Probably no Cold War architectural relic is better known to online audiences than Buzludzha, the Bulgarian Communist Party’s long abandoned but awe-inspiring “Monument House,” nestled among the Central Balkan Mountains. Abruptly closed in 1990, what CNN recently called a “spaceship-like . . . rotting shrine to communism” has made the rounds among travel blogs and brutalism enthusiasts for the last decade, attracting thousands of adventurous tourists — and feeding renewed interest in socialist modernist architecture in East and West alike.

If the structure of Buzludzha bears some resemblance to a docked UFO, its architect, Georgi Stoilov, hoped that it would represent Bulgarian socialism’s trajectory from a small circle of committed revolutionaries in the late nineteenth century to the strong and prosperous socialist state of the future. Upon its completion in 1981, it was an impressive monument to one of the most popular ruling parties in the Eastern Bloc. But with the ruling party’s collapse just eight years later, it stood as a painful reminder of the regime’s failure.

Given its isolated location, Buzludzha seemed destined to rot in silence, with only selfie-hungry hikers and a few Communist mourners occasionally paying a visit. Yet the renewed interest in the monument has prompted a number of organizations and art professionals to draw up plans for its preservation. Avowedly apolitical projects propose transforming it into a Bulgarian history museum or a profitable venue for cultural events. Many on both the Left and the Right have criticized these plans, either for commercializing socialist architecture or for legitimizing its allegedly “totalitarian” heritage. Yet what the dispute demonstrates most is the disappearance of the kind of radical ambitions that motivated the project to begin with.