April uprising

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The insurgent areas during the April uprising of 1876 and the borders of Bulgaria after the Conference of Constantinople .

The April Bulgarian Uprising was an uprising of the Bulgarian people during the “ Bulgarian Revival ” against the almost 500 years of Ottoman rule. It broke on April 20th jul. / May 2, 1876 greg. out and was crushed by the Ottoman army and irregular troops .

History and organization

"Swoboda ili smrt" freedom or death ; Flag of the insurgents in Gorna Oryakhovitsa

Since their conquest by the Ottoman Empire in 1393, all Bulgarian territories were under Ottoman rule until 1878. Influenced by the development of nation states and national identities in Western Europe, the desire for “national liberation” also arose in Bulgaria.

From December 15 to 25, 1875, the Bulgarian Revolutionary Committee met in the Romanian town of Giurgiu on the Danube under the chairman of the "Apostle" Stefan Stambolow . After Wasil Levski's knowledge that a national liberation struggle can only be successful with the relocation of the preparations for the uprising to Bulgaria with a network of revolutionary committees, the Revolutionary Committee in Giurgiu made an important decision: the preparation and implementation of an uprising within Bulgaria that would lead to should result in final liberation from Ottoman rule. The uprising should be prepared for much longer than the failed and bloody " uprising of Stara Sagora ". Another decision that was influenced by Levski's ideas was to subdivide the Bulgarian lands into Revolutionary Regions / Committees (bulg. Революционни окръга ). According to Stojan Zaimow and Nikola Obretenow there were four, according to Sahari Stojanow there were five Revolutionary Regions . One apostle should be primarily responsible in each region .

The leadership role was given to the First Revolutionary Region of Tarnovo . This revolutionary region included the areas around Veliko Tarnovo , Gorna Oryachovitsa , Sevlievo , Gabrovo and Trojan . The main responsible was the apostle Stefan Stambolow together with his deputy Georgi Izmirliew the Macedonian and with Christo Karaminkow-Bunito. The Second Revolutionary Region comprised the regions around Sliven , Yambol and Kotel . The apostle here was Ilarion Dragostinow with Georgi Obretenow as military instructor and Strahil Wojwoda as his deputy. The Third Revolutionary Region of Wraza was to include the regions around Sofia and Wraza and North Macedonia . The main person responsible was Stojan Zaimow with Georgi Apostolow Nikola Obretenow and Nikola Slawkow as deputies. The IV. Revolutionaries region of Plovdiv was the center of Panagyurishte . The chief apostle was Panayot Wolow with Georgi Benkowski as his deputy. Sahari Stojanow and Georgi Ikonomow were later called in as deputies. Preparations began in the winter of 1875/76.

At the beginning of April, an assembly took place in Oborishte on the southern slope of the Balkans , which went down in Bulgarian history as the first Bulgarian national assembly . The 64 delegates decided to strike on April 26, 1876. The population followed suit.

April uprising

Başı Bozuk perpetrate atrocities in Bulgaria, 1877, artist's impression by Konstantin Makowski

On April 20, Jul. / May 2, 1876 greg. the uprising broke out. The government building in Koprivshtitsa and Panagyurishte , the Konak in which the Turkish military had holed up, was stormed. The rebellion spread to Klissura , Brazigowo , Batak and Perushtitsa . In some places individual uprisings broke out suddenly, without a plan and without a leader. A total of 80,000 Turkish militants ( Başı Bozuk ) and Circassians and 10,000 regular Ottoman forces ( Redifen and Nizâm-ı Cedîd ) and the artillery battalion of Edirne (Adrianople) were mobilized against the rebellious population . In addition, further army units were requested from Cairo and Trebizond . During the fighting, the whole region fell victim to marauding Ottoman militants called Başı Bozuk and the Circassians.

