Communist’s Body Removed From Shrine

Officials exhumed the body of long-dead Communist leader Vasil Kolarov on Tuesday to empty a mausoleum that had once served as a shrine to the Stalinist system.

Kolarov, Bulgarian prime minister from 1949 until his death a year later, had occupied the only grave in the wall around the Georgy Dimitrov mausoleum in central Sofia.

A small crowd watched as workers used pneumatic drills to dig up the corpse for reburial in a Sofia cemetery.

Bowing to public demands, Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov earlier removed the embalmed body of Dimitrov, founding father of Bulgarian communism, which had been displayed inside the mausoleum since 1949. His body was cremated last week.