Централното училище в Комрат и българското образование в Бесарабия
The Central School in Komrat and Bulgarian Education in Bessarabia

Summary/Abstract: The process of the emergence of national Bulgarian education began in Bessarabia in the 1840s. By the mid-50s the initiative was taken to set up a Central School in Bolgrad but the Crimean War impeded its opening. The Central Bulgarian School in Bolgrad was opened in 1859 but within the confines of the Moldavian Principality. In the Russian part of Bessarabia the Bulgarian school was set up in the Komrat settlement in 1862 with the care and on the initiative of the Bulgarian emigre intelligentsia. This school existed in accordance with the wishes of the Bulgarian settlers but without co-operation of the authorities who in 1864 compelled P. Kalayandji and his adherents to leave the central settlement. This had an adverse effect on education but the persistent efforts for the building of a Central School by the settlers in the Russian part of Bessarabia went on. In 1868 a Higher Central Bessarabian-Bulgarian School was set up. Irrespective of the name, it was prevalently a Russian establishment of learning where the Bulgarian language was taught only as a subject. The Central School in Komrat failed to implement its national character for a number of reasons. The ethnic variety of the region was one of them. The Russification policy of the authorities, the preponderance of the Russianized Germans on the Trusteeship Committee in Odessa, the departure from Russian Bessarabia of the not too numerous Bulgarian Intelligentsia - all that contributed to the failure of the Komrat School to develop as a Bulgarian educational establishment. It should be pointed, out, however, that this school was to a certain extend instrumental in awakening the interest of the Bulgarian communities in Bessarabia in science and education, and in making it possible for youth to study at secondary schools and higher educational establishments. As regards educational standard that of the Komrat School was the highest among all the school that had existed to that point in the region. Only on the basis of such a school became possible the emergence of a modern secondary school in Komrat in 1888.

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