It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's… A Hero of the Bulgarian Revolution?

SOFIA, Bulgaria—On June 18, Bulgaria's capital awoke to find the statues in a monument to the Soviet armed forces brightly spray-painted as Superman, Ronald McDonald, Santa Claus, Captain America and The Joker.

The characters, according to graffiti the pranksters left at the base of the monument, were now "in step with the times."...

Ex-communists—rebranded as socialists—are still a force here. Until 2009, when they lost elections amid corruption allegations and economic failings, the Bulgarian Socialist Party was politically dominant. But as the EU's poorest country undergoes an austerity program to boost investor confidence, some are nostalgic for the more certain days of communism.

To fight that trend, the government opened a museum Sept. 19 to showcase some of the more shameful sides of Bulgaria's communist past through wacky art and kitsch sculptures. Bulgaria is the latest ex-Soviet bloc country to open such a collection, and its Museum of Socialist Art is also the biggest, the government says....