2024 ended and 2025 began with protest waves brewing in Serbia, Greece, Slovakia and Romania – albeit for different reasons in each of them. Bulgaria – a country known for its hardship when it comes to corruption and anti-West narratives – has enough reasons to have its own movement but right now it is staying distant from this tendency.
The mood is partially calmed down by a new coalition of opposing forces, in power since January and pledging to end the country’s remarkably long political logjam. It is also a union which is benefitting society’s desire for some stability after three years of snap elections: GERB, the party of strongman Boyko Borissov and the most dominant force in local politics since 2009, pro-Kremlin Bulgarian Socialist Party, nationalists There’s Such a People, backed by Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (one of the two parties to emerge from the split of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a controversial faction relying on votes from the Turkish community), led by Ahmed Dogan, a notorious figure in local politics, often investigated to have links to organised crime. It entered the parliament virtually without a campaign.
More than three decades of protests
Bulgaria’s efforts for democracy have always been marked by protest waves, turning citizens’ rage into a litmus test for society’s willingness to push for reforms and new approaches.
In April 1989, five months before Bulgaria’s Communist system fell apart, ecological protests erupted in the Danube town of Ruse and were led by concerned mothers who stood against chlorine pollution, allegedly coming from an industrial chemical complex in Giurgiu, from the other side of the river. It is remembered as one of the few civic movements against the regime.
The end of 1989 and early 1990 brought massive protest waves as people wanted to push for Bulgaria’s pro-West perspectives amid economic troubles. On June 7, 1990, what was called the biggest protest ever was held in Sofia and is colloquially referenced as the one that gathered more than one million people in the center of the capital (however, this is more of contemporary mythology, rather than an exact figure).
The turbulences in the mid-90’s – from hyperinflation to ideological battles – brought further movements, including demonstrations from students and the occupation of Sofia University in 1997. Protesters would opt for a similar measure in 2013-2014 when the university was again under the control of the students. This would mark the last time to this date that young people enrolled in the university system were so active during a protest wave: a stark contrast with the current events in Serbia.
Somewhat akin to the late 1980’s, in Bulgaria’s contemporary history, demonstrations against the political establishment have also intertwined with ecological actions: crowds took the streets against commercial construction and increasing logging in Vitosha Mountain in 2012, the Pirin Mountain in 2018 and the Black Sea coast in 2020. The latter morphed into a full-fledged protest against GERB and the party’s omnipresence in every structure of power. The 2020-2021 wave of unrest gave an important kick to the recently established reformist parties and in some way continued through the 2023 marches in support of Ukraine.
The last major protest wave happened in July 2023, in response to a brutal knife attack on a young woman which sent shockwaves across the country and highlighted Bulgaria’s unresolved issues with domestic and gender-based violence.
The prolonged political crisis and the resilience of parties associated with the system have transformed Bulgarians' anger into apathy
Eleven years after the mass demonstrations in 2013-2014, the political figures against which citizens marched and blocked streets every day for a year are even more powerful: opposition to GERB is now weakened, oligarch Delyan Peevski is leading a party of his own, making efforts to rebrand himself as a pro-Western politician and stands tall despite international sanctions from the UK and the US, while Bulgarian Socialist Party - despite waning in voter support in recent years – has found itself again in the government.
In a way, Bulgaria has seemingly circled back to where it began, yet protests are not in sight and frustration has taken the shape of apathy rather than anger. Why?
Putting the pause button on the election cycle seems rather welcomed: according to a survey by Alpha Research, made available on January 23, 39% of Bulgarians approve the new cabinet, 29% are skeptical, and the others are undecided. Pro-Kremlin President Rumen Radev keeps a healthy rating with a 44% of approval rating.
Ultimately, protest movements in Bulgaria have repeatedly suffered the same fate. Activism is often limited to events in central Sofia. People in smaller towns are rarely willing to take their grievances to the streets, parties regarded as being part of the system manage to stay relevant or even on top, while options for young people to get together in the name of something bigger are drying up.
The demonstrations routinely bring new faces but very few of these newfound leaders cross the line to politics. Parties that come to prominence or are established following street movements are rarely able to maintain the enthusiasm that accompanied their initial rise, and more often than not are confused on where they stand on the right-left spectrum.
There is a repeating pattern of mistakes: political novices don’t seem capable of passing on clear-cut political messages to the wider pool of voters, messages that would break the apathy, now escalated by the fatigue from having seven general, one presidential, one mayoral, and one European Parliament elections since 2021. 50.61 % voted at the start of the stalemate in April 2021 and 38.94% in October 2024.
The association of reformists with GERB was used by extremists to seize the anti-system discourse
Fewer votes mean coalitions of compromises, and in the last decade, GERB has made a habit of annihilating opposition forces by making governments with them out of necessity for temporary stability before yet again recalibrating their options. In this timeline, new political forces emerged, and two short-lived coalition governments headed by the reformist party We Continue the Change were established, both essentially brought down by GERB, which was also an uneasy partner during the reformists’ second sting in power. After the 2013 protests, GERB did the same by luring the now-dissolved Reformist Bloc. And that points to a major problem of the reformists: they build their identity by rising against GERB, which they equate with the corruption plaguing Bulgaria for years, but when it comes to governing and forming coalitions, they discover that they need GERB, as its official pro-Western stand makes it more palatable than others. But that undermines their credibility and, moreover, undermines the people’s belief that they can really push for change, a belief that is at the core of any street movement.
This also leaves pro-Russia radicals Revival as the only party in the parliament to have never collaborated with GERB in a cabinet, keeping their anti-establishment halo intact and able to mobilize their electorate, while pro-Russian president Rumen Radev can continue to play the role of a people’s champion that reins in the corrupt pro-Western political class.
