Hristo Botev (Bulgarian: Христо Ботев, pronounced [ˈxristo ˈbɔtɛf]), born Hristo Botyov Petkov (Христо Ботьов Петков; 6 January 1848 [O.S. 25 December 1847] – 1 June [O.S. 20 May] 1876) was a Bulgarian revolutionary, poet and journalist. He participated in the Bulgarian revolutionary movement as a member of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. Botev is honoured in Bulgaria.
Family background and childhood
Botev was born on 6 January 1848 [O.S. 25 December 1847] in Kalofer, Ottoman Empire (modern Bulgaria). The birthplace is disputed by several historians, stating that he was born in Karlovo (according to the letter of Nayden Gerov) or the small village of Osen. His father was Botyo Petkov and his mother was Ivanka Boteva.
His father was a teacher and a significant figure of the Bulgarian National Revival. His mother was born in a modest Kalofer family. Botev was not the only child in the family, he was together with his eight siblings, which were Ana, Petko, Stefan, Kiril, Tota, Genko, Genko and Boyan.
According to some sources, Botev was born in a room of the Kalofer school where his parents lived. A little later, a new school was built in Kalofer and the family rented a house where Botev spent the first years of his life. This house was destroyed during the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, but in the 1940s it was rebuilt and turned into the Hristo Botev National Museum.
In 1854, his father failed to reach an agreement with the Kalofer district about his salary and moved to Karlovo. There the family lived in his mother's house in Tabashka Mahala, and Botev went to school with his father as his teacher. In 1858, Petkov accused the administration of the Karlovo district of embezzling money that had been bequeathed to the school and then returned to Kalofer. The district tried unsuccessfully accommodating him in a house belonging to the merchant Hristo Tupchilestov, who lived in Constantinople, whereupon the family moved into the house of Hadzhi Nestor. After returning to Kalofer, Botev attended the local three-class school, where his father was a teacher.
As early as 1857, Petkov tried to send his son to study in the Russian Empire with the help of Nayden Gerov, an acquaintance from Odessa who had become a well-known pedagogue and Russian vice-consul in Plovdiv. This was only possible in the autumn of 1863, when Botev had finished primary education and received a scholarship from the Russian government and travelled via Plovdiv and Constantinople to Odessa, where he arrived on 14 November. In Odessa, Botev turned to the Bulgarian Board of Trustees of Odessa, to whom he was able to present a letter of recommendation from Nayden Gerov, and to its member Nikola Toshkovich, a wealthy merchant born in Kalofer, who was an acquaintance of his father. He entered the Second Grammar School as a "volunteer", as he was not well prepared to be a regular student, and was placed in the boarding school, where there were ten other Bulgarian students at the time.
From the moment he entered high school, Botev found it difficult to fit in - he constantly complained about the strict discipline, which included corporal punishment, but at the same time he was often absent from lessons, got into fights with classmates and treated most of his teachers with arrogance. In 1864, he left the boarding school and began to live independently in various lodgings. Despite his father's insistent letters and Nikola Toshkov's attempts to influence him, he neglected school and alienated the Bulgarians in Odessa with his eccentric behaviour, many of whose representatives restricted their contacts with him.
Although he did not attend school often, Botev spent a lot of time in various libraries, especially in the Bulgarian library Yuriy Venelin, which was located in Toshkov's house. He read mainly Russian authors and was particularly impressed by Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Ivan Turgenev. He became acquainted with the philologist Victor Grigorovich, whom he assisted in translating Bulgarian folk tunes into Russian. According to his classmate Kiro Tuleshkov, Botev was already working on his poem "Mother" in the summer of 1864, consulting Grigorovich, and sent it to Petko Slaveykov in Constantinople even then. The reliability of this information is not clear, as the poem was not published by Slaveykov until several years later.
When it became apparent in September 1865 that Botev was failing the gymnasium's third grade and was expelled for "carelessness," his scholarship was cancelled, and he was given money to travel back to Ottoman Bulgaria. Still, he stayed in Odessa, earning a living through private instruction and keeping in touch with the city's Polish population. Botev even registered as a "volunteer" at the Historical and Philological Faculty of the Imperial Novorossiya University with the help of Grigorovich. Botev also taught in Bessarabia, having written his first poetic works and established strong connections with the Russian and Polish revolutionary movements.
Following his return to Kalofer in 1867, Botev replaced his ill father as a teacher, introducing subjects such as geography, history and civil law. At that time, on 15 April, Botev's poem "To My Mother" was published for the first time in the journal "Gaida" which was published in Constantinople and was edited by Petko Slaveykov. The poem was published without a recognised author. During the 11 May observance of the Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, Botev delivered an impromptu speech criticising the national movement's moderation, which at the time was primarily focused on the creation of an independent church. Police threats were raised by the speech, but none materialised. Botev frequently visited Parashkeva Shushulova, a teacher at the nearby girls' school, during his time in Kalofer. She is said to be the most likely prototype for the beloved in some of his poetry.
Botev was sent by his father after getting better from the illness to Odessa once again to resume his education. Using his father's money to get to Constantinople and then Odessa, he did not follow through and without informing his parents, decided to go to Romania instead. Botev arrived in Giurgiu, at the end of September 1867. There, he quickly made contact with Bulgarian émigrés, including Hadzhi Dimitar and several members of the cheta that Filip Totyu and Panayot Hitov had formed that previous year. Following the announcement of the death of famed revolutionary Georgi Rakovski, they travelled to Bucharest to attend his burial on 12 October 1867. Lacking any money, Botev went to Georgi Atanasovich, who gave him the money he needed to continue on his way to Odessa. He resumed his trip to Odessa, which was then unfinished and stopped in Brăila. There, he began working as a word-editor and published his second elegy "To your brother".
For some time he lived in an abandoned mill near Bucharest with Vasil Levski, the eventual leader of the Bulgarian Secret Resistance Committees, and the two of them initially became close friends. From 1869 to 1871, Botev worked again as a teacher in Bessarabia, keeping close relations with the Bulgarian revolutionary movement and its leaders. In June 1871, he became the editor of the revolutionary emigrant newspaper Word of the Bulgarian Emigrants (Duma na bulgarskite emigranti), where he began publishing his early poetic works. Imprisoned for months, due to his close collaboration with the Russian revolutionaries, Botev started working for the "Liberty" (Svoboda) newspaper, edited by the eminent Bulgarian writer and revolutionary Lyuben Karavelov. In 1873, he also edited the satirical newspaper "Alarm clock" (Budilnik), where he published a number of feuilletons, targeting those wealthy Bulgarians who did not take part in the revolutionary movement. During the last years of his life, Botev gave up poetry for activism.
The Bulgarian revolutionary movement was put in danger with the capture of Levski by Ottoman authorities at the end of 1872. At the time Levski was the indisputable leader of the Bulgarian insurgency. He had established a network of revolutionary committees, supervised by the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC; In Bulgarian: БРЦК) located in Romania, which was tasked with preparing the Bulgarian revolutionaries for a future general uprising against Ottoman rule. Levski was brought to trial, sentenced to death by hanging and executed on 19 February 1873. His death was a serious blow to the morale of the revolutionary movement.