THE ILINDEN UPRISING

THE ILINDEN UPRISING

The Solun Congress held in January 1903

At Garvanov’s initiative, the Organization convened a Congress in Solun on January 15, 16 and 17, 1903. The Congress was attended by 17 delegates who didn’t equally represent all the Internal Organization Districts. Many prominent revolutionaries didn’t attend, including Gotse Delchev, Giorche Petrov, Iane Sandanski and Pere Toshev. In this regard Pando Kliashev, a detachment leader in Kostur Region, wrote: “The Congress... wasn’t a district nor a general Macedonian Congress as it should have been, it was a Congress composed of several city leaders and teachers, poorly acquainted with the state of affairs. There was one representative from the city Kukush, one from the entire Bitola Region and that was А. Lozanchev, a city leader.” Lazar Dimitrov, the Seres delegate, was absolutely correct when he said: “According to its composition, the Congress was illegal...” Even Garvanov’s Central Committee itself was illegal because it wasn’t elected by anyone.

Nevertheless, at Garvanov’s initiative the Congress persuaded the delegates that if an uprising broke out it would involve Europe and would give broad rights to the population, so it was decided to stage an early uprising in the spring of 1903.

The biggest opponents of an early uprising were the most prominent Macedonian revolutionaries such as Gotse Delchev, Giorche Petrov, Iane Sandanski and others. They believed that Macedonia wasn’t ready for an early uprising: the masses weren’t ready, the people weren’t sufficiently armed and the international situation was also unfavourable for an uprising. Normally, these revolutionaries were all for an uprising but not for one that was unprepared and early.

All attempts made by Gotse Delchev and others to reverse the decisions made during the Solun Congress, in order to stop the early uprising, failed. For this reason Gotse Delchev was killed by an Ottoman attack on May 4, 1903. On his way to attend a meeting, to discuss how to proceed with the uprising, Ottoman soldiers surrounded the village Banitsa in Seres Region, where he spent the night, and killed him. Some believe he was betrayed by the

supremacists. Sadly the Macedonian liberation movement was deprived of one of its most consistent and authoritative fighters for Macedonia’s freedom.

“For fifteen hours,” wrote Delchev’s associate Dimo Hadzhi Dimov, a participant in the Banitsa battle, “the Ottoman soldiers were held back by our bullets. We refused to allow them to approach our dead. For fifteen hours we watched our dead Gotse like he was leaning on Macedonia’s grave. For fifteen hours our hearts were torn because he left an entire nation orphaned.”

Today Gotse Delchev’s remains are preserved in the Republic of Macedonia mainly thanks to M. Chakov, who himself was in Gushtanov’s company during the battle in Banitsa when Delchev was killed. After the Banitsa tragedy, Tefikov, Commander of the Ottoman detachment, who was a friend of Gotse Delchev from the military school in Sofia, ordered Delchev’s and Gushtanov’s bodies to be taken to Ser. However, an order was sent from Solun to have them returned and buried in Banitsa but in separate graves from the other corpses. This, in fact, made it possible to know exactly where Delchev’s remains were buried. Then, in 1906, when Chakov was sent on a revolutionary mission to this part of Macedonia, he and Taska Serski decided to dig up the grave and collect Delchev’s remains. But, to their great surprise, Delchev’s body hadn’t yet completely “decomposed”. Gushtanov’s remains were handed over to his uncle and most of Delchev’s remains were collected and handed over to Dedo Nikola Mutavchiev from Banitsa for safekeeping. Chakov told Dedo Nikola Mutavchiev to make a box and put the bones in it. Then, in the dark of night, bury them under the holy throne of the church. He also told him to tell no one. “A snake will bite your tongue if anyone finds out they are Gotse Delchev’s bones…” he said.

In 1908, Dedo Nikola Mutavchiev dug up Delchev’s remaining bones from the grave and, like he had with the other bones he kept in the box, washed them, soaked them in alcohol and put them in the box with the other bones. Even though Macedonia was divided in 1912 and 1913 and even though the village came under Greek rule and was burned down several times, Delchev’s remains were still preserved. When the Greeks were expelled during the First World

War, Chakov, again with the help of Dedo Nikola Mutavchiev, in 1917 collected the box with Delchev’s remains and kept it with him until 1923 when Delchev’s remains were moved and placed in safekeeping in the office of the “Ilinden” Organization in Sofia with the following inscription:

“We pledge to the generations that these holy relics will be buried in the throne of independent Macedonia”

The Macedonian people’s struggle for freedom continued. After a part of Macedonia was liberated, the generations didn’t forget to transfer the “holy relics” and bury them in Skopje in the throne of the free part of Macedonia, the Republic of Macedonia.