Vasil Levski
and
Christo (Xristo) Botev
The former died first - the Lion-hearted one, the self-sacrificial hero, the devotion incarnate to the Cause...! His true name is not ''Levski'' - this is his nickname, originating from the word ''lev'' which means in ancient Bulgarian... lion! He had earned the nickname when he leapt over a wide trench with the agility and ferociousness of the beast deemed to be king, in his desperate fight against the Turks who would not give up their unlawful dominion over lands that did not belong to them. They invaded and kept Bulgaria and other territories under oppression for centuries - until, finally, men such as Vasil Levski rose crying out for freedom. It would indeed be freedom or death for them - the latter for the majority of the original wave of liberation forces that tried to free their country from the oppressor.
The latter would perish later trying to accomplish the exact same thing: Botev was the poet extraordinaire who identified himself chiefly as a reporter, actually - one that tried desperately to awaken his people to said Cause - to no avail. For many were fearful of reprisal if the action failed - and most thought it had no chance of doing anything else but fail. Fed up of the inertia of the majority, Christo Botev assembled a party of revolutionaries and, as in Sparta, led his few hundreds (200, not 300) to battle - and they all perished before achieving the goal, too. Neither he nor Levski would live to see the results of the movement that they had initiated - but results it would yield indeed, one day. For where they fell, others rose...
These are the true revolutionaries that others have merely followed the footsteps and examples of - sometimes unknowingly even. For, outside of their native Bulgaria and the Balkans, their tragic fates have rarely been retold - or praised, as they should.
At long last, these days, there are other retellings of the extraordinary courage of these two, elsewhere on the web, in the heroes' own language too. There is even a non-lucrative organization and website dedicated to the memory of the former; a well-deserved honor that serves a dual purpose as it perpetrates the legend as also inspires the same bravery in others today. For, nowadays, we are encountering frighteningly similar situations more and more - only the names and exact circumstances differ.
There can only be proportional levels of bravery and courage these days, of course - however, the oppression, the turmoil and the strife that can be encountered now and in the future, though overall widely different from what Levski and Botev encountered in the late 1800s, can still be quite the testing experience for the human spirit. And quite the threat to liberty in any definition that it can be given.
Just as Sergei Nechayev's writings influenced numerous radicals and would-be revolutionaries in later years (such as the 1969 Black Panthers or the Red Brigade of Italia) the traces left by Levski and Botev have resounded and reverberated throughout time and space and their markings are recognized in many luminaries far more famous than they are: from Anonymous to Che Guevara.
And it is with pride and reverence that we, the editing crew behind Bulgarian Dreams and its many sister sites and brother blogs throughout the TLB Prime Network take this time and space to promulgate the example, resilience and nobility of these two great heroes - in English, so that more people outside of their native land can discover them and admire their courage before adversity.
They never backed down, never gave up their dream, even as it appeared certain never to succeed, never to come true...
May we all be so unyielding, even as the enemy is all about us, ready and apt to strike us down!
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