“The greatest stress in the battlefield is to walk among your killed comrades and also among the injured ones, to hear them moaning and crying for help. But you have neither the time, nor the right to stop – you move on and leave the man to die. We are people, aged 20 – 21. We were facing death,” says a surviving Bulgarian soldier after the heroic Battle of Drava in 1945. First Bulgarian Army managed to fight off the German troops back then and the latter suffered great losses. A German general and historian remarked: “The Bulgarian army turned out to be a tough nut to crack despite its 1893 armament.”

Many similar important facts since the early 20^th c are collected in The Bulgarian Military Wonder documentary series. The videos recreate in details the biggest achievements of the Bulgarian military and their commanders in the period after the 1878 Russo – Turkish War till mid-20^th c. The videos have been shot and uploaded by young people with deep and serious knowledge of history and are aimed at a very wide range of public. The series doesn’t discuss the Bulgarian diplomacy, but the tremendous power of the nation, whenever it has been unified by a common cause.

“The website is highly reliable and attracts the attention of many. This is due to the fact that it is created and maintained by people who have realized the lack of indepth articles on Bulgarian history online,” says Mario Mishev, one of the creators of the patriotic website.

“We created the website Bulgarian History five years ago, during our school years. The idea was to turn it to an online space for history tuition and lessons, the ones we needed when we prepared for the university. However, there had been no such space in those years, and with time we decided to create it. Thus the website turned into the most visited platform with lots of videos, articles, interviews, stories etc. attached. Those are all things that I wanted to see and read during my school years. The problem is the wide gap between the common history fan and the academic circles. The history researched and discussed by experts rarely reaches the average reader. This is to a great extend due to the conservatism of these closed academic circles. The idea is to introduce new technologies, closer not only to students but also to middle-aged people. There is a huge gap with the school education and that is why we have visited over 150 schools so far. We watch the documentaries with the children and discuss the history facts with them. Thus we receive the feedback for the things that are close to them and thrill them. Our idea is to prompt the students and teachers to use a multimedia product for free in the learning process. We do respect teachers, but we prefer to communicate as friends with those students, and share our experience”, Mario Mishev says and adds:

“If the teacher doesn’t have such motivation, then our labor will remain unnoticed by the majority of schools. We have enriched the website with subjects from the areas of nature, geography and scientific achievements. We wanted to cover most of the curriculum and the videos hardly exceed 5 minutes each. This is the time frame that can keep the attention of a student. That is why the content has been selected in a precise manner and the editing has been carried out in a way which holds the attention. We have been very successful so far across all schools. We visited the Rhodope town of Smolyan not so long ago and showed a video on one of the major Bulgarian victories in the Balkan War. We were impressed to see the students show great respect to the heroes and memorable events of that period. That is why we always try to respond to their interest with articles that are very well selected and presented.”

English version: Zhivko Stanchev