LEARN BULGARIAN THROUGH LITERATURE AND MUSIC!
Vasil Levski
(1837 - 1873)
Who is Vasil
Levski? It is a very important name for all Bulgarians. For more than 100 years his name stays clean and is a symbol for
freedom. Here are some of his more popular quotes written in Bulgarian.
Цитати на Васил Левски
- Ако спечеля, печеля за цял народ — ако загубя, губя само себе си.
- Без революция сме загубени во веки веков.
- Близо е времето вече - българинът не ще бъде роб, а свободен.
- Братство всекиго, без да гледаме на вяра и народност.
- Времето е в нас и ние сме във времето, то нас обръща и ние него обръщаме.
- Всички зависят от вишегласието.
- Всичките неразбории, зависти, укори, които произлизат, повечето от глупостта, са причина за разделянето на един народ.
- Да бъдем равни с другите европейски народи, зависи от нашите собствени задружни сили.
- Дела трябват, а не думи.
- Интригата спира хода на народната работа.
- На драго сърце да обичаме оногова, който ни покаже погрешката, инак той не е наш приятел.
- Не се полъгвайте, че тези които държат парите държат и бъдещето ви, защото тези пари те са ги взели от вас, а вие им се кланяте и ги въздигате.
- Никой да не се повежда сляпо в работата.
- Тоз, който ни освободи, той ще ни пороби.
- Трябва да се даде правото на всеки народ, па и на всеки човек, който иска да живее почтено и свободно.
- Чисто народният българин, който е разбрал и вижда мъките и неволите на милия ни народ, който е усетил вече в сърцето си всекидневните и кървави сълзи на нашите обезчестени майки, братя и сестри от тиранина, то за него няма страх, няма никакви извинения, а смъртта му е самата утеха и душеспасение.
- Ще имаме едно знаме, на което ще пише: "Свята и чиста република".
Quotes
- If
I win - I win for all our people, if I lose - I lose only myself.
A letter
to Panayot Hitov, written in
March/April 1868.
- Time
is in us and we are in time. It changes us and we change it.
A letter
to Panayot Hitov, written on May 10 1871
- It's
deeds we need, not words.
To Lyuben Karavelov, January
27, 1872
- An
exam should be passed by every man. Because we have some examples: A
man today, tomorrow - a donkey.
to Hristo
Popov, May 30 1871
- We
are to have one flag, and on it the words: Holy and Pure Republic.
"Svoboda"
newspaper, February 13, 1871
A poem by Hristo Botev (a famous Bulgarian poet) about Vasil Levski and how his hanging.
Monument to Vasil Levski in his native Karlovo.
Here is something
about his life:
Vasil Levski (Bulgarian: Васил Левски, originally spelled
Василъ Лѣвскій, pronounced [vɐˈsiɫ ˈlɛfski]), born Vasil
Ivanov Kunchev (Васил Иванов Кунчев; 18 July 1837 – 18 February 1873), was
a Bulgarian revolutionary and is a national hero of Bulgaria today. Dubbed
the Apostle of Freedom, Levski ideologised and strategised a
revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Levski founded
the Internal Revolutionary Organisation, and sought to foment a nationwide
uprising through a network of secret regional committees.
Born in the Sub-Balkan town of Karlovo to middle class
parents, Levski became an Orthodox monk before emigrating to join the two Bulgarian
Legions in Serbia and other Bulgarian revolutionary groups. Abroad, he acquired
the nickname Levski, "Lionlike". After working as a teacher in
Bulgarian lands, he propagated his views and developed the concept of his
Bulgaria-based revolutionary organisation, an innovative idea that superseded
the foreign-based detachment strategy of the past. In Romania, Levski helped
institute the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee, composed of Bulgarian
expatriates. During his tours of Bulgaria, Levski established a wide network of
insurrectionary committees. Ottoman authorities, however, captured him at an
inn near Lovech and executed him by hanging in Sofia.
