Monument to Vasil Levski

A national hero, ideologist and organizer of the Bulgarian liberation movement, Vasil Levski believed that Bulgarians by themselves, without other nations’ help could and should win their freedom in order to be really independent afterwards. To this end, he organized by himself and established throughout Bulgaria a conspirative network of secret committees that prepare the population for armed rebellion. Unfortunately, the Turkish authorities heard about it and harnessed great resources to catch him. Finally they did, Levski was betrayed and doomed to death by hanging. The sentence was performed several meters from the present location of the monument that used to be in city’s outskirts back then.

This made him a national hero and his death didn’t put the deed that was initiated to end. It gave a push to the liberation fights which finally ended with nationwide uprising. It didn’t manage to achieve liberation, yet its massive character and the cruelty with which it was smashed, made global forces pay attention to the destiny of enslaved Bulgaria. Soon afterwards, as a result of the Russian-Turkish War, Bulgaria got its independence. Unfortunately he didn’t see his objective achieve, because Levski got killed just 5 years before the Liberation, and Bulgaria didn’t manage to achieve its freedom by itself and got foreign assistance.
For long they believed that in monument’s foundation Levski’s bones were laid, yet there is no evidence to this end until today.

There is an unforgettable a poem that every school child in Bulgaria knows , created as of the end of 1875 by Hristo Botev – a Bulgarian poet, revolutionary and personal friend of Vasil Levski:

Oh, my mother, my dear homeland,
why do you cry with such sorrow?
Raven, you too, cursed bird,
at whose grave you keep squawking so ugly?
 
Oh, I know, I know, you cry, mother,
That is why, you are a slave woman under black veil

Because your scared voice, mother,
Is voice without help, voice amidst the desert.
 
Keep crying! There, nearby the city of Sofia
Sticks, I saw it, a black gallows,
and your only son, Bulgaria,
is hung onto it with frightful strength.
 
The raven keeps squawking in ugly and wicked way,

Dogs and wolves howl in the fields,
Old men keep praying to God passionately,
Women keep crying, children keep screaming.
 
Winter keeps singing its evil song,
storms keep chasing thorny shrubs in the field,
Cold, frost, cry without hope
and make your heart buried in sorrow.