The Bulgarian Left political party has denounced the decision of the center-right government to declare February 1 to remember the victims of the communist regime (1944-1989).

The "Bulgarian Left", formed in 2009 by members of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the direct descendant of the former Bulgarian Communist Party, who saw the mainstream Socialists as not being leftist enough, issued a statement of protest against the new remembrance day.

Last week Borisov Cabinet said that February 1, 1945, was the first day of executions of senior Bulgarian politicians, including the regents, by the so called People's Court formed by the Fatherland Front, an umbrella group of leftist parties which committed a pro-Soviet coup on September 9, 1944, as the Soviet Army was advancing into Bulgaria. By 1947, the Bulgarian Communist Party had fully taken control by the Fatherland Front from within.

The People's Court was supposed to try those responsible for Bulgaria's alliance with Nazi Germany in World War II but its verdicts were also directed against the Bulgarian bourgeois elite at the time.

The decision was made in response to the initiative of Bulgaria's former two Presidents – Zhelyu Zhelev (1990-1997), Bulgaria's first democratically elected president, and Petar Stoyanov (1997-2002), who was Zhelev's successor. Zhelev and Stoyanov sent a letter to the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov requesting that the government should take into account their initiative.

Both Zhelev and Stoyanov came from the ranks of the UDF – Union of Democratic Forces – the emblematic rightist and pro-Western party in Bulgaria in the 1990s, which split up in 2003, and its current successors are the parties from the Blue Coalition – UDF and DSB

The Bulgarian Left, however, has declared the decision of the government to be outrageous.

"On February 1, 1945, some of the death sentences issued by the People's Court were executed. This decision is an anti-historical revision of the achievements of the Anti-Hitlerist Coalition which exonerates the blame from the criminal fascist policies and desecrates the honor and sacrifice of the millions of anti-fascists around the world. This decision is a disgrace for its authors and instigators," says the marginal far-left Bulgarian party.

It reminds that the "People's Court was an international commitment of the Bulgarian state before the USA, USSR, and Great Britain" and was set up by a number of political formations at the time, including the Bulgarian Workers Party (later renamed Bulgarian Communist Party) and was controlled by the Allied Control Commission in Bulgaria after World War II.

"Anti-communism is a malicious tumor. It does not resolve any problems but creates conflicts in the nation. The Bulgarian people need holy dates that unite rather than divide them. The Bulgarian rulers do not have the right to question Bulgaria's principled affiliation with the European and global anti-fascist family and to deny indirectly the Nuremberg Tribunal," says the Bulgarian Left.

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