In 1999,  Hungary and the entire civilized world celebrated the 150th anniversary of the national-democratic revolution of 1848-1849 headed by Lajos Kossuth and Sandor Petofi. Many Bulgarians participated in the Hungarian struggle for freedom, one of them was Dr. Stefan Dunyov, a hero of the Magyar, as well as of the Italian revolution, organized by Giuseppe Garibaldi.
 

The Magyars overcame their Austrian enemies in the military operations. Therefore, Emperor Franz Josef asked the Russian Tzar Nikolay for help. Finally, in the summer and autumn of 1849 Hungary was defeated by the Austrian-Russian coalition. Later Tzar Nikolay heavily regretted this wrong step, which had tremendous historical consequences. The autocrat confessed to Polish general Rzewuski: “Of all Russian kings I am the greatest fool, because I helped Austria to suppress the Hungarian revolt, and the greatest fool among the Polish kings was John III Sobieski, because he saved Austria from the Turks at Vienna.” Emperor Nikolay was absolutely right. Only 18 years after the “Russian victory” the dualistic monarchy of Austria-Hungary was founded and its foreign policy caused a lot of trouble for Russia.  After the revolution was crushed, about 6000 Hungarian officers and soldiers, including Lajos Kossuth himself, took refuge in Bulgaria which was a province of the Ottoman Empire at that time. Before crossing the border, Kossuth sent an official letter to Zia pasha, commander-in-chief of the frontier Turkish fortresses. In it he explained that he had followed on the track of the Swedish king Charles XII and the Hungarian prince Ferenc Rakoczi, who had been given asylum by Turkey. His letter was written in French. Since Zia did not speak any foreign language, he asked the Austrian consul for help, i.e. he addressed the representative of the country, which the Kossuth emigrants fought against. On top of all, the pasha severely scolded his subjects for not having reported on the “visit” of Charles of Sweden and Rakoczi of Hungary, who had taken the liberty to cross the border without asking him.

Mihai Safrany

On 22 August, 1849, Lajos Kossuth and the Hungarians accompanying him arrived at the Bulgarian town of Vidin (by the Danube river). Here Gabor Egressy, the greatest Hungarian actor of the middle of the last century  and Kossuth’s follower, organized a public literary reading for charity. This was the first reading in Bulgaria under Turkish rule. The performance roused unusual interest among the local people, as well as among the foreigners residing in the town. Gabor Egressy, a friend of the great poet Petofi, who had been killed in the revolution, recited his poem “The Madman”. The effect was exceptional. The pasha’s agent, who attended the performance, listened enraptured and lived over everything. At one point he could endure no longer and rushed out of the hall, his face thwarted with horror, hurrying to inform the pasha that the actor had gone mad.

Actually, in 1851 Gabor Egressy published his diary describing his experience in Vidin and Bulgaria. In his diary, which is an extremely interesting evidence of that time, we can read among other things that: “Recently a Turkish hooligan shot in broad daylight a Bulgarian priest. He was punished to live in another town for two years. What is more, one can often see how a Turk child beats with a stick some Bulgarian peasant without the latter daring to defend himself. A Bulgarian man, resident of the town of Vidin, was arrested and sentenced to death, because he had begun constructing a house of stone walling for himself. He was accused of actually building a fortress... It seemed that some evil magician had transferred us from the magnificent halls of Paris to the centre of Africa and a whole millennium back into the primitive society... Even today Ottomans live the way they did in the time of Mohammed.”
 

In order to deport the emigrants from Vidin to Shoumen (Northeastern Bulgaria) the Ottoman authorities mobilized dozens of hundreds of Bulgarians. But to the emigrants’ amazement, the peasants’ carts had square,  instead of round, wheels. The carts bumped along the rough roads, so that no one could bear to remain in them for more than several hundred metres. And the distance from Vidin to Shoumen is more than 400 km. “Why are your carts like that? - asked the shocked Hungarians. “Because if they are nice, the Turks will take the carts for themselves” was the Bulgarian peasants’ reply.  In Shoumen the Hungarians eagerly engaged in various cultural and public activities. For the first time in Bulgaria plays and operas were staged, readings were arranged, etc. Different jubilees  were celebrated like the anniversary of the revolution, the dethronement of the Habsburgs, etc. It even came to a point when some initiative Bulgarians began to prepare sausages, beer and other food using Magyar recipes.      Safrany's orchestra

The Hungarian Mihai Safrany organized an orchestra and a choir (the first in this country), in which Bulgarian boys and girls played and sang. And since Safrany brought to the stage representatives of the fair sex, people began to call them “shafrantii”, after his name ("shafrantii" is a word meaning “women of easy virtue”, which is still used in the present-day Bulgarian language).

In this way, the Hungarian emigrants played the part of a stone thrown in the swamp of Oriental Shoumen, which stirred the town people by examples that proved infectious for other Bulgarian towns and villages.

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