Unity makes strength
Hello, my bored geeks history junkies! There are dates and events in history which serve as a lesson and give precious examples that could be emulated throughout the ages. It's those events that often keep a nation going in hard times - it's enough to recall them and you can feel part of a greater good, and have new inspiration. Today is one such date for my country. See, I live in a tiny Balkan country with enormous and turbulent history, a country that's now only a shadow of what it used to be before, many many centuries ago. But the memory remains and it's probably what keeps my people going, despite the immense troubles we've went through.
Bulgaria is now the size of Virginia, both area- and population-wise. But the trace it has left in history and the legacy it has contributed for modern European culture is extremely disproportionately larger. It has gone through huge difficulties, has been fucked in the ass over and over by the Greater Powers, and save for two relatively brief periods between 681-1018 (when it was the cradle of the Slavonic culture and gave the Cyrillic alphabet to Eastern Europe and Old Slavonic to all Slavs), and then between 1185-1396 (when it helped the Byzantines to hold back Islam for two more centuries, allowing Central Europe to form powers great enough to withstand the incoming Ottoman invasions), it hasn't played such a significant role in the region ever since. It's been always squeezed between bigger empires who were striving to squash it and eat its remnants. And indeed, it experienced lots of hits under the belt and stabs in the back, which eventually brought it to its current state.
But one event sticks out, an event which the Bulgarians still pride in, because it was a victory they won on their own, without any help from anywhere, and despite the animosity of ALL the Great Powers at the time (including the presumably "friendly" Russia, which in fact only wanted to have a puppet on the Balkans). They achieved it without firing one gun and without spilling one drop of blood. Right in the face of the Big Ones. Showing them the middle finger and telling them to fuck off. It's the Unification of Bulgaria.
Somehow, the Great Powers, distracted for a moment in their petty bickering, didn't pay attention, and the two halves into which Bulgaria had been mercilessly split right after its liberation from the Ottomans, somehow managed to unite back with each other. Because that's what they wanted. Because that was the natural course of events. They did it on their own, in defiance of all the Greats, and they were prepared to pay the price. But instead of retaliation from the Ottomans, the hit came in the back - from Serbia. Prompted by Austro-Hungary, the Serbs attacked because they were scared of a large neighbor popping up on their borders. The Bulgarians fought back and kicked the Serbians out, and thus defended their Unification.
My city Plovdiv had been assigned capital of the so-called Eastern Roumelia, the southern half of the divided country, and vassal state to the Ottoman Empire. It was in the city of Plovdiv where the re-Unification was proclaimed. Today Plovdiv will celebrate for the 126th time.
Despite consistently being fucked even after that event by the greater powers (Russia, Britain, France) and its neighbors (Greece, Serbia, Romania), or lured into a number of disastrous wars that turned to one national catastrophe after another that cut off even more pieces of the body of this nation (culprits: Germany, Austria), this single event of heroism is still calling sentiments of unity at times of strife. It shows that, despite all our divisions, we can be as one, because there's much more that we share than what divides us. The significance of this event is immense, it served as a cathartic moment which forged the re-born nation, and launched one of the most remarkable economic and social transformations in the history of Europe - within a brief period, Bulgaria turned into a "tiger" of the Balkans, defying any laws of economics and geopolitics.
"Unity Makes Strength" is the slogan which stands on top of our Parliament building. It's a rephrase of the "Eintracht bringt Macht". It may be just a slogan today, in our society that's divided along so many lines, from the poor/rich, to the socialist/democrat divide, to the urban/rural, or why not pop/rock/Chalga divide if you like. But ultimately, we're more or less the same. And the triumph that is September 6, 1885 always reminds us that unity makes you stronger.
There's an ancient parable dating back to the times of an earlier, Old Great Bulgaria of the Asian steppes. Khan Kubrat, the founder of that extraordinarily advanced nomadic alliance, once gathered his sons and ordered them to bring an armful of wooden arrows. He gave one arrow to his eldest son and he easily broke it into two pieces on his knee. Then he took many arrows at once and his sons tried to break them, but they never succeeded. He then told them: "That's what happens when our tribes are united as one. No one will be able to break us!" Unfortunately, the circumstances (Khazar invasion) scattered the tribes into all directions. But some of them were strong enough to build new states in several corners, and one of them has survived to this very day. The Unification of 1885 turned out to be the RL event which proved Kubrat to be right.
