THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE 1876-1912

THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE 1876-1912

By

Risto Poplazarov Krste Bitoski Gligor Todorovski

(Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov) THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE 1876-1912

March 3, 2022

Original in Macedonian published by “Nasha Kniga” – Skopje 1968

FOREWARD

This book was written by several authors from the Macedonian Institute of National History in Skopje. It is a synthesis of a critical and turbulent period during which the Macedonian people fought in massive struggles to liberate themselves.

The book begins with the famous 1876 Razlovtsi Uprising which took place in the village Razlovtsi, near Delchevo, and ends with events covering up to 1912. It provides a clear overview of the most important historical events, struggles and efforts made by the Macedonian people to free themselves from Ottoman slavery.

On top of covering the usual armed insurrections and uprisings which the Macedonian people organized to gain independence, this book also covers other forms of struggles such as attempts to gain cultural, educational and religious rights.

One of the main reasons why the Razlovtsi and other uprisings and insurrections failed was because the Macedonian people were not ready politically. This book will provide the reader with a clear idea of the problems faced by the political organization known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, or IMRO, responsible for organizing and leading the rebellions before the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century. IMRO not only managed to encompass and organize the entire Macedonian population, preparing it for years for an armed uprising as the only way to free itself from Ottoman slavery, but at the same time it also fought fiercely against foreign propaganda waged by the Greater Bulgarian, Greater Greek and Greater Serbian bourgeoisie. The goal of the foreign propaganda was to break the Macedonian people’s unity and make it easier for the foreigners to enslave them. The struggle against the Bulgarian supremacist organization and its insidious methods was particularly difficult during this period because it was an exponent of the Great Bulgarian court of the Coburg dynasty. With their insidious work, the supremacists managed to seduce many honest Macedonians to join their cause. Using the same methods, they also managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the IMRO leadership and do damage from within and, at

the same time, influence the adoption of important solutions and the building of strategic concepts and tactics for IMRO.

Organized by IMRO, although insufficiently prepared, the Ilinden Uprising is a special epic moment in the history of the Macedonian people. During the Uprising, in addition to demonstrating heroism and determination, the Macedonian people also confirmed their full readiness, at the cost of great sacrifices, to struggle for national liberation.

Macedonian people, during the Ilinden Uprising, established the Krushevo Republic and clearly articulated the Macedonian people’s aspirations for independence and for the creation of a democratic Macedonian state. At the same time, the Krushevo Republic put emphasis on the new state’s character, which guaranteed freedom and equality for all peoples and nationalities living in Macedonia. The famous Krushevo manifesto very clearly emphasized this.

This book will also provide the reader with an overview of the difficult and devastating consequences resulting from the bloody suppression of the Uprising. At the same time, it will provide an overview of other, very important, post Ilinden Uprising events such as the Young Turk Revolution, the Federation Party and other dealings up to the 1912 Balkan War, which was the most fateful and catastrophic event in the history of the Macedonian people.

Due to the nature of this book and the way it was written, I hope it will achieve its goal and help all interested to get acquainted with the most important events of the most critical period in the Macedonian people’s struggles for their freedom.

Academician Mihailo APOSTOLSKI

MACEDONIA FROM 1876 TO 1892 (By Risto Poplazarov)

Macedonia, as a separate geographical and economic unit, located in the centre of the Balkan Peninsula, is an important place on the crossroads of several international land and sea routes, connecting many countries and seas together. According to Gjorche Petrov, by the beginning of the twentieth century, despite being an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia was a separate political unit with its own specific ideology and aspirations. And through the Macedonian people’s revolutionary struggles, it expressed desires to liberate itself and become an independent state.

Towards the end of Ottoman rule, Macedonia was divided into three administrative districts, or vilayets, which were sub-divided into sanjaks and the sanjaks were further divided into kaazis. The three vilayets that constituted Macedonia (Solun, Bitola, which included part of Albania, and Skopje, which included part of southern Serbia) were in fact one administrative unit governed by Governor General Hilmi Pasha since 1902.

According to demographical statistics, provided by V. K’nchev for last decades of the XIX century, Macedonia had a population of 2,260,000 inhabitants, of whom most were Macedonian with about 20% living in urban areas and about 80% living in rural areas, engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. The urban population worked in various industries including handicrafts, trade, agriculture, etc. The vast majority of the rural and urban population lived in misery, deprived of all national and political rights. In addition, the Ottoman state, which was in the process of disintegrating, had put the Christian population at the mercy of foreign educational and religious propagandists, who enjoyed privileges and divided the population into foreign nationalities trying to turn the people into “Greeks”, “Bulgarians”, “Serbians” and “Romanians”. With that in mind, the political and even the economic situation in Macedonia kept worsening with time. The Great Powers, on the other hand, through various treaties and agreements, started turning the Ottoman Empire into their own semi-colonies.

Almost every year the Ottoman Empire borrowed more and more money from the European banks and money lenders. As a result the Empire started to depend on foreign capital more and more. When the Ottoman debt became larger than the state budget, its creditors, i.e. the Great Powers, forced the Porte (Ottoman government) to issue the so-called “Decree of Muharram”. This was in 1881. According to this Decree, an international commission was formed and appointed to control the Ottoman Empire’s economy and budget in order to funnel funds to repay the debt. As a result the Ottoman Empire became a semi-colony of the Great Powers, creating and strengthening new opportunities for exploitation. In the last 20 years of the 19th century, the creditors extracted about 125,000,000 Ottoman Liras from the Empire’s economy and used it to repay the Empire’s debt incurred before and after 1881.

