339954 | 19 Dec. 2025 | 10:44

.Boyan is one of the most accurate and dedicated individuals I know - in the truest sense of the word. That is why he has reached the glorious fate

Whenever it comes to artists, the following vision always comes to mind: a dark, wintry field, lightly dusted with snow, and a man carrying a large, unfinished painting, disappearing into the distance...

 This is Neron - Dimitar Kazakov. We have just finished our conversation by a fire in Bozhurishte and he has once again set off on his journey.

 And in moments like this, I always think of another man. Another man, known to all, making his way down Boulevard Cherni Vrah towards the center of Sofia - carrying a huge canvas, one of Zlatyu Boyadzhiev's most famous works. The man is clearly angry, and it's a miracle he manages to navigate through the busy streets with the painting without paying attention to anyone. This man is Boyan. Boyan Radev.

 One of our mutual friends invited him to bring his painting to his office - but something delayed him and Boyan left, even though he had already unloaded the van with which he had brought Zlatyu.

 Because Boyan is one of the most punctual and devoted people I know - in the true sense of the word. That's why he waited for his famous destiny

 ...

 The famous bar on "Graf Ignatiev" Street was once again a mess - and then some neighbor complained that early in the morning, when the bar closed, Mercedes cars were waiting in front of it to pick up their waiters. And the trams also waited patiently, along with the passengers inside - the latter to finally get swept away.

 And I remembered that when Boyan became an Olympic champion for the second time, trams on the same "Graf Ignatiev" Street stopped for him to pass, and people inside clapped for him.

 I have never seen anything like it before, and even in those years it was unthinkable. Years in which there was order - and as it turns out now, quite meaningful. If back then someone had arrogantly stopped their Mercedes on the tram line, their driver would still be driving a carriage somewhere in the province. Live now gloriously, and freely, and democratically, and with the bullies. Hooray!

  ...

  The first time Bojan appeared on "Every Sunday", he had a staggering success. Since then he keeps telling me that I am his first television coach - and he always wants to interview me, but I don't give in.

  This happened in the middle of 1980, and the show, especially its flagship segment "Wished guest", had gained tremendous momentum. Then Bojan said something that today seems banal and even completely safe - that he was a "simple cart driver from Moshino". However, this was a real bomb.

 The communist leaders of the old generation were - or at least most of them were, impeccably ignorant, poorly educated, but cunning managers of the state, that is beyond doubt. They did not want their biographies to be talked about. Years later, poet Dimitar Metodiev, who was an advisor to Zhivkov, managed to find a respectable formula - that he was a "man of the people". This put an end to various questions, including about education and other vanities.

 And according to the official ideology, "the hero of the time" had to be a fully developed person - harmonious and highly educated, and so on. "

  And suddenly Boyan flourished: "I am a coachman from Moshino!" Oh, my old mother! How can this be, you are a two-time Olympic champion, one of our saints, who dares to speak that you are a coachman, a mere brawl from the mines of Pernik, that you have achieved everything through your own hard work – oh, the party, my dear, oh, the party's wisdom! But our boy stumbled: "Coachman, so be it!" and that was it.

 Then, more than 30 years ago, I realized that something had happened, but I couldn't immediately figure out what exactly. The work is simple: when the authorities artificially elevated their favorite sons, Boyan decided to tell them that everyone comes from the lowlands, and some will never leave it.

 I'm not sure if he fully understood what was happening. However, anyway - they saw the socialist hero as something monumental, almost like a model for the Soviet Army Monument, at least on that scale. And our Bojan: "No, we are ordinary, small people and only if we manage to cope with our fate, if we somehow make a deal with it, will we become something else".

 He didn't say it like that, of course, but that's how it turned out.

  Over the years, he stuck to this formula, and he didn't change it much - he always wanted us to see him as smaller than he is, smaller than himself - in order to survive our jealousy, and that's what he said.

 ...

 There is no serious person from the art circles who doesn't truly admire and even fear Bojan - the collector Bojan. Once Svetlin Rusev called me to tell me that he is truly scared of what he saw the last time he visited his home. "He has already accumulated incredible treasures, even he himself doesn't know what he's talking about," said Svetlin. And for him to say that, it means that Bojan's problem is truly terrifying.

 While pretending to be a coachman, he managed to build his own cathedral with extraordinary, inhuman persistence - not only as a great athlete, but also as an even greater collector.

 But now I will clarify, because I am also scared that one day Bojan might be buried under the ruins. Let me explain. Bojan is a major donor, he has his own hall in the National Historical Museum, but for everything else, they still can't find a place for him.

 His home is filled with masterpieces, in this spacious apartment there is no room to move without a great master catching you by your clothes. How Maria - the lovely wife of Boyan - manages all of this is a mystery. And our hero has been sleeping for years on a narrow couch, under which there are several priceless ancient tomb slabs, luckily he doesn't sleep directly on them.

 His collection is a valuable example of something else - how an ordinary person comes up with a great idea - especially in these wild times - to preserve not only his own fate, but also that of his native art

 ...

 I'm talking about Boyan's collection - and I'm thinking about the children from the music school in Shiroka Laka. These days, another "pitiful report" was aired - there is now such a genre: the children from the famous school ensemble were dancing in 40-year-old stage costumes, there was no money to update these rags. Socialism has long decayed, perhaps even 10 times already in the soil of the great Transition - and those talented children still play with the costumes of the socialist era. Bravo.

  What do you think about this? It turns out that we couldn't even sew the Transition costumes - leaving aside the clownish clothes of most new heroes.

 Don't stick these images of Bojan in this poverty and misery - they too will age and become rags like those outfits

 ...

 Once, in the early 80s, I was in Vienna with the Sofia Opera. And then she invited me to visit one of our operetta celebrities who had been living there for many years. After dinner, while saying goodbye, we lingered for a while in the lobby of her apartment - and that's when my eyes fell upon a painting, strangely hung there. I asked the hostess whose it was, just to be sure, and I wasn't mistaken - it was a magnificent piece by Bench Obreshkov.

 After a while, I told the story of Boyan, who at the time was working in Vienna. "Are you sure?" Boyan asked, "that you're not pulling my leg?" And that's how the conversation ended.

 Several months later, he bumped into me and shouted, "Come see someone you know?" "Who, man?" I was happy, because I thought it might be some lady. However, it turned out that the person was the aforementioned landscape by Obreshkov. Boyan had been trying and courting the singer for months, but in the end he managed to bring the painting back to Bulgaria. And as always, he was happy. And she was satisfied as well.

 One double Olympic champion possesses an abundance of grips, of the most masterful caliber. But the grip with which Boyan manages to reach yet another painting, which he has fixed himself in, is truly deadly. And not one of the former owners is dissatisfied - they too are happy, because they see how obsessed this man is, and how generous, at that.

 And what, to have a smoked work by Zlatyu hanging over the bed - it's better to give it to this crazy man, he will take care of it best!

  And now all these paintings live with Boyan, but they also fear - what will happen one day to them, when he - like all of us in turn - goes to conquer His Other fate, to become a champion elsewhere?

 "At one point, Boyan often used to say: 'If I had finished high school, I would now most likely be a simple deputy head of department in the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party! And look what became of me!' Excerpt from the book 'Stories about Personalities and Bubbles'."