Асен

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.

Kostenets, July 30, 1951 Georgi Konstantinov In Moscow, where he was sent for treatment, Assen Raztsvetnikov died of blood cancer... Last year he lived here, near me, for a whole month. From here, Kamen Zidarov, then director of the National Theater, took him to the "Dr. Racho Angelov" hospital to the famous Dr. Tsonchev... (Kamen Zidarov was born in Draganovo and he and Assen loved each other very much.) I had known Assen Raztsvetnikov since 1922. He had completed several semesters of Slavic philology and literature when I enrolled, and he was already threatening to leave philology because he found it boringly dry and transfer to the Faculty of Law. He wrote and published poems that did not stand out with any special qualities. I knew him better as a student - Assen Kolarov - and as a passionate communist. For a long time, we both sat on the same bench.