Levski looked beyond the act of liberation: he envisioned
a "pure and sacred" Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious
equality. His concepts have been described as a struggle for human rights,
inspired by the progressive liberalism of the French Revolution and 19th
century Western European society. Levski is commemorated with monuments in
Bulgaria and Serbia, and numerous national institutions bear his name. In 2007,
he topped a nationwide television poll as the all-time greatest Bulgarian.
Historical background
In 1396 the medieval Bulgarian Empire had ceased to
exist, falling under full Ottoman domination. The inegalitarian Ottoman millet system
(Sharia Laws) had turned Christian Bulgarians and other Non-Muslim subjects
into second-class citizens, and the religious differences had created
insurmountable cultural antagonism. The empire's 19th-century economic
hardships, which prompted its personification as the "sick man of Europe",
meant that the Ottoman state's Non-Muslim residents suffered more than its
Muslim subjects, and reforms planned by the sultans faced insuperable
difficulties.
Bulgarian nationalism gradually emerged during the
mid-19th century with the economic upsurge of Bulgarian merchants and
craftsmen, the development of Bulgarian-funded popular education, the struggle
for an autonomous Bulgarian Church and political actions towards the formation
of a separate Bulgarian state. The First and Second Serbian Uprisings had laid
the foundation of an autonomous Serbia during the late 1810s, and Greece had
been established as an independent state in 1832, in the wake of the Greek War
of Independence. However, support for gaining independence through an armed
struggle against the Ottomans was not universal. Revolutionary sentiment was
concentrated largely among the more educated and urban sectors of the populace.
There was less support for an organized revolt among the peasantry and the
wealthier merchants and traders, who feared that Ottoman reprisals would
jeopardize economic stability and widespread rural land ownership.
Early life, education and monkhood
Vasil Levski was born Vasil Ivanov Kunchev on 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1837
in the town of Karlovo, within the Ottoman Empire's European province of Rumelia.
He was the namesake of his maternal uncle, Archimandrite (superior abbot) Basil
(Василий, Vasiliy). Levski's parents, Ivan Kunchev and Gina Kuncheva
(née Karaivanova), came from a family of clergy and craftsmen and were members
of the emerging Bulgarian middle class. An eminent but struggling local
craftsman, Ivan Kunchev died in 1844. Levski had two younger brothers, Hristo
and Petar, and an older sister, Yana; another sister, Maria, died during
childhood.
Fellow revolutionary Panayot Hitov later described the
adult Levski as being of medium height and having an agile, wiry
appearance—with light, greyish-blue eyes, blond hair, and a small moustache. He
added that Levski abstained from smoking and drinking. Hitov's memories of
Levski's appearance are supported by Levski's contemporaries, revolutionary and
writer Lyuben Karavelov and teacher Ivan Furnadzhiev. The only differences are
that Karavelov claimed Levski was tall rather than of medium height, while
Furnadzhiev noted that his moustache was light brown and his eyes appeared
hazel.
Levski began his education at a school in Karlovo,
studying homespun tailoring as a local craftsman's apprentice. In 1855,
Levski's uncle Basil—archimandrite and envoy of the Hilandar monastery—took him
to Stara Zagora, where he attended school and worked as Basil's servant.
Afterward, Levski joined a clerical training course. On 7 December 1858, he became an Orthodox monk
in the Sopot monastery under the religious name Ignatius (Игнатий, Ignatiy)
and was promoted in 1859 to hierodeacon, which later inspired one of Levski's
informal nicknames, The Deacon (Дякона, Dyakona).
