Том 02 – Rebel with a Just Cause • Reminiscences (1922-1951)

Продуктов номер: 12285
Изчерпана

Автор: Спас Райкин
Категория: Българска история на чужди езици | Български мемоари и биографии
Издателство: Пенсофт
Състояние: Нова книга
494 страници
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Първо издание: 2001
Народност: българска

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A Political Journey Agеinst the Winds of the 20th Century If future historians become interested in this page of our past, I hope to save much material for their consideration, which, otherwise, may be lost. Should I, for some reason, fail to finish this ambitious plan, there is an enormous amount of material in my archives, which, I hope, will be somehow preserved. When I, and all Bulgarian emigrants in exile, were engaged in these activities, we felt that we were serving a noble cause for which destiny had chosen us to be its messengers. I never missed a moment in my life when I did not have an eye on history, as insignificant as we otherwise were. I have always looked to history as a human drama, and to us as actors playing on the big stage, small men in the crowd or leading political figures, with all our sins and charms, with all of our weaknesses and strengths, illusions and hopes, but always conscious that we were on a mission to help our nation which had given us our lives and for God, who had ordained this mission to us. How well we have fulfilled our duty to our fellow men of our times, and to those who have come after us, is not for us to judge. But one thing which I would not admit to anyone to question is our sincerety and dedication to our sacred cause. We fought the winds in our journey, and we defeated them. What follows in these volumes is history, nothing less, and nothing more. Sometimes in October 1965, as a member of the faculty of the History Department at State University of New York, the Potsdam Campus, I had to deliver my first lecture in a team-teaching experiment of History of Western Civilization. As I took a place at the lecturn in the auditorium, ready to begin my discussion, I looked at the audience of students and caught the hundreds of pairs of eyes fixed on me. The front row was occupied by my colleagues in the department. In one fleeting moment, I closed my eyes and in my mind flashed the long path I have travelled from the muddy streets of the small Bulgarian village of Zelenikovo, through trials and tribulations, to this temple of the American Academia where I was called to celebrate the triumph of my dreams. I have defied all curses of the fates and have reached the mountaintop of my salvation and redemption. If the reader has the patience to reach the end of these pages, he or she will understand my feelings of victory over the forces of evil pursuing me in this age of fascism and communism. I do not claim to be a hero and this is not a heroic story. This is an ordinary story of an ordinary man, who lived in an extraordinary age. Even before putting the finishing touches to this first volume, I was struck by the thought whether my experiences had any value at all. From the very beginning, to the very end, they are not exclusively my destiny. Hundreds, thousands of young men and women have trudged the same paths. Perhaps many others have written their vitae, or never written at all, and my contribution is simply an useless addition to other people's similar experiences. To that, many of my fellow fighters have suffered much worse things, have ended their lives in tragedies, as I have indicated on many occasions such instances in my memories. Burdened by such thoughts, at one point I was ready to abandon this project, my reminiscences of my childhood, my studies, my service as trudovak, in that penal institution, and my odyssey in the Rodopy Mountains, followed by my twilight years in Europe and America. But while going through all this examination of my path, I realized that I owed this confession to myself. During the writing I relived the feelings which had troubled me in the times when the events recalled here, had occurred. I could not so easily throw them in the basket of oblivion. I was deeply impressed by my long path of struggles against all kinds of adversities and injustices, having overcome them with patience and tenacity. It could not but please me. Who knows, these notes may fall in the hands of some young men, doomed to the same fate, on the verge of giving to desperation and loss of confidence in themselves and in life. If they read these pages they may be inspired to confront the misfortunes in life and overcome them with the same perseverance and determination with which I have confronted them. All my life I have pushed the boulder of Sisyphus towards the peak, it had always slipped from my grasp, I have again and again placed my shoulder under it, until throwing it over the challenges in my path. If all this helps at least one of these unhappy brothers in destiny, then all my labors have not been in vain.