On April 22nd, Jul. / May 4, 1876 greg. independence was proclaimed in Batak. Batak was a free and independent republic for the next ten days, under the leadership of the Revolutionary Committee. On April 26th, Jul. / May 8th greg. Klissura was taken as the first rebel stronghold by the Turkish garrison in Sofia under the leadership of Hasan Bej. The Başı Bozuk under their commander Tosun Bej are said to have had particular merits . On April 30th, Jul. / May 12th greg. Batak was surrounded by an Ottoman unit of 8,000 soldiers. The fight lasted five days and nights and also extended to the place Galagonkata, to the local school of Saints. Cyril and Method and the Sweta Nedelja Church . This church was the last fortress of the April Uprising and is the only remaining building from that time. One of the cruelest parts of the uprising followed: the Batak massacre .

From April 29th jul. / May 11th greg. until May 7th jul. / May 19, greg. In the Archangel Michael Monastery in the valley of the Drjanowo river, 200 insurgents waged a desperate battle against the overwhelming strength of the 10,000-strong Ottoman army led by Fazla Pasha.

On May 28, Botew and 205 members of his Tscheta boarded the Austrian Danube steamer Radetzky in Giurgiu and forced the captain to dock on the other bank at Kozloduy the following day . On June 1, Botev was killed by an Ottoman sniper and his cheta was wiped out.

One place after another fell into the hands of the Ottoman army. Several thousand civilians, including women and children, were murdered. Many were burned alive in the village churches. International investigative commissions tried to determine the number of victims and the extent of the destruction in cities, villages, churches and monasteries. The Russian consul in Adrianople , a correspondent for " Figaro " and the German consul in Plovdiv examined the area around this city. The English liberals sent Sir Walter Baring and Sir Garchino . Independently of this, the Americans investigated the consequences through their Consul General Eugen Skyler . The American commission reported only for the areas around Plovdiv, Sliven and Veliko Tarnovo:

"[...] 15,000 victims, mostly women and children, were recorded, that 79 villages, 9,000 houses, 200 churches, 10 monasteries and schools were destroyed and about 72,000 Bulgarians were homeless." "

The uprising also failed because of the lack of coordination between the local committees and the small number of barely more than 10,000 armed insurgents.

Victim

The Ottoman government initially reported a number of victims of 3,100, but later revised it to 15,000. Some historians, mostly Bulgarian, even speak of 30,000 to 60,000 victims. Most historians estimate the number of victims at 15,000 to 30,000. Hundreds of thousands more were persecuted according to Bulgarian information and deported to Asia Minor.

When the uprising and the number of its victims became known, the European public, after centuries of oblivion, perceived the Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian question again.

Impact and Importance

It is disputed whether it was, as Bulgarian historians claim, a national uprising of the “Bulgarian” population against foreign rule. The number of locally isolated revolutionaries and their level of organization was too small to have any influence on the population as a whole. Ultimately, the leaders of the April uprising were only able to organize a few hundred insurgents and were quickly defeated. The attacks by the insurgents on the local Muslim population were followed by extremely brutal "pacification measures" by the Ottomans, with tens of thousands of civilians dead. According to the historian Björn Opfer, one can not speak of a “national liberation struggle” in the end.

The brutality with which the uprising was put down, as well as the atrocities that were perpetrated against the civilian population, sparked an outcry in Europe. One was appalled by the pictures in the newspapers of the bodies of burned and murdered people. In the French National Assembly, Victor Hugo gave a speech against the cruelty of the Ottoman government. In Italy , Giuseppe Garibaldi made Bulgaria the subject of demonstrations. In Russia, inter alia Tolstoy , Dostoyevsky and Turgenev their voice. In the United States, the New York Times ran the headline on August 29, 1876, “The Atrocities of the Barbarians in Bulgaria”. In Great Britain, Gladstone wrote his pamphlet "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East", in which he described the barbaric suppression of the uprising and heavily criticized the policy of the Disraeli government with regard to the so-called Eastern Question. Even Oscar Wilde dedicated his sixth Sonnet the thousands of Bulgarian civilians who had lost their lives in the massacre.

