High in the Bulgarian mountains, Buzludzha monument is deteriorating. Commemorating early Bulgarian Marxists, it was designed to emphasize the power and modernity of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Buzludzha is now at the center of a debate over how Bulgaria remembers its past. Some people want to destroy it, some people want to restore it to its former glory, but Bulgarian architect Dora Ivanova has a better idea.Ivanova wants to turn it into a museum, and she founded the Buzludzha Project Foundation to do exactly that. In this episode, Ivanova describes how the city of Berlin inspired her plan for the preservation of Buzludzha, how to preserve the past without glorifying it, and the next steps to making her plan a reality.

Topics Discussed00:00 Intro00:15 Buzludzha's Opening Ceremony01:04 Buzludzha Today01:38 Buzludzha As Propaganda02:00 Dora Ivanova02:20 "The Cathedral of Socialism"02:45 Ian's Buzludzha Visit03:30 Ivanova on Perserving Buzludzha04:22 What To Do With Old Monuments04:59 Ivanova's Museum Proposal06:20 Tower Elevator07:05 Next Steps07:56 Inspiration From The City of Berlin09:22 The Buzludzha Project Foundation09:37 Outro - Join Club Archipelago

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Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 47. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear and the only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.


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[Intro]
In 1981, on top of a mountain in the middle of Bulgaria, high-ranking members of the Bulgarian communist party gathered to celebrate the opening of a new monument.
The monument, called Buzludzha Memorial House, was erected here to commemorate the 90 year anniversary of the first illegal meeting of Bulgarian Marxists. The communist dictator of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, dedicated the monument.
[Audio of Zhivkov’s speech in Bulgarian]
“Let the pathways leading here, never fall into disrepair,” he said.
Of course, it did fall into disrepair. Eight years after opening, Todor Zhivkov was deposed from office by his own party, and soon after the rule of the Bulgarian Communist Party crumbled.
Buzludzha is in an eerie state of decay. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s mostly in the shape of a flying saucer — an enormous round disc of concrete. If a particular alien culture had a fetish for brutalism, this would be their spaceport. Rising out of the back of the saucer is a tower, 230 ft high, and flanked by two red stars. The communist party claimed that the red stars, illuminated at night by spotlights, could be seen from as far away as the Romanian border in the north, and the Greek border to the south.

Dora Ivanova: It was on purpose built like this. It was built to impress. It was built as part of the political propaganda and education as they called it during this time. It’s shape looks like a UFO, actually. This is also on purpose because it had to show how the socialist idea is contemporary, it’s the future.

This is Dora Ivanova.

Dora Ivanova: Hello, my name is Dora Ivanova, and I am the found