Gotse Delchev

Born into a Bulgarian Millet affiliated family in Kukush (today Kilkis in Greece), then in the Salonika vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, in his youth he was inspired by the ideals of earlier Bulgarian revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev, who envisioned the creation of a Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious equality, as part of an imagined Balkan Federation. Delchev completed his secondary education in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki and entered the Military School of His Princely Highness in Sofia, but at the final stage of his study, he was dismissed for holding socialist literature. Then he returned to Ottoman Macedonia and worked as a Bulgarian Exarchate schoolteacher, and immediately became an activist of the newly-found revolutionary movement in 1894.

Although considering himself to be an inheritor of the Bulgarian revolutionary traditions, he opted for Macedonian autonomy. For him, like for many Slavic Macedonian prominent intellectuals, originating from an area with mixed population, the idea of being 'Macedonian' acquired the importance of a certain native loyalty, that constructed a specific spirit of "local patriotism" and "multi-ethnic regionalism". He maintained the slogan promoted by William Ewart Gladstone, "Macedonia for the Macedonians", including all different nationalities inhabiting the area. Delchev was also an adherent of incipient socialism. His political agenda became the establishment through revolution of autonomy for Macedonia and Adrianople regions into the framework of the Ottoman Empire, which in the case of Macedonia would lead to its inclusion into a future Balkan federation or confederation. It would to be a multiethnic state with the Bulgarian Macedonians as the dominant though tolerant majority among the various Macedonian peoples Despite having been educated in the spirit of Bulgarian nationalism, he was an opponent of the incorporation of Macedonia inside Bulgaria. Furthermore, he revised the Organization's first statute, where the membership was allowed only for Bulgarians, in order for it to depart from the exclusively Bulgarian nature, and IMRO begun to acquire a more separatist stance. In this way he emphasized the importance of cooperation among all ethnic groups in the territories concerned in order to obtain full political autonomy.

Delchev is considered a national hero in Bulgaria and North Macedonia. While his autonomist ideas have stimulated the subsequent development of Macedonian nationalism, in the latter it is claimed he was an ethnic Macedonian revolutionary. Nevertheless, for part of the members of IMRO behind the idea of Macedonian autonomy a reserve plan for eventual annexation by Bulgaria was hidden. Per some of his contemporaries, closely associated with him, Delchev supported Macedonia's incorporation into Bulgaria as another option too. On the other hand, some researchers find the identity of Delchev and other IMRO figures to be open to different interpretations, dissimilar to modern Balkan nationalisms. Thus, his legacy has been disputed between both countries.

Life

Early life

He was born to a large Bulgarian family on 4 February 1872 (23 January according to the Julian calendar) in Kılkış (Kukush), then in the Ottoman Empire (today in Greece), to Nikola and Sultana. He was christened as Georgi. During the 1860s and 1870s, Kukush was under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Uniate Church, but after 1884 most of its population gradually joined the Bulgarian Exarchate. As a student, Delchev studied first at the Bulgarian Uniate primary school and then at the Bulgarian Exarchate junior high school. He also read widely in the town's chitalishte (community cultural center), where he was impressed with revolutionary books, and was especially imbued with thoughts of the liberation of Bulgaria. In 1888 his family sent him to the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, where he organized and led a secret revolutionary brotherhood. Delchev also distributed revolutionary literature, which he acquired from the school's graduates who studied in Bulgaria. Bulgarian students graduating from high school were faced with few career prospects and Delchev decided to follow the path of his former schoolmate Boris Sarafov, entering the military school in Sofia in 1891. He became disappointed with life in Bulgaria, especially the commercialized life of the society in Sofia and with the authoritarian politics of the prime minister Stefan Stambolov, accused of being a dictator.

Delchev spent his leaves from school in the company of socialists and Macedonian-born emigrants, most of them belonged to the Young Macedonian Literary Society. One of his friends was Vasil Glavinov, a future leader of the Macedonian-Adrianople Social Democratic Group, a faction of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party. Through Glavinov and his comrades, he came into contact with different people, who offered a new form of social struggle. In June 1892, Delchev and the journalist Kosta Shahov, a chairman of the Young Macedonian Literary Society, met in Sofia with Ivan Hadzhinikolov, a bookseller from Thessaloniki (Salonika). Hadzhinikolov disclosed at this meeting his plans to create a revolutionary organization in Ottoman Macedonia. They discussed together its basic principles and agreed fully on all scores. Delchev explained that he had no intention of remaining an officer and promised after graduating from the Military School, he would return to Macedonia to join the organization. In September 1894, only a month before graduation, he was expelled for his socialist and revolutionary ideas. He was given the possibility to enter the Army again by re-applying for a commission, but he refused. Afterwards he returned to Macedonia to become a teacher and set up secret committees, based on Vasil Levski's example. At that time, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was in its early stages of development, forming its committees around the Bulgarian Exarchate schools in order to exploit the extensive school system.

