In the wee hours one night before Christmas, massive bronze human figures were loaded onto a truck and driven to an unspecified location. To the morbidly minded, this scene was like a flashback to the dispatching of victims extrajudicially killed in Europe’s dark interwar decades. Yet, it also conjured up the heists of state property in the post–Cold War era of mass privatizations. In fact, this was just the inglorious exit of the main sculpture group from what was once one of Europe’s most imposing Soviet war memorials.

Towering over a downtown park not far from Parliament, Sofia’s Soviet Army Monument became a focus of Bulgaria’s contested Communist heritage as Bulgaria, like most ex–Eastern Bloc states, paved a Western-oriented path after 1989. Slated for demolition already in 1993, today it faces the same fate as so many other symbols of the Communist era across Eastern Europe.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fueled a new wave of historical score-settling. In August 2022, Latvian authorities spectacularly demolished the Soviet Army Monument in capital Riga, soon followed by a string of others. Neighboring Lithuania and Estonia have done similarly. Poland has continued its staunch “decommunization” agenda. The Bulgarian case differs in some respects, compared to such virulent efforts. Yet recent events lay bare the dynamics behind the entrenchment of a new, ultimately dysfunctional right-wing agenda in much of Central and Eastern Europe.