|
|
 |
The memory
of the national fight and of revolutionary struggles is particularly vivid
in the Pirine mountains. It reinvests with meaning the works that naturally
convoke it, such as (...) the "Ballade to Radon Todev" (a famous Bulgarian
poem composed in the memory of the hero who fighted against the Ottoman
Turks). The veterans of the last war and the surviving partisans of the
"anti-fascist fight" endeavour to keep alive the memory of these last battles,
supported until 1989 by communist institutions. They thus conform to a practice
generalized in countries that have experienced such regimes, consisting
of producing a unilinear and official interpretation of history. The actors
of these former fights invested with the authority they have gained from
their past commitments give:their own interpretation of the fights in which
they took part. They describe retrospectively their battles in the light
of events that have determined the further course of Bulgarian history and
have fixed their expresssion in institutions. The episode celebrated in
the "Ballade to Radon Todev" is one of them. 
|
