Gazurkov House

History of Tutrakan v. 2 p. 54

Among the representatives of the industry preceding machine production, named manufactorists or manufactory workers, with greater perseverance and long-term activity (some with more than twenty years of experience in this field) are Iv. Georgiev, Dimitar Gazurkov, Dragan Kamarashev, Bratya Popovi, Bratya Ganevi, Stoyan Kulev, Nikola Musinov, Marin Slavov, Leon Alanakyan, Petar Mihailov and others. Many of them also have traded with various types of goods and products of manufacturing and handicraft production, as well as in industrial and colonial goods of local and foreign origin.

The factory-built enterprises were part of the general process of industrialization of the country. In 1900, in Tutrakan, which has a population of 9,393 people, there were 1,167 economically active persons employed in industry, which was 12.4% in percentage terms. According to their number in the individual sectors, they were distributed as follows:

1. Clothing, shoes, hats – 402

2. Flour, bread milk-processing – 250

3. Metalworking – 187

4. Construction – 134

5. Ceramics – 56

6. Spinning, weaving gifts – 38

7. Fur – 36

8. Woodworking – 25

9. Transport – 25

10. Printing, art – 14

In 1905, in terms of the percentage of the industrial population of the towns, Tutrakan took 74th place among the 80 Bulgarian towns at that time with 12.6%, and according to the same indicator in the villages among the 67 counties. Tutrakan county was on 42nd place with 3.4 %, as much as had the county of Ruse. The capitalist industry arose and strengthened mainly on the basis of the entrepreneurship and organisational skill of wealthy artisans and wealthy merchants. The lack of sufficient capital, as well as the destructive competition of European goods, also had a restraining effect on its development due to the open borders of the obligatory customs regime of 8%. However, conditions were being created for the urban economy to follow the path of its modernisation more and more sustainably.

From documents about the history of Tutrakan p. 66-68

Old Tutrakan p.33-37

“On April 11, 1894, the Municipal Council decided to expropriate several civil properties to provide a plot of land for the construction of a girls’ school. For that the council took out a loan in the amount of BGN 50,000 in 1893. Since half of them were given for the expropriation of the properties, the remaining amount turned out to be insufficient to complete the construction. After the preparation of the projects and their approval by the district engineer, despite the lack of funds on March 29, 1896 a commission was appointed, headed by Mayor Dimitar Gazurkov. It reviewed all the papers prepared by the district engineer, signs the “pledge” terms and price lists and announces a tender for the construction of the girls’ school to an entrepreneur. On April 29 the tender was won by Mr. D. Baynov, who gave the lowest price of BGN 25,589 for the construction. The following year, the school building, located opposite the newly built Vasil Levski School, was completed. / The school was located on Stefan Karadja Square and was demolished during the Romanian occupation. Today in its place is located the kindergarten “Flight” /. “History of Tutrakan v. 2, p.179

*** Two cities – two different forms / the comparison of Dimo Kazasov (lived in Tutrakan 1896-1899), between his native Tryavna and Tutrakan from the end of the XIX century / in “Seen and experienced 1891-1944”, Dimo Kazasov, 1969, p. 58

„ In Tutrakan there were large exporters of wheat, corn, beans and other agricultural products. A long line of porters loaded the huge barges around the clock, attached to the shore with bridges and ropes. The steamers were constantly loading and unloading sacks and crates of goods. There were farmers who owned thousands of acres of fields and forests. Manufacturers and grocers traded heavily and lived comfortably in rich, upholstered homes.

The Tryavna house did not know upholstered furniture. Its biggest luxury were the chairs, woven with colorful spam. In Tryavna, meat appeared only before a holiday, while Tutrakan had a permanent butcher’s bazaar, decorated with beef hams, the meat of which sold 30 stotinki per kilogram. Only from Monday to Monday, people from Tryavna could get vegetables brought from Debelets and Kilifarevo. There was a permanent vegetable market in Tutrakan with cheap vegetables. I remember the joy with which my father told my stepmother that pepper is sold here not per kilogram, but in number – 100 peppers for 10 stotinki.

In Tryavna they did not know the grill and the kebabs. In Tutrakan there were special establishments called “karnacarni” (or the Romanian “carne” – meat) with a variety of grills. In Tutrakan, fish was an everyday and high-quality and cheap food, and the desserts in Tryavna were limited to a mill (banitsa), the “white man” and milk with rice. The mill appeared only on holidays, and the “white man”, made from fresh unsalted cheese – once or twice a year. Tutrakan knew Turkish pastries, led by baklava, he knew cake, strudel, etc. In Tutrakan everyone bought bread from the bakeries – 20 stotinki white and 10 stotinki black. In Tryavna the bread was prepared at home once a week.

