Vasil Levski (1837 - 1873)
Memorial to Levski at the site of his execution in Sofia (image from Trip Advisor)
February 18th 1873: Vasil Levski executed
On this day in 1873, by the new-style calendar, Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski was executed in Sofia, aged 35. Levski was born as Vasil Kunchev in Karlovo in 1837, and as a young adult became a deacon. However, he soon gave up the monastic life and fled to Serbia to enlist in a Bulgarian legion fighting against the Ottoman Empire. During this time, he earned the nickname Levski (‘lionlike’), and became convinced that Bulgaria would only be liberated from oppressive Ottoman rule if the movement was highly organised and energised the massses. He envisioned a democratic republican government for an independent Bulgaria, with freedom of expression, speech, and association enshrined in law; liberated Bulgaria would be a land of ethnic and religious equality. In an attempt to stoke revolutionary fervour, Levski began setting up local committees in Bulgaria itself - moving away from a foreign-based movement. By the early 1870s, he had successfully established a clandestine revolutionary network in localities across Bulgaria, led by a central body in the town of Lovech. However, in 1872, a failed robbery of a Turkish post office alerted the authorities to the presence and scope of the revolutionary organisation. The police then began a crackdown of revolutionaries, but Levski refused to heed the advice of his peers and begin the revolution, as he did not believe the population was adequately prepared. Levski was ultimately arrested and sentenced to death by hanging, though he refused to surrender the names of his accomplicies; he was sent to the gallows in Sofia in February 1873. Levski’s death threw the revolutionary movement into disarray, but, five years after his execution, his dream was realised and Bulgaria secured its independence. Today, Vasil Levski is remembered in Bulgaria as a national hero, known as the ‘apostle of freedom’.
“If I shall win, I shall win for the entire people. If I shall lose, I shall lose only myself”
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