/ world today news/ Prominent and not-so-prominent personalities from – I am ashamed to say it, but I am forced because they call themselves that – the political and intellectual “elite” often complain about our historical fate and share with a sigh: do you stop if it would happen like this…, what would be our lot today: life!
Years ago, one of our verbose former presidents, listening to the wise words of an Austrian “great scientist and friend of Bulgaria”, sighed sadly that with our Cyrillic alphabet we do not have the chance to get along better with Europeans. Why don’t we adopt the Latin alphabet?
A great historical disaster was brought to us by Prince Boris – a convert, by rejecting the good proposals of the Roman Pope to make us Catholics, and accepted Orthodoxy from Byzantium and allowed the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius to push their invented alphabet on us and for centuries to come separated us from the divine blessings of Europe.
If we were Catholics we would not have fought the crusaders marching against Byzantium, but we would have been allies with them, and then our king, whatever happened, would have entered Constantinople in triumph. And Baldwin Tower would remain empty and nameless.
Acceptance of the Orthodox faith distorted our European consciousness. A few centuries later it brought great troubles to Europe. Clergymen from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, deprived of their sense of belonging to Europe, followed the Byzantines to the north and reached Kiev. They tricked the Russian Prince Vladimir, together with his people, into making him Orthodox, they pushed him liturgical books written in Church Slavonic with Bulgarian letters and introduced him to Orthodoxy. And they made Russia an eternal threat to “European civilisation”. The world would be different if the Russians remained pagans. There would be no need for the invasion of the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, Napoleon and Hitler.
The unfortunate consequences of this unreasonable act of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and state will haunt us forever. Because this gave an occasion to the converted Russia some century later, hiding its imperial interests with false fraternal feelings, to impose on us the so-called Liberation from Turkish slavery. We have not invited them because it is known to “elite” scholars that it was not slavery at all, but presence. At the end of the war, Russia tried to deceive us with some kind of San Stefano peace treaty with borders from the times of Bulgaria’s greatness. Thank God our friends and well-wishers England, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary at the Berlin Congress helped us free ourselves from these imaginary borders. We could tolerate the Turkish presence for another decade or so, until the civilized European countries figure out who will free the Bulgarians first and, by the way, reach the dreamed Straits. Then in front of the National Assembly would stand not the monument of the liberating King, but three or four monuments of the European liberators. And we would not have entered the European Union with so much enthusiasm, but we would have been among its founders. But instead of getting smarter, we built monuments of gratitude to Russia all over the country, and now we’re wondering how to erase them without looking like barbarians. First, let’s remove March 3 as a national holiday, and then it’s easy.
For decades, Bulgarian statesmen have been trying to correct what was done by Boris the convert, to put Russia where it belongs – somewhere behind the Urals. The most profitable time to correct historical destiny is wars. The greats of Europe quarreled and settled the First World War. Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I and his government chose an ally to repair the consequences of the Balkan and Inter-Allied Wars: In alliance with the civilized Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm’s relative, we will strike Greece, Serbia, Russia and make Bulgaria great. There is no mistake here: But the lot turned to the non-winning side and Bulgaria remained within the borders that the Treaty of Versailles graciously assigned to her, losing some and other territories. And what would it be: “Bulgaria “from the Black Sea to Ohrid, from the Danube to the White Sea”.
But there are always times for dreams. A new World War II has come. And new chances for another, desired historical destiny. Just to hit an ally. And we got it right: Bogdan Filov and his majesty Boris III chose the alliance with fascist Germany, along with allied Italy and Japan. Rome, Berlin and Tokyo sounded so majestic and all-conquering that there was no way we were going to lose this time either. Mr. Filov is a learned man, a professor, he cannot be wrong. In order not to harm the Bulgarians’ atavistic feelings of gratitude towards Russia, the government declared neutrality towards it. Quite different from the rules of the Hague Convention of 1907 neutrality, but the USSR was in a difficult position and the Bolshevik government would not have to be satisfied with that either. In addition, we quietly announced that we would not send the great Bulgarian soldier to the Eastern Front. In compensation, we declared a “symbolic war” on Britain and the United States. A good start: we took the place of the German troops in Macedonia and White Sea Greece, and the dreams of a Great Bulgaria almost came true. We sang enthusiastically: “Bulgaria, Bulgaria/ you are happy now,/ in your hands, in your hands/ are all the good things.” But, this eternal but of the unfulfilled story. The war on the Eastern Front did not go as we thought it should go. The Americans did not understand that the war with them was symbolic and bombarded Sofia and other Bulgarian cities with aerial bombardment. In September 1944, the Soviet government did not comply with our strange neutrality and the Red Army entered our territory. After another year, the Second World War ended and Bulgaria again found itself far from its historical dreams: Yugoslavia wanted reparations, Greece wanted territories almost to the suburbs of Plovdiv.
And yet the end of this unfortunate war could have ended happily if Stalin had agreed with Churchill and a British landing through Greece occupied the territory of Bulgaria. True, we would have lost the territories to which Greece had claims, but we would have enjoyed a civilized British occupation, instead of the presence of troops of all nationalities of the USSR, who had not mastered European civilization. It would have been good for our history if these soldiers had stayed further away from Bulgaria. And for that, only one thing was needed: the winner was someone else. But these thoughts of “elite” historians and politicians are only for the initiated. It is still too early to name the desired winner, but the time will come for that too. The modern print and electronic information deluge is full of such revelations. We will not be left behind by the new European reading of recent history.
The Paris Peace Treaty under the pressure of the Soviet Union saved us from redrawing the map of Bulgaria, but it is certain that there is some benefit hidden behind it. Russia’s policy is always self-serving. Many of our “elite” of all categories believe that for this reason we owe nothing to Russia. And the monuments of the Red Army, wherever they are in the country, should be removed. The new mayor of the capital promises that this noble case will be resolved in the near future. Good example is contagious and we can expect many more destructions as retribution for the failed history.
Meanwhile, a Japanese scientist had come to the conclusion that the end of history had come. Then he corrected himself and now the story continues again. The Warsaw Pact and the CIS collapsed, the USSR collapsed and the Russian Federation was born. The time has come for a new historic election. In recent history we have become members of the European Union and NATO. From this came some very interesting changes in our economy, defense, education, health care. Some retrograde-minded scientists have called Bulgaria’s fall from the tenth place in economic development in Europe during the years of “communism” to the last 27th in the EU ranking a catastrophe. Other scientists from the new “elite” assure us that everything is OK, in European terms. As a sign of European solidarity, we refused the construction of the Belene NPP, for which we had spent 3.4 billion, we refused South Stream because it only imports gas from Russia, we disarmed the army of the bad Soviet armament and paid in advance for unproduced aircraft with an indefinite delivery date, we pay for new armored vehicles. There are many signs of solidarity, but the most important is the willingness to sacrifice everything to achieve the most important common European goal: to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. In the march towards this historical goal, Bulgaria is once again led by a scientist of European prestige. Now he is not only a professor, but an academician. This already really guarantees us that once we strategically defeat Russia we will get all our historical dreams.
One thing is certain: it will be time to cry again!
#desired #failed #story