There were no grapes in Tryavna, no cherries, vegetables, apricots. Only on a holiday they appeared in front of the churches in baskets brought by women from Dryanovo, staring at their backs. For 10 kg of fruit they received from 1.50 to 2 BGN after passing 32 km on foot to come and return. In the Tutrakan house, in addition to the usual barrels of cabbage and bacon for the Tryavna house, there were watermelons, melons and pumpkins stored in the winter, and the volume of a car bought for 2-3 BGN. Pork sausages hung on long poles, dried fish, and chigas, cod, and sturgeon, cut lengthwise, hung around small hoops. In addition to the tin cans with cheese, the cellars also contained the tin cans with honey, squeegee and marinated trout, beluga, sturgeon, cod, roach and others. In Tryavna the wooden spoon, the ring bowl and the copper sahan were still in common, when in Tutrakan the lie was metal, the porcelain bowl, the dishes – enameled cast iron.

The Danube had provided a higher material culture for the otherwise illiterate Tutrakan, and the distance had deprived the enlightened and fully literate Tryavna of the same culture. My paternal great-grandmother, Duna Stoycheva, whose oil-painted portrait of the Revival artist Tsonev hangs in the State Art Gallery, died at the age of 98 in 1893. She could read and write …

On the way back, our steamer was late. I went out on deck to watch the lighted lights of the terraced Tutrakan. As we approached its western end, I saw the red light of the brothel. Not only was there no such establishment in Tryavna, but there could not be. In just one night, the people of Tryavna would destroy it to the ground. In addition to the brothel, a kind of prostitution was tolerated in Tutrakan, the victims of which were called “holders”. The bachelors – lawyers and clerks – supported young women who shared their bed and took care of their household. They spent their unhappy lives as prisoners. “

Angel STOYANOV CHESHMEDZHIEV – Prominent politician and activist for Dobrudzha. He was born on November 5, 1880 in Tutrakan. In 1895 he studied at the high school in Ruse as a scholarship holder of the municipality. After graduating from high school he continued his education in Bucharest and in 1900 graduated in finance and economics. For some time he worked as a financial inspector in the town of Sliven and in other cities, successively working as a sub-head of department in the Ministry of Education and head of a department in the Ministry of Justice and head of the state economic department of St. Synod. In 1908 he married Zhenika (Zhana) D. Gazurkova, daughter of the former mayor of Tutrakan Dimitar Gazurkov.

Angel Stoyanov was a key figure in the struggles of the Dobrudzha emigration. In September 1913 he participated in the establishment of the first Dobrudzha society and in the adoption of its statutes on February 19, 1914. He was elected to the first board of trustees of the Dobrudzha society and together with Dr. Tonchev, Dr. Teodorov and Dr. Vichev joined the first Supreme Board of the Dobrudzha Union. In the period 1929-1940 he was its chairman.

He adopted the ideas of the dominant patriotic current in the mid-1920s in the Union, which believed that the Liberation of Dobrudzha was a supra-party all-Bulgarian affair. It accepted that the main task of the Union was to unite Dobrudzha residents in the area and in exile for a mass legal struggle to protect their interests and to preserve the Bulgarian national image of Dobrudzha. He supported the idea of federation of the Balkan peoples, formulating the condition that “every nation with its state and every state with its people” should enter this federation.

At the 16th regular congress of the Dobrudzha emigration, held in Shumen in 1933, Angel Stoyanov delivered his keynote speech, in which he sharply criticized the Bulgarian government and the Bulgarian press for not objectively covering the events in Dobrudja and overcoming the tragedy of the Bulgarians. living under occupation. He was chairman of the Great Dobrudzha Council in 1942 in Dobrich, which closed the activities of the Dobrudzha Union.

Member of the XXV National Assembly from the Kubrat District in 1940. After concluding the Craiova Treaty, at the solemn sitting of the National Assembly he delivered a speech on behalf of the liberated citizens of Dobrudzha. Defender of the rights and property of Dobrudzha residents in the National Assembly. In 1943, Angel Stoyanov Chesmedjiev stood in support of the bill for granting national pensions to especially deserving figures for the liberation of Macedonia, Thrace and Dobrudzha. He was awarded the Order of “St. Alexander ”for merits as an actor for the liberation of Dobrudja in 1940. As an MP he came to Tutrakan on April 10, 1942 and spoke in the cinema hall about the domestic and foreign policy of the government. On July 12, 1943 he was declared an honorary citizen of Tutrakan. One of the city’s streets is named after him.

Immediately before his death he was vice-president of the Dobrudzha Cultural Institute. Author of many publications in the press. He and his family were killed in the bombing of Sofia on January 10, 1944. Mourning processions were held in his memory in Silistra, Ruse, Dobrich, Kubrat and Tutrakan. Immediately after his death, a committee was established to perpetuate the memory of Angel Stoyanov. It was decided to publish a volume with his speeches and publications and to make busts in Sofia and Ruse, and to erect a monument in Tutrakan.

Despite his services to the region and the respect he enjoyed among the population, the People’s Court posthumously sentenced him to death / photo case. He was posthumously rehabilitated nowadays. By decision of the Municipal Council in Tutrakan, a street was renamed after him. .