First Bulgarian Legion and educational work
Inspired by Georgi Sava Rakovski's revolutionary ideas,
Levski left for the Serbian capital Belgrade during the spring of 1862. In
Belgrade, Rakovski had been assembling the First Bulgarian Legion, a military
detachment formed by Bulgarian volunteers and revolutionary workers seeking the
overthrow of Ottoman rule. Abandoning his service as a monk, Levski enlisted as
a volunteer. At the time, relations between the Serbs and their Ottoman suzerains
were tense. During the Battle of Belgrade in which Turkish forces entered the
city, Levski and the Legion distinguished themselves in repelling them.Further
militant conflicts in Belgrade were eventually resolved diplomatically, and the
First Bulgarian Legion was disbanded under Ottoman pressure on 12 September
1862. His courage during training and fighting earned him his nickname Levski
("Lionlike"). After the legion's disbandment, Levski joined Ilyo
Voyvoda's detachment at Kragujevac, but returned to Rakovski in Belgrade after
discovering that Ilyo's plans to invade Bulgaria had failed.
Fellow revolutionary Panayot Hitov later described the
adult Levski as being of medium height and having an agile, wiry
appearance—with light, greyish-blue eyes, blond hair, and a small moustache. He
added that Levski abstained from smoking and drinking. Hitov's memories of
Levski's appearance are supported by Levski's contemporaries, revolutionary and
writer Lyuben Karavelov and teacher Ivan Furnadzhiev. The only differences are
that Karavelov claimed Levski was tall rather than of medium height, while
Furnadzhiev noted that his moustache was light brown and his eyes appeared
hazel.
Levski began his education at a school in Karlovo,
studying homespun tailoring as a local craftsman's apprentice. In 1855,
Levski's uncle Basil—archimandrite and envoy of the Hilandar monastery—took him
to Stara Zagora, where he attended school and worked as Basil's servant.
Afterward, Levski joined a clerical training course. On 7 December 1858, he
became an Orthodox monk in the Sopot monastery under the religious name
Ignatius (Игнатий, Ignatiy) and was promoted in 1859 to hierodeacon,
which later inspired one of Levski's informal nicknames, The Deacon
(Дякона, Dyakona).
First Bulgarian Legion and educational work
Inspired by Georgi Sava Rakovski's revolutionary ideas,
Levski left for the Serbian capital Belgrade during the spring of 1862. In
Belgrade, Rakovski had been assembling the First Bulgarian Legion, a military
detachment formed by Bulgarian volunteers and revolutionary workers seeking the
overthrow of Ottoman rule. Abandoning his service as a monk, Levski enlisted as
a volunteer. At the time, relations between the Serbs and their Ottoman suzerains
were tense. During the Battle of Belgrade in which Turkish forces entered the
city, Levski and the Legion distinguished themselves in repelling them. Further
militant conflicts in Belgrade were eventually resolved diplomatically, and the
First Bulgarian Legion was disbanded under Ottoman pressure on 12 September
1862. His courage during training and fighting earned him his nickname Levski
("Lionlike"). After the legion's disbandment, Levski joined Ilyo
Voyvoda's detachment at Kragujevac, but returned to Rakovski in Belgrade after
discovering that Ilyo's plans to invade Bulgaria had failed.
In Serbia, the government was again favourable towards
the Bulgarian revolutionaries' aspirations and allowed them to establish in
Belgrade the Second Bulgarian Legion, an organisation similar to its
predecessor and its goals. Levski was a prominent member of the Legion, but
between February and April 1868 he suffered from a gastric condition that
required surgery. Bedridden, he could not participate in the Legion's training.
After the Legion was again disbanded under political pressure, Levski attempted
to reunite with his compatriots, but was arrested in Zaječar and briefly
imprisoned. Upon his release he went to Romania, where Hadzhi Dimitar and Stefan
Karadzha were mobilising revolutionary detachments. For various reasons,
including his stomach problems and strategic differences, Levski did not
participate. In the winter of 1868, he became acquainted with poet and
revolutionary Hristo Botev and lived with him in an abandoned windmill near Bucharest.
Bulgarian tours and work in Romania
Rejecting the emigrant detachment strategy for internal
propaganda, Levski undertook his first tour of the Bulgarian lands to engage
all layers of Bulgarian society for a successful revolution. On 11 December
1868, he travelled by steamship from Turnu Măgurele to Istanbul, the starting
point of a trek that lasted until 24 February 1869, when Levski returned to
Romania. During this canvassing and reconnaissance mission, Levski is thought
to have visited Plovdiv, Perushtitsa, Karlovo, Sopot, Kazanlak, Sliven, Tarnovo,
Lovech, Pleven and Nikopol, establishing links with local patriots.
