Bolhrad High School

The Georgi Sava Rakovski Bolhrad High School (Ukrainian: Болградська гімназія імені Г.С. Раковського, Bolhrads'ka himnaziya im. H.S. Rakovs'koho; Bulgarian: Болградска гимназия „Георги Сава Раковски“, Bolgradska gimnazia „Georgi Sava Rakovski“) is a public school in Bolhrad, Odesa Oblast, southwestern Ukraine; though formally designated a gymnasium (high school), it currently provides classes for students aged 6 to 18. It was established on 10 June 1858, in what was then the Principality of Moldavia, at the request of Bessarabian Bulgarian and Gagauz communities, and was thus the oldest high school of the Bulgarian National Revival; to this day, it remains central to the expression of Bulgarian culture in Ukraine. Originally, it was self-sustaining and had a supervisory sole over various primary schools in southern Bessarabia, with funds provided by its ownership of several lakes and fisheries just north of the Danube Delta—including Yalpuh and Kuhurlui. Its current name, granted in 1999, honors a Bulgarian intellectual leader and political activist, Georgi Sava Rakovski, who was personally involved in the gymnasium's establishment.

The school, and the whole of southern Bessarabia, was integrated with the Principality of Romania from 1859 to 1978, and was exposed to Romanianization attempts; its regional monopoly on Bulgarian education was also questioned by the Russian Empire, which provided for rival institutions in Comrat and Mykolaiv. The institution preserved its core mission and its autonomy into the 1870s, when its students actively fought during the Liberation of Bulgaria. Immediately after, Bolhrad itself was annexed by Russia, and folded into the Bessarabia Governorate. The regime of Tsarist autocracy closed down its printing press, phased out its ethnic privileges, and, in 1884, renamed it after Alexander III. The gymnasium was not stripped of its estates, which it preserved into the interwar period, when Bessarabia was united with Romania. The Greater Romanian regimes tried but failed to confiscate the lakes; they also resumed centralizing policies, and insisted for the admittance of non-Bulgarian students—though the school continued to be staffed by ethnic-minority professors, they had their political loyalties subjected to public scrutiny. Under Romanian rule, the institution was known as a lyceum, and, from 1932, was renamed after Carol II.

During World War II, Bessarabia was taken over by the Soviet Union: first with an occupation in 1940–1941, and then, more definitively, with annexation by the Ukrainian SSR (from 1944). It was a regular gymnasium in the Soviet education system, though Bulgarian contributions were still recognized. The dissolution of the Soviet Union turned it into a regular Ukrainian public school, and later into one with an officially recognized Bulgarian focus—one which was also celebrated in Bulgaria, which offers its alumni a number of state scholarships. Since 2010, the high school's name has been lent to Bolgrad Glacier in Sentinel Range, Antarctica.