During his visit to Sofia this week, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev paid his respects to those who died for Bulgaria's freedom. On the occasion of Bulgaria’s Independence Day, Medvedev laid a wreath at the in Sofia. Yet the two countries continue to struggle over recent history – the subject of this fact check.
The Russian Ambassador to Bulgaria, Anatoliy Makarov, was asked in February when Russia would return the taken to the Soviet Union after World War II and whether he thought it was normal for Bulgarian history to be held in a foreign country without free access. Makarov replied that the materials are accessible to the Bulgarian archive services and researchers, including for copying. He added that as of April 2018, Russia had returned about 10,000 copies to Bulgaria. But he said that the remaining originals could not be returned to Bulgaria because the Russian Federation had prohibited this by law in 1998.
“As for the originals, a part of them was returned to Bulgaria in 1949 and 1958 during the Soviet Union. Now, however, the originals cannot be handed over in accordance with Federal Law No. 64 of April 15, 1998 ‘On Cultural Valuables Displaced [to the USSR] as a result of World War II and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation.’ But I will repeat again, access to them is open for the Bulgarians,” the Russian ambassador said.
Makarov was fielding questions from the public on the occasion of Russian Diplomats’ Day, celebrated on February 10 and his answers were published in the Facebook column two days later. The questions about the Bulgarian archives seized by the Soviet Army in 1944 were asked many times, indicating a keen interest among the Bulgarian public.
We find what he said to be misleading, though true under the Russian law, yet the archives' availability to researchers is difficult—not only because they are in Moscow but also because of costs Moscow imposes for copyies. Our explanation is below:
In 2009, the Bulgarian government formally asked Moscow to return the seized archives following a decision of the Council of Ministers. The decision says that the archives contain important papers from the period 1934-1944 regarding Bulgaria’s entry into the war on the side of the Axis Powers (Germany, Austria and Italy), the war period and the events leading to the Communist takeover in September 1944. The documents were seized “from different Bulgarian institutions and by different representatives of the Soviet government, or by the Allied Control Commission in connection with the preparation of the Nuremberg process,” according to the . Moscow still considers them as , despite the fact that they were taken from a pro-Soviet puppet government installed by Moscow on September 9, 1944.
During World War II, Bulgaria was an ally of the Germany-led Axis Powers. The Bulgarian government provided material and logistical support to the German troops and administered the German-occupied territories in Greece and Macedonia. Nevertheless, Sofia refused to send Bulgarian soldiers to fight against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front and also stopped, under public pressure, the deportation of the Bulgarian Jewish population. But it did not save the Jewish population of Greece and Macedonia, most of whom perished in Nazi death camps. An armed resistance movement, led by the Bulgarian Communist Party and supported by other leftist organizations, was active throughout the war and sabotaged German operations in the country.
The restitution of cultural property displaced during World War II has been the subject of both legal interpretations and legal disputes. The four victors in that war -- the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union -- had no agreement over the return of artifacts stolen by the Nazis. As a result, each country handled displaced cultural property in the zones they controlled as they saw fit. The United States undertook a cultural property restitution program that continues to this day. Artifacts have been returned to their country of origin with the expectation that they would be handed to their pre-war owners.
According to , “the U.S. Authorities in Germany returned more than half a million displaced cultural treasures and more than a quarter of a million books to the USSR that had been looted by the Nazi invaders.”
But the Soviet Union took a completely different approach, in contradiction to Article 56 of the of 1907, which states: