Bulgaria Marks 140th Anniversary of Freedom Apostle Gotse Delchev

Bulgarian revolutionary hero Gotse Delchev was murdered by Ottoman troops 108 years ago.File photo

Bulgarians all over the country are honoring Saturday, February 4th, the 140th anniversary since the birth of the Bulgarian revolutionary hero from Macedonia Gotse Delchev.

One of the founders and the ideologists of VMRO, Delchev is among the most significant revolutionaries, revered as national hero in both Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Gotse Delchev was born in 1872 in the town of Kukush, present-day Greece. He attended the Bulgarian Military Academy in Sofia, and became involved with the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee, which was founded in 1893 and was later transformed into the Internal Macedonian(-Adrianople) Revolutionary Organization (VMORO).

Delchev quickly became one of the leaders of the VMORO, the organization seeking to liberate the Macedonian and Adrianople Region Bulgarians from the Ottoman Empire, in its most successful period - 1894-1903.

Gotse Delchev was killed in 1903 close to village of Banitsa, present-day Greece, as his regiment of rebels skirmished with Ottoman Turkish troops, three months before the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903.

One of the most important books on Gotse Delchev, "Freedom or Death, the Life of Gotse Delchev", was written by the British historian Mercia MacDermott.

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