Vernacular memorial museums: memory, trauma and healing in post-communist Bulgaria

ABSTRACT

Shortly after the coup d’état of 1944 in Bulgaria, state-organized repressions began to take place against political opponents and dissidents. They included mass shootings, life imprisonment, incarceration and the establishment of gulag camps whose scale and longevity has been documented only recently. In the aftermath of Eastern European communism, untangling the memory of political violence without a formal process of restorative justice presented new challenges. This paper examines the processes of healing, reparation, processing and the preservation of traumatic memory of survivors and communities occurring within and through self-initiated and unofficial vernacular memorial museums. What possibilities do vernacular memorial sites hold for collective, collaborative and participatory reparative forms? How are traumatic memory and these difficult historical narratives presented, transmitted and preserved through these physical and digital commemorative spaces?

KEYWORDS:

• Political violence
• memorial museum
• commemoration
• trauma
• gulag

Introduction

In 2015, scrolling through Facebook’s news feed, I stumbled across a video produced by the BBC in 1990. It featured a survivor from a communist forced labor camp who described his memories from the early 1960s whilst standing at the site of the former camp. The footage was produced a year after the collapse of the Eastern European communist regime and exactly four years before my birth. I gazed at the screen in shock and disbelief. I had grown up and completed secondary school in Bulgaria but was completely unaware of the existence of these gulag camps until this specific moment. Why was their history absent from the pages of the textbooks I read and the walls of the museums I visited? Why had my family never mentioned them? After all, they had often shared with me both good and bad memories of their life during the communist period. The survivor’s testimony propelled me to find out more about the camps, their history, and the dearth of their memory in popular discourse.

Two years later, I was in front of the very same screen but this time trying to track down the survivor from the reportage. In less than 400 characters I described my research aims – to find individuals who have been victims of state-sanctioned violence during the communist era – and published it on my Facebook wall. After a few days, my post was shared in groups and on the profiles of friends and strangers, thus my journey through the narratives and lived accounts of Bulgarian political violence began. My foray into digital ethnographic research via Facebook, during the summer of 2017, resulted in twenty-four interviews, including visits to the houses of survivors, their families, and witnesses.

This article is organized in three parts and explicates different spaces that commemorate political violence and traumatic memory, and their role within politics of repair and healing. The first part locates, within the existing scholarship, a historical framework of state-led persecutions in communist Bulgaria (1945–1989). The second section analyses memorial spaces established by a religious organization and former camp internees, respectively. The final section focuses on digital memory and rituals of remembrance on Facebook, examining profiles run by survivors of the political repression.

In what follows, I consider these unofficial sites as vernacular memorial museums. I have decided to use the term vernacular, as such spaces embody a communal resource and construct a public shared voice while they are created through a volunteer activity by “ordinary people,” and are not initiated by the state or state-actors (Hess, 2007; Mikula, 2015; Moncunill-Pinas, 2017). Vernacular museums permit a distinctive form of collective and vernacular discourse to take place, enabling forms of remembering different from ones held by accredited museums. The vernacular sites of memory discussed here challenge institutional and official memory discourses about the communist past in present-day Bulgaria. In broader terms, I situate my analysis within recent scholarship on memory studies that posits that vernacular spaces dismantle the linear experience of history, democratize the past, and could turn the visitor into an active participant and form spaces for healing (Haskins, 2007; Marschall, 2013). A conclusion ties together the various strands and addresses the need, impact, and limitations of vernacular memorial museums, linking them to wider debates about possibilities and challenges facing traumatic memory.

I focus solely on Bulgaria since the scholarship regarding the country’s communist past and political violence is scant. I am not drawing a direct comparison to historical events elsewhere or states within and outside of the former USSR, as despite the resemblances at times, the case of Bulgaria is distinctive for reasons which will follow. Bulgaria is at the periphery and rarely becomes part of the production and circulation of knowledge. Thus, I hope with these decisions to challenge the dominant Western academic readings of the region, and to contribute to a new dialogue and critical understanding of Eastern European scholarship writ large (Boatcă et al., 2021; Topouzova, 2021).

