"The national holiday gathers, expresses the mentality of a people, its dignity, its spiritual elevation. The national holiday should unite a people, a nation, and not separate them. It is an occasion to unite the emotions of a people." This is what Prof. Kiril Topalov, writer, playwright, literary historian, translator and diplomat, told the National Radio.

"After the Liberation, in the euphoria of the establishment of the Bulgarian independent state, it was natural to adopt this date," noted Prof. Topalov. He placed the Russo-Turkish War of Liberation in the context of the series of wars between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the 19th century. In his words, it is nonsense for an empire to be a liberator.

"Empires conquer. An empire, if it stops conquering, it dies. They are always on the move, they are always ahead, they always have to conquer, to 'eat' the smaller fish, to establish influence in certain areas. This is normal and we cannot therefore reproach one barbarous power for marching upon another to take something from its court. We must reason soberly and rationally about these things."

After September 9, March 3 was declared "a remnant of the bourgeois holiday system of a capitalist campaign," he recalled.

"The historical fact was very methodically and consistently hidden from us that the course of the war was turned not by the mighty Russian army, but by the handful of Bulgarian militiamen (opalchenie) and the Ukrainian units that fought together with them. The militiamen turned the course of the war because on the other side of the Black Sea it has already been reversed - the Turkish army was already chasing the Russian one back up," stressed Prof. Kiril Topalov.

"If Suleiman had passed on foot through this pass, to join other Turkish armies in Northern Bulgaria, the course of the war would have been absolutely different - the Russian army would have been pushed back on its way."

"If we decide to be a people, a society, a country with dignity, we could look at the dates around which we can unite and not divide," Prof. Topalov commented on the radio. According to him, we have several dates to choose from - May 24, September 6, September 22, the date of the April Uprising - April 20.

"If we unite as a society and adopt one of these dates as a national holiday, our society will be more united, more purposeful and with less hatred between us," believes Prof. Topalov.

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