SOFIA — It’s hard to miss the giant, 11-meter-tall statue that towers above Plovdiv, standing proud on top of the Bulgarian city’s second-highest hill.
Named Alyosha, a generic diminutive used to refer to Soviet soldiers, the giant figure honors the Red Army soldiers who fought in Bulgaria during World War II. Some sources, including the Russian Foreign Ministry, claim that Alyosha was based on a photo of a real Russian soldier who was fighting in Bulgaria at that time.
With Russia now waging an unprovoked war on Ukraine, Soviet war memorials across Eastern Europe have been attracting renewed attention, with monuments honoring the Red Army recently pulled down in Poland and Latvia.
French artist Mitch Brezunek has found a new and unique way to confront the past: by turning Alyosha into a ghost. The…