Historical context: 1946–2022

Shortly after the establishment of communism in Bulgaria in 1946, state-organized repressions began across the country, including People’s Court sentencing, mass shootings, unofficial arrests, life imprisonment, incarceration, and the establishment of forced labor camps (Stanilov, 2005, 2006; Topouzova, 2019). The gulag camp system operated between 1945 and 1987; some of the most notorious camps included Belene, Bobov Dol, Kutsian, Luti Dol, Nozharevo and Lovech. Dozens of other camps existed but their histories remain fragmented and untraceable. The majority of individuals sent to the camps, oppressed and intimidated by the state, were not formally tried or sentenced, nor did they understand the reason for their persecution. The internees were often not aware of the length of their “sentences” which were frequently extended on an arbitrary basis by State Security agents, often through to the end of their lives (Skotchev, 2017).

In 1949, forced labor camp Belene was formed, and remained the largest and longest operating gulag camp, with its complete closure only taking place in 1987 (Topouzova, 2018). The inmates lived in horrendous conditions, and their internment was accompanied by unbearable labor quotas, lack of food, proliferating diseases, and violent punishment (Topouzova, 2019). It was a common occurrence for State Security workers to instigate violence without any motives, as recalled in many survivors’ memoirs (Skotchev, 2017). At times the political prisoners had court hearings and a legal case accompanied by a fabricated sentence. State Security falsified the verdicts and individuals were incarcerated not only in camps, but also in prisons in Sofia, Pazardzhik, Stara Zagora, Lovech, Shumen, and others. Beyond these spaces of violence, systematic state-driven repressions also took the form of verbal and physical threats, spying, interrogation techniques including beatings, imprisonment in militia stations and other cases of homicide.

During the transitional years in the 1990s, several attempts were made to prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed, including a public inquiry commission, investigation, and a trial (Topouzova, 2021). However, the retributive justice attempts remained incomplete and unresolved (Luleva, 2011). There were no formal apologies, no substantial state-led efforts at reconciliation and no actions towards a lustration. The investigation and search of a mass burial site in the Belene Island Complex in the 1990s was in vain. Simultaneously, a vast amount of State Security archives were destroyed, and much of the “evidence” of the crimes vanished (Topouzova, 2021; Znepolski, 2009). The survivors of political violence were officially “rehabilitated” through insignificant financial compensation which they could only receive if possessing “evidence” of their incarceration and oppression in the form of a legal document – which many did not have (Kolio Vutev, personal communication, June 7, 2017). In 2007, the secret police archives were made public but hesitation to come to terms with the past remains. The Bulgarian state, unlike other post-communist states such as Romania, Hungary, or the German Democratic Republic, has not established a research institute for studying the past regime (Koleva, 2012). As Topouzova (2019) explains, more than thirty years after the collapse of communism, there is still no national and institutional discourse on political violence as of the unsuccessful transitional and reparation politics. Collective memory remains in flux, and there is no state-led institution dedicated to the commemoration of victims of the communist regime. This neglect is also a result of the purge of more than 144,000 state archival files and the absence of legislation on lustration (Shentov, 2004; Topouzova, 2019).

Spaces of remembrance

During the 1990s survivors formed organizations with the aim of preserving traumatic memory. They began organizing yearly public rituals of remembrance, which took place at the sites of the former camps. During these commemorations, the survivors had not only a voice but also an audience of listeners alongside a space for healing. Over the years, these memorial days were at times joined by local politicians, but their attendance continues to be mainly of descendants of victims. There are several unofficial and self-funded memorials and plaques spread across Bulgaria – at the National Palace of Culture, Central Sofia Cemetery, University Hospital for Active Treatment Sofia, Varna, Sliven, Kornitza, Samokov and on the sites of camps Lovech, Kutsian and Belene. They represent a small portion of the history of state-led violence and fall significantly short of supplying relevant historical context.

