With the laying of wreaths and flowers and a historical reenactment at the foot of Mount Buzludzha, the 157th anniversary of the campaign of the united detachment of Hadji Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha from the summer of 1868 will be celebrated today. This was announced by the Kazanlak Municipality.
The celebration will begin with a memorial service and a military ritual and will continue with a solemn speech, after which representatives of 28 clubs of the National Society (ND) “Tradition“ will reproduce the battle of July 18, 1868 at the southeastern foot of the historical peak. Traditionally, the program includes a ritual sacrifice, which, after being consecrated, will be distributed to those present.
Before the official celebration, the day will traditionally begin with the laying of wreaths and flowers in front of the monuments in Kazanlak related to the Buzludzha epic. These are the bas-relief of Stefan Karadzha on the street of the same name, the monument to the fallen soldiers for national unification in the park “Rosarium“ and the one on the central square “Sevtopolis“, dedicated to Hristo Yanakov and Stefan Oreshkov - two Chetniks captured by the Ottoman authorities and hanged in July 1868. on the central square in Kazanlak.
The solemn program on Mount Buzludzha is the oldest celebration on the occasion of this Bulgarian revolutionary event, the director of the National Park-Museum (NPM) “Shipka – Buzludzha“ Dr. Chavdar Angelov told BTA. This tradition dates back to the summer of 1883, when for the first time, on the initiative of a studious group “Iskra“ in Kazanlak, a mourning ceremony was organized, dedicated to the feat of Hadji Dimitar and those who died in the last fifth battle that the detachment fought with the Ottoman enslaver.
An interesting fact is that after the official Day of the People's Awakeners was declared in Bulgaria - November 1, every large municipality also approved a local such day, said the director of the Kazanlak Historical Museum (IM) “Iskra“ Dr. Momchil Marinov. According to the Ministry of Education, Kazanlak has two local days of the people's awakeners – one day is March 26 (old style) - the Edirne epic, and the other is precisely the homage to the feat of Hadji Dimitar.
One of the first exhibits of the Museum “Iskra“ is the flag with which in 1885, on the eve of the Unification, Kazanlak residents climbed the path to the historical peak and paid their respects to the feat of the heroes, the director also said. In his words, the detachment of Hadji Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha is the best fighting formation in the entire history of the Bulgarian National Revival. “These are professional revolutionaries and we see these reviews mostly from Ottoman sources. All Ottoman commanders were impressed by their fighting prowess and tactics, and according to some Bulgarian historians, the detachment was not even defeated, it was literally destroyed man by man, which is a phenomenon in our history“, pointed out Dr. Marinov.
The historical reenactment, which will be presented today at the foot of Mount Buzludzha, has been organized since 2012 and recreates the battle of July 18, 1868, said Nikolay Baynov, manager of the 23rd "Infantry Shipka Regiment" - Kazanlak under the ND "Tradition", who is also the scriptwriter of the reenactment. Only young boys participate, of whom 26 are Chetniks, and over a hundred are Turks, Bashibazouks and Circassians, and in the role of Hadji Dimitar in recent years has been Tsvetan Baynov. This year's Queen Rose and her runners-up will also participate in the epilogue, which includes the samodives. Baynov added that it is also important that the reenactment is at the exact location of the depicted battle.