Bulgarian revolutionaries and freedom fighters

During 500 years of Ottoman occupation, armed uprisings occurred recurrently in Bulgarian lands. However, most of them were badly organized, small and lacked widespread coordinated support from the population. Thus, the uprisings were quickly and brutally suppressed by superior Ottoman forces.

Velcho Atanasov Dzamdzijata (1778-1835) was a Bulgarian revolutionary and freedom fighter. He led an unsuccessful uprising in Turnovo in 1835, and was hung by the Turks after the uprising was suppressed.

Georgi Rakovski (1821-1867), Bulgarian revolutionary leader, writer, poet and journalist. Rakovski was one of the leaders in the Bulgarian struggle for independence from the Turks. 1861-62 he organised a Bulgarian legion in Belgrade, then travelled around Europe to gain support for the Bulgarian case. His radical views were opposed by more moderate groups in Bulgaria, but his poetry and his journalistic contributions were important for gaining the support of the younger people in the struggle against the Turks.

After Rakovski's Bulgarian legion in Belgrade was dissolved by the Serbs in 1862, he moved to Bucurest and started organising small armed groups of revolutionary fighters (cheti). The idea was that these cheti should cause unrest inside Bulgaria to motivate the population to fight the Ottoman rule. Hadzi Dimitar (1837-68) and Stefan Karadza (1840-68) led their cheta into Bulgaria in 1868. With only 120 men they crossed Moesia and fought all the way to the Balkan Range before they were surrounded by superior Ottoman forces. Rather than surrender to the Turks, the group fought to the last man.

Vassil Levski (1837-73), Bulgarian revolutionary leader, considered by many as the greatest Bulgarian national hero of all times. He participated in Rakovski's Bulgarian legion in 1862. From 1869 Levski led the organising of a secret network of armed revolutionary committees inside Bulgaria. At the height of his work, however, he was captured by the Turks in 1873 and hung in Sofia.

Ljuben Karavelov (1834-1879), Bulgarian writer. Lived most of his life abroad, both in Moscow and Bucurest, but dedicated his life and poetry to the struggle for liberation of Bulgaria. Karavelov was the only one of the revolutionary leaders who lived to see an independent Bulgaria.

Georgi Benkovski (1844-76), Bulgarian revolutionary leader. He continued Levski's work of establishing Bulgarian revolutionary committees, and organised the country in four "revolutionary districts"; Turnovo, Vratsa, Sliven and Plovdiv. Benkovski is considered as the leader of the April Uprising in 1876. He died in battle with the Turks in Plovdiv.

Hristo Botev (1848-76), Bulgarian writer and freedom fighter, educated in Russia. Botev was a member of the Bulgarian liberation committee in Bessarabia and worked as journalist in Braila. His collected patriotic poems was published in Bucurest in 1875, and had major political impact. He also wrote sad lyric love poems. During the April Uprising in 1876 Botev hijacked an Austrian steam boat and crossed the Danube with his "cheta" of 200 Bulgarian immigrants from Romania. The group fought approximately 20 km southwards inside Bulgaria before they were surrounded and neutralized by Ottoman forces in June 1876. Botev is honoured as Bulgaria's national poet.

The April Uprising of 1876 and Turkish atrocities

The April Uprising of 1876 marked the summit of Bulgarian national revival when the heroism of the Bulgarians reached its peak. Hristo Botev also took part in the uprising after crossing from Walachia with a detachment of 120 revolutionaries on the Austro-Hungarian boat Radetzki. The uprising was brutally crushed by the Turkish regular army and bashibazouk (Turkish irregular solders) bands. Some 30 thousand Bulgarians perished in the unequal struggle.

The April Uprising of 1876 was the best organized and coordinated mass armed popular action in several Bulgarian regions against the oppressor in the last quarter of the 19th century, after the Paris Commune. At this time in Western Europe the process of the creation of national states and the extension of the democratic rights in them had, generally speaking, come to a close. On the one side stood the independent countries and, on the other, colonies and semi-dependent regions. In this intervening period, by force of objective circumstances, as a result of the uneven development of capitalism as a world system, the centre of the world revolutionary movement gradually moved from Western Europe to the East. It is from here that the great significance of the Bulgarian national liberation movement of the 1870s and its peak - the April Uprising - derives.

One nation daringly appeared on the European political scene with the motto 'Freedom or a heroic death', challenging the rest of the world, putting to the test all adherents of liberalism and the opponents of the increasing conservatism among the ruling circles of the European bourgeoisie. After several days of hard fighting, however, the uprising was suppressed by the Ottoman forces with a brutality thus far unsurpassed in European history. Entire villages were massacred to the last man, whether they had been active in the uprising or not. Approximately 30000 Bulgarians are assumed to have been killed. The Turkish brutality turned the European opinion in favour of Bulgarian independence. The impact was really surprising: over 3,000 publications in the European press voiced support for the insurgent Bulgarians. In this situation the governments of the Great Powers were in no position to overtly maintain the status quo as regards 'the sick man', the Ottoman empire. This created a congenial political situation and made possible a more decisive intervention on the part of Russia.

Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople, 1873-1915, (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1916), pp. 16-19, reprinted in Alfred J. Bannan and Achilles Edelenyi, eds., Documentary History of Eastern Europe, (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), pp. 191-194.

