Volen Siderov - Early Life

Early Life

Siderov was born in 1956 in Yambol, Bulgaria. He received an undergraduate degree in Applied Photography in Sofia, and before the fall of Communism in 1989, worked at the National Literature Museum as a photographer.

After the fall of Communism, Siderov became a member of the newly-established Movement for Human Rights. During the fall of 1990, he became the editor-in-chief of Democracy (Bulgarian: Демокрация), the official newspaper of the Union of Democratic Forces (Siderov played a major role in establishing the paper as the official publication of the right-wing party).

In 1992, he was fired from the newspaper and put an end to all relationships with his political partners. At one point he was appointed deputy editor-in-chief of Monitor, a newspaper of a political orientation that could be described as nationalist and conservative. In 2000, Siderov was presented with the award of the Union of the Bulgarian Journalists. Later, he was fired from Monitor as well, and he came to be the host of Attack, a talk show on the Bulgarian cable TV channel "SKAT". In it, he chastised the perceived corruption of the Bulgarian political establishment and blamed Bulgaria's poor economic condition on the ethnic minorities. In 2002 Siderov was invited to a controversial anti-globalisation conference in Moscow where he rubbed shoulders with people like Ahmed Rami and David Duke.