Bulgaria pays tribute to Gotse Delchev - the apostle of freedom for Bulgarians in Macedonia and Adriatic Thrace

published on 2/4/25 7:10 AM

Photo: BGNES Archive

On February 4, Blagoevgrad will commemorate the 153rd anniversary of the birth of Bulgarian revolutionary Gotse Delchev with a wreath-laying ceremony. The ceremony will take place at 11am in front of the hero's monument on Macedonia Square. Voivode Gotse Delchev was the leader and ideologue of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Edirne Revolutionary Committees. Delchev is considered a national hero in Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

There will be no joint commemoration with North Macedonia this year. Bulgaria has not received an invitation to commemorate the day together, said Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev.

Sofia has not received an invitation from Skopje to jointly celebrate Gotse Delchev’s birth anniversary

As is tradition, the Bulgarian ambassador in Skopje and diplomats from the mission will lay wreaths today at the voivode's sarcophagus in the St Spas monastery in the Macedonian capital.

Gotse Delchev was born on 4 February, 23 January old style,1872 in Kukush, now the town of Kilkis in Greece. He was the third of nine children born to Nikola and Sultana Delchev. From 1888 he studied at the Bulgarian Boys' High School in Thessaloniki, where he formed a secret revolutionary circle for the freedom of Macedonia with Damyan (Dame) Gruev, Gjorče Petrov and Boris Sarafov. He later studied at the military school in Sofia, and for two years was a teacher in the exarchate of Štip, where he was recruited into the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO).

With the help of Bulgarian officers, he built up the IMARO's armed detachments in the historical regions of Macedonia and Adrianople.

Gotse Delchev was a supporter of Macedonian autonomy. Together with Dâme Gruev and other revolutionary activists, they managed to delay an uprising against Ottoman rule until the summer of 1903, and Delchev also convinced the leadership of the Secret Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (SMARO) to change their idea of a mass uprising involving the civilian population to one based on guerrilla warfare.

On 3 May of that year, he died in a battle with the Turkish army in the village of Banitsa. Gotse Delchev's remains were taken to the Macedonian Scientific Institute in Sofia during the First World War. In 1946, on the orders of the communist government in Bulgaria, the voivode's bones were handed over to the Yugoslav authorities in Skopje.

In Bulgaria, Gotse Delchev is revered as a revolutionary apostle of the IMARO, an ethnic Bulgarian and a national hero. He continued the national liberation struggles and committee activities initiated by the Apostle of Freedom, Vasil Levski.

In North Macedonia, Gotse Delchev is also honoured, but his Bulgarian ethnic origin is denied.

Delchev identifies as Bulgarian and refers to his fellow Macedonians as Bulgarians. The name "Macedonian", according to the terminology of the time, was used for the ethnic Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Gypsies, Jews of the geographical area of Macedonia, and when it referred to the local Slavs, it meant a regional Bulgarian identity.

In the XXI century Bulgaria has repeatedly offered North Macedonia joint celebrations of common historical heroes and events honoured in both countries, including Gotse Delchev's birthday. These proposals were rejected by Skopje on the grounds that they threatened Macedonian identity.

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Bulgaria pays tribute to Gotse Delchev - the apostle of freedom for Bulgarians in Macedonia and Adriatic Thrace

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