Vassil Levski, the Apostle of Freedom - 137th death anniversary

There is a date on the Bulgarian calendar, which is both tragic and great – February 19, the day of the death of national hero Vassil Levski. What are Levski’s merits that secured for him a prominent place in the Bulgarian national pantheon?

Even pronouncing the name of Vassil Levski is enough to evoke most rewarding emotions and thoughts in any living Bulgarian. Already a legend in his lifetime, called with love the Apostle of the Bulgarian Freedom, Vassil Levski has given a guiding light to many Bulgarian generations. His patriotic activity covered the end of the 1860s and the early 1870s. His life was but a short one, but the results of his work produced a U-turn in the Bulgarian history.

Vassil Levski was the ideologist and strategist of the national revolution for liberation from 5-century long Turkish yoke. At a moment when all models of struggle seemed exhausted, Levski launched the idea of the new Internal Revolutionary Organisation, which would allow the Bulgarian nation to attain freedom all on its own, without any foreign assistance. In February 1868 he wrote to a Bulgarian voivode: “ … And I will do it, God willing, for which, if I win I’ll win for a whole people, if I lose, I’ll lose only myself.”

From the beginning of 1869 to the end of 1872 Vassil Levski worked to turn his concept into a reality. Secret committees originated across Bulgaria under his leadership, united in an orderly organization. The objective of Levski and his comrades was to prepare the people for an all-national uprising aimed at restoring the powerful Bulgarian state and open up prospects for new, democratic development. With his ideas and activity Levski became in effect, the father of modern Bulgaria. “IN our Bulgaria,” he wrote, “all nations will live with the same pure and holy laws, the way God decided for man to live …”

Levski attracted peasants, craftsmen, teachers and clergy to the great task of the liberation of the Fatherland. The Apostle was successful not only because the historical moment for the Bulgarian revolution had arrived. He seemed to have a secret key to the souls of people. An open and jocular man by nature, he was capable of fiery verbal expression and was devoted to his mission to the point of self-denial. All this gave Levski an irresistible charisma as a leader. He soon emerged as a major threat for the drowsing Ottoman Empire. The Turkish police were after him, but under different names and personalities, and spending his time in hiding, Levski survived unscathed.

However in 1872, in a secluded inn in Northern Bulgaria, the Turkish search party took Levski by surprise and arrested him. Facing the Turkish Court the Apostle succeeded in preventing the collapse of the secret Bulgarian revolutionary organization. When on Feb. 19, 1873 his blonde head shown from the height of the gallows, he had accomplished his mission in winning the hearts of a whole people.

Three years later the young Bulgarian revolutionaries followed into his steps, with his name in their hearts. In April 1876 they organized the uprising conceived by Levski. That most important armed rising against the Ottoman Empire lead to the Russo-Turkish war of liberation of 1877-1878. It finally resulted in the liberation of the Bulgarian lands. The first monuments that rose back then were monuments of Vassil Levski. One of them is in his native town of Karlovo, at the foot of the Balkan Range, and the other – at the place of his execution – in the city of Sofia. There – in the center of the capital – is the bas-relief with the face of the Apostle on it, the face that has always evoked the brightest sorrow in the hearts of Bulgarians.

What makes Vassil Levski unique in the country’s history and the formation of the national ideal? Radio Bulgaria’s Veneta Pavlova talked to Stoyan Javezov, Chief Secretary of the Vassil Levski national committee and Chairman of the foundation, bearing his name.

“Levski is unique in that on the eve of the country’s liberation from Ottoman domination, he formulated the question of the road we must take that will lead us to freedom, as well as for the period after that, in an entirely new way. This is something few of the figures from the Bulgarian National revival period or freedom fighters have done. What do I mean? First, Levski is one of the strategists of the Ban national revolution. He said that it should be the work of a well-structured internal organization, and must not rely on outside support. Second, with the clear messages he addressed, he outlined the main guidelines for Ban society after the liberation: democracy, ethnic and religious equality. His “Rules for the workers for the liberation of the Ban people” (which was in fact a broad political programme), formed the basis of the 1879 Tarnovo constitution, adopted by the Constituent Assembly of the new Ban state. And third – his moral standing was exceptional. The Apostle of freedom dedicated his entire life to one single mission – freedom for his people. No one else comes close to his stature before or after the country’s liberation.”

From Radio Bulgaria we offer you now to hear the poem “The Hanging of Vassil Levski” by Bulgaria’s most cherished and loved poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev. He himself fought for Bulgaria’s liberation from 5 centuries of Ottoman rule and was only 27 when he fell to a Turkish bullet. Here is the poem, translated by Thomas Butler:

"The Hanging of Vassil Levski" - a painting by Boris Angelushev

The Hanging of Vasil Levski

O my Mother, dear Motherland
Why weep you so mournfully, so plaintively?
And you, raven, cursed bird -
On whose grave croak you with such a dread?

Ah, I know - I know you're weeping, Mother
Because you are a dismal slave,
Because your holy voice, Mother
Is a helpless voice - a voice in the wilderness.

Weep! There, near the edge of Sofia town
Stretches - I saw it - a dismal gallows
And one of your sons, Bulgaria
Hangs from it with a terrible power.

The raven croaks dreadfully, ominously
Dogs and wolves howl in the fields,
Old people pray to God with fervor
Women weep, children cry.

Winter croons its evil song,
Gales sweep thistle across the field
And cold and frost and hopeless weeping
Heep sorrow on your heart.

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Vassil Levski, the Apostle of Freedom - 137th death anniversary

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