Mikhail Gerdschikow

Mikhail Gerdschikow

Mikhail Ivanov Gerdschikow ( Bulgarian Михаил Иванов Герджиков ; born January 26, 1877 in Plovdiv ; † March 18, 1947 in Sofia ) was a revolutionary and is considered a leading figure in the BMARK ( Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee , a forerunner organization of IMRO ) in Macedonia and Thrace . He led the preparations and led the fighting of the organization during the Ilinden-Preobraschenie uprising in the "7. revolutionary region ”, which included Eastern Thrace . He was also one of the most famous Bulgarian representatives of anarchism .

family

Michail Gerdschikow was born in Plovdiv, then still Philippopolis, in 1877. His mother Magdalina Ilitsch came from Kopriwschtiza , his father was called Iwan Pawel Gerdschikow and came from Batak . After the establishment of the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia, he was chairman of the Supreme Court in Plodiv and, after the union with the Principality of Bulgaria , director of a bank.

Life

Mikhail Gerdschikow attended French college where he was nicknamed Michelle. Here he learned the French language and got to know the revolutionary French literature, which left deep marks on the young Mikhail. As a youth in college, he became the leader of a Secret Macedonian Revolutionary Committee . After finishing college he went to Lausanne and Geneva , where he studied law and met with the Bulgarian revolutionary community in exile there.

After completing his law degree, he returned to the Principality of Bulgaria in 1899 and a little later became a teacher at the Bulgarian school in Bitola . There he was accepted as a member of the BMARK . In his function as a member of the BMARK he made friends with Goze Deltschew , one of the leaders of the organization, and undertook joint actions with him against the Ottoman rulers. In 1900 the organization sent him to Thessaloniki to support the structures there and the Central Committee. In the same year, however, his camouflage was broken. He went into hiding and became a Chetnik (fighter) of the Cheta (small mobile combat units) of Christo Chernopeew . After a short time, however, he himself led a Cheta in the Gevgelija area .

Mikhail Gerdschikow (1903)

At the Plovdiv Congress in 1902, the BMARK elected him to lead the organization in Thrace . It is thanks to him that in all Bulgarian areas in Eastern and Western Thrace structures and chetas of the organization, which has now been renamed the Secret Macedonia-Adrinanopel Organization ( GMARK for short ), were built up, which prepared an uprising against the Turkish-Ottoman rulers. He organized and carried out the Congress of the Organization in Petrowa Niwa between July 11 and 13, 1903, with more than 300 delegates. At the congress he became the military leader (Bulgarian главен войвода = Hauptvojwoda) of the rebels in the “7. revolutionary region ” .

As such, on August 18, 1903, the Transfiguration of the Lord's Day (Bulgarian: Probraschenie Day), he proclaimed the uprising on Mount Kitka in the Strandscha Mountains . Together with Stamat Ikonomow and Lasar Madscharow he was elected leader of the proclaimed Strandscha republic . In a short time the Turkish border guards, police and military posts were overwhelmed by the insurgents. In the first days of the uprising, the rebels managed to advance from the Bulgarian border in the north to Lozengrad in the south and thus liberate a large area from Ottoman rule. As the leader of a Cheta, Gerdschikow managed to storm the cities of Ahtopol and Wasiliko . The uprising and the free republic only lasted 20 days, however, until the Turkish government sent 350,000 Turkish soldiers with artillery and cavalry and an unspecified number of militants ( Başı Bozuk ) to meet the 26,000 insurgents .

In Macedonia and Thrace there were also 5,000 to 15,000 civilians among the fatalities, 200 villages were razed to the ground, 12,000 houses burned, 70,000 people were made homeless, tens of thousands fled to neighboring countries, etc. a. 30,000 to Bulgaria. The largest refugee city was Burgas on the Black Sea. Nevertheless, there were repeated guerrilla actions in the following years. In the last days of the uprising, the Turkish regular army attacked more than 3,000 children, women and old people who were Bulgarian refugees in the Petrowa Niwa area. The massacre is still denied by Turkey today. After the bloody suppression of the uprising, Mikhail Gerdschikow first secured the refugee convoys to Bulgaria and later their supplies there (see Thracian Bulgarians ).

In the run-up to the Balkan Wars , his knowledge of the Turkish infrastructure in Thrace made him military advisor to Gen's operational staff. Ivan Fachev elected. During the First Balkan War he fought as the leader of a detachment that was mainly recruited from former fighters of the Ilinden Probraschenie uprising, and liberated Wasiliko and Ahtopol again, as well as Gramatikowo , Demirköy , Midia and other localities in Eastern Thrace. For his services in the storming of Thrace by the Bulgarian army and for his bravery, he was awarded 15 medals after the war .

Gerdzhikov's tombstone in Sofia

In the period after the Balkan Wars, Mikhail Gerdschikow worked as a journalist and publicist. In 1919 he became the founder of the "Federation of Anarcho-Communists in Bulgaria". After the putsch of June 9, 1923 by right-wing politicians like Aleksandar Zankow and because of the "Democratic Unity" government that was subsequently installed , Mikhail Gerdschikow emigrated to Istanbul and later to Vienna and Berlin , where he wrote for Bulgarian and French newspapers. In 1928, 25 years after the Ilinden-Preobraschenie uprising, he took part in the first commemoration in the Petrowa Niwa area, which is held annually to this day. After seven years of exile, however, he returned to Bulgaria in 1930, where he again worked as a journalist.

After the communists came to power in Bulgaria , Mikhail Gerdschikow fell out of favor for his support for the anarchist movement. He died in Sofia in 1947.

He was married to Goze Delchev's former lover, Janka Kanaftschewa.

Web links

• Biography of Michail Gerdschikow short (German) and long (Bulgarian)
• Another biography of Mikhail Gerdschikow (Bulgarian)