Gotse Delchev

He was born to a large family on 4 February 1872 (23 January according to the Julian calendar) in Kılkış (Kukush), then in the Ottoman Empire (today in Greece). By the mid-19th century, Kılkış was populated predominantly with Macedonian Bulgarians[34][35][36] and became one of the centres of the Bulgarian national revival.[37][38] During the 1860s and 1870s it was under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Uniate Church,[39][40] but after 1884 most of its population gradually joined the Bulgarian Exarchate.[41] As a student, Delchev studied first at the Bulgarian Uniate primary school and then at the Bulgarian Exarchate junior high school.[42] 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.[43] In 1888 his family sent him to the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, where he organized and led a secret revolutionary brotherhood.[44] Delchev also distributed revolutionary literature, which he acquired from the school's graduates who studied in Bulgaria. Graduation from high school was 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 at first encountered the newly independent Bulgaria full of idealism and dedication, but he later became disappointed with the commercialized life of the society and with the authoritarian politics of the prime minister Stefan Stambolov, accused of being a dictator.[45]

Letter from Delchev, where he declares himself and his compatriots as Bulgarians.[46]

Delchev spent his leaves in the company of emigrants from Macedonia. Most of them belonged to the Young Macedonian Literary Society. One of his friends was Vasil Glavinov, a leader of the Macedonian-Adrianople 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 the bookseller from Thessaloniki, Ivan Hadzhinikolov. 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, 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.[47] In September 1894, only a month before graduation, he was expelled because of his political activity as a member of an illegal socialist circle.[48] He was given the possibility to enter the Army again by re-applying for a commission, but he refused. Afterwards he returned to European Turkey to work there as a Bulgarian teacher, aiming to get involved in the new liberation movement. At that time, the revolutionary organization commonly known as Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was in its early stages of development, forming its committees around the Bulgarian Exarchate schools.[49]

The diploma of Delchev from his graduation from the Military school in Sofia.[note 2]

Diploma from the Bulgarian Exarchate's school in Štip, signed by Delchev as a teacher.

Letter from Delchev to the Bulgarian Exarch Yosif, where he resigned as head teacher in Bansko.

Excerpt from the statute of BMARC, with corrections made by hand, personally by Gotse Delchev with intention to work out the new statute of the SMARO.

Excerpt from the statute of SMARO, whose author was G. Delchev.[note 3]

In Ottoman Thessaloniki, IMRO was founded in 1893, by a small band of anti-Ottoman Macedono-Bulgarian revolutionaries, including Hadzhinikolov. The first name of the organization is disputed, but among its early names were Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees (BMARC) and Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (SMARO).[50][51] It was decided at a meeting in Resen in August 1894 to preferably recruit teachers from the Bulgarian schools as committee members.[52] In the autumn of 1894 Delchev became a teacher in an Exarchate school in Štip,[53] where he met another teacher, Dame Gruev, who was also a leader of the newly established local committee of the IMRO.[54] As a result of the close friendship between the two, Delchev joined the organization immediately and gradually became one of its main leaders. After this, both he and Gruev worked together in Štip and its environs.[55] The expansion of the IMRO at the time was considerable, particularly after Gruev settled in Thessaloniki during the years 1895–1897, in the quality of a Bulgarian school inspector. Under his direction, Delchev travelled during the vacations throughout Macedonia and established and organized committees in villages and cities. 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 Macedonia and Thrace.[56] However, as a rule, most of SMAC's leaders were officers with stronger connections with the governments, waging terrorist struggle against the Ottomans in the hope of provoking a war and thus Bulgarian annexation of both areas. In the late 1895 he arrived illegally in Bulgaria's capital and tried to get support from the SMAC's leadership from the name of the "Bulgarian Central Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committee".[57] Delchev had a number of meetings with Danail Nikolaev, Yosif Kovachev, Toma Karayovov, Andrey Lyapchev and others, but he was often frustrated by their views. As a whole, Delchev had a negative attitude towards their activities. After spending the next school year (1895/1896) 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. Later Delchev participated in the Thessaloniki Congress of the IMRO in the Summer. Afterwards, Delchev gave his resignation as a teacher and, in the Autumn of 1896, he moved back to Bulgaria, where he, together with Gyorche Petrov, served as foreign representatives of the organization in Sofia.[58] At that time the organization was largely dependent on the Bulgarian state and army assistance, that was mediated by the foreign representatives.