Spaces of remembrance such as memorials and memorial museums play a pivotal role in identity politics and the production of national belonging and are an important mechanism for any society’s attempts at preserving its past (Zavadski, 2014). These places rely heavily on oral history accounts, artifacts, texts and images. Both physical and immaterial records of memory act as reminders, triggers of memory and “lieux de memoire” (Nora, 1989). These institutions act as facilitators of historical truth and as evidence of violations against human rights, they serve as centers for education, and offer different manners of coming to terms with the past. Memorial museums exceed the potential of memorials, as they enhance historical narratives and play an important role in transitional justice (Sodaro, 2018). In the case of Bulgaria, an official memorial museum appears inconceivable due to the lack of reconciliation with the past. The process of collecting narratives and artifacts of the traumatic past remains stalled. As of the absence of official and public practices and spaces commemorating the traumatic events, memory is driven to erosion. This has occurred alongside what scholars have characterized, conversely, as the twentieth century “memory boom,” often observable in the widespread establishment of memorial museums internationally; which has also turned into a “near-default expectation” an inseparable part of states’ politics of repair (Williams, 2007). In the case of Bulgaria or the former Eastern Bloc, the so-called “memory boom” came with a significant delay. While memory was thriving in the West, in the East it was controlled, selected and adjusted until late 1989. Even after the fall of the USSR, certain historical memories remained taboo and unresolved topics as the newly formed governments were established by individuals who were tied to the previous system (Blacker et al., 2013).

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

In response to the absence of an official memorial museum in Bulgaria, independent organizations and individuals have created such spaces. One of these vernacular memorial museums is situated on the property of the Catholic Church – The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Belene (see Figure 1) – facilitated both by the church and the grassroots cultural center Eugene Bossilkov – Belene.

Figure 1. Museum at The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Belene, Bulgaria, 2021, Photo: Author.

The permanent exhibition includes memorabilia, photographs and historical texts linked to the martyr Eugene Bossilkov, who was the first Bulgarian Bishop of the Nikopol Diocese of the Catholic Church. In 1952, he was persecuted by state officials and consequently imprisoned and killed (Luleva, 2015). Alongside, the artifacts linked to Bossilkov’s life and persecution, there are also models of the Belene gulag camp’s buildings based on survivors’ recollections and a library. On my first visit to the site of Belene gulag camp and the vernacular memorial museum, I was accompanied by Priest Paolo Cortesi (one of the founders of the cultural center Eugene Bossilkov – Belene), who explained that after his relocation to Belene in 2010 the locals refused to talk about political violence and denied the existence of any literature regarding the camp. The negligence towards memory has occurred as a result of the undefined history of political violence, alongside the locals’ complex relationship to the camp, and the falsified reasons regarding imprisonment. Over the course of a decade, Cortesi created a library with works about the Belene camp, as well as other gulag and concentration camps. The book collection spans Bulgarian, Italian, Turkish, Romanian and English languages and is accessible to anyone interested (Paolo Cortesi, personal communication, November 17, 2016).

Petko Ogoyski’s tower

On the last day of 2019, I stood in front of Petko Ogoyski’s house – a structure bearing a six-story tower constructed on top of it. The tower in Chepintsi, as described by Petko, is his personal ethnographic museum and includes artifacts linked to the way Bulgarians used to eat, dress and fight throughout history (cited in Hristov, 2014). One section of the museum encapsulates Petko’s experience of political violence and his time spent in the gulag camp Belene. He was arrested because of his satirical writing against the communist party and an additional fabricated conviction (Ogoyski, 2015).¹

Figure 2. Ogoyski’s tower, Chepintsi, Bulgaria, 2019. Image courtesy of Lubov Cheresh.

