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Comment by _hao | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if you're willfully ignorant or actively spreading misinformation, but the USSR seized Bulgaria's gold reserves after the war and the following coup. They also seized the national archives, which are still not returned to this day. Everything you tout as being "given" by USSR was paid with Bulgaria's own funds!

I really don't understand (French) communists (if you are in fact French, assuming from your bio) such as yourself spouting nonsense. You have all the information and experience of people who have lived under such a regime or in the fallout of one, and yet you keep talking bullshit. You have no idea what it was like to live under such a regime. This left-wing wave that's festering in the Western world should've never been allowed to happen. If people such as yourself actually paid attention to what really happened to every country in the East, all of us in Europe would've been in a much better state nowadays...

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>> I don't know if you're willfully ignorant or actively spreading misinformation

In 1960, the banks of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy demanded early repayment of loans, a whopping $135 million. Thus, they provoked an economic crisis in Bulgaria. Over time, it had ballooned to an astronomical sum. If nothing else, Bulgaria had to pay off the enormous interest that had accumulated on those loans. The Soviet Union came to the aid - they bought (and at the London Stock Exchange rate) Bulgaria's gold reserves.

In accordance with a written request from the chairman of the People's Bank of the BNR, the USSR State Bank paid off Western loans by purchasing 22 tons of Bulgarian gold and 50 tons of silver. The payment of these assets was made in a convertible currency at the market rate. Moreover, Moscow undertook to support the Bulgarian economy by subsidizing it with the supply of petroleum products at prices significantly below market prices.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100408235132/http://www.blitz....

There are a few more points to add to what has been said above:

After the end of World War II, in accordance with the agreements signed at the 1947 Paris Peace Conference, Bulgaria - as an ally of Nazi Germany - was required to pay reparations totaling $70 million over an eight-year period. However, this is mere pocket change compared to the billion dollars that Greece, actively egged on by the British, wanted to squeeze out of Sofia! And it would have succeeded - had the USSR not intervened to stand up for its “brothers.”

Citing blitz.bg... That's like citing a soiled piece of toilet paper found in a public bathroom.

We can all cherry pick "facts", but history requires context. Your replies are all in bad faith. I'm done with this "discussion". To future readers - beware! This is how actual misinformation and disinformation works.

Mate, I can provide you with sources, but it would require you to dig deeper, to question what you’ve been taught, as it will reveal that our entire civilization is built on lies.

But it would truly require you to actually dig, look for real facts, ask critical questions, and realize that humanity - especially our Western civilization - has always sought to rewrite history.

I assume you’re targeting western audiences with all this BS, because you sound really out of depth to anyone from the Balkans/EE.

Instead of vague generalizations, is there anything concrete? Which period in Bulgarian history did you find irrelevant? The collaboration with the Nazis or the post-war reconstruction of Bulgaria with the help of the Soviet Union?

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