Prof. Rositsa Angelova PhD opened the exhibition “Valor and Honor” this evening in one of the halls of the Ethnographic Museum.
The first exhibition of the year is the work of specialists from the “New and Recent History” department at the Regional History Museum, headed by Prof. Rositsa Angelova and the Military History Club “46th Infantry Dobrich Regiment”. The curator is the designer at RHM – Razgrad Mihail Marinov.

At the opening of the exhibition, the deputy mayor of Razgrad Elka Nedelcheva, municipal councilor Nikolay Penchev, the director of the museum Tanya Todorova, citizens and a large group of students from the Sandor Petofi National Pedagogical School were present. Everyone in the hall received a card dedicated to the exhibition, with a photo from the museum’s collection representing Razgrad on the eve of the liberation in 1878.

Prof. Rositsa Angelova began her speech with the words of the publisher of the first Bulgarian newspaper “Bulgarian Eagle” Ivan Bogorov, spoken on the occasion of the fact that during the years of Ottoman rule the name “Bulgarian” was rarely heard and Bulgarians most often defined themselves simply as Christians: “Before we make Bulgaria, we must make Bulgarians.”

“Would Bulgaria have been on the European map in the 19th century if it had not been for the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878?”, she asked rhetorically and gave a brief retrospective of the events from that time, when Russia’s military-political and strategic interests coincided with the Bulgarian people’s desire for liberation. Russia mobilized its army, Montenegro and Serbia joined, and in parallel with this, the Bulgarian militia was formed, in which, for a very short period, more than 10,000 volunteers were enrolled in the 12 battalions, who fought side by side with the Russian and other armies.

68 volunteers from the Razgrad region joined the militia, and two of them fell in the fierce fighting.
“Our exhibition is dedicated to the participants in the war. Here are their uniforms, weapons, equipment and personal belongings – part of the collection of the Military History Club “46th Infantry Dobrich Regiment”, for which we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. With our exhibition we pay tribute, this is our bow to all who participated in the battles and died on the battlefields”, said Prof. Rositsa Angelova in her speech.

She also presented the live mannequins, dressed and armed as the participants in the war: members of the National Society “Tradition” from Razgrad and Veliki Preslav and the Military History Club “46th Infantry Dobrich Regiment”, with whom visitors to the exhibition had the opportunity to take photos as a souvenir.

Deputy Mayor Elka Nedelcheva first congratulated the museum workers and the director Tanya Todorova for the already established tradition of surprising Razgrad residents and guests of the city with interesting initiatives dedicated to the holidays in Razgrad, then suggested adding the word “dignity” to the words in the title of the exhibition – “valor” and “honor”. And she motivated herself as follows: “If we do not return to our heroic national history and, respectively, to the history of Razgrad, we cannot be worthy Bulgarians. We must learn lessons from history, because it is the greatest teacher”, said Elka Nedelcheva.

She congratulated the young people in the hall for their interest in the exhibition and wished them that what they saw would provoke their interest in learning more about those events from 147 years ago, which ultimately marked the liberation of both Razgrad and Bulgaria.
The exhibition will be open to visitors until February 23 with an entrance ticket.
You can see more photos on the Facebook page of the Regional History Museum:
https://www.facebook.com/regionalhistorymuseumrazgrad/