Teacher and revolutionary

In Ottoman Salonika, IMRO was founded in 1893, by a small band of anti-Ottoman Macedono-Bulgarian revolutionaries, including Hadzhinikolov. The earliest known statute of the Organization calls it Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees (BMARC). It was decided at a meeting in Resen in August 1894 to preferably recruit teachers from the Bulgarian schools as committee members. Although Delchev despised the Exarchate policy in Macedonia, in 1894 he became a teacher in an Exarchate school in Štip. There he met another teacher, Dame Gruev, who was also among the founders of IMRO and a leader of the newly established local committee. Gruev told him about the existence of the Organization. Delchev impressed Gruev with his honesty and joined the Organization immediately, gradually becoming one of its main leaders. Delchev advocated for the establishment of a secret revolutionary network, that would prepare the population for an armed uprising against the Ottoman rule, based on Levski's example. They shared common views with Gruev that the liberation had to be achieved internally by a Macedonian organization without any foreign intervention. Therefore, Gruev concentrated his attention on Štip, while Delchev attempted to win over the surrounding villages. It is unknown how many active members the Organization had from 1893 to 1897. Despite his and Gruev's efforts, the number of members grew slowly. In a letter from 1895, Delchev explained that the liberation of Macedonia as a state lies in an internal uprising for which a systematic agitation was conducted in order for the population to be ready in the near future, otherwise the result of a premature uprising would be tragic. Delchev travelled during the vacations throughout Macedonia and established and organized committees in villages and cities. In this period, he adopted Ahil (Archilles) as his nom de guerre. Furthermore, he organized secret border crossing points towards Bulgaria near Kyustendil for easier infiltration of revolutionary propaganda literature.

Delchev also established contacts with some of the leaders of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC). Its official declaration was a struggle for the autonomy of the Macedonian and Adrianople regions. However, as a rule, most of SMAC's leaders were officers with strong connections with the Bulgarian governments and prince Ferdinand, waging terrorist struggle against the Ottomans in the hope of provoking a war and thus Bulgarian annexation of both areas. In late 1895 he arrived in Bulgaria's capital Sofia from the name of the "Bulgarian Central Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committee" to prevent any foreign interference in its work. In February 1896, he met SMAC's new leader Danail Nikolaev, their conversation was turbulent and short. Namely, Nikolaev asserted that the only way to freedom was with trained Bulgarian soldiers and clandestine aid and finance of the Bulgarian government. Moreover, he considered Delchev a brash youngster and deemed unreal and absurd the idea of peasant uprising by revolutionary impulsion of the Macedonian Slavs. SMAC wanted IMRO to be subordinated to them, and Bulgarian army officers to dominate their activity, while IMRO wanted to remain independent of Bulgarian governmental control. After spending the 1895/1896 school year as a teacher in the town of Bansko, in May 1896 he was arrested by the Ottoman authorities as a person suspected of revolutionary activity and spent about a month in jail. Delchev participated in the Thessaloniki Congress of the IMRO in 1896. The Central Committee was placed in Salonika. He, along with Gyorche Petrov, wrote the new organization's statute, which divided Macedonia and Adrianople areas into seven regions, each with a regional structure and secret police, following the Internal Revolutionary Organization's example. Afterwards, Delchev gave his resignation as a teacher and in the same year, he moved back to Bulgaria.

Revolutionary activity as part of the leadership of the Organization

The Central Committee regarded as necessary to have trustworthy permanent representatives in Sofia in order to mediate the tense relations with the SMAC, because IMRO looked to avoid a break since it was largely dependent on Bulgarian state material and financial assistance. Thus, from November 1896, Delchev was put in charge of the Foreign Representation of the IMRO alongside Petrov who joined him in March 1897. Besides the dialogue with the SMAC, they were assigned to acquire funds or additional support and preserve ties with all those in the Bulgaria who were approving of the Macedonian cause. Delchev envisioned independent production of weapons and traveled in 1897 to Odessa, where he met with Armenian revolutionaries Stepan Zorian and Christapor Mikaelian to exchange terrorist skills and especially bomb-making. That resulted in the establishment of a bomb manufacturing plant in the village of Sabler near Kyustendil in Bulgaria. The bombs were later smuggled across the Ottoman border into Macedonia. In the period from 1897 to 1898 the Organization decided to create permanent acting armed komitadji bands (chetas) in every district, with Delchev as their leader. He was the first to organize and lead a band into Macedonia with the purpose of robbing or kidnapping rich Turks. This activity of his had variable success. His experiences demonstrate the weaknesses and difficulties which the Organization faced in its early years.

