Letters from Prof. Assen Zlatarov

After the end of the First World War (1914-1918), from which Bulgaria emerged defeated, crippled and with shattered national ideals, a desire for renewal through education and moral improvement arose in the bosom of the intelligentsia. Then the ideological currents manifested themselves and flourished: communism, anarchism, Tolstoyism, temperance and tourism. One of its apostles expressed this newness very well: "an awakening to spiritual life, a longing for something higher than that in which cares, everyday vanities and struggles oppress the soul." Invited by the board of trustees of the "Nadezhda" community center in Tarnovo to give several talks on my specialty, I accepted the invitation with some embarrassment; It seemed to me that the times were not at all suitable for lectures on biology and chemistry, and that the words of a laboratory worker would not resonate in hearts dried up by the current events of political disputes and worries about livelihood.