Хилендарски

Paisii Hilendarski rises as a bright beacon among the historical and historical-literary processes that take place at one of the peak moments in our development - at the beginning of the Bulgarian Revival and the new Bulgarian literature. His work collects the light of the past and directs it forward into the future. As the founder of a new era, he has a clear view of its needs and sees deeply into the fate of our people. And the famous Slavo-Bulgarian History is not only a major work of new Bulgarian literature, but presents a program that sets the tasks of the Bulgarian Revival and charts a path for the development of the Bulgarian BO people. The bright figure of the first Bulgarian Revivalist has long attracted the attention of our science. However, the sources for both his activities and his era are scarce and the scientific search is struggling to find its way to his personality and to the processes that brought him to the brink of two eras, as a harbinger of a new moment in the historical and literary development of our people. Our Marxist historiography and literary studies - one might say - have already explained the essence of our Revival, which represents a period of transition from a feudal to a capitalist formation. However, a number of extremely important questions that the development during the era poses have remained unclear; Their solution would reveal to us more specifically the processes that lead to the appearance of the Slavonic-Bulgarian History in 1762 and that follow after this appearance, in order to complete in our country "the Great Engels Revival. 1 of a progressive revolution" - as he called it. Our general and literary historiography of recent times has rightly directed its attention not only to the phenomena that register the offensive movement and acquaint us with the picture of life and the achievements of culture and literature, with a number of personalities and works representing the individual moments and successes of our socio-historical and literary past, but also to the processes and laws of our development. However, in order for these processes and laws that drive our development to become fully apparent, Paisius' work and our Revival must be placed in the light of the general historical and historical-literary development that European peoples have undergone over the centuries.

Recently, Soviet Slavic studies have shown a great deal of interest in the history of our literature. And it must be said right away that the problems of old Bulgarian and Renaissance literature are still being avoided from their perspective. And in this direction there is much to be found, concerning the history of Russian and Bulgarian literature. A good illustration of this thought is the extensive and valuable work by A. N. Robinson "History of the Slavic Revival and Paisii Hilendarski" (Moscow, 1963, 139 p.), written in connection with the Fifth Slavic Congress, which took place in Sofia in September 1963. The personality and work of Paisii Hilendarski have long aroused interest among Russian Slavic scholars, manifested mainly in an archaeographic direction (V. I. Grigorovich, Yu. Iv. Venelin, O. Bodyanski, Vl. Lamanski, P. A. Lavrov, etc.). What's more, Paisius was introduced into scientific literature by the Russian scholar V. I. Grigorovich in 1852. After that, interest in Paisius gradually grew. Now a new and particularly important moment is the introduction of Paisius into the history of pan-Slavic literatures, which first appeared in the famous "History of Slavic Literatures" by Pipin and Spasovich (1879). The prominent Slavist P. A. Lavrov made a thorough historical and literary analysis of "One of the revisions of the "History of Slavonic Bulgaria" by the monk Paisius..." (1895). After a long break in similar scientific publications, in 1941 the extensive study "Paisius of Hilendar and his "History of Slavonic Bulgaria" 1762" appeared by Academician N. S. Derzhavin, included in his famous "Collection of Articles and Research in the Field of Slavic Philology" (pp. 63-124). And again a new break, broken in 1963 with the appearance of the above-mentioned work by A. N. Robinson.