After a two-month stay in Bucharest, Vasil Levski
returned to Bulgaria for a second tour, lasting from 1 May to 26 August 1869.
On this tour he carried proclamations printed in Romania by the political
figure Ivan Kasabov. They legitimised Levski as the representative of a
Bulgarian provisional government. Vasil Levski travelled to Nikopol, Pleven,
Karlovo, Plovdiv, Pazardzhik, Perushtitsa, Stara Zagora, Chirpan, Sliven,
Lovech, Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Sevlievo and Tryavna. According to some researchers,
Levski established the earliest of his secret committees during this tour, but
those assumptions are based on uncertain data.
From late August 1869 to May the following year, Levski was
active in the Romanian capital Bucharest. He was in contact with revolutionary
writer and journalist Lyuben Karavelov, whose participation in the foundation
of the Bulgarian Literary Society Levski approved in writing. Karavelov's
publications gathered a number of followers and initiated the foundation of the
Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC), a centralised revolutionary
diasporic organisation that included Levski as a founding member and statute
drafter. In disagreement over planning, Levski departed from Bucharest in the
spring of 1870 and began to put into action his concept of an internal
revolutionary network.
Creation of the Internal Revolutionary Organisation
Despite insufficient documentation of Levski's activities
in 1870, it is known that he spent a year and a half establishing a wide network
of secret committees in Bulgarian cities and villages. The network, the Internal
Revolutionary Organisation (IRO), was centred around the Lovech Central
Committee, also called "BRCC in Bulgaria" or the "provisional
government". The goal of the
committees was to prepare for a coordinated uprising. The network of committees
was at its densest in the central Bulgarian regions, particularly around Sofia,
Plovdiv and Stara Zagora. Revolutionary committees were also established in
some parts of Macedonia, Dobruja and Strandzha and around the more peripheral
urban centres Kyustendil, Vratsa and Vidin. IRO committees purchased armaments
and organised detachments of volunteers. According to one study, the
organisation had just over 1,000 members in the early 1870s. Most members were
intellectuals and traders, though all layers of Bulgarian society were
represented.
Individuals obtained IRO membership in secrecy: the initiation
ritual involved a formal oath of allegiance over the Gospel or a Christian
cross, a gun and a knife; treason was punishable by death, and secret police
monitored each member's activities. Through clandestine channels of reliable
people, relations were maintained with the revolutionary diasporic community.
The internal correspondence employed encryption, conventional signs, and fake
personal and committee names. Although Levski himself headed the organisation,
he shared administrative responsibilities with assistants such as
monk-turned-revolutionary Matey Preobrazhenski, the adventurous Dimitar Obshti,
and the young Angel Kanchev.
Apocryphal and semi-legendary anecdotal stories surround
the creation of Levski's Internal Revolutionary Organisation. Persecuted by the
Ottoman authorities who offered 500 Turkish liras for his death and 1000 for
his capture, Levski resorted to disguises to evade arrest during his travels.
For example, he is known to have dyed his hair and to have worn a variety
of national costumes. In the autumn of 1871, Levski and Angel Kanchev published
the Instruction of the Workers for the Liberation of the Bulgarian People,
a BRCC draft statute containing ideological, organisational and penal sections.
It was sent out to the local committees and to the diasporic community for
discussion. The political and organisational experience that Levski amassed is
evident in his correspondence dating from 1871 to 1872; at the time, his views
on the revolution had clearly matured.
