New LIK Issue Dedicated to 150 Years Since April Uprising Launches in Koprivshtitsa

The latest issue of BTA's LIK magazine is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the April Uprising in 1876. The Bulgarian News Agency's thematic publication on literature, culture and art presents the uprising through its archives, with information on commemorations over the years preserved in BTA's news service and bulletins. The issue also includes opinions and comments from educators, public figures and representatives of local communities in the centres of the revolutionary districts associated with the history of the uprising. 

The magazine will launch at the St St Cyril and Methodius School in Koprivshtitsa on Monday, April 20, known as the Day of the First Gunshot. The event will begin at 2:00 pm and will be held jointly via video link with BTA's national press clubs in Bulgaria and abroad. 

Partners in the presentation are Koprivshtitsa Municipality and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with the Academy also presenting its own publication "150 Years Since the April Uprising".

BTA Director General Kiril Valchev says in the introduction: "This issue of LIK presents the most interesting parts of the discussions that BTA has dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the April Uprising, held at the national press clubs of BTA and in the centres of the four revolutionary districts of the uprising: Veliko Tarnovo, Sliven, Vratsa and Panagyurishte."

"In these discussions, we spoke about many important lessons from the April Uprising, which are relevant to our present as well. But the most important thing is the consensus we reached: that we must focus on the big goals before the difficult steps required to achieve them. Because wherever the uprising seemed to have failed, we concluded the conversation by noting that it ultimately led to the great success - Bulgaria's freedom," Valchev said. 

Journalist Boyko Vassilev, host of the Panorama talk show on Bulgarian National Television (BNT) and moderator of the events commemorating the April Uprising, which are held under the auspices of BTA, wrote: "Don't you often wonder how small the step is from Bulgaria's rise to its downfall and back again! What if it turns out that this question stems from April 1876, when the Bulgarians rose up against the Ottoman Empire? Because the conversation about the April Uprising is a conversation about Bulgaria today," he said. Among the highlights in his text is the youth of the leaders, which he describes as "shocking": "The chief leader, Stefan Stambolov, was only 22; Nikola Slavkov, Stoyan Zaimov and Georgi Apostolov were the same age; Ilarion Dragostinov was 24; Panayot Volov and Todor Kableshkov were 25. (…) Educated young men from wealthy families: what were they missing? Just one thing: freedom - political, unconditional, complete."

The youth of the uprising's leaders is also discussed in the article "1876: When the Young Began to Teach the Old about Freedom" by Prof. Georgi Valchev, Rector of the St Kliment Ohridski Sofia University. "In those complex years of social upheaval and the search for paths forward that were true to our society in a changing world, they were often called names like 'good-for-nothings' and 'troublemakers', but that did not deter them. They realized that in almost every person's life there comes a moment when they must make a conscious choice - to be or to have," said Prof. Valchev. "The revolutionaries disregarded their fathers' advice to 'have'- to continue multiplying the family wealth, just as their fathers had built beautiful family homes, and chose instead to 'be'".

The article by Prof. Atanas Semov, Corresponding Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, contributed to LIK, is titled "The April Uprising and the National Character". According to him, "there can be no doubt: the April Uprising is the greatest collective endeavor of the Bulgarian people".

The thematic timeline compiles highlights from news reports on the April Uprising, drawn from BTA's archives, which contain information dating from the agency's founding in 1898 to the present day. The narrative in LIK's chronology begins in the middle of the 20th century. In 1945, the 69th anniversary of the outbreak of the April Uprising was marked, and among the guests in Panagyurishte was the 90-year-old insurgent Krastyu Elenkov, who conveyed the emotion of what had happened in one of the most glorious episodes in Bulgaria's history. Also presented are the memories of other contemporaries of the historical events, including the distinguished General Benderev, one of the participants in the uprising, who took part in the 1946 commemorations. In 1958, the 100-year-old Mito Gorchev from the village of Srebrino recounted to a BTA reporter his meeting with Georgi Benkovski and the moment when it was announced that the first rebel rifle had fired and the people set out to fight. The chronology recalls how the April Uprising was covered by foreign writers, including Fyodor Dostoevsky and Victor Hugo, and its presence in the arts.

The magazine also features highlights from the discussions occasioned by the 150th anniversary of the April Uprising in 2026.

On December 17, 2025, BTA organized a conference at its national press club in Ruse commemorating the decision taken in December 1875 by the Giurgiu Revolutionary Committee to declare an uprising. The forum was part of a joint initiative of BNT, BTA and Bulgarian National Radio, titled "14 Centuries of Bulgaria in Europe", marking anniversaries in Bulgarian history significant to the broader European narrative through 2032, when the 1,400th anniversary of the founding in 632 CE of the first Bulgarian state entity on European territory, Old Great Bulgaria, will be observed. Following the conference in Ruse, BTA organized discussions on the 150th anniversary of the April Uprising at its national press clubs in the centres of the revolutionary districts of the uprising, Veliko Tarnovo, Sliven and Vratsa between January 29 and March 22, 2026, with a discussion in Panagyurishte scheduled for April 30. Taking part in the discussions are public figures, members of the media, representatives of cultural institutions, clergy, teachers and students.

Since January 2024, BTA's literature, art and culture monthly magazine has been freely accessible online. All LIK issues since its relaunch can be downloaded in electronic format from BTA's website. The April 2026 issue on the theme "The April Uprising!" can be accessed here.