From December 23, 1876 to January 20, 1877 the international conference of Constantinople took place. The European politicians proposed a series of reforms in the Ottoman Empire. With regard to Bulgaria, the possibility of autonomy and the limits of one or more future autonomous Bulgarian provinces within the Ottoman Empire were discussed. However, Sultan Abdülhamid II refused to accept these proposals. Thereupon Tsar Alexander II declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April 1877 with the aim of "liberating the Bulgarians and other Balkan peoples". As a result of this Russo-Ottoman War (1877–1878) Bulgaria achieved national independence in the Peace of San Stefano in 1878 .

A revolutionary (new) founding myth of the Bulgarian nation emerged from the local uprisings in the following decades:

“The memories of the April uprising became a“ long-running favorite ”in the minds of the Bulgarians. Up to the present day the uprising is regarded as proof of the militant national consciousness, the willingness to sacrifice, the ability to suffer and the heroism of the Bulgarians and their leaders. Regardless of their political orientation and ideology, all governments of the 20th century, from the peasant party in the interwar period, the authoritarian royal dictatorship before and during the Second World War to the state communist regime, used the myths of this uprising to locate their historical traditions and to allocate national mobilization resources use and sell politics. "

- Claudia Weber : In search of the nation. Culture of remembrance in Bulgaria from 1878–1944, p. 87

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Härtel / Schönfeld: Bulgaria - From the Middle Ages to the present
  2. a b c Bakalow / Angelow / Zanew: "Istorija na Balgarija"
  3. a b c d e Zachari Stojanov: The departure of the flying crowd. Chronicle of the Bulgarian uprisings of 1875/1876. Verlag Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1978, p.
  4. ^ Härtel / Schönfeld: Bulgaria - From the Middle Ages to the Present . P. 117
  5. ^ Richard J. Crampton: Bulgaria . Oxford University Press 2007, ISBN 0-19-820514-7 , pp. 91f.
  6. ^ Richard Millman: The Bulgarian Massacres Reconsidered . In: The Slavonic and East European Review , 58 (2), (1980), p. 230.
  7. ^ Robert Seton-Watson: Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question. A study in diplomacy and party politics . Macmillan, London 1935, p. 58.
  8. Wolfgang Geier: Bulgaria between West and East from the 7th to the 20th century: socially and culturally historically significant epochs, events and shapes in Volume 32 of Studies by the Research Center East Central Europe at the University of Dortmund , Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001, p. 130 132
  9. a b Nikolai Ovtscharow: “History of Bulgaria. Brief outline ", p. 53
  10. a b Härtel / Schönfeld: Bulgaria - From the Middle Ages to the Present, p. 117
  11. Balkanistica. Occasional papers in Southeast European studies . American Association for South Slavic Studies, American Association for Southeast European Studies, Slavica Publishers, 1 (1974), p. 73.
  12. Wolfgang Geier: Bulgaria between West and East from the 7th to the 20th century: socially and culturally-historically significant epochs, events and figures. In: Volume 32 of studies by the Research Center for East Central Europe at the University of Dortmund , Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001, p. 131.
  13. a b Björn victim: In the shadow of the war. Crew or connection. Liberation or Oppression? A comparative study of the Bulgarian rule in Vardar Macedonia 1915-1918 and 1941-1944. Verlag Lit, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7997-6 , p. 21f.
  14. The New York Times of August 29, 1876
  15. Härtel / Schönfeld: Bulgaria - From the Middle Ages to the Present, p. 117: "[...] Benjamin Disraeli declared that one could not take the fate of 20,000 Bulgarians into consideration if it affected the interests of the British state"
  16. Claudia Weber : In search of the nation. Culture of remembrance in Bulgaria from 1878–1944 . (= Studies on the history, culture and society of Southeastern Europe 2) Lit-Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-7736-1 , S 87.