In the period 1897–1902, he was a representative of the Foreign Committee of the IMRO in Sofia. Again in Sofia, negotiating with suspicious politicians and arms merchants, Delchev saw more of the unpleasant face of the Principality and became even more disillusioned with its political system. In 1897 he, along with 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. Below the regional committees were districts.[59][60] The Central Committee was placed in Thessaloniki. In 1898 the Organization decided to create permanent acting armed bands (chetas) in every district, with Delchev as their leader.[61] Delchev ensured the functioning of the underground border crossings of the organization and the arms depots added to them, alongside the then Bulgarian-Ottoman border.

His correspondence with other IMRO members covers extensive data on supplies, transport and storage of weapons and ammunition in Macedonia. 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.[62] 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.[63] He was the first to organize and lead a band into Macedonia with the purpose of robbing or kidnapping rich Turks. His experiences demonstrate the weaknesses and difficulties which the Organization faced in its early years.[64] Later he was one of the organizers of the Miss Stone Affair. In the winter of 1900, he resided for a while in Burgas, where Delchev organized another bomb manufacturing plant, which dynamite was used later by the Thessaloniki bombings.[65] In 1900 he inspected also IMRO's detachments in Eastern Thrace again, aiming for better coordination between Macedonian and Thracian revolutionary committees. After the assassination in July of the Romanian newspaper editor Ștefan Mihăileanu, 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.[66] From the Autumn of 1901 till the early Spring of 1902, he 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 Delchev inspected the 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 the military power of the organization, at the same time having Delchev as its military advisor (inspector) and chief of all internal revolutionary bands.[67]

Delchev's mother - Sultana

Delchev's father – Nikola

After 1897 there was a rapid growth of secret officers' brotherhoods, whose members by 1900 numbered about a thousand.[68] Much of the brotherhoods' activists were involved in the revolutionary activity of the IMRO.[69] He was among the main supporters of their activities.[70] Delchev aimed also for better coordination between IMRO and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. For a short time in the late 1890s lieutenant Boris Sarafov, who was a former schoolmate of Delchev became its leader. During that period the foreign representatives Delchev and Petrov became by rights members of the leadership of the Supreme Committee and so the IMRO even managed to gain de facto control of the SMAC.[71] Nevertheless, it soon split into two factions: one loyal to the IMRO and one led by some officers close to the Bulgarian prince. Delchev opposed these officers' insistent attempts to gain control over the activity of the IMRO. Sometimes SMAC even clashed militarily with local SMARO bands as in the autumn of 1902. Then the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee organized a failed uprising in Pirin Macedonia (Gorna Dzhumaya), which merely served to provoke Ottoman repressions and hampered the work of the underground network of SMARO.

The primary question regarding the timing of the uprising in Macedonia and Thrace implicated an apparent discordance not only among the SMAC and the SMARO, but also among the SMARO's leadership. At the Thessaloniki Congress of January 1903, where Delchev did not participate, an early uprising was debated and it was decided to stage one in the Spring of 1903. This led to fierce debates among the representatives at the Sofia SMARO's Conference in March 1903. By that time two strong tendencies had crystallized within the SMARO. The right-wing majority was convinced that if the Organization would unleash a general uprising, Bulgaria would be provoked to declare war on the Ottomans and after the subsequent intervention of the Great Powers the Empire would collapse.[72]

The American daily New York Times's report from 11 May 1903, about the death of Delchev.

Delchev also launched the establishment of a secret revolutionary network, that would prepare the population for an armed uprising against the Ottoman rule.[73] Delchev, who was under the influence of the leading Bulgarian anarchists like Mihail Gerdzhikov and Varban Kilifarski personally opposed the IMRO Central Committee's plan for a mass uprising in the summer of 1903, instead supporting terrorist tactics and guerilla tactics such as the Thessaloniki bombings of 1903.[74][75] Finally, he had no choice but to agree to that course of action, at least managing to delay its start from May to August. Delchev also convinced the SMARO leadership to transform its idea of a mass rising involving the civil population into a rising based on guerrilla warfare. Towards the end of March 1903, Delchev with his detachment destroyed the railway bridge over the Angista river, aiming to test the new guerrilla tactics. Following that he set out for Thessaloniki to meet with Dame Gruev after his release from prison in March 1903. Delchev met with Gruev in late April and they discussed the decision of starting the uprising. After the meeting, he left for Serres, with the intention of holding a regional congress to lay out his plans for the uprising.[76]

Telegram by the Ottoman authorities to their Embassy in Sofia informing, Delchev, one of the leaders of the Bulgarian Committees, was killed.[77][78]

The first biographical book about Delchev, issued in 1904 by his friend, the Bulgarian poet and revolutionary Peyo Yavorov.

