He studied philosophy at Sofia University. He stood out by opposing dogmatic views in meetings at the university and frequently got into trouble with the administration. He criticized Lenin's view on "philosophical categories" in his doctoral thesis. First, his scholarship was canceled, and then he was banned from setting foot in Sofia.
Jelio Jelev, the first democratic president of Bulgaria, is a philosopher and an important statesman who left his mark on the Balkans in modern times.
He was born in Varna in 1935 and studied philosophy at Sofia University. He stood out by opposing dogmatic views in meetings at the university and frequently got into trouble with the administration. In his doctoral thesis, he criticized Lenin's view on "philosophical categories".
First, his scholarship was canceled, and then he was banned from setting foot in Sofia. He was immersed in soil and philosophy in Grosden, his wife's village, for seven years. The book he wrote during this time, titled "Fascism", was not given much importance at first. But after a while, it was understood that the thesis put forward in the work as a "totalitarian state" was essentially a criticism of the system in Bulgaria.
After the overthrow of the old system on November 10, 1989, he entered the political scene and became the president of Bulgaria in 1990. He was re-elected as president in the first free elections. In 1997, he announced that he was leaving his job and would return to philosophy, and he did so.