’
Atlas Obscura, July 2019 – Bulgaria’s Abandoned Communist Monument Gets a Lifeline
Adrien Minard, 2018 – Bouzloudja: Crépuscule d’une utopie [Twilight of a Utopia]