Vasil Levski, a foremost European revolutionary and democrat

published on 2/15/12 10:51 AM

Photo: Архив

Bulgaria’s most loved national hero. He was not only a revolutionary who sacrificed his life for the liberation of Bulgaria from five centuries of Turkish rule, but also an ideologist of the future independent Bulgaria that he did not live to see. In this light the great man has been portrayed in the book, Vasil Levski, the Apostle of Bulgarian Freedom. Translated into seven languages – English, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian and Hungarian, the monograph is part of the project, The reconstruction of Onbashi House as part of the Vasil Levksi National Museum in Karlovo. It seeks to promote the life and work of the Apostle, a foremost figure in European history. The project is being implemented with support from the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism. The book is the work of three leading Levski scholars. More, from Dora Tchausheva, director of the Vasil Levski National Museum in Karlovo.
“We try to promote the ideas of Vasil Levski beyond the Bulgarian borders. The book portrays him as a revolutionary and democrat, a champion for private, national and universal freedom. Each of the three authors of the book accentuates a different aspect of his life, and the legacy of the Apostle is presented with a rich and diverse photo and documentary material. His house of birth in Karlovo has been presented, so that readers are able to capture the spirit of the great Balkan Range, the magnificent natural scenery of his hometown. All this influenced the growth of his personality and his ideas of genius.”
In the first part of the book historian Prof. Doyno Doynov, Chairman of the Vasil Levski All-National Committee, explores the life of a boy from Ksrlovo, that embarks on the road to Christianity to later decide to cast off the cassock and dedicate his life to Bulgaria’s liberation. Having joined two Bulgarian legions abroad, and the Panayot Hitov detachment as standard-bearer, Levski early acquired first-hand experience in the Bulgarian liberation movement in mid-19 c. His exchange with the most enlightened figures in that movement, Georgi Rakovski, Ivan Kasabov, Lyuben Karavelov and Hristo Botev, expanded his views with the ideas of the European revolutionary movements. In the new book, Prof. Ivan Stoyanov from Sts Cyril and Methodius University in Veliko Tarnovo, explores the political views of Vasil Levski.
“The draft statutes of the Internal Revolutionary Organization founded by him, spell out explicitly its objectives, notably, the replacement of ‘the state despotic and tyrannical system with a democratic republic’. Vasil Levski advocated the idea of republican rule, of transforming the subject into a citizen in the 1870s when the world knew only two genuine republics, Switzerland and USA. He revised the ideas of the great European thinkers and revolutionaries Giuseppe Mazzini and Lajos Kossuth, taking them to Bulgarian soil. Looking far into the future, Levski saw Bulgaria as a ‘democratic republic’ where ‘Bulgarians, Turks, Jews etc. will be equal in any respect’, and laws will be made democratically. In both theoretical and pragmatic terms he did a great job for Bulgarians in bringing the Bulgarian question onto the European political stage.”
His immeasurable contribution into the revolutionary movement and the Bulgarian national cause is mirrored in the byname that Vasil Levski was given after the 1878 Liberation – the Apostle of the Bulgarian Freedom. And though the network of revolutionary committees built tirelessly by Levski across the Bulgarian ethnic territory suffered heavy blows from the Ottoman authorities after his death in 1873, it was at the heart of the organization of the 1876 anti-Turk April Uprising. The uprising that was crushed with unheard of atrocities urged the European public opinion to uphold the Bulgarian national cause. This soon brought to the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War of Liberation, and the restoration of the Bulgarian statehood.
In the view of Prof. Doynov, today, at the beginning of 21st c. we have to remove the sacral elements from the image of Vasil Levski and try to think about him as a real man, not as the portrait from the wall. This will help learn our lessons from his brilliant ideas. In his ideology he invariably gave the average people center stage, and believed they were the true makers of history. Today trying to define our place in the large family of European nations, we should recall the words of the Apostle of Freedom: “being equal with the rest of the European nations is up to our own united efforts”.

Translated by Daniela Konstantinova

По публикацията работи: Maria Peeva

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Vasil Levski, a foremost European revolutionary and democrat

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