Bulgaria’s abandoned monument to communism looks like a decaying spaceship | Hacker News Reader

Bulgaria’s abandoned monument to communism looks like a decaying spaceship

dangerousminds.net

68 pointsgivan35 comments

This is pretty neat and all, but seems more appropriate for a site like Reddit. Is there a discussion behind the scenes here that would make it HN worthy?

The history of the place is quite interesting. It was the location where one of the numerous Bulgarian uprisings against the Ottoman empire was crushed. The people leading it were quite similar to Che Guevara of the 1860's.

For educated Americans it is usually quite shocking to learn that this is one of the few places in the world that celebrate the fight against non-Western Imperialism by people who in America would be told to check their white privilege.

Some links for historical context, the place and people involved:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Legion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadji_Dimitar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Karadzha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzludzha

To further agree with your comment, privilege is not an scalar or even a multidimensional vector[1], but a vector field. That is, it is multidimensional and depends on your current position. One should always check their privilege as it is a serious form of cognitive bias.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

Can you elaborate? The above sentence is difficult to parse, and I don't quite understand what is shocking about a Bulgarian uprising 150 years ago.

It's posted on Reddit every week, especially to subs like /r/abandonedporn. It was a matter of time before it found its way to HN.

I don't want it here.

That's fine, and I was disappointed by the article too. But 54 people (and counting) have clicked the "Yes! This!" button. That's the button that decides what goes to the front page, not individual users' salty feelings about the quality of the content.

If you don't like that arrangement, then the implication is that you dislike the basic idea behind how Hacker News works. If you're OK with it, well, that means you should be OK with the possibility that other people might like things that you don't, and that will result in content you're not interested in at points where your tastes differ from those of the crowd.

Thats because we don't have a 'NO!' button.

Yeah it's quite spooky. When I was there in 2012 the doors were welded shut. It's been abandoned and falling into ruin.

Video of there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZmVanaIkRc Motorbiking video driving up to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OIwMKKkwiA

I saw it from the Shipka pass[1] a few years ago, but I had no idea what it was.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipka_Pass

You can hear the pronunciation http://www.seslisozluk.net/?word=Buzluca&lang=tr-en

One day, we'll fly again. Into the Iron Sky!

That was a fun movie. Sarah Palin vs. the Moon Nazis.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/?ref_=nv_sr_1

There is just something about old Soviet-era architecture and infrastructure that I really love. It always looks so surreal and other-wordly to me (an American).

Better photos:

https://www.google.bg/search?q=%D0%B1%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%BB%D1%8...

Reminded me of Taiwan's (now destroyed) Pod village http://www.myseveralworlds.com/2008/05/22/photo-journal-the-...

Look at this. This was the best space shuttle humanity ever produced. Look at it now - http://goo.gl/19OyGc (video at around 21:02).

The original blog post with more pics: http://romainveillon.com/2014/04/buzludzha/

That round amphitheater-like shape seems somewhat impractical. I can't really figure out what you could use it for (beside Party meetings).

It is located in Buzluca, which in Turkish language means Icy-land. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzludzha The Buzluca is part of the Balkan Mountains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_Mountains), which in Turkish means "a chain of wooded mountains". Very interesting such anti-Turkish organization's home (the Bulgarian communist party) is mentioned always with Turkish names.

Edit: The name Balkan peninsula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkans comes from the Balkan Mountains.

Why are any of those things interesting?

Bulgaria was a Turkish colony until 1908 with decolonization not finished until the end of the First Balkan war in 1913 when all Turkish territory populated by a majority of ethnic Bulgarians was absorbed into Bulgaria.

What you don't mention is that this place was the last stand of one of the earlier Bulgarian revolts against the Ottomans in 1868.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzludzha

Yes, you are right about that. But let's not mention also that Bulgaria was established by Turkics.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages#Vocabulary_co...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgars

In 681.

By that logic France was established by Germans, more so since the Carolingian Empire didn't even exist for another century after the creation of the first Bulgarian Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bulgarian_Empire

But communists were happy with the story of 681 until someone finds out, by accident, the remaining of the first Bulgarian rulers, or something like that, and it shows that the Bulgars are not Slavs, for sure, and they try to shut up the historians. Then those communists, instead to narrate the correct history (Slavs were migrating to these lands, in some period foreigners come there called Bulgars etc) they kept it like it was they thought, "Bulgars were Slavs and they established out country etc". Even, today the history of Bulgaria starts with 681, in the schools. They have to correct it, but they are offended thus they don't mention in the history books that Bulgars are Turkics, thus they don't change it. It is like in the Star Wars movie where you find out your enemy is your father.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, have you thought about not believing everything the Turkish nationalist news papers print about ethnicity they don't like? You might have a hard time fitting into polite company when you start denying the various genocides modern Turkey and the Ottoman Empire were a part of. At any rate here is a google translate of the Bulgarian page on the origins Bulgars:

"The origin of the Bulgars is a problem still encourage discussion. In its linguistic affiliation Bulgars are counted preobladavashtiya number of modern scholars to Turk-Altaic peoples. It is assumed that the Proto-Bulgarian ethnos was formed in Central Asia (East Kazakhstan ) between the Caspian Sea and mountain Imeon (Pamir, Hindu Kush and Tian Shan). Other possible areas are Altai, or West Siberia , Tarim basin , western Mongolia, southern Siberia and upper reaches of the Irtysh. From the late 16th century were offered various hypotheses, some of which attract with their whimsicality and stubbornness in defending them. Most authorities reject the concepts of aboriginal (or Thracian) in Slavonic, for Tatar and Finno-Ugric origin of the Bulgars . Popular, but also challenged and Hun are ogurskite options Turanian hypothesis. Some scientific papers and amateur research in recent years revived another hypothesis according to which the proto-Huns were mixed Iranian population."

https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B8%D0%B7...

Denomination remnants of the Ottoman empire, nothing surprising at all about that.

This post was killed by user flags.

Dangerousminds.net is one of the best pop culture blogs out there. I read it frequently. But not many of its posts are good fits for HN, and this one was lightweight even by their standards.

There's similar but still operational (as a shelter and meteorological observatory) building on Sniezka mountain on the polish-czech border. http://fotozikarto.blog.onet.pl/wp-content/blogs.dir/637788/...

There's also a spaceship (not decaying) in our old town of Guilford, CT right near the beach:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/garden/13who.html

There is also this spaceship

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/10/jested-tower-hotel-in-c...

best of 60s design ;)

Space - the final frontier. http://old2.offnews.bg/files/uploads/2013/04/25.-House-of-th...

There's a pretty interesting book titled "Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed" (CCCP, get it!?!) that has lots of pictures of similarly-weird soviet-era architecture. Review: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/27/cosmic-communis...

It was built by communism. The sooner it's dust and gone the better.

Regardless what idea built it it's now a part of history and it should be treated like any other monument out there.

I'm quite certain the artists involved didn't care they just wanted to build something beautiful.

...’s abandoned monument to ... looks like a decaying ...

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/...

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