As I entered his home, I found myself in a small room at the basement level. On the bed, Petko sat old and sick, with only a few months left of his life. He was unable to walk, nor climb the floors of his museum to give me a detailed tour as he has previously done with every visitor. This deeply saddened him. Instead, as we sat in his living space, he talked to me about the collection, his books, and typewriters, all of which were elsewhere. Petko has written a number of books narrating the state-led violence he experienced in a gulag camp and several prisons, whilst he has also preserved memories of other victims. He shared his duty to writing, to saving memory from erasure and to maintaining remembrance. His words moved across stories of others, shared traumas, and his reminiscences. As a way to explain further, Petko lifted his trousers up to his knee to show the deep scars from beatings. Petko has dedicated not only his time and efforts to preserving traumatic recollections in books but has also turned his domestic space into a museum.

The museum spreads across two spaces. One is the room in which Petko used to write and it includes typewriters, the verdicts against him, and newspapers where his work has been published, alongside notes and poems – some of which written during his imprisonment. On one side of the clustered room there is a glass vitrine housing his publications. In another room, a large collection of items occupies every available surface. There are objects such as tableware, utensils, paintings, archival photographs, weapons, and shoes. He has recreated the 300 grams of food ration (two pieces of dried bread) given to an inmate if they completed their rota. As of his time spent at the camp, he has also reproduced a cloth neck-harness used for moving heavy stones. There are several pairs of wooden clogs – his and others’ – all with holes used for hiding small pencils, aspirin, and other objects (Kasabova, 2018; Topouzova, 2021).

Peyko Peykov’s home

Peyko Peykov was also imprisoned in forced labor camp Belene and other prisons around the country. Similarly, to Petko Ogoyski, his resilience and rebellion landed him there. He was detained when he was 17 years old and sentenced to fifteen years, as he formed an illegal organization aiming to revive the former Bulgarian Agrarian National Union Nikola Petkov and consequently overthrow communism (Peyko Peykov, personal communication, June 6, 2017). Since the 1990s, Peykov has participated in the local Bulgarian Agrarian National Union party (BZNS hereafter) through meetings, memorial gatherings, installations of plaques and local elections.

When I met Peyko he was 87 years old. We sat in the courtyard of his house, I believe we were not only there because of his age and restricted mobility but also because the house and artifacts were a critical part of his narrative. He pulled out a family album and spoke extensively about his memories from his childhood up to the present day. He read his organization's manifesto and pointed to the photographs hung all around the house's exterior. They further illuminated his story - all was highly organized, with a chronology of dates, spaces, and details. Later, he also invited me inside of his home where I witnessed the living memorial museum.

There were piles of objects, calendars, books, images, flags, paintings, and busts of Nikola Petkov (the leader of BZNS) in each room (see Figure 3). The artifacts were linked to the history of BZNS, the political repressions experienced by its members, and others over the course of the regime. Photographs of Peykov’s friends killed by the state due to their association with BZNS were carefully positioned on the walls. Documents followed by dates linked to his persecution as well as posters of BZNS also covered the interior.

Figure 3. Peyko Peykov’s home, Lovech, Bulgaria, 2017, Photo: Author.

The forms through which history and memory are represented in the case studies remain parted and displaced, as none of them comprises a complete account of the state-led violence. And since memory is merely a “reconstruction of the past achieved with data borrowed from the present” (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 68), these private spaces illustrate the missing narrative of the past within collective memory. They allow for reparation and healing to take place – for their founders, and visitors (Petko Ogoyski, personal communication, December 31, 2019). Although these individual attempts to preserve memory differ from one another, they are equally capable of establishing a connection between the past and present of traumatic memory.

In Belene, the past is presented through the gaze of the church. The space mimics official institutions, and although it functions as evidence of the past, an ongoing, continuous dialogue with the town’s inhabitants is still not present. The local population have undergone thorough denying of traumatic memory in terms of their complex and unresolved relationship with the camp, the land, and the residents who were employed as guards at the camp (Koleva, 2020). The tower of Petko Ogoyski hosts a selection of objects – a powerful expression of human agency. They are repositories of memory and a resistance to forgetting, narrating the lived experience inside a Bulgarian forced labor camp (Rydén, 2018). Ogoyski’s urge to preserve traumatic memory “not as a witness, but with the duty of a survivor” manifests through the museum (Ogoyski, 2015, p. 8). The artifacts perform a healing role for him, whilst they serve as a way for coming to terms with the past and remembering through forgetting (Assman, 2012). Unlike the vernacular museums in Chepintsi and Belene, Peykov’s house was never meant to be seen as a museum and therefore has never opened its doors to visitors. The accumulation of artifacts dedicated to BZNS has gradually taken over Peykov’s home and reflects his life, ethics, and struggles, and has begun to resemble a memorial museum. The space replicated flawlessly the way traumatic memory manifests – fractured, fragmented and dispersed (Huntjens et al., 2013; Van der Kolk, 2015).

