Bulgaria MPs Vote Communism out of High School History Textbooks

The monument of the Soviet Army is still the most impressive and largest monument in downtown Sofia.

Bulgarian Members of Parliament voted Thursday against the proposed changes of the Public Education Act suggesting a greater emphasis on communist regimes and their crimes.

The amendments had been sponsored by two MPs from the right-wing Blue Coalition, which is a descendant of Bulgaria’s anti-communist party from the 1990s, the Union of Democratic Forces.

MPs Lachezar Toshev and Martin Dimitrov (who is a Co-Chair of the Blue Coalition and a Chair of the UDF) proposed changes aimed at changing the content of the high school textbooks “in order to inform the young people about the crimes of the communist regimes in Bulgaria and around the world.”

The ruling GERB party, which has the largest group with 116 MPs out of 240, and whose government is enjoying the parliamentary support of the Blue Coalition, did not support the proposed legislative amendments saying that such changes must be first a matter of a wide public debate.

The same goes for the other change proposed by the Blue Coalition MPs – the introduction of obligatory religion courses in the high school curriculum.

The amendments to the Public Education Act in question were rejected at first reading, which means that the MPs are going to vote on them again after reconsidering them.

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