Yane Sandanski

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Statute of People Federative Party (Bulgarian section), written in the Bulgarian language: "...a member of the party can be any Bulgarian, Ottoman citizen twenty years of age or older..."[1]

Yane Ivanov Sandanski or Jane Ivanov Sandanski (Bulgarian: Яне Сандански, Macedonian: Јане Сандански) (May 18, 1872, Vlahi, Ottoman Empire (present-day Bulgaria) - April 22, 1915 near Melnik, Bulgaria) was a revolutionary, one of the leaders of the BMRC since 1895 (SMARO from 1902 and IMARO from 1905) in the Serres region and head of the extreme leftist wing of the organization. He is considered an ethnic Bulgarian in Bulgaria[2][3][4][5][6] and an ethnic Macedonian in the Republic of Macedonia. The Bulgariannes of Sandanski is recognized by several Macedonian historians like Academician Ivan Katardzhiev, director of the Historical Sciences section in the Department of Social Sciences in the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the director of the Macedonian State archive Ph. D. Zoran Todorovski.[7]

Yané Sandansky as a conscript in the Bulgarian Army

Biography

Sandanski was born in the Bulgarian populated village of Vlahi near Kresna in Ottoman Empire on May 28, 1872.[8] His father Ivan participated as a flag carrier in the Kresna-Razlog Uprising. After the crush of the uprising, in 1879 his family moved to Dupnitsa, Bulgaria, where Sandanski received his elementary education. Until 1895 Sandanski was a Bulgarian state employee. Yane Sandanski was a prominent revolutionary, one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Movement in Macedonia and Thrace. Since the start of his revolutionary activity, he became well known because he protected the local villagers in Pirin Macedonia from the tyranny of the Ottomans trogh organising courts and taught self-defence. Sandanski lived and fought in the Pirin region, and that is why the people gave him the name "PirinTsar" (Pirinski Tsar). He was one from the organizers of the Miss Stone Affair - America's first modern hostage crisis. On September 3, 1901, a Protestant missionary named Ellen Stone set out on horseback across the mountainous hinterlands of Balkan Macedonia and was ambushed by a band of armed revolutionaries. Sandanski was also active in the anti-Ottoman Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising.

Since 1908 until the Balkan Wars he supported the movement of the Young Turks. After the Young Turk Revolution during the Second Constitutional Era Sandanski was also founder and leader of the one of the left political parties in Ottoman Macedonia - People Federative Party (Bulgarian section), which headquarter was in Thessaloniki. His dream was creating a Balkan Federative Republic according to the plans of the Balkan Socialist Federation and Macedonia as a part of that Federation. He demanded that the IMARO should embrace all nationalities in the region, not only Bulgarians as for example in a speech held in the town of Nevrokop during the Young Turk Revolution.[9] Only in this way would by possible to create a healthy organizational system aimed at organizing a mass popular uprising, setting free in this way the IMARO from foreign influences, especially from the Greater Bulgarian aspirations toward Macedonia.[10] However later Sandanski and his faction supported active the Bulgarian army in the Balkan wars of 1912–1913, initially with the idea, that their duty is to fight for autonomous Macedonia,[11] but later fighting for Bulgaria.[12] After the wars, Pirin Macedonia was ceded to Bulgaria and he resettled again in the Kingdom.

Sandanski, Dimo Hadzhidimov, Todor Panitsa and other Federalists with Young Turks

Controversy

The Macedonian liberation mouvement was consisted of three major factions. Led by his excessive ambitions, Sandanski happened to be in conflict with the majority — thе Centralists in IMARO and the Varhovists. Although initially a member of Bulgarian nationalistic Varhovists band, later Yane Sandanski and his Seres group (Federalists) are claimed to fight for an autonomous Macedonia included in Balkan Federation. On the other hand, the bigger fraction (Centralists), as other one organization - Macedonian Supreme Committeee (Varhovists), is claimed to incorporate Macedonia into Bulgaria. Sandanski's greatest sin is the assassination of Ivan Garvanov and Boris Sarafov, both members of the IMARO's Central Committee, which initiated the fratricides in the Оrganization. For this and other killings Sandanski really regretted later.[13] He was investigated from the authorities in Bulgaria as organizer of this assassinations and even was sentenced to death from the Centralists and the Varhovists. Sandanski also collaborated with the Young Turks, opposing other factions in IMARO and the Macedonian Supreme Committee, which fought against the Ottoman authorities in this period. He was amnestied from Bulgarian Parliament after his support to Bulgarian Army during the Balkan wars. Against Sandanski were organised several unsuccessful assassination's attempts from the Centralists and the Varhovists. The most prominent was the attempt in Thessaloniki, realized from Tane Nikolov, by which were killed two other Federalists and Sandanski was hevy injured. However Sandanski was killed later near the Rozhen Monastery on April 22, 1915, while travelling from Melnik to Nevrokop, by local IMARO activists.[14]

Respect

Yane Sandanski is mentioned in the National Anthem of the Republic of Macedonia as one of the greatest Macedonian heroes whose idea was creating independent Macedonian State. The town Sveti Vrach in Pirin Macedonia, Bulgaria was renamed to Sandanski in 1949. Sandanski Point on the E coast of Ioannes Paulus II Peninsula, Livingston Island, Antarctica is named after Sandanski.

Sandanski (left) with IMARO members supporting Bulgarian troops during Balkan wars.

Quotes

The grave of Sandanski near the Rozhen Monastery, Bulgaria.
  • “The revolution in Macedonia shoud to be proclaimed when the labor masses: Bulgarians, Turcs, Albanians, Vlahs, Greeks and Jews will be become conscious and will be in revolution status....” (Белев, Т. Из живота на четите. На гости у Сандански (спомен), Илюстрация Илинден, 1933, № 6 (46)
  • "The Macedonian revolutionaries, which after long and cruel fight with the Turkish tyrants lived to see their dream — freedom of their Fatherland, cannot allow her to fall under Serb and Greek rule again: they will not be afraid to resort to even the most fearsome terrorist means to realize their sacred dream — liberated Bulgarian Macedonia!" (interview for Italian newspaper Seculo, given in Tirana, 1913).
B.N.: "These events concern the most closely and most directly us as small nations — Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks. That's why I came here to investigate these events.
Y.S.: "The future life of small nations doesn't have any conditions. - Sandanski answered readily. - Bulgaria and Serbia did wrong because they followed their own interests. Their main goal wasn't freedom for this people here, but their selfish interests, expanding of their states. After these events, they would stay where they are, and we would make fatherland here.
[...]
B.N.: "...So, you are not allowed to enter Bulgaria?"
Y.S.: "I dare not go to Bulgaria, but I don't need it. Here is my Bulgaria" (speaking about Macedonia)
Source Политика, 21, VII 1908, Београд.

References

  1. ^ The statute was first published in the "Narodna volja" newspaper: "Народна воля" бр. 1, 1909
  2. ^ He established a political party, called "People's Federative Party (Bulgarian section)" and noted in its statute (written in literary Bulgarian language) that member of this party could be "every Bulgarian, Ottoman citizen twenty years of age or older" (newspaper "Narodna volya", number 1, January 17th, 1909).
  3. ^ He regarded Slav Macedonian population and its language as Bulgarian: in his "Memoirs" Sandanski called his language "Bulgarian" (page 19), 2007), and one village inhabited by Turks and Macedonian Slavs "Turkish-Bulgarian village" (first page).
  4. ^ The Washington Post also described him as Bulgarian in his issue on August 30, 1908). (See here:)
  5. ^ Among non-Bulgarian records about the Bulgariannes of Sandanski is an article in Serbian newspaper "Politika", July 1908, number 1619, written by famous writer Branislav Nusic, in which Sandanski is interviewed and listed among Bulgarian rebels (see here, fifth column to the right)
  6. ^ The American journalist Albert Sonixen (who had many publications on the Macedonian strugle) wrote: “Now when I am writing these lines, I am reading in the newspapers that Sandanski at the head of one band consisting of hundred Bulgarians, followed by mixed battalion of Greeks, Jews and Turks are in the gates of Constantinopole”. (Сониксен, Алберт. Изповедта на един македонски четник, София 1983, с. 180)
  7. ^ Katardzhiev defines all Macedonian revolutionaries from the period before 1930-ies as "Bulgarians" and asserts that separatism of some Macedonian revolutionaties toward official Bulgarian policy was only political phenomenon without ethnic character (an interview for "Forum" magazine, in Macedonian, retrieved on September 6, 2007). Todorovski asserts that "All of them declared themselves as Bulgarians..." and "he considered himself as Bulgarian too" about Sandanski (an interview for www.tribune.eu.com, June 27, 2005, in Macedonian, retrieved on June 26, 2007).
  8. ^ Mercia MacDermott. For Freedom and Perfection. The Life of Yane Sandansky, 1988, Published by Journeyman, London, ISBN 1851720146 : 9781851720149, OCLC 16465550, pg. 1.
  9. ^ Today, all of us, Turks, Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Jews and others, we have all sworn that we will work for our dear Fatherland and will be inseparable, and we will all sacrifice ourselves for it, and, if necessary, we will even shed our blood." - This part of Yané’s speech is quoted from a hand-written leaflet, bearing the seal of the Razlog Committee for Union and Progress, and a price, i.e. the leaflet was one of many copies made for sale. The leaflet was found among the papers of Lazar Kolchagov of Bansko, and was published by Ivan Diviziev in Istoricheski Pregled, 1964, Book 4 (Nov Dokument za Yané Sandansky).[1]
  10. ^ “Long ago you are regarding our Macedonian-Adrianopole question only as Bulgarian question. The struggle we are on, you consider as the struggle for triumph of the Bulgarian nationality over the others which are living with us. Let forget henceforth who is Bulgarian, who is Greek, who is Serbian, who is Vlah, but remember who is underprivileged slave.” - A letter to the Greek citizens of Melnik, (Революционен лист (Revolutionary Sheet), № 3, 17.09.1904)
  11. ^ Ј. Богатинов - "Спомени", бр.11 од в. „Доброволец“, 1945 г.
  12. ^ The Russian journalist Viktorov-Toparov, who met Yané in May 1913, wrote: At the beginning of 1913, when the Serbian and Greek occupation regime forced the Macedonian Bulgarians once again to consider the fate of their country, serious doubts had assailed Sandanski. And I shall always remember that evening in 1913 when Sandansky came to me to confide his doubts and vacillations: "There, look this always happens when someone is freed by force of arms! How fine it would have been if Macedonia could have freed herself! But now it’s happened, our duty is to fight alongside Bulgaria, and for Bulgaria" - Sŭvremena Misŭl, 15.V.1915, pp. 24-25.
  13. ^ “All we are Bulgarians, Taso (i.e. Atanas), but we are killing ourselves for nothing. It is heavy to me..." (The words are quoted in the memoirs of his adherent Atanas Yanev and published in "Eho" newspaper, 26.05.1972)
  14. ^ 50-те най-големи атентата в българската история. Крум Благов. Издателство Репортер. 21.09.2000. ISBN 9548102447

Further reading

  • Mercia MacDermott. For Freedom and Perfection. The Life of Yane Sandansky, 1988, Published by Journeyman, London, ISBN 1851720146 : 9781851720149, OCLC 16465550 [2]
  • Memoirs of Yane Sandanski (original edition in Bulgarian) [3]

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