/ world today news/ Bulgaria is a country that undergoes several political upheavals every century. In the 20th century, it was the loss in the Second Balkan War and the two world wars, as well as the collapse of the socialist system, which led to the current difficult and unfinished transition. After each cataclysm comes a new power, which, in typical Bulgarian fashion, does everything possible to overthrow the transitional one, to depersonalize and disgust it to the point of complete negation.
More than 30 years after the fall of the socialist system, most of the Bulgarian governments have done everything possible to sever all ties with Russia and the Eastern countries. If we abstract from the economic, political and financial relations that we have broken and very often turned out to be detrimental to our country (examples of this are the unrealized Belene NPP, South Stream and the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline), the most difficult thing for us as a nation is, the destruction of the cultural and historical heritage between Bulgaria and Russia.
The most recent example is the disgraceful proposal of the current Bulgarian government to remove March 3 as a national holiday, which even Western historians call “the beginning of the Third Bulgarian State”. But alas, the destruction is everywhere, monuments are pushed, holidays and joint celebrations are canceled, such as the one on May 24, when in 2017 our two peoples celebrated the day of Slavic writing together. Other places are left to total ruin and neglect. One such example is the Park-Museum “V. N. Lavrov”.
The park is located in the immediate vicinity of the village of Gorni Dabnik, Pleven region. The remains of over 3,500 Russian and Finnish soldiers who fought for the freedom of Bulgaria, in one of the heaviest battles (the battle of Gorni Dabnik) of the entire liberation war of 1877-1878, are buried in it. It is worth mentioning that a large part of those who fell for Bulgaria’s freedom in this battle were young men. They are: Lieutenant Nikolai Nikolayevich Porozhenko, only 24 years old, Colonel Elmar Fyodorievich Prokope at 36 years old, Colonel Konstantin Alekseevich Runov – 38 years old, Nikolai Fyodorovich Ozharovsky – 33 years old, Lieutenant Mikhail Nikolayevich Perepelitsyn – 29 years old, Captain Pavel Nikolaevich Basilevsky – 31 years old, Second Lieutenant Alexander Pavlovich Romanov – 25 years old, Second Lieutenant Lev Petrovich Kasherininov – 26 years old, Second Lieutenant Nikolai Konstantinovich Schildbach – 22 years old, Ensign Bror Gustav Yohanovich Gresbek – 22 years old, Major General Vasily Nikolaevich Lavrov – 39 years old, as well and Colonel Otto Mebes, Officer Alexander Gagman, Officer Sergei Vorobeev, Officer Reinhold Hamar, Second Lieutenant Oskar von Smith and many others whose mortal remains have either not been found or are buried in the mass graves of Lavrov Park. These are people who left behind mothers, fathers, wives, children, and their relatives never got to say their last goodbyes or see where they were buried. They are buried in a foreign land, albeit a fraternal and grateful one, or so it is written on the monument we have left for them:
If we abstract from the fact that the promise we made to those who fell for our freedom, written on this column, was not kept and the friendship was not eternal, if we have dignity as a people, we would at least clean their mounds, in appreciation that these wars , whatever their motivations were, left their bones so that our country and people could exist to this day. This is not just respect for those thousands of fallen soldiers, but also for ourselves as a people, because if we don’t respect our past, what kind of future do we want to have?
#Lavrov #Park #memory #died #freedom #Bulgaria
