It is hard to say whether the Ukrainians or the Russians are more to blame for what is happening now and has been going on for two years now. And it is destruction, the crash of cannons and bombs and many, many human victims. Let's assume that both Russians and Ukrainians are equally guilty and are some bullies, to whom the civilized world should have noticed a long time ago and divided them into two sides from this quarrel and from this war. But it's not just that.
As a European, democratic person, the following gives me a very bad impression. It is felt and seen to this day, especially in this conflict, the division that exists in Russia, but no less in Ukraine, between the classes, between the common people and the elite. A real and deep difference and division that has never existed here in Bulgaria. This is an echo of the serfdom that existed throughout Russia, including Little Russia, i.e. today's Ukrainian lands, almost until the end of the 19th century.
In Bulgaria, despite all the differences between people, even at that time, despite the fact that we were under slavery, there was not such a deep gap between those who had to work and those who had to rule. One, of course, is one huge mass, and the other a much smaller group of people. It is this difference, which has been preserved for a long time, that allows today the elites in both countries to send hundreds of thousands of people to the front as sacrificial animals. People whose lives, whose worth as human beings is in another category...
I will first give a quote from Georgi Rakovski, which very vividly describes what we call serfdom. This is what he does in his pamphlet entitled "Remigration to Russia or Russia's murderous policy for the Bulgarians", a pamphlet published on the occasion of the emigration of Bulgarians to the southern Russian lands in the middle of the 19th century. Georgi Rakovski warns the Bulgarians that nothing good awaits them there. Moreover, this is what he says: “And this is how they will accommodate you, as soon as you go there: They will sell you and share with some of their spahis (landlords), who, by assigning you a piece of land each, will make themselves simpler and even poorer than gypsy huts, will force you with a whip (Russian whip) day and night to work for them like horses, just for one piece of clothing and one sustenance?
Raw skins and black as earth bread! You will be their eternal slaves and they will sell you to each other like livestock whenever they feel like it! Oh! What a shame for you! There is no lamentation before anyone; because from that place in which you are stuck once, you can never move anywhere!“
Just like today, the mobilized soldiers at the front in Ukraine have their phones taken away and sent to the trenches directly on the front line. With the same feeling left over from past centuries.
Such a person-to-person relationship has never existed here in the Balkans, especially in Bulgaria. We have always been more democratic, so to speak, more equal and with the same attitude towards our own kind.
After Rakovski's words of flames, let me quote another giant of the word, who has an observation on this and many other topics – the folk poet Ivan Vazov. It is about the novel “New Land” and the letter of a Russian administrator, in newly liberated Bulgaria, shortly after 1878. Of course, this letter is assumed, but as in most cases, Vazov describes actual incidents and events in this novel. And this is what the Russian Count Maruzin wrote to his beloved, Lyubov Aleksandrovna, who is in Russia: “What kind, good, simple-minded Bulgarian peasants!
Imagine, Lyubov Aleksandrovna, they come into my office, take off their hats and shake hands. Imagine one of our men who would do the same to a college assessor in our country! Scandal! Saint Rus would shake all over!… And you know? They grip tightly, fingers crackling in their calloused hand. "Your Eminence" — no — "Sir!" To the governor — too! And him — hand! Beautiful people, democratic manners! Right, there is something to learn from the cousins.“
This is, of course, a small part of the letter, but it shows that at that time, for an ordinary Russian peasant, a peasant, to enter the office of a high-ranking official and shake his hand, shake his hand It was a scandal! And at the same time, the Bulgarian peasants did not have such a concern, nor was it seen as something scandalous on the other side.
It is precisely because of the relative equality and mutual respect between people that has always existed on the Bulgarian lands that I say that what is happening today in Russia and Ukraine will never happen here. No matter how much they divide us as a society and external agitators incite us to take one or the other side in this conflict, and not only in this one, the sobriety and practicality in the Bulgarian still remains. As well as democracy and respect for others.