Todor Panitsa | |
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| Born | July 2, 1879 |
| Died | May 7, 1925 (aged 45) |
Todor Nikolov Panitsa (Bulgarian : Тодор Николов Паница; July 2, 1879 – May 7, 1925) was a Bulgarian revolutionary figure, [2] active in the region of Macedonia. [3] He was one of the leaders of the left wing of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.
Panitsa was born in Oryahovo, northwestern Bulgaria, a town located on the right bank of the Danube. He grew up in the family of Nikola Panitsa from Tarnovo and Mitanka Peltekova from Svishtov. [4] Panitsa studied in Lom, where he was attracted to the Macedonian liberation movement. Later he remained an orphan and was raised by his uncle in Varna. Three years Panitsa served as a cavalryman in the Bulgarian army. At the end of 1902 he became an activist of IMRO. Then Panitsa joined the band of Nikola Pushkarov and participated in the Ilinden uprising as rebel in Skopje region. After the uprising he arrived in Varna, Bulgaria. In 1904 Panitza went back to Ottoman Macedonia and joined the band of Mihail Daev.
The failure of the Ilinden Uprising reignited the old rivalries between the varying factions of the Macedonian revolutionary movement. After the split of IMRO in 1906 Panitsa revealed to Sandanski the prepared by Michael Daev, Ivan Garvanov and Boris Sarafov plot to kill him. So the leadership of the left wing of IMRO had decided to get rid of the leadership of the right faction. After the assassination of Daev, Panitsa, acting on Yane Sandanski’s order, organized and threshed the assassinations of Boris Sarafov and Ivan Garvanov in 1907. [5]
During the Young Turks Revolution together with Yane Sandanski he cooperated with the Ottoman authorities and became a member of one of the one left political parties in Ottoman Empire - People's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section). This party would like creatе a Balkan Socialist Federation, and Macedonian State as a part of that Federation. Federalist paramilitaries led by Sandanski and Todor Panitsa contributed to the Salonica expedition corps in 1909 organized by the Young Turks.
During the Balkan Wars he supported the Bulgarian Army operations in Macedonia, initially with the idea, to fight for autonomous Macedonia, but later fighting for Bulgaria. During the First World War, he was badly injured in the battles of the Bulgarian army against the French in Krivolak. Later he became a mayor of Drama, then occupied by Bulgaria. After the war the restored IMRO split again. In December 1921, left-leaning deserters formed the Macedonian Federative Organization, where Panitsa was active. The Bulgarian premier Aleksandar Stamboliyski started then a campaign against the IMRO after his visit to Belgrade in May 1921. At this point Stamboliyski decided upon an anti-IMRO guerrilla, entrusting the job to Panitsa and other federalists. In the bloody battles that followed, Panitsa's federalists set out to destroy the IMRO, but it scattered them, after which Panitsa fled to Greece in 1922. In 1923, Stamboliyski himself was assassinated by the IMRO. [6]
After the defeat of the Communist uprising of September 1923 in Bulgaria, the new government repressed leftist Macedonian organizations aided by the IMRO. Subsequently part of the fleeing from Bulgaria federalists placed themselves in Yugoslav service, joining the Association against Bulgarian Bandits. Panitsa who had moved meanwhile from Greece to Belgrade, served as advisor of this Association. Later he went in Vienna, where the rest of the federalist leadership was reassembled. Here they got into contact with the Comintern and Bulgarian Communist Party and Panitsa became a Soviet spy and an associate of the Military Department of the BCP. [7]
In 1924, the Macedonian Federative Organisation, then headed by him, reached an agreement with the IMRO, the so-called May Manifesto. The revelation that Bulgarian ultra-nationalist organisation as IMRO, officially sanctioned such a separatist and communist-influenced document, caused uproar in its ranks. After the IMRO revoked the agreement, Panitsa and the federalists participated by the foundation of the pro-communist IMRO (United), that was accepted as a partner in the Balkan Communist Federation and was sponsored directly by the Comintern. [8] Panitsa was alleged then by IMRO to have served foreign interests and was sentenced to dead. In 1925 he was killed by Mencha Karnicheva, an activist of the IMRO's right wing in Vienna. [9]
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.
The Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising, or simply the Ilinden Uprising of August–October 1903, was organized revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was prepared and carried out by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization, with the support of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee, which included mostly Bulgarian military personnel. The name of the uprising refers to Ilinden, a name for Elijah's day, and to Preobrazhenie which means Feast of the Transfiguration. Some historians describe the rebellion in the Serres revolutionary district as a separate uprising, calling it the Krastovden Uprising, because on September 14 the revolutionaries there also rebelled. The revolt lasted from the beginning of August to the end of October and covered a vast territory from the western Black Sea coast in the east to the shores of Lake Ohrid in the west.
Hristo Tatarchev was a Macedonian Bulgarian doctor, revolutionary and one of the founders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). Tatarchev authored several political journalistic works between the First and Second World War. He is considered an ethnic Macedonian in the Macedonian historiography.
Todor Aleksandrov Poporushov, best known as Todor Alexandrov, also spelt as Alexandroff, was a Bulgarian revolutionary, army officer, politician and teacher. He favored initially the annexation of Macedonia to Bulgaria, but later switched to the idea of an Independent Macedonia as a second Bulgarian state on the Balkans. Alexandrov was a member of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO) and later of the Central Committee of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO).
Nikola Yanakiev Karev was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary. He was born in Kruševo and died in the village of Rajčani both today in North Macedonia. Karev was a local leader of what later became known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). He was also a teacher in the Bulgarian school system in his native area, and a member of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party. Today he is considered a hero in Bulgaria and in North Macedonia.
Pitu Guli was an Aromanian revolutionary in Ottoman Macedonia, a local leader of what is commonly referred to as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).
Yane Sandanski was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary. He is recognized as a national hero in both Bulgaria and North Macedonia.
Hristo Chernopeev was a Bulgarian Army officer and member of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia. He was among the leaders of the Bulgarian People's Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization.
Ivan Garvanov was a Bulgarian revolutionary and leader of the revolutionary movement in Ottoman Macedonia and Southern Thrace.
Boris Petrov Sarafov was a Bulgarian Army officer and revolutionary, one of the leaders of Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC) and Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). He is considered an ethnic Macedonian in North Macedonia, having identified occasionally as a Macedonian in his life.
Dimo Hadzhidimov was a 20th-century Bulgarian teacher, revolutionary and politician from Ottoman Macedonia. He was among the leaders of the left wing of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which he considered a Bulgarian creation.
Petar Chaulev was a Bulgarian revolutionary in Ottoman Macedonia. He was a local Bulgarian leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).
Dimitar Vlahov was a politician from the region of Macedonia and member of the left wing of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement. As with many other IMRO members of the time, historians from North Macedonia consider him an ethnic Macedonian and in Bulgaria he is considered a Bulgarian. According to Dimitar Bechev, Vlahov declared himself until the early 1930s as a Bulgarian and afterwards as an ethnic Macedonian.
The history of Macedonians has been shaped by population shifts and political developments in the southern Balkans, especially within the region of Macedonia. The ideas of separate Macedonian identity grew in significance after the First World War, both in Vardar and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern. During the Second World War, these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, but the decisive point in the ethnogenesis of these South Slavic people was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia after World War II, as a new state in the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Melpomena Dimitrova Karnicheva or Krničeva, popularly known as Mencha (Менча), was a Bulgarophile Aromanian revolutionary and terrorist of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The wife of IMRO leader Ivan Mihailov, she is known for assassinating IMRO left-wing activist Todor Panitsa.
Hristo Apostolov Matov was a prominent Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary, philologist, folklorist and publicist and one of the leaders of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees,.
Petar Atsev was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary, and a voyvoda of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) for the region of Prilep. He worked as a Bulgarian teacher.
The "May Manifesto" of May 6, 1924 was a paper in which the objectives of the unified Macedonian liberation movement were presented: independence and unification of partitioned region of Macedonia, fighting all the neighbouring Balkan monarchies, supporting the Balkan Communist Federation and cooperation with the Soviet Union.
The Macedonian Federative Organization was established in Sofia in 1921 by former Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) left-wing's activists.
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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