The dearth of official sites of remembrance has been a significant reason for the formation of these sites, alongside the personal and collective urgency to not forget, heal and reconcile with the past. These spaces continue the important processes of repair – within society, the state, and the individual. They are of importance to their owners as they validate their experiences, they assure the relatives of survivors that memory will be preserved and contribute to the passing of memory to generations who may not have access to this history. They contribute to the ongoing (but flawed) practices of transitional justice, which previously included the Bulgarian truth commission, rehabilitation, and the slow changes in the history curriculum (Torpey, 2017). The memory work is performed through the use of archival photographs, memoirs, historical literature, drawings and models of the camp, belongings of victims, reconstructions of objects, sketches of political prisoners, and tours through the artifacts and stories. The three sites could be regarded as memorial museums as they not only depict historical events, but also persecution, resistance and violence. They maintain a relationship with former inmates and families of victims while they too instigate participation through contributions to their collections, facilitate public-facing events and have an educational standpoint (Williams, 2007).

Another question which remains is one of access, as these vernacular museums are in remote villages or towns, and they are not actively publicized. Visiting them requires a pre-arranged meeting which in my experience happened through an existing network of locals and historians. These vernacular memorial museums are accessed mainly by individuals related to victims of political violence, or others interested in the field of history. Only the coordinates of Petko Ogoyski’s Tower are discoverable on Google Maps, and while the space is listed as a museum, however, there are no contact details. The memorial museum located at the grounds of The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is visited annually by history teachers, students, foreign and local tourists as it is near the site of the former camp. The organization maintaining it partners and co-organizes events with the NGO Sofia Platform – a Bulgarian foundation working with schools (Mihail Marinov, personal communication, December 27, 2019).

Commemoration on Facebook

Alongside the vernacular spaces of remembrance located near a church and in private houses, there are also other unofficial assemblies dealing with traumatic memory. They, however, occupy the digital realm. For decades now around the world there have been numerous web-memorials addressing global, national, recent, or distant atrocities – some are run by official institutions, whilst others have been established by individuals. Following a Western-inspired model for constructing vernacular history, these online memorials usually include testimonies in audio, visual, and text-based forms (Zucker & Simon, 2020). In the same manner that websites are used to house memorials, Facebook profiles have also begun to resemble digital memorial sites. These web spaces offer different public spaces, untranslatable into physical memorials and museums. Together with diverse forms of interactivity, the digital memorial spaces invite others to contribute through participation, thus developing a narrative led by multiple perspectives. These web memorials empower personal voices, whilst creating a unique community through the collective sharing of posts and media, which are reminiscent of the tributes usually occurring at the physical sites of memorials (Hess, 2007, p. 2).

Unlike physical sites of memory, the attendance online extends further in terms of audience and longevity. The digital memorial spaces are capable of attracting various audiences while physical sites are visited mainly by individuals who are aware of them or are linked to the history of political violence. It could be suggested that the Internet enables a possibility for the transmission of traumatic memory to new audiences.

