Bulgaria: A desperate suicide sparks a mass movement

Bulgaria has awakened, said Stella Stoyanova in Standart (Bulgaria). Last month’s passionate protests against rising electricity prices, corruption, and unemployment that triggered the resignation of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov were only the beginning. The same day the government fell, photographer Plamen Goranov, 36, set himself on fire in the city center of Varna, in order to draw attention to the corruption of the city’s mayor. His sacrifice touched off more protests, and his death last week from the burn wounds has galvanized people across the country. “Behind the choice of such a spectacular death there is more than just the hopelessness and despair which characterizes the lives of many Bulgarians.” Self-immolation is a challenge to the entire society, a way of showing “that our life is not just unbearable, but has become an incurable wound that must be amputated.”

“Some are already talking of a Bulgarian Spring,” said Zdravka Andreeva in Die Tageszeitung (Germany). We all know how the self-immolation of anti-communist crusader Jan Palach in 1969 rallied Czechoslovakian resistance to the Warsaw Pact occupiers after the Prague Spring. Goranov’s death is having a similar effect. Protesters want “a total overhaul of the system,” including an end to corruption and a flowering of the democratic rule that the people expected, but never got, when communism fell in 1989. They’re calling for a new constitution, the dismantling of utility monopolies, and an abolition of a voting system that favors parties rather than the people. They want nothing less than the rebirth of Bulgaria.

We should be wary of this call for total revolution, said Krasina Kristeva in Trud (Bulgaria). Protest leaders say they want to “sweep away old faces.” But Bulgarians have often shown themselves “all too willing to dump their elected lawmakers” and follow the next great hope. We did it in 2001, when we elected former Czar Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, believing he could restore our greatness. Then in 2009 we swooned for Borisov, a former bodyguard who, we thought, would take a tough-guy stand against corruption. Both men led new parties full of inexperienced lawmakers, who generally turn out to be “easy prey to the very oligarchs and monopolies they want to fight.” In the end, the same corrupt interests prevailed.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Bulgarians could sorely use Europe’s help, said Yavor Siderov in The Guardian (U.K.). Instead, the European Union is showing the country “the cold shoulder.” It was the European Central Bank, remember, that made Borisov impose a strict austerity regime, which “choked the economy, fed unemployment,” and caused a “catastrophic drop in living standards.” Don’t worry, Bulgarians were assured, the EU will reward you for having one of Europe’s lowest debt-to-GDP ratios. Instead, last week, top EU officials announced that Bulgarians would not be allowed to join the visa-free travel zone, remaining “second-class citizens.” Germans and Britons apparently fear an influx of poor Bulgarians. But Bulgarians don’t want to emigrate—they want to improve their country. Rather than snubbing them, the EU should “rediscover the value of pan-European solidarity.”