Every year on February 19, Bulgaria bows its head respectfully to the immortal cause of its greatest son, Vasil Levski, who devoted and gave his life to the liberation of the country from five centuries of foreign slavery.
Vasil Levski, who was called the Apostle of Freedom in Bulgaria, stepped into immortality when he was hanged on February 19, 1873.
Born on July 18, 1837, in the town of Karlovo, on the outskirts of Kocabalkan, Vasil Levski became a monk in 1858, taking the name Ignatiy, and a year later he received a higher religious title, known in Bulgarian as dyakon. However, during this period, under the influence of the ideas of the great Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Rakovsky, he gave up religious activities and joined the struggle for the liberation of the country. As a matter of fact, Vasil Levski joined the two Bulgarian legions formed by Georgi Rakovski in Belgrade in 1862 and 1868. He became the standard bearer in the gang of the famous voivode Panayot Hitov.
Vasil Levski (18 July 1837 – 18 February 1873), was a Bulgarian revolutionary who is, today, a national hero of Bulgaria. Dubbed the Apostle of Freedom, Levski ideologised and strategised a revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Levski founded the Internal Revolutionary Organisation, and sought to foment a nationwide uprising through a network of secret regional committees.
Associate Professor Plamen Mitev, one of the faculty members of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridski" University, says the following when describing Vasil Levski's activities:
From the beginning of 1868, Vasil Levski began to reinterpret the existing views regarding the solution of the Bulgarian problem. His views in the letters he sent to Voivode Panayot Hitov show this. While Levski emphasizes that he is thinking of doing something new in these letters, he says: - If I succeed in these new things, "the whole people will gain from this, if I fail, I will only lose myself." In this famous statement of Levski, we see the first signs of the search for new ways to solve the Bulgarian problem.
During this period, Levski set out to realize the idea of creating a network of secret revolutionary committees throughout the country that would prepare a general popular uprising for the liberation of Bulgaria. For this purpose, he traveled throughout the country twice. During these trips, he collected information about the real political views prevalent among the people. In fact, they began to work on the creation of the first secret revolutionary committees. In 1870, he participated in the creation of the Bulgarian Central Revolutionary Committee in Bucharest, together with the great revolutionary and writer Lüben Karavelov. In the spring of the same year, the revolution particularly increased its activity.
By the end of 1870 and throughout the following year, he managed to create a very dense network of secret revolutionary committees. He combined these committees into the Internal Revolutionary Organization, which had its own charter and program and strict disciplinary regulations. Vasil Levski also included the following view in the organization's Charter: "Through a general revolution, radical changes should be made in the current system of tyranny and tyranny, and a democratic republic should be established instead of this system."
Levski succeeded in achieving what political activists from different generations wanted to do during the Awakening Period. He prepared the Bulgarian national revolution. His ideas about a free Bulgaria to be established in the future are also lofty. Vasil Levski advocated the establishment of a political system in the free Bulgaria of the future that would provide equal rights and justice to all religious and ethnic communities, regardless of whether they were Christian or Muslim, Bulgarian, Turkish, Serbian, Greek, Armenian or Jewish; He wanted a "clean and holy" republic to prevail in the future free Bulgaria.
Before him, no activist had put forward these ideas so clearly and consecutively. Vasil Levski is a supreme activist who gained many supporters through his selfless activity in the middle and third quarter of the 19th century.
Execution
He was caught as a result of a robbery carried out by his gang members and was sentenced to death after being tried by the Ottoman judicial authorities. His sentence was executed on February 19, 1873.