Petar Boyadjiev

On his Facebook profile Petar Boyadjiev,² a former political prisoner shares his recollections of state-led violence through text-based posts, photographs and documents, and links to interviews, films and articles, alongside traumatic reminiscences of others. In 1968, Boyadjiev was imprisoned in Sofia Central Prison for writing and distributing political appeals across the capital. He and his peers pleaded for freedom of speech and travel, acknowledgement of the victims of Stalin’s purges, the democratization of the regime, and equal human rights. For this, Boyadjiev spent 12 years in prison, but later with the help of his friend, Foscolo, managed to flee to France. During the 1980s the two of them, alongside other political emigrants, established the foundation “Dialogue” to voice their and others’ trauma in Western media (Gorcheva & Skotchev, 2019). In one Facebook post, Boyadjiev has published the writing of Dimitar Georgiev Penchev, who describes his imprisonment in 1985. He recalls being kidnaped by the militia, then imprisoned in Stara Zagora prison, and later digging an escape tunnel whilst witnessing the deaths of fellow inmates. He also writes of the gulag camp Bobov Dol, and his successful escape to France. In the comments, a user has written that such narratives should be studied in school. Another has added that “this should be remembered and recounted to the youth notwithstanding whether they want or not to believe in such brutal truths” (Boyadjiev, 2019).

Atanas Popov

Atanas Popov³ was sent to a forced labor camp near Luti Dol in 1959, as he was considered a political enemy to the state. On his Facebook profile, he regularly shares image and text-based autobiographical recollections of the state-led violence he experienced. In one post, he recalls:

Today, on the 19th of November 1962, I left the communist hell after almost four years of unbearable suffering and pain. I spent one year at the forced labour camp in Luti Dol, near Vratsa which followed Stalin’s model of the gulag camps for the children and grandchildren of the “enemies of the people.” (Popov, 2019)

The post has been shared 262 times and 312 users have commented. Many of the comments include admiration of his courage and commemoration of his suffering, while some share a hope for future remembrance and describe the emotional state in which the text has left them. One user has written:

I was also sent to a camp between 1962 and 1964 in Zlatograd, in the mine Giuduirska for 18 months! I saw, felt and lived the complete absurdity of socialism when I was only 18 years old, and ever since I am repelled forever by this absolutely backwards system! (Popov, 2019)

Another user has posted a video in the comments including a photograph of two of his relatives and has written that both individuals were regarded as enemies of the state.

The fragmented histories on the two profiles are contributing to the maintenance of collective memory, as they bring the trauma and violence of the communist regime to a shared horizon of contemporaneity, thus tying the past with the present (Barash, 2016). In the comment sections, the users have started to recognize a shared collective trauma, often unvoiced and have begun to construct a space of digital remembrance and healing. Even though some of the individuals do not have first-hand accounts of the political violence of communism – nor do they possess the traumatic experiences – they still convey the memory and are witnesses by adoption.

Boyadjiev’s profile focuses on commemorating other people’s suffering through texts, photographs and films; thus, developing a space for “fermentation” of collective memory. Previously, he has formed a shared space for activism, one which allows the silenced victims to narrate their trauma on the platform “Dialogue” and in his blogs, and now he has transformed his profile to such a space. Since Boyadjiev has had the opportunity and outlets to speak of his traumatic memory ever since the 1980s, perhaps there is not an immediate need to share his own experiences, as he has managed to go through a form of healing through talking and writing (Hussain, 2010). By contrast, Popov shares his recollections of the political violence through family and personal photos, and extensive written accounts. It also creates a discourse between survivors, witnesses and individuals. The dialogue which takes place in Popov’s posts adopts the role of a therapeutic tool for healing, reconciliation, and understanding, while it is also a way of collective processing of trauma. The way in which the users deal with Popov’s and their own trauma in the digital realm is reminiscent of what usually takes place within a support group – as there are listeners and stages of the reconstruction of a narrative and the recovery of the individuals (Menyhert, 2017). These posts turn the users into witnesses, addressees, and observers – their digital presence is not a passive act, as they become guardians and transporters of memory (Skotchev, 2019). The traumatic memories are “legitimized” by others, whilst mutual recognition and reparation emerge in the comments.