Bulgarian postcard (1904) representing Delchev and an IMARO cheta. The inscription above reads: "The immortal Delchev."

Memorial poster of IMARO issued after the Young Turk Revolution. The group presents Delchev and his already dead comrades, whom he personally had invited into the organization: Toma Davidov, Mihail Apostolov, Petar Sokolov and Slavi Merdzhanov.

The ruins of Kilkis after the Second Balkan War.

The bell tower among ruins of the village of Banitsa, where Delchev was buried until 1913.

On 28 April, members of the Gemidzii circle started terrorist attacks in Thessaloniki. As a consequence martial law was declared in the city and many Turkish 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.[79][80] He was killed on 4 May 1903, in a skirmish with the Turkish police in the village of Banitsa,[61] probably after betrayal by local villagers, as rumors asserted, while preparing the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising.[81] Thus the liberation movement lost its most important organizer, on the eve of the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising. 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 to the Patriarchate.[82] Soon afterwards SMARO, aided by SMAC organized the uprising against the Ottomans, which after initial successes, was crushed with much loss of life.[83] Two of his brothers, Mitso Delchev and Milan Delchev were also killed fighting against the Ottomans as militants in the SMARO chetas of the Bulgarian voivodas Hristo Chernopeev and Krstjo Asenov in 1901 and 1903, respectively. The Bulgarian government later granted a pension to their father Nikola Delchev, because of the contribution of his sons to the freedom of Macedonia.[84] 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.[85] 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.[86] During World War II, the area was taken by the Bulgarians again and Delchev's grave near Banitsa was restored.[87] 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.[88] Until the end of WWII Delchev was considered one of the greatest Bulgarians in the region of Macedonia.[89]

The first biographical book about Delchev was issued in 1904 by his friend and comrade in arms, the Bulgarian poet Peyo Yavorov.[90] The most detailed biography of Delchev in English was written by English historian Mercia MacDermott: Freedom or Death: The Life of Gotse Delchev.[91]

In 1934 the Comintern gave its support to the idea that the Macedonian Slavs constituted a separate nation.[115] Prior to World War II, this view on the Macedonian issue had been of little practical importance. However, during the war these ideas were supported by the pro-Yugoslav Macedonian communist partisans, who strengthened their positions in 1943, referring to the ideals of Gotse Delchev.[116] After the Red Army entered the Balkans in late 1944, new communist regimes came into power in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In this way their policy on the Macedonian Question was committed to the Comintern policy of supporting the development of a distinct ethnic Macedonian consciousness.[115][117] The region of Macedonia was proclaimed as the connecting link for the establishment of a future Balkan Communist Federation. The newly established Yugoslav People's Republic of Macedonia, was characterized as the natural result of Delchev's aspirations for autonomous Macedonia.[118]

Initially, the Macedonian communists questioned the extent of Delchev's alleged Macedonian national consciousness.[119] Macedonian communist leader Lazar Koliševski proclaimed him as "...one Bulgarian of no significance for the liberation struggles...".[120] In 1946, Vasil Ivanovski acknowledged that Delchev did not have a clear view of "a Macedonian national character", but stated that his struggle made the free and autonomous Macedonia a possibility.[119] On 7 October 1946, under pressure from Moscow,[121] as part of the policy to foster the development of Macedonian national consciousness, Delchev's remains were transported to Skopje.[122] On 10 October, the bones were enshrined in a marble sarcophagus in the yard of the church "Sveti Spas", where they have remained since.[121] Delchev's name became part of the anthem of SR Macedonia - Today over Macedonia.[123] According to Mishe Karev, a nephew of Nikola Karev, after the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, the Macedonian communist elite discussed the idea of scrapping Delchev's name from the anthem of the country and proclaiming him a Bulgarian, but this idea was declined.[124]