After 1897 there was a rapid growth of secret Bulgarian army officers' brotherhoods, whose members by 1900 numbered about a thousand. Much of the brotherhoods' activists were involved in the revolutionary activity of the IMRO, collecting funds and petitions in support of the Macedonian cause. They were formed on the initiative of Petrov by officers with whom he managed to develop good raport, one of them being the lieutenant Boris Sarafov. Delchev was also among the main supporters of their activities. Relations with the SMAC did not improve and remained tense until 1899. In May that year, on the 6th Congress of the SMAC, Sarafov was elected as new president after being proposed by Petrov and Delchev. However, their first choice was Dimitar Blagoev by whose socialist ideas Delchev was specifically influenced, but he declined. Thus, they settled for Delchev's former schoolmate Sarafov, who they saw as favorable to IMRO's ideas even though their personalities differed. IMRO delegates Delchev and Petrov became by rights members of the leadership of the SMAC in May 1899, thus this signaled the start of a period of close cooperation. Although Sarafov proved capable of propagating the Macedonian cause and raise money, he was also arrogant and unpredictable, so Delchev and Petrov were unable to utilize him.

In 1900, Delchev resided for a while in Burgas, where he organized another bomb manufacturing plant, whose dynamite was used later by the Boatmen of Thessaloniki. In March 1900, Gotse Delchev, accompanied by Lazar Madzharov, went on a tour of Strandzha Mountain, aiming better coordination between Macedonian and Thracian revolutionary committees, returning to Burgas in mid-April. After the SMAC's assassination of the Romanian newspaper editor Ștefan Mihăileanu in July, who had published unflattering remarks about the Macedonian affairs, Bulgaria and Romania were brought to the brink of war. At that time Delchev was preparing to organize a detachment which, in a possible war to support the Bulgarian army by its actions in Northern Dobruja, where a compact Bulgarian population was available. Meanwhile, Sarafov was reelected as president in August, and with that the involvement of Delchev and Petrov in the SMAC's work resumed. However, deep disagreements still existed, essentially concerning the ultimate aim of the autonomy which in IMRO's case was independent Macedonia as part of a future Balkan Federation, while for the SMAC it was unification with Bulgaria. Other instances were difference in mentality and social origin between "schoolteachers" and "officers", of which the latter desired to command the liberation operations, as well as the distrust by them in the idea of a peasant uprising led by teachers. The chief figure in this contemptuous attitude was General Ivan Tsonchev, who was intimate with the Bulgarian prince Ferdinand and his court. He was also the leader of those who intended through the cooperation to subordinate IMRO and he began to work against Delchev and Petrov. Tsonchev and his supporters insisted on an immediate uprising which would be led by Bulgarian army officers. Consequently, Delchev with Petrov resisted Tsonchev's faction, as they asserted that the time for a uprising is not ripe since the population is still not ready to liberate itself, thus political agitation and guerilla fighting should proceed. On the other hand, Tsonchev's faction briefly contemplated assassinating them. Towards the end of 1900, the relations between the IMRO and SMAC deteriorated gradually. Furthermore, the ideologically inclined Ivan Garvanov offered Tsonchev control over IMRO, after managing to become de facto its leader by acquiring the archive and accounts, following the arrest of the Central Committee members in the beginning of 1901. Therefore, in March 1901, Delchev alongside Petrov sent a circular to local IMRO committee leaders, denouncing the attempt of SMAC to seize the direction of IMRO. They ordered the termination of all relations with it, as well as ordered all local committees to refuse any transition of any armed group which did not have a pass signed by him or Petrov, and their weapons to be seized. Delchev intended to promote an election list directed against Tsonchev at SMAC's 9th Congress in July 1901. Nevertheless, Sarafov was replaced by Stoyan Mihaylovski, while Tsonchev became the vice-president and assumed full control with his officers. After this, the relations between the SMAC and IMRO were limited and increasingly hostile. In September, Delchev and Petrov were replaced as foreign representatives of IMRO. From 1901 to 1902, Delchev made an important inspection in Macedonia, touring all revolutionary districts there. He also led the congress of the Adrianople revolutionary district held in Plovdiv in April 1902. Afterwards he inspected IMRO's structures in the Central Rhodopes. The inclusion of the rural areas into the organizational districts contributed to the expansion of the Organization and the increase in its membership, while providing the essential prerequisites for the formation of its military power, at the same time having Delchev as its military advisor (inspector) and chief of all internal revolutionary bands. In August, despite being invited he refused to attend the 10th Congress of the SMAC, which escalated the crisis with IMRO.

