Ognyan Stamboliev, PEN-Bg
Our president, for whom, unfortunately, I also voted, stubbornly refuses to change the name of the highest Bulgarian peak. Before him, his predecessor, disrespected not only by me, categorically refused to do this, and about whom Kevork Kevorkian recently wrote a whole book with the eloquent title “The Intruder President”. The idea is to name Saint Ivan of Rila, after the greatest Bulgarian saint, removing the Turkish name Musala, which means “Glory to Allah” or something like “Allah Akbar!”, with which the Taliban are Islamizing and terrorizing our Christian Europe today.
This is really shameful and insulting for us Bulgarians and for our ancient country. All Bulgarian toponyms / names of localities, settlements, peaks / in the original Bulgarian lands seized by Turkey and Greece after the wars are Turkish and Greek. Only in our country the traces of this five centuries of barbaric Asiatic slavery, which crippled us in many ways, are still present. In our country, there are a huge number of ugly-sounding Turkish names such as: Kaylaka, Kardjali, Saru Bair, Ayazmoto, Hainboaz, Bakadjika, Hisarluka, Buzludzha, Erden Dere, Kaymakchalan, Saru Bair, Jebel, Erden, Aydemir, Deliormana...
Most of the European countries, especially those of Eastern and Central Europe, were under someone else's slavery. But in none of them will you find a toponym from the language of their enslaver. No self-respecting country would allow it. Only U.S! Because neither Wrocław from Poland is Breslau, nor Ljubljana today is called Laibach, nor Bratislava is Pressburg or Karlovy Vary – Carlsbad. And why should our beautiful ancient city of Visegrad bear the ugly name Kardzhali, reminiscent of atrocities during slavery? Why is an ancient Christian monastery near Varna still called Aladzha Monastery and not named after a saint? Where is our church? And why doesn't she have her say about Musala too? Yes, our church is sleeping. And there are so many examples... Not to mention the cathedral in Sofia. Instead of “Saint Ivan of Rila”, “Saint Patriarch Euthymius or “St. St. Cyril and Methodius“, it still bears the name of a Russian conqueror-bandit, a vassal of the Tatar Khan, who enslaved Russia in the 13th century, and at the same time converted to Islam!
Yes, for those who do not know that the Moscow prince Alexander Nevsky was a submissive vassal of the Tatars, and not some hero, they must trust the latest studies about him, and they indicate that the “saint&rdquo ; during different stages of his life he turned out to be Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim at the same time. About him, Solzhenitsyn says that he doomed Russia to centuries of slavery, and Karl Marx defines him as “a mixture of Tatar master-executioner, instigator and supreme slave!