President's speech on the occasion of Bulgaria's National Day and the celebration of 144 years since the Liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule

 

 

Dear compatriots,  

 

This year we are celebrating our National Day, while our homeland is receiving refugees and war is raging near us. The sons of two brotherly peoples are warring, whose forefathers laid down their bones on our soil, fighting side by side on the causeway of our freedom as soldiers of the army of Tsar Alexander II, which crushed the Ottoman Empire. 

 

For us Bulgarians, the ongoing fratricidal war is particularly painful. Therefore, my first appeal today is not to allow the ferocity that is ravaging the lands to the north, in Ukraine, to enter our hearts and our hearths. 

 

Let us open our arms to all those in distress, just as our ancestors once found protection from slavery in Bessarabia, Tavriya, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Odessa, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Let us be human. 

 

Voices have been heard not to celebrate today's holiday. But it is precisely the rupture with memory and the revision of history that are the cause of many tragedies.  

 

No! 

 

We are here to honour the names of our revivalists, of our revolutionaries, of Paisii, Rakovski, Levski and Botev, of the insurgents of April 1876. Of all those who by their deeds and sacrifice brought the resurrection of Bulgaria closer.  

 

Today we remember the noble minds of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gladstone, Darwin, Victor Hugo, Januarius MacGahan and Eugene Skyler, who awakened the world's sympathy for the plight of the Bulgarian people. 

 

Today, we pay tribute to the valiant soldiers of the Liberation Army, whether they were Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Romanians or Finns. They are all in the pantheon of our, Bulgarian freedom. We honour the memory of our fearless volunteers. No one's memory deserves to be thrown to the political demons.  

 

Dear fellow countrymen,

 

It is our duty to protect history from the advances of rogues and desecrators. For a nation that allows its memory to be lost is doomed to lose its freedom.   

 

Eternal glory to the thousands of known and unknown heroes who gave their lives for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland!  

 

Long live Bulgaria!