Grigor Doytchinov
A break of grave consequence in the continuity of the core’s formation follows
WW II and the force of the Soviet type of ideological paradigm upon the country.
The centralistic principle causes in the beginning a mighty impetus but also a
rigorous restructure. The political system brings the influence of the state in
a dominating position and the possibility of expropriation of real estates for
the benefit of urban re-ordering are reaching scales, not known before. The
pretension of the communist ideology for exclusiveness and the refusal of the
historic background leave for long the traces of this one-dimensional way of
acting. The technocratic top-down planning, characteristic for the Bulgarian
urbanism receives ideological and political tailwind and wipes out the attempts
for a public participation, arising vague in the course of the discussion on the
Mussman’s plan, 1938.
The implementation of the Soviet type of urbanism and the style of the
“socialist realism” does not start immediately after the war. Although in 1944
a watershed is set in the public life, there is an interim phase reflecting on
the step-by-step political changes until 1948.^4 Numerous pre-war projects
are finished and the architectural offices are functioning in the transitional
period as before. Although the ideas of the socialist realism start sprawling, the
projects realised and the contributions to the competitions of that period show
a clear genetic link to the pre-war modernism and neo-classicistic approach,
they are more related to the pre-war German architecture than to the Soviet
one. The process of the total public subjection to the communist party is
finished in general in 1948-1949 and with it the rising role of the soviet model
of public life and urbanism.^5
The critical state of the city in the years after WW II and the call for urban
interventions isn’t provoked just by the rapid changes in the country’s social
and political system. The growing pressure of migration arising due to large-
scale collectivization in the farming industry and the onset of industrialization
in the city are also factors that considerably complicate the efforts to control
the urban space. A factor of decisive importance for the reorganising of the
urban core is the destruction of a substantial amount of approximately 12.000
residential buildings by bombing in WW II. The bombardment destroys mainly
the urban core and opens the door for a rigorous re-structuring. The unlucky
constellation of war-resulting space potential and political megalomania makes
possible to realise a totally new concept in the urban core, regardless of historic
urban patterns and private ownerships.
In order to get to grips with the post-war situation, the authorities begin initial
planning efforts. A national town planning competition is carried out already
in the end of 1944 to mobilise the potential of the architects for solving the
city’s problems.^6 The contributions express the spirit of pluralism still existing
at this time: The ideas reach from contributions continuously developing the
concept of Mussman’s plan from 1938 till projects in the spirit of Le Corbusie’s
Ville Radieuse. The idea of the extension of the monumental centre westwards