{"id":45799,"date":"2026-08-15T18:05:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T15:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/from-the-small-prison-into-the-big-one\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T18:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T15:42:15","slug":"from-the-small-prison-into-the-big-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/from-the-small-prison-into-the-big-one\/","title":{"rendered":"From the small prison \u2013 into the big one"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>You were released from prison as part of a widespread amnesty for political prisoners. What do you remember? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On August 15, 1956 \u2013 I was in Varna Prison at the time. When I got out, I went to the sea. And as I looked at it, I thought about how I had written about these waves.  <\/p>\n<p>I had never seen the sea before. That was the first time I saw waves, yet I had written so vividly, so expressively about the wave. I even have a very characteristic verse: <em>like a wave widowed on the farther shore<\/em>. Can you imagine that: a wave becoming widowed on the farther shore \u2013 and returning\u2026  <\/p>\n<p><strong><em>What happened after you were released?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From the small prison \u2013 into the big one. The conviction \u2013 when I stepped outside, I said to myself: \u201cAh, it is the same as it was inside!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I received liberation, but not freedom. This is what I had said and written back then about the Liberation of Bulgaria in the Russo-Turkish War as well \u2013 we received liberation, but we did not receive freedom. Because freedom has entirety, and it brings about the national spirit or the mission of a given individual. This is the great difference between liberation and freedom.   <\/p>\n<p>After that, when I got out, where was I to go to earn my living? Half a year later I had to go to Plovdiv. First, I took up basket-making. Then I made cobblestones, the kind people walk on in different cities. After that, I worked in various factories\u2026    <\/p>\n<p><em>From the <a href=\"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/books\/album-vaklush\/\">\u201cVaklush\u201d Album<\/a> \u2013 the extraordinary story of Vaklush Tolev, told through photographs, text, and calligraphy across 376 pages, as a continuation of the <a href=\"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/film\/\">documentary film \u201cVaklush\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You were released from prison as part of a widespread amnesty for political prisoners. What do you remember? On August 15, 1956 \u2013 I was in Varna Prison at the time. When I got out, I went to the sea. And as I looked at it, I thought about how I had written about these [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":45798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[404],"tags":[451],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"class_list":["post-45799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album","tag-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45799"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaklush.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=45799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}