- Botev's life and death has striking similarity in the
deeds of two other poets and revolutionaries. In Hungary,
Shandor Petjofi and in Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, fought
also with pencil and sword their nations' oppressors. The
motherland of these three poets and revolutionaries was
nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, partitioned among
three empires: the Russian, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman
one. Two strong movements, Nationalism and Romanticism
influenced strongly their poetry and belletristic.
- Botev's life followed the blueprints for a
nineteenth-century National revolutionary in Eastern
Europe. Born in 1848 (the year of revolutions throughout
Europe), raised with the living traditions of hayduks
(guerilla fighters), studied in Russia (influenced by
narodniks), taught in his home town, and eventually
joined the revolutionaries across Danube to cross the
river again in 1876 and find his death and
immortality.
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