As IRO expanded, it coordinated its activities more with
the Bucharest-based BRCC. On Levski's initiative, a general assembly was called
between 29 April and 4 May 1872. At the assembly, the delegates approved a
programme and a statute, elected Lyuben Karavelov as the organisation's leader
and authorised Levski as the BRCC executive body's only legitimate
representative in the Bulgarian lands.After attending the assembly, Levski
returned to Bulgaria and reorganised IRO's internal structure in accordance
with BRCC's recommendations. Thus, the Lovech Central Committee was reduced to
a regular local committee, and the first region-wide revolutionary centres were
founded. The lack of funds, however, precipitated the organisation into a
crisis, and Levski's one-man judgements on important strategic and tactical
matters were increasingly questioned.
Capture and execution
In that situation, Levski's assistant Dimitar Obshti robbed an Ottoman
postal convoy in the Arabakonak pass on 22 September 1872, without approval
from Levski or the leadership of the movement. While the robbery was successful
and provided IRO with 125,000 groschen, Obshti and the other perpetrators were
soon arrested. The preliminary investigation and trial revealed the
revolutionary organisation's size and its close relations with BRCC. Obshti and
other prisoners made a full confession and revealed Levski's leading role.
Realising that he was in danger, Levski decided to flee
to Romania, where he would meet Karavelov and discuss these events. First,
however, he had to collect important documentation from the committee archive
in Lovech, which would constitute important evidence if seized by the Ottomans.
He stayed at the nearby village inn in Kakrin, where he was surprised and
arrested on the morning of 27 December 1872. Starting with the writings of
Lyuben Karavelov the most accepted version has been that a priest named Krastyo
Nikiforov betrayed Levski to the police. This theory has been disputed by the
researchers Ivan Panchovski and Vasil Boyanov for lack of evidence.
Initially taken to Tarnovo for interrogation, Levski was
sent to Sofia on 4 January. There, he was taken to trial. While he acknowledged
his identity, he did not reveal his accomplices or details related to his
organisation, taking full blame. Ottoman authorities sentenced Levski to death
by hanging. The sentence was carried out on 18 February [O.S. 6
February] 1873 in Sofia, where the Monument to Vasil Levski now
stands. The location of Levski's grave is uncertain, but in the 1980s writer Nikolay
Haytov campaigned for the Church of St. Petka of the Saddlers as Levski's
burial place, which the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences concluded as possible yet
unverifiable.
Levski's death intensified the crisis in the Bulgarian
revolutionary movement and most IRO committees soon disintegrated.
Nevertheless, five years after his hanging, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878
secured the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the wake of the April
Uprising of 1876. The Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878 established the
Bulgarian state as an autonomous Principality of Bulgaria under de jure Ottoman
suzerainty.
Revolutionary theory and ideas
At the end of the 1860s, Levski developed a revolutionary
theory that saw the Bulgarian liberation movement as an armed uprising of all
Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire. The insurrection was to be prepared,
controlled and coordinated internally by a central revolutionary organisation,
which was to include local revolutionary committees in all parts of Bulgaria
and operate independently from any foreign factors. Levski's theory resulted
from the repeated failures to implement Rakovski's ideas effectively, such as
the use of foreign-based armed detachments (чети, cheti) to provoke a
general revolt. Levski's idea of an entirely independent revolution did not
enjoy the approval of the entire population either—in fact, he was the only
prominent Bulgarian revolutionary to advocate it. Instead, many regarded an
intervention by the great powers as a more feasible solution.
Levski envisioned Bulgaria as a democratic republic,
occasionally finding common ground with the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen, and largely reflecting the liberal ideas of
the French Revolution and contemporary Western society. He said, "We will
be free in complete liberty where the Bulgarian lives: in Bulgaria, Thrace,
Macedonia; people of whatever ethnicity live in this heaven of ours, they will
be equal in rights to the Bulgarian in everything. We will have a flag that
says, 'Pure and sacred republic'... It is time, by a single deed, to achieve
what our French brothers have been seeking..." Levski held that all
religious and ethnic groups in a free Bulgaria—whether Bulgarians, Turks, Jews
or others—should enjoy equal rights. He reiterated that the Bulgarian
revolutionaries fought against the sultan's government, not against the Turkish
people and their religion: "We're not driving away the Turkish people nor
their faith, but the emperor and his laws (in a word, the Turkish government),
which has been ruling not only us, but the Turk himself in a barbarian
way."
