Bulgaria's Supreme Court: Hands Off Sofia Soviet Army Monument

A protester against the Soviet Army monument in downtown Sofia holds a poster comparing communism and Nazism. In November 2010, those demanding the monument's removal staged a rally under the slogan "The [Berlin] Wall fell, the Monument is still here." P

Sofia's controversial Soviet Army Monument cannot be dismantled, Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court has ruled.

The Court's ruling came Tuesday night as it considered the plea by popular Bulgarian journalist Ivo Indzhev against Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova.

Indzhev has spearheaded a campaign to remove the largest monument in the very downtown of the Bulgarian capital, whose critics view it as a symbol of Bulgaria's occupation by the Soviet Union's Red Army in 1944.

In his suit, the journalist and four other Bulgarians insisted that the Soviet Army Monument be dismantled. However, the Supreme Court has upheld a decision of a lower instance that the memorial cannot be removed from its current spot.

The judges have declared that the removal of the monument is impossible because it is a memorial object according to the Bulgarian Territorial Organization Act.

This means that the monument could be dismantled only with the respective agreement of its authors that has no way of being obtained.

The Sofia Soviet Army Monument made global headlines after in June 2011 a group of anonymous street artists – which in September revealed it was called "Creative Destruction" – painted the bronze figures of the Soviet soldiers to look like Western/US popular culture characters.

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