I suggest that these Facebook profiles not only perform memory work, but also carry notions and characteristics of vernacular memorial museums, as they preserve memory, provoke understanding of history, emotional affection, and empathy, whilst permitting reparation and healing, and acknowledgement of the victims of violence (Sodaro, 2018). They include archival and contemporary photographs, first-person narratives, videos, scans of documents from the State Security archives, and objects linked to state-led violence and repressions. Unlike digital memorial archives and websites, the Facebook spaces permit an ongoing dynamic discourse, whilst reaching diverse audiences. The two profiles discussed have appropriated the ability to construct a bridge between strangers and have created a community that shares “inherited memory, prosthetic memory, received memory and postmemory” (Hirsch, 2012, p. 105). The unsuccessful attempts at reparation politics have led to the absence of public, state-led discussions and sites where descendants of victims can grieve, heal and reflect on the past; these online spaces have emerged as a consequence. The individuals contributing to the conversations in the comments section are “the generation after,” the children of survivors who have inherited the trauma of their relatives – through narratives and silences. The descendants have been affected by the trauma, as its effects are continuing long after the closure of camps and political prisons. Thus, the act of transmitting knowledge, sharing materials and accounts is a necessity to repair.

Even though these online memorial museums can reach a larger audience, permit easier and global access, several issues need to be mentioned with regards to Facebook. It is highly concerning that all content uploaded grants Facebook a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license” (Facebook, 2022). The narratives shared are managed by Facebook algorithms, determining their visibility. As Facebook is a social media website and not a platform specifically designed for the collection of memories, the posts get easily lost and are not as user-friendly as custom web platforms used as memorial museums. Whilst the visibility which Facebook offers could play an important role in terms of raising awareness for the political past, simultaneously there could be a political backlash against them. The individuals sharing their traumatic memory on Facebook are vulnerable, and by exposing themselves in the digital realm, they could become victims of online attacks, whilst their memories could be “downloaded,” appropriated, reused, and misrepresented (Cowan & Rault, 2018). In addition, only a little more than half of the population of Bulgaria has a Facebook profile (Napoleon Cat, 2020; Statista, 2021), therefore these digital vernacular memorials are not available to all, and unlike physical memorial museums, they require a mobile or computer device, Internet, a Facebook profile and the knowledge of this technology.

On Facebook, multimedia co-exists, profiles are continually updated and there is a fixation on sharing regularly. Therefore, these spaces challenge the linear production of history, alongside the production of public memory (Garde-Hansen et al., 2009). While they open a unique non-hierarchical participatory space that can’t be facilitated by any memorial museum, memory is often reduced, condensed, and compressed. The start of my research offers such an example. As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, in only a few hundred characters I described my interest in complex historical events and their aftermath spanning a 45-year period. This downsizing of history worked in my favor – I connected with dozens of individuals whom I later interviewed, and some of whose experiences are considered in this article. While I didn’t intend to produce a historical narrative but rather to write a call for help, in cases when recollections are shared the precise number of characters used affects traumatic memory and its representation.

Alongside the delicacy of the word count used to narrate political violence, it is important to note that users can edit, delete, or archive a Facebook post, which illuminates the temporality and fragility of digital memory. Outside of the actions of a Facebook user, the platform itself is fragile and perilous. It may seem more possible to preserve the pieces of dried bread in Ogoyski’s collection for decades than the Facebook posts of Popov. Online memory is fleeting and ephemeral, it depends on the way the medium, hardware, software and the company itself evolves. The existence of social media is threatened by the failure of corporations and data storage systems (Savin-Baden & Mason-Robbie, 2021). Unlike objects which disintegrate, turn into ruins and could leave a trace, there won’t be any physical remains of Facebook; however, users can download their data and store it elsewhere.

