"In the last few years we had the chance to discover new documentary evidence of the life and work of the Apostle in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul". This was told by the historian Prof. Plamen Mitev, a specialist in the history of the Bulgarian Renaissance, who is participating in the solemn program for the celebration of the 188th anniversary of the birth of Vasil Levski.
"These new testimonies enrich our ideas about certain events related to Vasil Levski, but the debates continue on many other issues, because most of Vasil Levski's life passed in conditions of conspiratoriality and of course, he could not have continuously left documentary traces on the basis of which we could fully and objectively construct everything he did, what happened to him", added the former dean of the Faculty of History of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.
"One of the new details is that we found Ottoman registers in which the year of birth of the Apostle was corrected - it is not 1837, but 1840, because these documents clearly state how old Vasil Levski was in 1844, when an audit of the Karlovo male population was carried out and the register clearly states that Vasil, the son of Ivan Kunchev, was four years old, which means that he was born in 1840, he also pointed out.
"Here is an example of new things that, unfortunately, do not find wide popularity, because tradition imposes itself with its strength and it is difficult to change such things that were introduced 150 years ago and they have not been changed," the historian added.