Ilinden uprising

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The Ilinden Uprising (also known as the Ilinden Preobraschenie Uprising in Bulgaria ) was an uprising in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace, which were then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1903. It was prepared and organized by the Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (TMORO) . In addition to Bulgarians and Slavic Macedonians , Christian Orthodox Albanians and Aromanians also took part.

From today's perspective, it is controversial whether it was an advance by Bulgarian irredentism , a first manifestation of a developing Slavic-Macedonian nationalism, or an uprising for the rights of the Christian population in the Islamic-dominated Ottoman Empire.

Surname

The uprising bears the name of two church holidays: The uprising broke out prematurely in the Macedonian fighting area on July 20th . / August 2, 1903 greg. , Elias Day (Bulgarian / Macedonian: Ilinden ) in Kruševo in the Ottoman Vilâyet Manastır in what is now the southwest of the Republic of Macedonia. In the region around Adrianople (the so-called VII. Revolutionary region) in Eastern Thrace - the Kazas Malko Tarnowo , Gümülcine , Mustafa Pascha and İğneada of the then Vilâyets Edirne (today's border area of ​​Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece) - the uprising broke out on the 6th. August Jul. / August 19, 1903 greg. from, the day of the transfiguration of the Lord (Bulgarian: Preobraschenie ).

prehistory

After in 1893 in Thessaloniki , the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrian Opeler Revolutionary Committee (bulg. Български Македоно-Одрински революционни комитети shortly BMORK) had established in the underground, the actions took against Ottoman military presence in the Balkans to. The Principality of Bulgaria , founded in 1878, served as a base and retreat . From there, other groups tried, some with the support of the Bulgarian government, to intensify the struggle for freedom in the areas still under Ottoman rule. These included the Kresna Raslog uprising (1878), the Gorna Jumaya uprising of 1902, and the bomb attacks to which the Ottoman Empire responded with bloody retaliation. In April 1903, the attacks in Thessaloniki on the building of the Ottoman Bank , on the French freighter "Guadalkivi" and on the city's electricity network were revenge . Thereupon the BMORK - which in 1902 had renamed itself to the "Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization", TMORO - decided to venture a large-scale uprising in early August in the hope of being supported by foreign, especially Russian, intervention, including the Russian one - Ottoman war of 1877/1878 had been triggered by uprisings in Bulgaria .

In January 1903, the Central Committee of the TMORO met under the leadership of Ivan Garvanov at the "III th Thessaloniki Congress" and made the decision to prepare a large-scale uprising that would take place in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace, or the Ottoman provinces of Macedonia and Edirne (Adrianopol) should break out.

course

The heads of TMORO in Eastern Thrace, published in Iljustracija Ilinden , magazine of the Ilinden organization (1927)
Tscheta by Mikhail Gerdschikow

The insurgents were poorly armed and outnumbered: the Ottoman government sent an army of 350,000 soldiers and an unspecified number of rioters to meet the 26,000 insurgents . The hoped-for Russian intervention did not materialize , as Austria-Hungary was not interested in strengthening Russian influence in the Balkans. In view of these circumstances, the initial successes of the TMORO were remarkable: in several localities it gained the upper hand, in Kruševo, west of Prilep , it was even able to proclaim the " Republic of Kruševo " under the presidency of school teacher Nikola Karew . The Aromanians (in the diction of the time “ Vlachs ”), the Christian Albanians and the “ Graecomanians ” (Greek Orthodox Slavs, Albanians or Vlachs who defined themselves culturally as Greeks) of the city were also represented in its “constitutive parliamentary assembly” .

The Republic of Kruševo only lasted 10 days. Around 1,000 insurgents fell in battle or were executed, including figures that are still popular today such as Goze Deltschew and Pito Guli . Others committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy.

The center of the fighting in the Strandscha region, which was part of the Thrace combat area, was the area around the city of Malko Tarnowo. Not far from Malko Tarnowo in the Petrowa Niwa area , the " Strandscha Republic " was proclaimed on August 19, on the Transfiguration of the Lord (Bulgarian: Probraschenie Day) . The republic elected Mikhail Gerdschikow , Stamat Ikonomow , and Lazar Madscharow at its head. The aim of the uprising was to liberate as many Bulgarian areas as possible, and to unite them with Bulgaria at a later date, with the will of the great powers, as well as to help the rebels in Western Thrace and Macedonia. In the first days of the uprising, the rebels managed to advance from the Bulgarian border in the north to Lozengrad in the south. The first cities to be liberated were Ahtopol and Wasiliko . The “Strandscha Republic” organized the entire public and economic life of the region for almost a month.

However, the other revolutionary regions in Western Thrace and the Rhodope Mountains were poorly organized and if so, then only sporadically armed, which made the outbreak of an uprising difficult and in some places prevented it. Arming and feeding the Cheetas in these regions was made even more difficult by the increased military presence following the premature outbreak in Macedonia. However, through minor actions, they were able to damage the Edirne- Thessaloniki railway several times and disrupt the transport of troops on the railroad.

Among the fatalities were 5000 to 15,000 civilians, 200 villages were razed to the ground, 12,440 houses burned, 70,000 people were homeless, 3,122 were raped, tens of thousands fled to neighboring countries, etc. a. 30,000 to Bulgaria. The largest refugee city was Burgas on the Black Sea. Emigration from the region to the USA also increased by three times as a result of the Ottoman reprisals in 1903. In the following years, too, there were repeated guerrilla actions.

