Georgi Rakovski

Georgi Sava Rakovski (Kotel, 1821 – Bucharest, 1867) was a Bulgarian revolutionary and writer, a leading figure of the Bulgarian National Revival and of the resistance to Ottoman rule.

He studied at monastery schools and at the Greek Orthodox college in Fanar, Constantinople. He plotted against Ottoman authorities and was sentenced and imprisoned several times during the 1840s. Later he worked as a lawyer and merchant in Istanbul and, in 1861, organized a Bulgarian legion in Belgrade, which was disbanded when the conflict between Serbia and the Ottomans ended.

He wrote essays and journalism while living in hiding. His best-known work, Gorski Patnik, was begun while he hid near Kotel. Written in archaic Bulgarian, it follows a group of rebels rising against the Turks, and it was left unfinished. In Bucharest he helped found, together with Vasil Levski, the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. He died of tuberculosis in Bucharest in October 1867, without learning the outcome of the 1868 expeditions.

He is considered one of the first Bulgarian literary authors, and his organizing work laid groundwork for the country's independence.