After realizing that the Balkan collective memory had already accepted the heroes of the Macedonian revolutionary movement as Bulgarians, Macedonian authorities exerted efforts to claim Delchev for the Macedonian national cause.[125] Aiming to enforce the belief that Delchev was an ethnic Macedonian, all documents written by him in standard Bulgarian were translated into standard Macedonian, and presented as originals.[126] As a result, Delchev was declared an ethnic Macedonian hero and Macedonian school textbooks began even to hint at Bulgarian complicity in his death.[127] In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, before 1960, Delchev was given mostly regional recognition in Pirin Macedonia.[118] Afterwards, orders from the highest political level were given to reincorporate the Macedonian revolutionary movement as part of the Bulgarian historiography and to prove the Bulgarian credentials of its historical leaders. Since 1960, there have been long unproductive debates between the ruling Communist parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia about the ethnic affiliation of Delchev. Delchev was described in SR Macedonia not only as an anti-Ottoman freedom fighter, but also as a hero, who had opposed the aggressive aspirations of the pro-Bulgarian factions in the liberation movement.[128] The claims on Delchev's Bulgarian self-identification, thus were portrayed as a recent Bulgarian chauvinist attitude of long provenance.[129] Nonetheless, the Bulgarian side made in 1978 for the first time the proposal that some historical personalities (e.g. Gotse Delchev) could be regarded as belonging to the shared historical heritage of the two peoples, but that proposal did not appeal to the Yugoslavs.[130]

Delchev is today regarded both in Bulgaria and North Macedonia as an important national hero, and both nations see him as part of their own national history.[131][132][133] His ethnic identity has continued to be disputed in North Macedonia, serving as a point of contention with Bulgaria.[134][135] Some attempts were made for the joint celebration of Delchev between both countries.[136][137] Bulgarian diplomats were also attacked when honoring Delchev by Macedonian nationalists.[138] However, on 2 August 2017, the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and his Macedonian colleague Zoran Zaev placed wreaths at the grave of Gotse Delchev on the occasion of the 114th anniversary of the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising.[139] The Macedonian side has recently been interested to negotiate about Delchev.[140] A joint commission on historical issues was also formed in 2018 to resolve controversial historical readings, including the dispute about Delchev's ethnic identity, which remains unresolved.[141][142][143] The Association of Historians in North Macedonia came out against the calls for a joint celebration of Delchev, seeing them as a threat to Macedonian national identity.[144] Macedonian historians insist that the myth of Delchev there is so significant that it is more important than all of the historical research and documents,[145] and therefore his Bulgarian self-identification should not be discussed.[146]

His memory is honored especially in the Bulgarian part of Macedonia and among the descendants of Bulgarian refugees from other parts of the region, where he is regarded as the most important revolutionary from the second generation of freedom fighters.[147] His name appears also in the national anthem of North Macedonia: "Denes nad Makedonija" (Today over Macedonia). There are two towns named in his honor: Gotse Delchev in Bulgaria and Delčevo in North Macedonia.[61] There are also two peaks named after Delchev: Gotsev Vrah, the summit of Slavyanka Mountain, and Delchev Vrah or Delchev Peak on Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands in Antarctica, which was named after him by the scientists from the Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition. The Goce Delčev University of Štip in North Macedonia carries his name too.[148] Today many artifacts related to Delchev's activity are stored in different museums across Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

During the time of SFR Yugoslavia, a street in Belgrade was named after Delchev. In 2015, Serbian nationalists covered the signs with the street's name and affixed new ones with the name of the Chetniks' activist Kosta Pećanac. They claimed that Delchev was a Bulgarian and his name has no place there.[149] Though in 2016 the street's name was changed officially by the municipal authorities to "Maršal Tolbuhin". Their motivation was that Delchev was not an ethnic Macedonian revolutionary, but an activist of an anti-Serbian organization with a pro-Bulgarian orientation.[150][151]

In Greece the official appeals from the Bulgarian side to the authorities to install a memorial plaque on his place of death are not answered. The memorial plaques set periodically by Bulgarians afterwards are removed. Bulgarian tourists are restrained occasionally to visit the place.[152][153][154]

On February 4, 2023, on the 151st anniversary of the birth of the revolutionary, both the Macedonian and Bulgarian side paid their respects at the St. Spas Church in Skopje separately, while the delegation of North Macedonia declined the offer to jointly lay wreaths proposed by the Bulgarian delegation.[155] Many Bulgarian citizens who wanted to attend the event were held for hours at the border due to the malfunction of the border system.[156][157] However, problems with the admission of the Bulgarians continued even after the processing of their documents.[158] As a result, some Bulgarian citizens and journalists were prevented from crossing. Three citizens were detained, fined and banned from entering the country for 3 years, due to attempting to physically assault policemen.[159][160] According to their lawyer, two of them were apparently beaten.[161][162] Bulgaria officially reacted sharply to these events.[163]