It is worth regarding the physical and digital vernacular memorial museums presented in this article in the wider context of memorial spaces worldwide such as the Museum of Genocide Victims, Vilnius (state-led), the Museum of Communism, Prague (private), the District Six Museum, Cape Town (community-led), or the Armenian Genocide Museum (virtual, state-led), the Srebrenica Virtual Museum (non-profit) and to consider their differences and resemblances. Established museums such as these often have professional staff, including a board of directors, trustees, curators, heads of exhibitions and educators, administrators, event coordinators, volunteers, and others. In the production of exhibitions, museums work closely with academics, historians, scientists, and other professionals. Museums actively construct public narratives and produce discourses about the past. While they form important spaces for education, they are also supported by funding bodies – the state, university, for-profit company – which influences how and what appears in their exhibitions (Genoways & Ireland, 2003). Vernacular museums on the other hand lack the authority and hierarchy of a funding body or a museum board. The narratives presented in unofficial spaces are shaped through experiences, empathy, struggle, and pleas for remembrance of survivors themselves, or of a community related to the sites of violence. Despite that, they can challenge and contribute to historical narratives and national memory, even though the absence of funding, expertise and recognition makes it difficult for them to have a greater impact, reach and endure influence on a state level (Rassool, 2006). For instance, the spaces run by communities and NGOs such as the District Six Museum or the Srebrenica Virtual Museum could hold a degree of resemblance to the case studies discussed in this paper regarding a non-hierarchical structure of curation, active public involvement and participation in the museums’ collections, and input in the way histories are presented. Vernacular memorial museums are fragile because unlike accredited institutions they depend on the individuals running them, and their financial stability, possibilities, and life duration. Several months after I met Peykov in 2017 and Ogoyski in 2019, they both passed away; thus, the tours of their lives ceased. I have no information of what has happened to Peykov’s collection, and as for Ogoyski’s museum, I was informed that it would be taken care of and preserved by a reliable source. The priests of the church in Belene still open their doors to newcomers and tell the stories of trauma. The digital vernacular memorial museums are currently maintained and regularly updated by their owners, although they all rely on the platform’s endurance.

Conclusion

The urgency to pay reparations in Bulgaria has been put on hold, demonstrating the state’s refusal to examine this violent history and traumatic events (Azoulay, 2019). Similarly, the absence of an official memorial space confirms the absence of initiatives to deal with the past. Thus, vernacular memorial museums have formed – attempting to save memory, to educate, and impact the present.

The five cases (three physical and two digital) are sites of and for remembering, sites where trauma and history overlap and attempt to form memory (Nora, 1989). The vernacular memorial museums in Belene, Chepintsi and Lovech present a scattered and divided image of the past, as they focus on a specific event, organization or individual’s experience and do not cover political violence comprehensively. The artifacts exhibited in the three physical sites are not only proof of the repressions, but their scarcity further demonstrates their pivotal importance in the repair work within the topography of traumatic memory. The digital vernacular memorial museums on Facebook also present a cluster of histories, none of which is complete, but they permit individuals to “visit them” and gain knowledge without leaving their homes. They allow users to participate by sharing personal memories, photographs and documents, and create spaces for discourse and repair.

The failure of transitional justice politics and state-led reparations has resulted in a mnemonic resistance in the form of these vernacular memorial museums, which challenges the official stance towards the production of alternative historical narratives (Olick, 2007). Despite numerous restrictions, limitations and complications, these spaces offer testimony that political violence indeed has occurred and that the need to verbalize is ongoing.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Krasimira Butseva

Krasimira Butseva is an associate lecturer at the Media School, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, at the School of Art and Design, University of Portsmouth and the University for the Creative Arts Farnham. Her scholarly research explores political violence, traumatic memory, commemoration and oblivion in the context of Eastern European communism. Her creative practice posits visual representations of the lived experience of state repression and everyday life during the communist era. Her artistic work has been previously exhibited in London, Brighton, Portsmouth, Ipswich, UK; Sofia, Plovdiv and Lovech, Bulgaria; Cape Town, South Africa; Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany; and Pinyao, China.

Notes

1 The reasons for the imprisonment of political prisoners were usually fabricated by State Security. Petko Ogoyski, alongside all individuals discussed in this paper, were sent to camps or prisons as of their falsified “sentences.”

2 Petar Boyadjiev’s Facebook posts are all public; documentation of the mentioned post can be shared upon request.

3 Atanas Popov’s Facebook posts are public; documentation of the mentioned post can be shared upon request.