Authors: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sonya Penkova

Publisher: National Museum of Military History

Condition: New book

ISBN: 978-619-7039-12-2

Paperback, 128 pages

First edition: 2021

Price: 12.78 €/25 leva 

The richly illustrated catalogue explores the layers of collective memory from the turbulent time of the fights for freedom. Through the relics of well-known and lesser-known heroes preserved in the National Museum of Military History, it presents a fragment of the heritage that has preserved the ideas of spiritual, political, and national independence. The narrative follows uprisings, conspiracies, and rebellions from the late XVIII and early XIX centuries up to the April Uprising.
More than 70 historical figures and over 150 artefacts – witnesses of heroism in those turbulent times, bring contemporary person face to face with those crazy heads who dared to overthrow an entire empire. Among them are weapons, documents, and personal belongings of those whose names are inscribed in Bulgaria’s immortal national pantheon — Indzhe Voyvoda, the Hitrov brothers, Zhelyo and Ilyo Voyvoda, Panayot Hitov and Filip Totyu, Georgi Rakovski and Vasil Levski, Todor Kableshkov, Georgi Benkovski, Panayot Volov, Hristo Botev, Dimitar Berovski, and many other famous and lesser-known heroes who lived with the idea that “our freedom depends on us.”
The catalogue also gives a worthy place to some of the few flags from the national liberation struggles that have been preserved to this day – those of the Bulgarian Volunteer Battalion in the Crimean War; the detachments of Zhelyo Voyvoda, Stefan Karadzha, and Filip Totyu; the Karlovo flag of Vasil Levski; seven flags from the April Uprising and others.