Gyorche Petrov

Gyorche Petrov Nikolov,^{[note 1]} born Georgi Petrov Nikolov^{[note 2]} (April 2, 1865 – June 28, 1921), was a Macedonian Bulgarian teacher and revolutionary, one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).^[1][2][3] In his youth Petrov was involved in the Unification of Bulgaria and the subsequent Serbo-Bulgarian War. After the foundation of the IMRO he was its representative in Sofia, the capital of Principality of Bulgaria.^[4] As such he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC),^[5] participating in the work of its governing body.^[6] During the Balkan Wars, Petrov was a Bulgarian army volunteer, and during the First World War, he was involved in the activity of the Bulgarian occupation authorities in Serbia and Greece. Subsequently, he participated in Bulgarian politics, but was eventually killed by the rivaling IMRO right-wing faction.

Gyorche Petrov
Born	(1865-04-02)April 2, 1865 Varoš (Prilep), Ottoman Empire
Died	June 28, 1921(1921-06-28) (aged 56) Sofia, Kingdom of Bulgaria
Cause of death	Assassination
Nationality	Ottoman/Bulgarian

Biography

Born in Varoš (Prilep), Ottoman Empire (today North Macedonia), he studied at the Bulgarian Exarchate's school in Prilep and the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. Later he attended the Gymnasium in Plovdiv, capital of the recently created Eastern Rumelia. Here he joined the Bulgarian Secret Central Revolutionary Committee founded in 1885. The original purpose of the committee was to gain autonomy for the region of Macedonia (then called Western Rumelia), but it played an important role in the organization of the Unification of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. In the same year, he was a volunteer in the Bulgarian army during the Serbo-Bulgarian War.^[7] Afterwards, Petrov worked as a Bulgarian Exarchate's teacher in various towns of Macedonia.

Teachers and pupils from Bulgarian boys' school in Bitola. Petrov is the fourth person on the first row from left to right.

Petrov joined the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and on the Salonika Congress of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization in 1896 he was among the authors of the organization's new charter and rules, which he co-wrote with Gotse Delchev.^[8] Petrov also published an ethnographic study of Macedonia's population, which he described as consisting of Bulgarians, Turks, Albanians, Vlachs (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), Jews and Gypsies.^[9][2] Gyorche Petrov was the representative of the Foreign Committee of the IMRO in Sofia in 1897–1901. In the article "The Macedonian Liberation Cause on Bulgarian Soil", published in 1902 in Sofia, Petrov revealed the differences in the revolutionary tactics of the IMRO and the SMAC and the reasons for their bad relations. He seriously criticized the provocative activities of the SMAC leaders Ivan Tsonchev and Stoyan Mihaylovski, who took the disastrous path of starting an unprepared uprising in Macedonia. Despite Petrov's warnings, in the fall of 1902, SMAC organized the Gorna Dzhumaya Uprising, which was a complete failure.^[10][11] Petrov did not approve of the untimely outbreak of the Uprising on Ilinden, August 2, 1903.^[3] However, he participated in it as the leader of a cheta (armed band),^[8] of which Aromanian revolutionary Ioryi Mucitano was part.^[12] After the unsuccessful uprising, Petrov continued his participation in the IMRO.

Petrov and his cheta in 1903.

The failure of the Uprising reignited the rivalries between the varying factions of the Macedonian revolutionary movement. The left-wing faction, including Petrov, opposed Bulgarian nationalism but the rightist's faction of the IMRO, drifted more and more towards it. Petrov was again included in the Emigrant representation in Sofia in 1905–1908. After the Young Turks Revolution of 1908, Petrov together with writer Anton Strashimirov and Pere Toshev, edited the "Kulturno Edinstvo" ("Cultural Unity") magazine, published in Salonika (Solun) during 1908-1909.^[13] In 1911 a new Central Committee of IMARO was formed and the right faction gained full control over the Organization.

During the Balkan wars, Gyorche Petrov was a volunteer in the 5th company of Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps.^[14] He was President of the Regular Regional Committee in Bitola for some time during the Bulgarian occupation of Southern Serbia, i.e. Vardar Macedonia, but after the Bulgarian occupation of Northern Greece, became a mayor of Drama.^[15] At the end of the war he was one of the initiators of the formation of a new leftist organization called Provisional representation of the former United Internal Revolutionary Organization, and this government set a task of defending the positions of the Macedonian Bulgarians by agitating for a creation of independent Macedonia at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920).^[16]

He kept close ties with the new government of Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU), especially with war minister Aleksandar Dimitrov and some other prominent Agrarian leaders with whom he founded the leftist Macedonian Federative Organization.^[17] BANU rejected territorial expansion and aimed at forming a Balkan federation of agrarian states, a policy which began with a détente with Yugoslavia. As a result, Petrov became a Chief of the Bulgarian Refugees Agency by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then Petrov had to deal with the problem of Bulgarian refugees who had to leave Yugoslavia and Greece, thus incurring IMRO rightist faction leaders' hatred upon himself.^[18] One of the reasons for this was the open struggle of the IMRO with the government of the BANU, and on the other hand, the interplay between the various refugee organizations and the attempt of IMRO to acquire them.

As a result of differences over whether a possible autonomous Macedonia should be guided towards Greater Yugoslavia together with Bulgaria,^[19] or as the right-wing IMRO leaders insisted, towards Greater Bulgaria,^[20][21][22] he was eventually killed by an IMRO assassin in June 1921 in Sofia, on the order of Todor Aleksandrov.^[7][23] The assassination of Gyorche Petrov complicated relations between IMRO and the Bulgarian government and produced significant dissensions in the Macedonian movement.^[24]

Legacy

Today, streets in Sofia and Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria bear the name of Petrov. According to the Macedonian historiography, he was an ethnic Macedonian.^[25] To honor his name a suburb of Skopje was named Gjorče Petrov, or usually shortly referred to only as Gjorče. The suburb is one of the ten municipalities of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.

Gallery

• 
  Diploma issued by the Bulgarian Gymnasium in Plovdiv, Eastern Rumelia to Petrov
• 
  Cover of his 1896 book Materials on the study of Macedonia
• 
  Gjorche Petrov, Nikola Maleshevski and Goce Delchev
• 
  Gyorche Petrov with his squad
• 
  Gyorche Petrov with his wife Yordanka
• 
  Gyorche Petrov, Arseni Yovkov and Georgi Pop Hristov
• 
  Excerpt from a letter Todor Aleksandrov wrote in which he accused Gyorche of being a traitor to Bulgarian people.^{[note 3][26][27][28]}
• 
  Monument of Gyorche Petrov in the park of the suburb named after him

Notes

1. (Bulgarian: Гьорче Петров Николов; Macedonian: Ѓорче Петров Николов, romanized: Gjorče Petrov Nikolov)
2. (Bulgarian: Георги Николов Петров, romanized: Georgi Petrov Nikolov; Macedonian: Ѓорги Николов Петров, romanized: Gjorgi Petrov Nikolov)
3. "Only the narrow-minded bolshevik Hadzhidimov, the lazy anarchist Gerdzhikov, the scheming-beelzebub Gyorche and the traitors of the Bulgarian people, both in the past and now, the Sandanists, speak and agitate that autonomy should be demanded for Macedonia, because it is a separate economic and geographical unit with a separate "Macedonian people", with its own history spanning centuries, and so that they would not have to pay Bulgaria's debts, and some of them threaten as follows: "If by some miracle all of Macedonia is given to Bulgaria, we will fight with arms in hand to prevent this unification."