Bulgaria is now the size of Virginia, both area- and population-wise. But the trace it has left in history and the legacy it has contributed for modern European culture is extremely disproportionately larger. It has gone through huge difficulties, has been fucked in the ass over and over by the Greater Powers, and save for two relatively brief periods between 681-1018 (when it was the cradle of the Slavonic culture and gave the Cyrillic alphabet to Eastern Europe and Old Slavonic to all Slavs), and then between 1185-1396 (when it helped the Byzantines to hold back Islam for two more centuries, allowing Central Europe to form powers great enough to withstand the incoming Ottoman invasions), it hasn't played such a significant role in the region ever since. It's been always squeezed between bigger empires who were striving to squash it and eat its remnants. And indeed, it experienced lots of hits under the belt and stabs in the back, which eventually brought it to its current state.
But one event sticks out, an event which the Bulgarians still pride in, because it was a victory they won on their own, without any help from anywhere, and despite the animosity of ALL the Great Powers at the time (including the presumably "friendly" Russia, which in fact only wanted to have a puppet on the Balkans). They achieved it without firing one gun and without spilling one drop of blood. Right in the face of the Big Ones. Showing them the middle finger and telling them to fuck off. It's the Unification of Bulgaria.
Somehow, the Great Powers, distracted for a moment in their petty bickering, didn't pay attention, and the two halves into which Bulgaria had been mercilessly split right after its liberation from the Ottomans, somehow managed to unite back with each other. Because that's what they wanted. Because that was the natural course of events. They did it on their own, in defiance of all the Greats, and they were prepared to pay the price. But instead of retaliation from the Ottomans, the hit came in the back - from Serbia. Prompted by Austro-Hungary, the Serbs attacked because they were scared of a large neighbor popping up on their borders. The Bulgarians fought back and kicked the Serbians out, and thus defended their Unification.
My city Plovdiv had been assigned capital of the so-called Eastern Roumelia, the southern half of the divided country, and vassal state to the Ottoman Empire. It was in the city of Plovdiv where the re-Unification was proclaimed. Today Plovdiv will celebrate for the 126th time.
Despite consistently being fucked even after that event by the greater powers (Russia, Britain, France) and its neighbors (Greece, Serbia, Romania), or lured into a number of disastrous wars that turned to one national catastrophe after another that cut off even more pieces of the body of this nation (culprits: Germany, Austria), this single event of heroism is still calling sentiments of unity at times of strife. It shows that, despite all our divisions, we can be as one, because there's much more that we share than what divides us. The significance of this event is immense, it served as a cathartic moment which forged the re-born nation, and launched one of the most remarkable economic and social transformations in the history of Europe - within a brief period, Bulgaria turned into a "tiger" of the Balkans, defying any laws of economics and geopolitics.
"Unity Makes Strength" is the slogan which stands on top of our Parliament building. It's a rephrase of the "Eintracht bringt Macht". It may be just a slogan today, in our society that's divided along so many lines, from the poor/rich, to the socialist/democrat divide, to the urban/rural, or why not pop/rock/Chalga divide if you like. But ultimately, we're more or less the same. And the triumph that is September 6, 1885 always reminds us that unity makes you stronger.
There's an ancient parable dating back to the times of an earlier, Old Great Bulgaria of the Asian steppes. Khan Kubrat, the founder of that extraordinarily advanced nomadic alliance, once gathered his sons and ordered them to bring an armful of wooden arrows. He gave one arrow to his eldest son and he easily broke it into two pieces on his knee. Then he took many arrows at once and his sons tried to break them, but they never succeeded. He then told them: "That's what happens when our tribes are united as one. No one will be able to break us!" Unfortunately, the circumstances (Khazar invasion) scattered the tribes into all directions. But some of them were strong enough to build new states in several corners, and one of them has survived to this very day. The Unification of 1885 turned out to be the RL event which proved Kubrat to be right.
