Deaths on May 4

Gotse Delchev, Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary IMRO (b. 1872)

Georgi Nikolov Delchev (Bulgarian/Macedonian: Георги/Ѓорѓи Николов Делчев, 4 February 1872 – 4 May 1903), known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev (Гоце Делчев, originally spelled in older Bulgarian orthography Гоце Дѣлчевъ), was an important Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary (komitadji), active in the Ottoman ruled Macedonia and Adrianople regions at the turn of the 20th century. He was the most prominent leader of what is known today as Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a secret revolutionary society, active in Ottoman territories in the Balkans, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Delchev was its representative in Sofia, the capital of Principality of Bulgaria. As such he was elected also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), participating in the work of its governing body. Though, he was killed in a battle with an Ottoman unit on the eve of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising.

Born into a Bulgarian family in Kilkis, then in the Salonika Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, in his youth he was inspired by the ideals of earlier Bulgarian revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev, who envisioned the creation of a Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious equality, as part of an imagined Balkan Federation. Delchev completed his secondary education in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki and entered the Military School of His Princely Highness in Sofia, but he was dismissed from there, only a month before his graduation, because of his leftist political persuasions. Then he returned to Ottoman Macedonia as a Bulgarian teacher, and immediately became an activist of the newly-found revolutionary movement in 1894.Although considering himself to be an inheritor of the Bulgarian revolutionary traditions, as a committed republican Delchev was disillusioned by the reality in the post-liberation Bulgarian monarchy. Also by him, as by many Macedonian Bulgarians, originating from an area with mixed population, the idea of being ‘Macedonian’ acquired the importance of a certain native loyalty, that constructed a specific spirit of "local patriotism" and "multi-ethnic regionalism". He maintained the slogan promoted by William Ewart Gladstone, "Macedonia for the Macedonians", including all different nationalities inhabiting the area. In this way, his outlook included a wide range of such disparate ideas as Bulgarian patriotism, Macedonian regionalism, anti-nationalism, and incipient socialism. As a result, his political agenda became the establishment through revolution of an autonomous Macedono-Adrianople supranational state into the framework of the Ottoman Empire, as a prelude to its incorporation within a future Balkan Federation. Despite he had been educated in the spirit of Bulgarian nationalism, he revised the Organization's statute, where the membership was restricted only for Bulgarians. In this way he emphasized the importance of the cooperation among all ethnic groups in the territories concerned in order to obtain political autonomy.Today Gotse Delchev is considered as a national hero in Bulgaria, as well as in North Macedonia, where it is claimed that he was among the founders of the Macedonian national movement. Macedonian historians insist that the historical myth of Delchev there is so significant, that it is more important than all the historical researches and documents, and therefore his (Bulgarian) ethnic identification, should not be discussed. Despite such controversial Macedonian historical interpretations, Delchev had clear Bulgarian ethnic identity and viewed his compatriots as Bulgarians. Some leading modern Macedonian historians, public intellectuals and politicians have recognized this begrudgingly or even openly acknowledged that fact. The designation Macedonian according to the then used ethnic terminology was an umbrella term, used for the local nationalities, and when applied to the local Slavs, it meant a regional Bulgarian identity. Opposite to the Macedonian claims, at that time even some IMRO revolutionaries natives from Bulgaria, as Delchev's friend Peyo Yavorov, espoused Macedonian political identity. However, his autonomist ideas of a separate Macedonian (and Adrianopolitan) political entity, have stimulated the subsequent development of Macedonian nationalism. Nevertheless, some researchers doubt, that behind the IMRO idea of autonomy was hidden a reserve plan for eventual incorporation into Bulgaria, backed by Delchev himself.