The meaning of a human life is to leave something behind. For the artist this is another picture, for the architect - the new bilding, and for people like me - the stored memory. This is the basic reazon for writing this chronicle - to recall past events, years, meetings and thus to preserve the memory ot President Perat Stoyanov, whit whom we will always associate the transition from dakrness to the part of hopes. And from there, to the timid confidence that one day such hopoes will become reality.

I admit that I started this books from tre perspective of a citizen of Plovdiv - led by a sense of a local patriotism and pride. Who knows when Plovdiv will produce a future head of state of Bulgaria again. I had the ambition to do it also because Petar Stoyanov himself did not write and did not encourage the publication of any book or literary collection on his persona. This may be evidence of human modesty, but from a historical perspective it is inacceptable. Both his predecessor and the presidents after him have issued several such collections.

Dimirat Raychev