September is the most dramatic month for the recent history of Bulgaria. At the very end of summer, over the years, they have met and exalted, and broken, and won, and coups.
This recalls on "Facebook" Zachary Karabashliev.
September is the month of the Unification in 1885, of Independence in 1908, of the liberation of our native Dobruja in 1916 from Romanians and Russians.
But September 9, 1944 is the date that changes everything – not just our entire territory is being usurped, but also our history. Come to think of it... and our collective memory.
Because totalitarianism has this demonic ambition — to enslave not just the body, but also the soul.
45 years of communist propaganda and education erase the memory of an entire nation of self-sacrifice, idealism, moral and military victories. Only devotion to the USSR and the BKP mattered. The result is sad: ignorance of national history, loss of ancestral memory, collective amnesia, nihilism...
For 45 years, the education system here has taught Bulgarian children (now parents and grandparents) only slavery, slavery, slavery, Turkish slavery, fascist slavery, slavery, slavery, failures, national catastrophes, betrayals, betrayals, losses... Not military victories, not political successes and successful diplomacy, not rise and growth, but an inferiority complex. As sad as I am to say it — I see how the communist apparatus managed to “change the chip” of this our opposite, but resilient and adaptable people. He changed it.
And 35 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the wall in Bulgarian education remains. In our history textbooks, some of the most important pages about Bulgaria are no more than a few.
September 15 is the first day of school. But on September 15, 1863, in the Bessarabian village of Banovka, near Bolgrad in today's Ukraine, General Kolev was also born. After high school in Bolgrad, he came to Sofia and worked in the District Court, but volunteered in the war against Serbia in 1885, and later graduated from the Military School. In the years after that, he served and continued to study, grew up, participated in the wars for national unification and became the commander and symbol of the Bulgarian cavalry, the liberator of Dobruja, one of our brightest heroes, who deserves to be in the Bulgarian Pantheon together with Rakovski, Levski, Benkovski, Botev, Drangov...
But who remembers today General Kolev, who faced the “invincible” until then Russian squadrons and defeated? Who today remembers the epic near Dobrich on September 5-7, 1916, when the Bulgarian army and the civilian population defended the city and defeated the Russians and Romanians?
And in those September days, the miracles of the Dobrudja front began and continued with the victories at Kubadin, Karapelit, Kochmar, Kara Omer, Kara Murad and many others, after which Russians, Romanians and Serbs were pushed beyond the Danube, beyond Northern Dobrudja, beyond Tulcha, beyond Seret, far in the cold Russian steppes.
There was no way we could be forgiven for these victories.
And Dobrich was renamed “Tolbukhin”!? What does the Soviet military have to do with the old Bulgarian city, except that it occupied it?
Nothing, of course. Simply, every memory of the triumph of the Bulgarian spirit, every single victory before September 9 (military or diplomatic), had to be erased from the national consciousness.
In my time as a student, we didn't need to know about the battles in front of the “impregnable" Tutrakan fortress on September 4-6, 1916. How in two days of unparalleled heroism the Bulgarian soldiers mastered it and took 28,000 prisoners, over 400 officers, over 140 cannons, two flags... We didn't need to know about Gen. Kiselov, Gen. Toshev, Gen. Kantarjiev, gen. Zhekov, Gen. Vazov, Gen. Zhostov, Gen. Protogerov and others. many others... We didn't need to know anything about the ardent Colonel Drangov. All these names in my time were and remain to this day only names of half-abandoned villages, towns, streets with broken pavements — names without history behind them, without memory, devoid of content.
And finally, I will retell a rather funny story from one September 2016, entrusted to me by a friend.
Only eight years ago, a monument to General Kolev was finally erected in Dobrich!
(By the way, I know from reliable sources what the opposition was to the erection of this monument, but for that — another time.)
It was the day before the official opening. One of the attractions — the monument was “musical”. My friend was nearby when at one point a group from a mental health center showed up. They were accompanied. And when they passed in front of the horse, suddenly the old hymn “Shumi Maritsa” (The music was automatically triggered by something in the horse's nose.) As if on command, the whole group stood still and stood like that — arms were outstretched, chests were raised — until the hymn is over. After which they spontaneously started clapping.
"That was" — my friend said — "the purest and most unadulterated reaction I have seen to this monument".
The music system, of course, no longer works, and there is no need.
The monument is dignified and good, the plaques with the names written behind it are eloquent enough.
September.