вестник

It is known that one of the first (if not the very first) readers and judges of Botev's poems was Petko Slaveykov. Botev sent him a notebook of poems that burned in Stara Zagora along with many other manuscripts and books by Slaveykov, as his son Pencho testifies. In his newspaper "Gayda", year III, issue 19 of April 15, 1867, page 312, Botev's first published poem "Your Mother" appears. Slaveykov's words in "Macedonia", issue 33 of July 13, 1868 most likely refer to him: "I only know one of our young men with poetic abilities..." But after going to Bucharest, Botev no longer searched the pages of Slaveykov's publications. Standing on other, social-revolutionary positions, he cannot even condescendingly welcome some of the poetic confessions of Slaveykov, who, working in Constantinople under the nose of the Turkish authorities, could not accompany his fellow writers from the Transdanubian region in everything. And he was not spared by Botev in the humorous-satirical poem "Why Am I Not?"

Early in the morning of December 6, 1929, a new newspaper appeared among the newspapers and magazines on newsstands in Sofia and other cities of the country: "RLF" (Workers' Literary Front). The original title with large painted letters and the peculiar layout suddenly attracted the attention of buyers. From the introductory article "On a Clear Class Position," lovers of fiction understood without hesitation what this newspaper was. But here is the very introductory article, which best speaks of the editorial program: "Today. A clear delineation of two camps. No gap! The civil war very clearly delineates the fronts: on the one hand, the bourgeois intelligentsia, which during the war was shamefully silent or sang hymns of murderous chauvinism, today stands on its clear class position. It spent the civil war, taking part in the campaign against the workers and peasants in the Spitz commandos, and then continues "its heroic work: it sings the exploits of the murderers, denies the proletarian intelligentsia and follows the cultural policy of the current government. On the other hand stands the proletariat itself with its inexhaustible wealth of culture and art, with its intelligentsia, its proletarian writers...", etc. From this introductory article the reader sees that the newspaper "RLF" is a militant, combative literary organ of the party, which appeared in the name of a new culture, a new art, a new literature - the proletarian one. This is particularly strongly emphasized by the other materials in the first issue. Under the introductory article is an announcement about the arrest and imprisonment under the fascist law for the protection of the state of a large number of editors of labor newspapers, whose names make up a whole list. The remaining two columns print the poem "On Post" by Nikola Doronski (pseudonym of Nikola Lankov). This poem excites with the freshness of feeling and especially with the innovative vision of its author: