With the return of Tsar Samuil's mortal remains "it is more of an event in political terms".
"It really has symbolic meaning. A people needs to believe in itself. It needs to have landmarks. Unfortunately, in recent decades, many of the Bulgarian people's landmarks have been confused. The role models have changed very often. The issue of Samuil in particular seems to me to unite a large part of the Bulgarian people.
This was said to the Bulgarian National Radio by the historian from Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" and its rector for 2 consecutive terms, Professor Ivan Ilchev.
He recalled that there are almost no written sources from Tsar Samuil's contemporaries, and most of them are from a later stage. This is also due to contradictions.
"The only source says that Samuil was tall, large, very strong, and the skeleton speaks of a man 1.6 m tall, which even for that time was by no means a tall man. The sources themselves contradict each other. I very much hope that, in order to get closer to the truth, Bulgarian specialists will now have the opportunity to examine, with the help of modern science, the remains that were brought to Bulgaria. Until now, Bulgarian specialists have not been able to work with these remains, so now, in my opinion, we still have years of research to do in order to reach a definitive opinion. And I repeat, in history there is very, very rarely a definitive opinion".
The scientist pointed out that Samuil's father was a comitopul for the Macedonian lands with the center in Sofia. According to him, it is much more likely that Samuil was born in Sofia, "where his father ruled", and not in the lands of today's Macedonian Republic.
Asked whether Samuil's mortal remains should be laid to rest on the Prespa island of Saint Achilles, where another Bulgarian king - Gavril Radomir, Samuil's son, is laid to rest, Ilchev pointed out:
"From the point of view of the tradition of the Christian religion, of course, mortal remains should not be transferred. On the other hand, you know very well that 30 or 40 years after Napoleon's death on the island of St. Helena, the French state transferred his remains to place them in the Pantheon in Paris. So any state can do this to create what in the sixties French historians called "places of memory". Surely, such a place of memory will become with the sarcophagus in "St. Sophia"".
One of the first things that was agreed upon in the Multidisciplinary Expert Commission on Historical and Educational Issues of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was the topic of Samuil, recalled its member Prof. Ilchev:
"One of the first things we agreed upon was that Samuil was the ruler of a large state that contemporaries and the vast majority of researchers call Bulgarian. The problem is that when the government changed in North Macedonia, they changed all the members of their commission. Not only that, but they started calling them "national traitors" in the media and in statements by state figures, those who were there 2 years ago.
During the same time, I think 6 governments changed in Bulgaria. Not one of them, not a single Minister of Foreign Affairs, allowed himself to give us advice for a second on how to behave as members of the Bulgarian commission, and not a single member of the Bulgarian commission was replaced by the government.
However, today's event is "another blow to Serbia's policy," Ilchev is categorical.
"One of the main foundations of Serbia's policy over the last 120-30 years, or even more, has been to isolate Bulgaria, to surround it with countries that are friendly to Serbia, but which are hostile to Bulgaria. In this case, it turns out that Bulgaria has good relations with Romania, good with Turkey, and now - very good with Greece, while Serbia does not have these relations. So the blow is not only in Skopje. The blow is also for Belgrade's policy".
Athens does not take sides in the historical disputes between Sofia and Skopje, he is categorical.
"Greece assesses what is advantageous for its policy - whether to be in very good relations with Bulgaria, as it is, or whether it can, on the basis of these very good relations, trade something else.
When I found out about the agreement, that it was almost a fact, it was agreed, my first reaction was to call the new rector of Sofia University and ask her if she knew anything about whether there was any appetite for the manuscripts that are kept in the Duichev Center at Sofia University - extremely valuable medieval manuscripts. Then I also called the Minister of Education. Thank God, that hasn't happened, at least not yet."
However, the University of Sofia, by virtue of an international agreement, gives full opportunity to scientists from Greece to work with these artifacts. Bulgarian and Greek scientists have already jointly published "6-7 volumes" dedicated to the manuscripts at the Duychev Institute.
The church utensils that Bulgaria is returning to Greece have enough analogues in Bulgaria, Ilchev believes.
"This is an exchange, but I repeat, this is very valuable for us, because for the first time Bulgarian scientists are given the opportunity and I am sure that they will begin to study the remains. Miniature pieces of them will be sent for research in the most renowned world laboratories. In a few years we will have a much better idea of whether Gavril Radomir was in this sarcophagus, whether Ivan Vladislav is there - things that, I repeat, we know for the moment primarily from the sources, and the sources are sometimes not uniform".
Samoil is a king – a warrior who throughout his reign held back the pressure of Byzantium. At the end of the 10th, beginning of the 11th century, Samuil had an army of about 15 to 30,000 people. At the same time, the Song Empire in China had a regular army of 1,400,000 people, the professor recalled and called for "to look at events with a broader perspective".