Unknown letter from Dr. K. Krastev to Ferdinand

One of the most characteristic features of Dr. Krastev as a person is his civic virtue. Nurtured by this civic virtue and repeatedly expressed during his activities as a literary critic and public figure is his sincere concern for the fate of Bulgarian science and culture. Among the numerous articles by Dr. Krastev dedicated to issues of public life, perhaps the most interesting are the articles concerning educational work or spiritual life in Bulgaria in general. In these articles we encounter thoughts and characteristics of individual social groups, which often surprise us with their progressiveness: the lack of prospects for the bourgeois intelligentsia, deprived of any social ideals and "cultural aspirations", the indifference of the monarch to Bulgarian art and science, the question of the actual emancipation of women in the field of education. Dr. Krastev developed many times the thesis of the freedom of the worker of science and culture. It was sharply stated in the response to the letter of the Ministry of Public Education of 25. IX. 1896, by which Dr. Krastev was dismissed from the university for the second time. Dr. Krastev's opinion on all these issues is most fully manifested in his behavior during the university crisis of 1907. "Baptism of the university", which should be an "awakening of consciousness" and "a government act - an incomparable disgrace for a "cultural state" - This is his two-sided assessment of the events that took place on January 3-4, 1907: the youth demonstration, the booing of Ferdinand at the opening of the National Theater, the dispersal of the demonstrators with the police and, as a result, the issuance of the decree to suspend classes at the university for six months and to dismiss the members of the professorial body. Considering the energy of Dr. Krastev and the thoughts expressed in his other articles on the issue of the university crisis: "The Beginning of the End of the University Crisis" and "The University Question and the Class School", as well as the memories of contemporaries, he was obviously one of the inspirers and organizers of the determined resistance of the professorial body against the lawlessness of Ferdinand and his lackeys and one of the compilers of the two appeals "To the Bulgarian Society" and the third appeal - "Message", with which the negotiations between the professors and the government were terminated.