Levski was prepared to sacrifice his life for the
revolution and place Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people above personal interests:
"If I shall win, I shall win for the entire people. If I shall lose, I
shall lose only myself." In a liberated Bulgaria, he did not envision
himself as a national leader or a high-ranking official: "We yearn to see
a free fatherland, and [then] one could even order me to graze the ducks, isn't
that right?" In the spirit of Garibaldi, Levski planned to assist other
oppressed peoples of the world in their liberation once Bulgaria was
reestablished. He also advocated "strict and regular accounting" in
his revolutionary organisation, and did not tolerate corruption.
Commemoration
In cities and villages across Bulgaria, Levski's
contributions to the liberation movement are commemorated with numerous
monuments, and many streets bear his name. Monuments to Levski also exist
outside Bulgaria—in Belgrade, Serbia, Dimitrovgrad, Serbia, Parcani,
Transnistria, Moldova, Bucharest, Romania, Paris, France, Washington, D.C.,
United States, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Three museums dedicated to Levski
have been organised: one in Karlovo, one in Lovech and one in Kakrina. The Monument
to Vasil Levski in Sofia was erected on the site of his execution.
Several institutions in Bulgaria have been named in Vasil
Levski's honour; these include the football club PFC Levski Sofia, the Vasil
Levski National Sports Academy and the Vasil Levski National Military
University. Bulgaria's national stadium bears the name Vasil Levski National
Stadium. The 1000 Bulgarian leva banknote, in circulation between 1994 and
1999, featured Levski's portrait on its obverse side and his monument in Sofia
on the reverse. The town of Levski and six villages around the
country have also been named in his honour. The Antarctic
Place-names Commission of Bulgaria named an Antarctic ridge and peak on Livingston
Island of the South Shetland Islands Levski Ridge and Levski Peak respectively.
The life of Vasil Levski has been widely featured in Bulgarian
literature and popular culture. Poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev dedicated
his last work to Levski, "The Hanging of Vasil Levski". The poem, an elegy,
was probably written in late 1875. Prose and poetry writer Ivan Vazov devoted
an ode to the revolutionary. Eponymously titled "Levski", it was
published as part of the cycle Epic of the Forgotten. Levski has also
inspired works by writers Hristo Smirnenski and Nikolay Haytov, among others.
Songs devoted to Levski can be found in the folklore tradition of Macedonia as
well. In February 2007, a nationwide poll conducted as part of the Velikite
Balgari ("The Great Bulgarians") television show, a local
spin-off of 100 Greatest Britons, named Vasil Levski the greatest
Bulgarian of all time.
There have been motions to glorify Vasil Levski as a
saint of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. However, historian Stefan Chureshki has
emphasised that while Levski's post-monastical life was one of a martyr, it was
incompatible with the Orthodox concept of sainthood. Chureshki makes reference
to Levski's correspondences, which show that Levski threatened wealthy
Bulgarians (чорбаджии, chorbadzhii) and traitors with death, endorsed
theft from the rich for pragmatic revolutionary purposes and voluntarily gave
up his religious office to devote himself to the secular struggle for
liberation.
Vasil Levski's hanging is observed annually across
Bulgaria on 19 February instead of 18 February, due to the erroneous
calculation of 19th-century Julian calendar dates after Bulgaria adopted the Gregorian
calendar in 1916 Although the location of Levski's grave has not been
determined, some of his hair is on exhibit at the National Museum of Military
History. After Levski gave up monkhood in 1863, he shaved his hair, which his
mother and later his sister Yana preserved. Levski's personal items—such as his
silver Christian cross, his copper water vessel, his Gasser revolver, made in Austria–Hungary
in 1869, and the shackles from his imprisonment in Sofia—are also exhibited in
the military history museum, while Levski's sabre can be seen in the Lovech
regional museum.
(Source: WIKIPEDIA)
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