In late December 1902, Garvanov unexpectedly declared that a congress of IMRO will take place the following month. Particularly intended for a date of a general uprising in 1903 to be decided. By that time two strong tendencies had crystallized within IMRO. The Bulgarian nationalist majority was convinced that if the Organization would unleash a general uprising, it will lead to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, the leaders of the IMRO leftists, Delchev with Petrov strongly protested, elaborating that the komitadjis are not adequately prepared and a premature uprising will only result in massacre, endangering the whole organization as well. However, without waiting for their reaction, Garvanov organized the Salonika Congress on 15 January 1903, with only 17 delegates cautiously selected to be favorable to his ideas. Delchev did not participate nor any of the other leaders or founders of IMRO. A general uprising was debated and under the influence of Garvanov it was decided to stage one in May 1903. The opponents of the decision refused to recognize it. Delchev, with the anarchist Mihail Gerdzhikov, proposed instead intensifying terrorist tactics and guerilla tactics, which came to approval and postponement of the uprising by Garvanov's supporters, on the condition that it will lead to provoking revolts in the districts estimated sufficiently prepared. Thus Delchev and Petrov established terror units, which were associated with the anarchist organization Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee. With the arrival of spring, IMRO multiplied the attacks, and the violence grew significantly. Delchev went to Macedonia to meet in the Serres region with Yane Sandanski seeking support and understanding, as he was always ideologically concurred to him, and he shared the view to oppose the general uprising decision. Towards the end of March 1903, Delchev with his band destroyed the 30 meters long Salonika-Istanbul railway bridge over the Angista river between Serres and Drama, aiming to test the new terror tactics.

Death and aftermath

In late April he set out for Thessaloniki to meet with Dame Gruev after his release from prison in March 1903. Delchev hoped that he will argue against the uprising, but Gruev wanted it to proceed since the course of events had become unrepairable. Therefore, Delchev agreed to prepare as much he can in the Serres district and headed that way with the intention of holding a regional congress in Serres to lay out his plans for the uprising. At the same time, the terror initiated by IMRO culminated on 28 April when the Boatmen of Thessaloniki started their terrorist attacks in the city, of whom only Delchev knew they will happen. As a consequence martial law was declared in the city and many Ottoman soldiers and "bashibozouks" were concentrated in the Salonika vilayet. This increased tension led eventually to the tracking of Delchev's cheta and his subsequent death. With his cheta he arrived in the village of Banitsa on 2 May for a meeting with Dimo Hadzhidimov. Soon after, they were surrounded and a skirmish followed in which Delchev was killed on 4 May 1903, with a shot to the chest, by Ottoman troops led by his former schoolmate Hussein Tefikov. A consular source reported that the skirmish occurred after betrayal by local villager. The Ottomans sent his severed head to Salonika. Thus the Macedonian liberation movement lost its most important organizer and ideologist, on the eve of the Ilinden Uprising. He was recognized as "the most capable and most honest Komitadji" by missionaries. After being identified by the local authorities in Serres, the bodies of Delchev and his comrade, Dimitar Gushtanov, were buried in a common grave in Banitsa. Following the skirmish, more than 500 arrests were made in various districts of Serres and 1,700 households petitioned to return from Exarchist to Patriarchist jurisdiction. Soon afterwards IMRO, aided by SMAC, organized the uprising against the Ottoman Empire, which after initial successes, was defeated with many casualties. Two of his brothers, Mitso and Milan were also killed fighting against the Ottomans as militants in the IMRO chetas of the Bulgarian voivodas Hristo Chernopeev and Krastyo Asenov in 1901 and 1903, respectively. The Bulgarian government later granted a pension to their father Nikola, because of the contribution of his sons to the freedom of Macedonia. During the Second Balkan War of 1913, Kilkis, which had been annexed by Bulgaria in the First Balkan War, was taken by the Greeks. Virtually all of its pre-war 7,000 Bulgarian inhabitants, including Delchev's family, were expelled to Bulgaria by the Greek Army. During Balkan Wars, when Bulgaria was temporarily in control of the area, Delchev's remains were transferred to Xanthi, then in Bulgaria. After Western Thrace was ceded to Greece in 1919, the relic was brought to Plovdiv and in 1923 to Sofia, where it rested until after World War II. During World War II, the area was taken by the Kingdom of Bulgaria again and Delchev's grave near Banitsa was restored. In May 1943, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was set in Banitsa, in the presence of his sisters and other public figures.

The first biographical book about Delchev was issued in 1904 by his friend and comrade in arms, the Bulgarian poet Peyo Yavorov. The most detailed biography of Delchev in English was written by English historian Mercia MacDermott called Freedom or Death: The Life of Gotse Delchev, published in 1978 and translated into Bulgarian in 1979.