Another assassination attempt, which saw the sinking of the Hungarian ship Vaskapu in the port of Constantinople , failed. The bomb detonated prematurely on September 2 and the Vaskapu burned out as it entered the Bay of Burgas . In the last days of the uprising, the regular Turkish army attacked more than 3,000 Bulgarian refugees, mostly children, women and the elderly, in the Petrowa Niwa area . The massacre is still denied by Turkey today.

meaning

Today both Macedonia and Bulgaria claim the Ilinden uprising for themselves. Bulgarian historiography classifies the uprising as an attempt to “liberate Macedonia” in its own national history; the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia of 1991 reclaims the “constitutional traditions of the Republic of Kruševo”, which it thus regards as the beginning of its own state sovereignty. A play by the poet Nikola Kirov Majski about the Ilinden uprising, in which he himself took part, published in 1923 , is one of the first literary works to be written in the Macedonian dialect . On the Macedonian side, the fact that the fight did not only take place in Macedonia, but also in the region of Eastern Thrace, especially in the Strandschagebirge , is partly withheld . This is derived from the name of the organization that organized the uprising: the Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (Adrianople - known today under the Turkish name Edirne - was the capital of Eastern Thrace).

In fact, the assignment of events to one side or the other appears anachronistic, since at the time the sense of identity was more dependent on religious affiliation ( Millet ) than on ethnic-national criteria. All Christian Balkan peoples (whether Slavs, Wallachians or Albanians) strove to strengthen their rights and their social status in the Islamic dominated Ottoman Empire. The Aromanians should also be mentioned, as the uprising movement was most violent in their settlement centers and to whom, Pito Guli, one of the most prominent leaders of the uprising belonged (even if propagandistic representations later tried to Slav him as "Gulev").

The controversial valuation of the uprising shows its importance for the identity and the sense of freedom of the Orthodox peoples of the region.

“After decades of dispute about the national affiliation of the participants in the uprising on Elias Day, the 100th anniversary was celebrated jointly by Bulgaria and Macedonia for the first time. That is the best expression of appreciation for the fallen for freedom. "

- Konstantin Sabchev

The uprising, together with the southwestern Bulgarian village of Ilinden, gave its name to the Ilinden memorial and the Ilinden Peak , a mountain on Greenwich Island in Antarctica.

literature

  • Hans-Joachim Härtel, Roland Schönfeld: Bulgaria. From the Middle Ages to the present. Friedrich Pustet Verlag, Regensburg 1998, ISBN 3-7917-1540-2 , p. 160.
  • Ivan Karajotow, Stojan Rajtschewski, Mitko Ivanov: История на Бургас. От древността до средата на ХХ век (about German history of the city of Burgas. From antiquity to the middle of the 20th century), Verlag Tafprint OOD, Plovdiv, 2011, ISBN 978-954-92689-1-1 , p. 190-200
  • Mehmet Hacisalihoglu: The Young Turks and the Macedonian Question (1890-1918) . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56745-4 .
  • Fikret Adanir: The Macedonian Question . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 3-515-02914-1 .

Web links

Commons : Ilinden-Preobraschenie-Aufstand  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ioannis Zelepos: The Ethnization of Greek Identity, 1870-1912. State and private actors against the background of the “Megali Idea”. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2002, p. 199.
  2. ↑ a b c d Sabine Riedel: The invention of the Balkan peoples. Identity politics between conflict and integration. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, p. 117.
  3. ↑ Hüsein Mehmed: The Pomaks and Torbeschen in Moesien, Thrace and Macedonia . Sofia 2007.
  4. ↑ Christo Karamandschurow: The Rhodope Mountains during the Ilinden-Preobraschenie uprising. (from the Bulgarian Родопа през Илинденско-Преображенското въстание / Rodopa prez Ilindensko-Preobrazhenskoto wastanie), Verlag OF, Sofia 1986, pp. 69-73.
  5. ↑ Keith Brown: The past in question. Modern Macedonia and the uncertainties of nation. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2003, ISBN 0-691-09994-4 , p. 66.
  6. ↑ Така завършва една славна епопея на борби, мечти и въжделения на българското население в Македония и Тракия - с 289 сражения на 26,000 въстаници срещу 350 хилядна турска войска; с 994 загинали въстаници, над 200 опожарени села; с 12 440 опепелени къщи, около 4 700 убити и заклани мъже, жени и деца от мирното население; 3 122 жени и моми изнасилени. ; http://meridian27.com/trakia/tr2.htm ( Memento from February 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Elizabeth Kontogiorgi: population exchange in Greek Macedonia. The rural settlement of refugees 1922-1930. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 0-19-927896-2 , pp. 17f.
  8. ↑ Ivan Karajotow, Stojan Rajtschewski, Mitko Iwanow: История на Бургас. От древността до средата на ХХ век (in German about history of the city of Burgas. From antiquity to the middle of the 20th century ), Verlag Tafprint OOD, Plovdiv, 2011, ISBN 978-954-92689-1-1 , p. 192 -193
  9. ↑ Torsten Szobries: Linguistic aspects of nation-building in Macedonia. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, p. 56.
  10. ↑ Björn Sacrifice: In the Shadow of War. Occupation or Anschluss - Liberation or Oppression? A comparative study of Bulgarian rule in Vardar Macedonia 1915-1918 and 1941-1944. Lit Verlag, Münster 2005, p. 29.
  11. ↑ Konstantin Sabtschew: Insurrection on Elias Day 1903. In: BNR Radio Bulgaria. Archived from the original ; Retrieved August 8, 2007 .