Petar Pondev

"If you happen to be passing by Shtarkovtsi, and you remember the house of Grandpa Dicho's Cooperative, you will recognize it by the tall ash tree and the yellow pint of brandy, hung on the tree's peg. When you unhook it to drink, you cross yourself, like any Christian... Cross yourself, and say: Dispute and luck, good fortune and prosperity, and good agreement at home... - So say, drink as much as your heart desires! That's how Grandpa Dicho loves!" Everything that Mikhalaki Georgiev wants to instill about life, morality and man leads us to the gate of Grandpa Dicho's Cooperative. Grandpa Dicho's Cooperative is that idealized world by the writer, where goodness, labor and agreement, like three inseparable brothers from fairy tales, do not allow any human evil or evil thought to penetrate. Here one can feel completely happy and secure, because in the inseparability of good, of work and agreement is enclosed not only wealth, but also all the wisdom of life, with which grandfather Dicho, without violence and without coercion, governs his numerous family. And It would be strange if Mikhalaki Georgiev - this such a warm-hearted good-natured man, who wrote his stories mainly in the 90s of the last century - remained a stranger to the charitable spirit of populism, whose social dreams dominated during this era. Like his fellow writers, he idealized the old peasant cooperative. In it he also saw the solid foundations of folk life, on which the moral essence of the Bulgarian was formed with the sure hand of time - what the new inhuman time wants to destroy. To Grandpa Dichova's farm with the tall ash tree by the gate, Mihalaki Georgiev always returns when he seeks a way out of the vices of his cruel times.

"Readers will notice that among my heroes, neither learned heads, nor important merchants, nor influential rich men appear very often; but simple and ordinary people, all from the lower ranks. These do not appear precisely because the work I describe is foreign to them." And so as not to leave any doubt about the purpose of his book, Zahari Stoyanov confesses: "Finally, I turn to you, brothers, simple poor people. For you I have worked hard to write this book, to show you that the most ardent fighters and defenders of our fatherland were not proud rich men and puffed-up scholars, but simple and uneducated brothers of yours, who knew no more than you. It will be enough to remind you only of the names of Levski, Benkovski, Kocho Chistemenski, the Zhekovi brothers, Bai Ivan Arabadzhiata, Ivan Vorcho, etc., all the guildsmen and workers. These, and no one else, washed the face of Bulgaria and defended our disgraced glory. With these words, Zahari Stoyanov turns to the readers of his "Notes", to explicitly remind them of whom he had in mind when he wrote them. The only and main character in them is the people, and he wants the people to be their first reader.