Civil Victory Against the Attempt to Appropriate Vasil Levski's House in Sofia – Kiril Georgiev and Ivan Trenev

Civic activists and concerned citizens successfully prevented a secret procedure to transfer the museum house of Vasil Levski in Sofia to a private association with questionable intentions.

The Threat to Cultural and Historical Heritage

The initiative to change the status of Vasil Levski's museum house from public municipal property to private municipal property provoked a strong public reaction. The historic building holds enormous significance, as the Apostle of Freedom hid there many times and established the local revolutionary committee. The mayor of Sofia's Serdika district, who is a representative of the PP-DB political coalition, independently decided to transfer the management of the site. He justified his actions to the public by claiming a lack of budget and qualified personnel for year-round maintenance of the historic shrine.

The intention of the local authorities is to entrust the management of the building to the non-governmental organization "Traveling Community Center Father's Hearth", managed by Ivaylo Shopski. Leading state institutions, including the Regional History Museum, refuse to take responsibility for managing the site. Participants in the discussion express categorical disagreement with the institutions' abdication, emphasizing that the state has billions of leva in its budget but does not allocate funds even for one full-time curator.

The Funding Acquisition Scheme

Changing ownership from state to municipal ownership often serves as an initial step toward subsequent large-scale privatization. Analysts describe an established corruption model in which the state declares that it cannot maintain a property and transfers it to local authorities. The municipality then creates a public-private partnership with a non-governmental organization that gains the right to obtain and manage European funds.

The guests point out that the ultimate goal of such schemes is acquiring the property through adverse possession or through a verification procedure. They give Student Town as an example, where thousands of state properties pass into private hands through identical mechanisms involving university and municipal administrations. There are suspicions that behind the attempt to take over the house are interests of shadowy businessmen planning large-scale construction in the immediate vicinity of the historic building.

Main steps in the described property scheme:

• Declaring inability to manage the property by state authorities.
• Transfer of ownership from state to public municipal ownership.
• Change of status from public municipal to private municipal property.
• Entering into a partnership with a selected NGO to obtain European funds.
• Possible acquisition of the property by private individuals after a short period of time.

The Role of Political Figures and Ivaylo Shopski

Activists reveal cooperation between representatives of different political forces, including GERB, PP-DB and VMRO. The Sofia Municipal Council initially supports the initiative with a large majority, while the mayor of Serdika district offers the property to Shopski without the required public discussions and procedures. The mayor's wife, a former PP-DB member of parliament, causes public dissatisfaction with her attempts to introduce laws for gender change among minors, which the guests describe as part of a harmful neoliberal policy.

The person chosen to manage Levski's house has a documented criminal past. Ivaylo Shopski has a final conviction from 2015 for a violent crime in which he tied a person to a chair, placed a bag over his head and beat him for hours. Before that, in 2014, he worked as an employee at the Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Water in Pernik and participated in a corruption scandal involving marked money used to cover up industrial pollution. Shopski avoided a bribery conviction by becoming a protected witness against his best friend, who was the director of the institution.

Civic Resistance and Pressure on Activists

The organized civic petition gathers thousands of supporters and forces Sofia Municipality to withdraw from its initial intention. After this success, defenders of history face systematic harassment from affected financial interests. Shopski files completely unfounded reports against them with the prosecutor's office and the State Agency for National Security, accusing them of money laundering through their legal foundations used to purchase historical archives.

The pressure also includes attempts at direct censorship in independent television channels. A former head of the Council for Electronic Media calls the television station demanding that the program not be broadcast in order to preserve the reputation of historical figures such as the Obretenovs. For months, Shopski conducts an aggressive campaign on social networks, distributes defamatory materials on the streets of the capital and threatens ordinary citizens with police action. The activists respond with lawsuits for insult and defamation, refusing to submit to repression.

Protection of Bulgarian Identity

The participants in the discussion categorically state that cultural and historical heritage represents the main pillar of national security. They view attempts to destroy monuments as part of a deliberate globalist policy aimed at erasing Bulgarian memory and identity. The guests give examples of the replacement of educational programs by former ministers, the marginalization of key historical figures and the publication of academic articles calling for the banning of Bulgarian folklore.

True patriotism requires active actions and daily struggle to preserve values, not merely self-serving displays of national symbols and tattoos. The defenders of the cause call on Bulgarians to overcome apathy and fear, reminding them of the self-sacrifice of heroes such as Nikola Vaptsarov and Stefan Stambolov. They believe that the united efforts of conscious citizens possess the unstoppable power to prevent criminal attacks and preserve the Bulgarian spirit for future generations.