Massacre of Bulgarians, Moslem atrocities, 1876

Mr. Disraeli was then Prime Minister, and treated the matter very lightly. He declared, in reply to a statement that persons had been tortured as well as killed, that he doubted whether torture was practised among a people "who generally terminated their connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner." He spoke of the Circassians who had taken a large share in the plunder and killing of the Bulgarians as "settlers with a great stake in the country." His light manner of speaking on the subject irritated Members on both sides of the House, who recognised that if my statements were true they constituted a damning charge against Turkish methods of government in Bulgaria, and demanded at least serious examination. My old friend, Professor Hunter, in the House of Commons said that he knew me as a "slow-minded man, who would not make statements of that kind without being satisfied of the truth."

Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Robinson, of the Daily News, sent me a telegram reporting what Mr. Disraeli had said and adding that he desired full explanations. Thereupon I saw various friends, and especially Dr. Long and Dr. Washburn, who furnished me with translations of a mass of correspondence, from which I wrote a second and longer letter to the Daily News. In my first letter I gave the names of thirty-seven villages which had been destroyed and whose inhabitants had been tortured or killed. In the second letter, written on June 30th, I brought the number of destroyed villages up to sixty, and stated that I had seen an official report which estimated the number of persons killed at 12,000. It should be understood that at this time there was no revolt in Bulgaria, though there had been considerable expression of discontent. The idea of the Turks was to crush out the spirit of the Bulgarian people, and thus prevent revolt. In the two letters mentioned I had given the names of the sixty villages which had been destroyed. One London journal, which got into trouble with Mr. Labouchere of Truth, boldly asserted that the names of these villages did not figure in any known map. The statement may have been true of English maps, because the declaration of Mr. Schuyler, the United States Consul-General was not without a basis of truth, that for the United States and the British Empire I was the discoverer of the existence of Bulgaria. I replied to the statement that the villages were as easily identified as if I had given the names of Yorkshire or Devonshire villages, and I urged that a Commission should be sent out by H.M. Government to make a report on the matter. The publication of the second letter still further aroused the British people. These letters, in the words of Mr. Glastone, "first sounded the alarm in Europe."

Meanwhile at my request, Mr. Robinson sent Mr. MacGahan, an Irish-American of great experience and fine character, to Bulgaria to report more fully than I had been able to do. There was no question of my going, and that for two reasons. First, that I was then fully occupied with professional work, and secondly, that beyond doubt difficulties would have been placed in my way by the Turkish Government; probably they would even have refused to give me the necessary local passport. The selection of Mr. MacGahan was a happy one. He was a friend of Mr. Schuyler's. Both of them had been in Central Asia and knew something of Russia, and neither of them could be charged with having any prejudice against the Turks. Mr. Schuyler went on behalf of his Government to make a report, and Mr. MacGahan accompanied him.

One of the first places they visited was Batak, the destruction of which had been mentioned in my first letter. From thence MacGahan sent me by private messenger a telegram, which came as a thunderbolt to the British public. Its contents were so horrible that I recognized at once Constantinople. I therefore sent it by letter to be dispatched from Bucarest. It was followed a day or two afterwards by a letter which I sent likewise by Bucarest. This letter, which was dated 2nd August, and appeared in the Daily News about a week later, created a profound sensation, not only in Great Britain but throughout Europe. It was at once a series of pictures describing with photographic accuracy what the observers had seen and a mass of the most ghastly stories they had heard on trustworthy authority. They had seen dogs feeding on human remains, heaps of human skulls, skeletons nearly entire, rotting clothing, human hair, and flesh putrid and Lying in one foul heap.

They saw the town with not a roof left, with women here and there wailing their dead amid the ruins. They examined the heap and found that the skulls and skeletons were all small and that the clothing was that of women and girls. MacGahan counted a hundred skulls immediately around him. The skeletons were headless, showing that these victims had been beheaded. Further on they saw the skeletons of two little children lying side by side with frightful sabre cuts on their little skulls. MacGahan remarked that the number of children killed in these massacres was something enormous. They heard on trustworthy authority from eye-witnesses that they were often spiked on bayonets. There was not a house beneath the ruins of which he and Mr. Schuyler did not see human remains, and the streets were strewn with them. When they drew nigh the church they found the ground covered with skeletons and lots of putrid flesh. In the church itself the sight was so appalling that I do not care to reproduce the terrible description given by Mr. MacGahan.

Batak, where these horrors occurred, is situated about thirty miles from Tartar Bazarjik, which is on the railway and on a spur of the Rhodope Mountains. It was a thriving town, rich and prosperous in comparison with neighbouring Moslem villages. Its population previous to the massacres was about 9,000. MacGahan remarks that its prosperity had excited the envy and jealousy of its Moslem neighbours. I elsewhere remark that, in all the Moslem atrocities, Chiot, Bulgarian, and Armenian, the principal incentive has been the larger prosperity of the Christian population; for, in spite of centuries of oppression and plunder, Christian industry and Christian morality everywhere make for national wealth and intelligence …

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.

The Constantinople Conference, called at the end of 1876 and the beginning of 1877 under the pressure of Russia, attended by delegates from Russia, Great Britain, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Turkey, worked out a draft-plan for the creation of an autonomous Bulgarian province, which incorporated the lands between the Danube and the Balkan Range, part of Thrace and the whole of Macedonia. During the autumn and winter of 1876/77, the European great powers tried to gain independence for Bulgarian areas through negotiations with the Ottoman empire. The Sublime Porte, the Turkish executive body, with the respectful assistance of Great Britain, rejected the suggestions from the great powers and the draft in full.

The Conference failed to reach any definite decision. Its convocation, however, proved that all Great Powers recognized the urgency of the Bulgarian national issue. After all the attempts to find a diplomatic solution were given up, Russia declared war on Turkey on 12 April 1877. the Russian army opened two fronts - in Caucasus and in the Balkans.

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