BREAD AND SALT

recipe for a rain of bread and salt:

2400 g heavy cream

4000 tablespoons melted butter

3000 glasses of lukewarm water

6000 glasses of flour

20000 teaspoons of salt

6000 tablespoons of sugar

2000 teaspoons of yeast

1500 sesame seeds

500 g of gravity

800 g of collision

Mitch Brezounek

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

BURGAS

The monument to the Red Army in Burgas is called Alyosha-ta. It is 18 meters high and older than its “brother” in Plovdiv. It stands on Burgas’ main Troikata square and was built in 1952-1953. Its creators were sculptor Vasil Radoslavov and Aneta Atanasova, who worked in a team with the architect Minko Minkov. The figure is of a soldier, with his left hand pointing to the sky and right hand over his gun.

The inscription on the pedestal is the usual: GLORY TO THE SOVIET ARMY LIBERATOR

On February 25, 2022, the hands of the figures on the pedestal of the monument were painted red with the inscriptions:

PUTIN – ASSASSIN

Russians and Ukrainians together protested against the war in Ukraine in front of the monument.

Controversy

On September 9, 2019, the exhibition entitled “The Liberation of Bulgaria from Nazism by the Red Army” had its opening in Sofia, during which the Russian Ambassador Anatoli Makarov failed to answer the question, “How many victims the Red Army suffered for this ‘liberation’ in Bulgaria?”

The story of the death of 42 Soviet soldiers in Burgas is striking. For 77 years already, the story had been part of the city’s legends, with a couple of different versions. The Russian historian A. Timofeev writes: “Burgas was occupied on September 9, 1944. On September 14, Soviet soldiers discovered storehouses containing alcohol, and the head of the regiment ordered an inspection. However, the medical officer refused to sample the alcohol and left the region. Hundreds of soldiers consumed the spirit and the storehouse was left unsecured until September 17. The military investigator Major Schukler wrote that between September 16 and 19 in the Burgas garrison, 190 people were intoxicated by drinking methyl alcohol. 154 of them sought medical assistance, 120 were hospitalized, 6 became blind, and 42 died. There is no information about the Bulgarian guard who was shot on the spot, most probably to hide an inconvenient fact.”

Today, in Izgrev Park, south of the little church Holy Trinity there is a monument dedicated to them with the inscription:

ETERNAL GLORY TO THE LIBERATORS 1944-1945

HERE ARE BURIED THE SOVIET SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN THE CITY OF BOURGAS

On December 19, 2019, the Russian Council in Burgas began renovating the monument to the 42 soldiers who died from alcohol intoxication, including new marble plaques and two more names added to the list, raising the number to 44. The initiative was presented as an idea of the Committee of the Successors of the Soviet Soldiers, and the funding was secured by Russian Oil Company Lukoil. All the existing legal procedures, which are long and conservative, were expedited.

Author of the historical text: Evelina Kelbecheva