Bulgaria's Pro-Russia Revival Party Investigated Over Anti-Semitic Image

Coalition partners 'We Continue the Change' and Democratic Bulgaria jointly condemned the pro-Russian Revival party as prosecutors announced they would investigate its use of a Nazi-themed image.

A man waves a Russian flag during a protest in front of the parliament in Sofia, Bulgaria, 6 April 2022. Thousands protested in support of Russia and against sending weapons to Ukraine. Photo; EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV

Bulgarian coalition partners “We Continue the Change” and Democratic Bulgaria on Monday jointly condemned the pro-Russian party Revival for promoting violence, homophobia and “misanthropic propaganda” – with the most recent case being the targeting a politician of Jewish origin, Solomon Passy.

Earlier, acting on an alert from the Shalom association of Jews in Bulgaria, the Prosecution announced that it will investigate Revival for a Nazi-themed image published on the party’s official Telegram channel.

The image is of the face of Solomon Passy, former MP and founder of the Atlantic Club of Bulgaria, pasted on the figure of a prisoner in concentration camp garb being taken away by Nazi soldiers, presumably to be gassed.

The words underneath read: “If you don’t want gas from Russia, come to us and we’ll let you breathe some gas”.

Passy has been critical of pro-Kremlin propaganda in Bulgaria and of Revival.

The reformist duo, in power since June in coalition with their major onetime opponents from GERB and United Democratic Forces, also called out the country’s pro-Russian President Rumen Radev for never addressing Revival’s controversial antics.

“The fact that the President has never commented on Revival’s action, despite his frequent comments on the political situation in Bulgaria, is puzzling. Why? The full force of the law should be used to protect the right of every Bulgarian citizen to life, dignity and personal rights, as dictated by the constitution and the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

On Friday, Radev’s pro-Russia leanings became even more apparent after he claimed that “Ukraine insists on keeping this war going on, and it’s Europe that pays the price”. He has vehemently opposed plans for further military aid to Ukraine.

Another protest calling for the impeachment of President Radev will take place in Sofia on Wednesday. Several such demonstrations took place after in August last year a Radev-appointed interim government tried to overturn reforms introduced by “We Continue the Change” leader and 2021-2022 PM Kiril Petkov.

Revival (Vazrazhdane) was established in 2014 but gained prominence recently when it infiltrated the 2020-2021 protest wave against the long-time governance of GERB and ex-PM Boyko Borissov, and then took a radical anti-vaccination position. With much of Bulgaria’s far-right in decline by 2020, the party took up the torch and is now the country’s major ultra-nationalist party.

In the April 2 general elections, the fifth in a two-year election cycle, Revival scored its best result yet, winning 14.6 per cent of the votes after promising a referendum on the adoption of the euro as the currency.

In recent months, the party was associated with protest actions against what they see as meddling by the EU, the US and the West.

In June, followers of Revival boycotted screenings of Belgian drama Close in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna describing the movie as promoting paedophilia and drew the Star of David on the door of a beer bar in Sofia which had refused to serve people close to the party.

In May, Revival was associated with the defacing of the building of Sofia’s House of Europe after a “peace march”.

Late last year, the party proposed a draft law under which critical journalists and activists would be sanctioned as foreign agents.