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If the Bulgarian Communist Party had a soul it would doubtless still hover over the cobbled expanse of pl. Aleksandar Batenberg , formerly pl. Deveti Septemvri or 9 September square - where major anniversaries were celebrated with parades . These took place on May 1 and September 9 (the date of the Communist coup in 1944), and featured a familiar repertoire of Communist spectacle: red-scarved Young Pioneers, brigades of workers bearing portraits of their leaders, mass callisthenics, and floats carrying tableaux symbolizing the achievements of socialist construction. The anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (November 7) was marked by soldiers goose-stepping and armoured vehicles grinding across the plaza in emulation of mightier parades in Moscow. Militia cordons kept the uninvited at a distance (events were televised nationwide), and the regimented proceedings - known as "spontaneous demonstrations of the people" during the Stalinist era - were a tiresome obligation for many participants. "We have seen so many of these demonstrations which humiliate human dignity, where normal people are expected to applaud some paltry mediocrity who has proclaimed himself a demi-god and condescendingly waves to them from the heights of his police inviolability", wrote dissident writer Georgi Markov (criticisms like these eventually cost Markov his life, taken by a Bulgarian agent wielding a poisoned umbrella in 1978). Hastily renamed "Democracy Square" after November 1989, the square soon reverted to its original prewar title, honouring the young German aristocrat who was chosen to be the newly independent country's first monarch in 1878. As an idealistic 22-year-old Aleksandar had volunteered to fight alongside Bulgaria's Russian liberators during the War of Independence, yet it was his loss of Russian backing in 1886 - when Bulgaria declared union with Eastern Roumelia without first securing the approval of her big Slav brother - that brought his six-year reign to a premature close
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