It was because he was born on Christmas day (in the year 1847) that Hristo Botev was christened as he was.

When a bit older, he left his birthtown of Kalofer, in the Plovdiv region, for schooling in nearby Karlovo, where his father taught. Four years later, in 1858, the family returned to Kalofer and Hristo continued his education under the direction of his father. This education included not only book learning, but also listening to the songs his mother sang and legends of haidouk deeds, read Bulgarian and Russian literature, and observed the relationships between rich and poor, slave and master.

In 1863, he entered high school in Kalofer, leaving the same year for studies in Odessa, in what was then Russia and is now Ukraine.

(Studying abroad in Odessa was common for the period.) In addition to reading Russian masters like Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov and Shevchenko, Botev also perused Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, which introduced him to the ideas of Russian revolutionary democracy.

After graduating from high school in September 1865, he remained in Odessa, with the aim of teaching, keeping on there through the Polish revolution of 1866. In October, he took a teaching position in the Bessarabian village Zadounaevska.

His father having fallen ill, Botev returned to Kalofer in January 1867 to replace him at the high school. As part of promulgating revolt against the chorbadji (member of the Bulgarian wealthy class, often collaborating with the Turks) and the Turks, he submitted to the editor (PR Slaveikov) of the newspaper Gaida (Bagpipe) his first piece of writing, a poem entitled Maitse si (To My Mother). His first public summons to start the fight against Turkish oppression he pronounced on May 11 that same year, on the festival of Kiril and Metodii. In September 1867, he left Kalofer definitively, going to Romania.

It was in Bucharest that he was able to publish the majority of his writings, through the newspaper Dounavska zora (Danubian Dawn).

He continued with pen and ink, publishing poems and, in 1868, preparing a small book of his efforts, but it was not published, due to lack of funds.

When he had arrived in Bucharest, it seemed he wished to continue his studies in Russia, but didn’t. Later, in September 1868, he enrolled in the Bucharest medical school, but soon left. In a letter to a friend written the next month, he said: “The hope that I had to complete my education in some university has been shattered as with rocks, submerged.” In another, he wrote: “I have fallen into such poverty, because besides that I have remained naked and barefooted, I also need even these things urgently.”

He and Vassil Levski lived together in a derelict watermill near Bucharest from December 1868 to January 1869. One can only wonder what they discussed.

The ensuing years saw Botev travelling around the region, teaching in various schools, co-publishing a satirical revolutionary newspaper called Tupan (Drum), involving himself in illegal revolutionary actions, assisting with the import of revolutionary literature to Russia, sending a congratulatory telegram to the Paris Commune in March 1871, and having published more of his writings (Elegia; Simvol-veruyu na bulgarskata komouna/A Symbol of Faith of the Bulgarian Commune; Prichinite za neouzpeha na bulgarskoto knizhovno drouzhestvo/Reasons for the Lack of Success of the Bulgarian Book Society; Strannik/Wanderer).

Arrest and imprisonment in April 1872 for conspiratorial revolutionary action put this wanderlust to an end. Intercession by Levski and Lyuben Karavelov got him released three months later, following which he put up residence in Bucharest and worked along side Karavelov as a printer, and later as a collaborator and co-editor of the revolutionary body.

Botev must have been a bel esprit, for after writing for yet another satirical newspaper, he began publishing his own, the first issue released on May 1 1873. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, it stopped after three issues.

Publishing more poems, participation in the BRTsK (Central Bulgarian Revolutionary Committee) general meeting in August 1874, publishing feuilletons occupied him for a while. In November 1874, he quit teaching altogether, to dedicate himself entirely to revolutionary work. The meeting of the Central Revolutionary Committee in December gave him what to do.

And if that wasn’t sufficient, in July the following year he married Veneta Vezireva. A month later, he attended a meeting in Bucharest at which he was one of the chosen leaders, and thus proclaimed a plan for general uprising. But, on September 30, due to disagreement with the other committee members, he resigned.

Before the year ends, he published a calendar for 1876 and his last poem, Obesvaneto na Vassil Levski/The Hanging of Vassil Levski.

An announcement in the first issue (May 5 1876) of the newspaper Nova Bulgaria publicised the April Uprising. Botev spurred on the feverish action of the period by organising a detachment and decides to become a voivoda (Bulgarian revolutionary chieftain). On May 13, he bade farewell to his wife and month-old daughter, without disclosing where he was heading, and made for Giurgiu, Romania.

On May 17, having arrived in Giurgiu the day before, he sent his last letters to his friends and wife. “Know that after my fatherland, it was you that I loved most,” he wrote to her.

Three days of skirmishes with the Turks ended for Botev on May 20, when he was shot and died at Kamarata Peak.

Botev earned much attention, years after his death, from the leaders of the Bulgarian communist party as a model of the ideal man: “He judges everything, public events and literary works, from the point of view of the peole and the revolution. Are they of use in the struggle, do they contribute towards the liberation of the people, do they strengthen its manliness – that is the criterion. Thus seventy years ago Botev had already applied the principle of the party in literature.” (Hristo Botev: Poems, published by Narodna Kultura, 1955). George Tsanev continued in his introduction: “Botev is the inspirer of today’s builders of socialism in the people’s Republic of Bulgaria. ... the great revolutionary and poet will inspire the Bulgarian people not only in achieving socialsim but also in its fight together with the other democratic nations, against those ‘kings of capital’ as Botev called the western capitalists, who are threatening mankind with new wars.”

More than Levski, even, Botev was moulded to fit socialist ideals because his numerous writings allowed for vast interpretation of meaning.