Bulgarian officers' brotherhoods known also as Bulgarian liberation fraternities was a clandestine military organization created at the end of the 19th century in Bulgarian army with the aim of drawing Bulgaria into a war with the Ottoman Empire. Their ultimate goal was the freedom of the territory of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace. The brotherhoods played a significant role in the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan revolutionary movement until the beginning of the Balkan Wars. [1]
The first clandestine society was established by Bulgarian army officers in Tarnovo in 1897. [2] A second company appeared in Ruse, and then in Sliven, Razgrad, Vratsa, Dobrich, Varna and other places.The organization distributed a manifesto in which it invited all Bulgarian officers from Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace to join its ranks. The fraternities were led by the Sofia Society. By 1900, the members of the fraternities were ca. 1,000 people. These were about half of the then officer corps in the Bulgarian Army. In this period, they stood at the head of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), with the companies themselves unofficially becoming part of these committees. Among the more famous figures of the brotherhoods were Boris Sarafov, Aleksandar Protogerov, Kliment Boyadzhiev, Stamat Ikonomov, Toma Davidov, Anastas Yankov and others. A large part of the activists of the brotherhoods participated also in the revolutionary activity of Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO). [3]
The main role in the creation in 1900 of the so-called rifle companies, associated with the Yunak Gymnastic Society, was played by the brotherhoods, which led to the formation of a set of a clandestine armed paramilitary groups as in Bulgaria, as well as on Ottoman territory. After the split of SMAC in 1901, the brotherhoods were confused and began to cease their activity. With a secret letter to the officers on actual service in Bulgarian army from December 1903, the new SMAC leadership restored the activity of the fraternities. As a result, many of its members organized themselves and participated in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising. [4] After 1905, they accepted the official decision to closing down the activity of the SMAC with a great disappointment. Therefore, many of the officers then gave up with their revolutionary activity and returned to the army. Thus, the companies were depersonalized and gradually ceased their activities. Before the Balkan Wars, another attempt was made to restore this organization in June 1912 in Sofia. Thus, for a few months, the organization was activated, provoking the Bulgarian government to accept the idea about a war with the Ottoman Empire. The beginning of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) finally put an end to the brotherhoods, whose members went back into the Bulgarian Army. [5]
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Georgi Nikolov Delchev, known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev, was an important Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary (komitadji), active in the Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Adrianople regions at the turn of the 20th century. He was the most prominent leader of what is known today as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a secret revolutionary society that was active in Ottoman territories in the Balkans at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Delchev was its representative in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria. As such, he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), participating in the work of its governing body. He was killed in a skirmish with an Ottoman unit on the eve of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising.
The Boatmen of Thessaloniki or the Assassins of Salonica, was a Bulgarian anarchist group, active in the Ottoman Empire in the years between 1898 and 1903. The members of the Group were predominantly from Veles and most of them − young graduates from the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. The group was radicalized by the Bulgarian anarchist Slavi Merdzhanov, whose initial target was the capital Constantinople, and subsequently Adrianople, but after his execution by the Ottomans in 1901, the group's attention shifted to Thessaloniki. From 28 April until 1 May 1903 the group launched a campaign of terror bombing in Thessaloniki. Their aim was to attract the attention of the Great Powers to Ottoman oppression in Macedonia and Thrace. The group's roots can be traced to 1898 in Geneva, and nearly all its founders were natives from Bulgaria. It was associated with the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization, but had also close ties with the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. The result of the bombings was disastrous for the Bulgarian community in Thessaloniki. According to the post-WWII Macedonian historiography, the group consisted of ethnic Macedonians.
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Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC),, also known as Supreme Macedonian Committee was a Bulgarian paramilitary and political organization, active in Bulgaria as well as in Macedonia and Thrace regions of the Ottoman Empire. It was based in Bulgaria from 1895 to 1905. Macedonian Bulgarian and Thracian Bulgarian emigrants in Bulgaria were a great number. Led by Trayko Kitanchev, they formed in 1895 the “Macedonian-Adrianople Organization”, at the head of which was “Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee”. Its official declaration was also a struggle for autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace. At the same time, being impatient for the liberty to come sooner, and strongly convinced that it would come only with the help of the Bulgarian Army. Later they directed their efforts in activities for involving the country into war with the Ottoman Empire as for example during the Supreme Macedonian Committee chetas' action in 1895, and the Gorna Dzhumaya Uprising in 1902. As a rule its leaders were members of the Bulgarian Officers' Brotherhoods and had strong connections with the governments. At the end their main idea was, waging struggle for a direct unification with Bulgaria.
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Petar (Pere) Naumov Toshev was a Bulgarian teacher and an activist of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization. In the historiography in North Macedonia he is considered an ethnic Macedonian revolutionary.
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