St. Anastasia Island: The Bulgarian Alcatraz

In 1784, the French officer André-Joseph Lafitte-Clavé participated in a mission to the Ottoman Empire on behalf of his country and found legions of Turkish soldiers stationed on the island to fend off possible attacks by the Russian fleet. St. Anastasia had in this way been converted into a strategic base for the Turkish artillery, as evidenced by the iron cannons later found in its territorial waters. With the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman occupation at the end of the 19th century, a small shipyard arose, made up of a small fleet dedicated to fishing and transport, as well as a windmill: all owned by the monastery, rebuilt and renovated thanks to donations and the patronage of a wealthy Burgas family after the various attacks and fires suffered at the hands of pirates over the centuries.

Escape from Alcatraz (Bulgarian)

In July 1923, a coup d’état supported by Tsar Boris III and favoured by the neutral position of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP) overthrew the executive led by the Bulgarian National Agrarian Union and its leader Aleksandar Stamboliyski. A repressive right-wing government was established, headed by Aleksandar Tsankov. The monastery of St. Anastasia becomes a prison in which political opponents — including 132 landowners and communists — are sent to solitary confinement. However, the maintenance and control of the prison was too complicated, and the prisoners were soon transferred back to the mainland, in Burgas, and partially released.

Following a bloody Communist attack on Sveta Nedelya Cathedral in the capital of Sofia in April 1925, the islet again became a very crowded detention camp. In July of the same year, 43 political prisoners organised their escape a few days before the trial that would have sentenced them to death. They manage to flee aboard two rowboats to Nos Chukalya, a promontory south of Burgas, later reaching Istanbul by land. On 17 August they embarked on board the Soviet ship Ilyich, bound for the USSR. In the 1940s, however, a large part of the fugitives ended up victims of Stalinist repressions and were interned in Siberia, from where they would never return.

Meanwhile, the monastery on the island of St. Anastasia never completely ceased to be a place of exile and imprisonment. From July to October 1941, it was officially transformed into an anti-fascist camp, with 63 prisoners. Finally, on 9 September 1944, a new coup d’état shook the country and power passed into the hands of the Communists who, in honour of the July 1925 escape, decided to rename the island from St. Anastasia to Bolshevik, a name it would keep until 1991. Bolshevik Island was declared a “historic place of the revolutionary struggle” and accompanied by plaques in memory of the prisoners.