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TIRANA, Albania — When the Rev. Shtjefen Kurti, a 73-year-old Catholic priest, was executed in 1971 for performing a baptism, the Communist authorities didn’t bother to inform his family. Only when his brother tried to take food to him in prison did he learn the priest’s fate.
“Don’t come back,” a guard told the brother. “He won’t be needing it anymore.” Continue reading “As Albania Reckons With Its Communist Past, Critics Say It’s Too Late”
Chalga music, a blend of Turkish rhythms, Balkan folk, and Europop, has become a polarizing force in the Bulgarian town of Dimitrovgrad, where many residents long for their socialist past
Bulgaria commemorates a murdered dissident — and takes a symbolic step toward reckoning with its communist past.
By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
SOFIA — His enthronement as patriarch of Bulgaria, spiritual leader of millions of Orthodox believers here, was supposed to stir pride and moral togetherness in an impoverished country confronting a vacuum in political leadership and widespread economic pain.
Instead, the installation of His Holiness Neofit last month, in a ceremony replete with byzantine splendor, served as one more reminder that Bulgaria had never really thrown off the inheritance of 40 years of rigid Communist rule and all the duplicitous dealings that went with it. Continue reading “Bulgaria’s Unholy Alliances”
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