Foreign exploitation of the Ottoman Empire’s economy was carried out through various banks and companies. At the end of the 19th century there were about 54 foreign companies controlling two billion gold pounds. Of these, ten companies operated the railways which had been undergoing rapid construction since 1873. There were many companies like that in Macedonia, of which three were banks operating in Solun, Bitola and Skopje. All the Western European industries, operating in the Ottoman Empire, made large amounts of profit and, at the same time, destroyed domestic industries and handicraft production which, due to antiquated production techniques, was expensive and unprofitable. Crafts and other economic activities in Macedonia couldn’t compete with foreign products and as a result began to decline bringing misery to the domestic workers and forcing them to go abroad to find jobs. In time domestic trade was completely ruined. The famous Macedonian trade fairs eventually failed.

In the last decades of the 19th century, when capitalism entered its imperialistic phase, as part of the struggle for a new redistribution of world wealth, Macedonia became an object of conquest for the Great Powers and the Balkan monarchies. The former tried to turn Macedonia into a condominium (a joint sovereignty colony) through reforms and the latter, with its propaganda machine, prepared the grounds for its plunder. All this as well as the Ottoman Empire’s

economic system stunted Macedonia’s normal economic development as well as its natural and geographical opportunities.

The Macedonian people found themselves in a difficult situation in the last four decades of the XIX century. The suffering in the Macedonian villages was especially severe. People were left scattered and without any protection. The beys (Ottoman landlords) and criminal gangs committed countless atrocities against them, without any legal action taken against the aggressors. In fact, the Ottoman authorities often cooperated with the aggressors and received bribes and various other rewards for cooperating. Societal oppression was also unbearable. It originated from the backward Ottoman Empire economic system. To alleviate the dire situation, a large part of the Macedonian population began to seek salvation in the mass pursuit of profit in migrant work, mostly outside the Ottoman Empire.

The rural population in Macedonia was divided into several strata. The richest peasants or chorbadzii owned large swaths of land. Some, working as representatives of the local Ottoman government, were also involved in money lending and collecting exorbitant interest. As people associated with the Ottoman government, they repeatedly emerged as opponents and enemies of the Macedonian revolutionary movement. In addition to the chorbadzii, there were also a number of villagers who owned large areas of land up to two hectares. They had their own houses, livestock and agricultural tools. These small farmers lived mainly in the mountainous areas of Western Macedonia, in areas not sufficiently favourable for agriculture.

The majority of Macedonian villagers didn’t have their own arable land and made their living by working on the farms belonging to the feudal estates. The villagers were divided into three categories: the jarandzhii, the kesimdzii and the ajlakchii. The jarandzhii were peasants who had little or no land, so they had no choice but to work on the estate farms. From the crops they cultivated they had to give half and in some cases two thirds of their agricultural production to the estate. They were also obliged to provide the estate with various free services or angaria, such as gathering and cutting firewood, repairing roads, etc. The kesimdzii also worked on the estate farms

but under agreements according to which they paid the estates annual rent (kesim). The kesimdzii paid their rent by giving the estate part of the crops they raised and sometimes they paid in cash. Usually this rent was the same as what the jarandzhii paid in crops. The difference between the jarandzhii and kesimdzii was the kesimdzii paid the same amount regardless of yield. It was not based on the amount of crops they raised. The jarandzhii, on the other hand, paid half or two thirds of what was cultivated that year.

The third category of landless peasants was the ajlakchii. They had no choice but to work the most difficult jobs and get paid the least. They were wage earners and had to work hard for their living doing some of the most difficult jobs on the estate farms. They were hired to harvest crops, dig ditches etc. The annual salary of an ajlakchia in cash was about 12 Ottoman liras. In crops they usually received several hundred kilograms of grain, ten kilograms of beans, vegetables, etc. The ajlakchii were also given free apartments, usually located in unhygienic huts, which were dirtier than the worst stables.

The estate owners in Macedonia continued to seize fertile lands all through the second half of the 19th century. At the same time villagers were allowed to purchase their own land. By the beginning of the XX century there were about 180,000 agricultural properties in Macedonia, of which 15,000 were large and medium and 10,000 small. It was estimated that 70% of the 180,000 agricultural properties didn’t belong to the peasants. “The vast majority of the Macedonian peasantry” wrote Prof. D. Zografski “didn’t have enough land... The subject of owning land for them was the basic and main issue that encouraged them to fight for ownership of the land they cultivated.” This fact is one of the main reasons why the Macedonian peasantry became the main driving force behind the Macedonian national-revolutionary liberation movement.

The tax system in Macedonia was also a particular problem for the oppressed masses. The tithe (a portion of one’s income), the most important tax, was collected by the leaseholders who bought it from the Ottoman state. Most often they were Turks and Albanians, and later Macedonians, Vlachs and others. Most often the leaseholders were crooked and wanted to grab more tithe than was allowed by

law. To do that they usually hired armed gangs made up of various criminals. With their strength and with help from the local Ottoman authorities and local thugs, they intimidated and terrorized the population, forcing it to give them twice as much tithe. In other words the crooked leaseholders forced people to pay more per plot than was required by law.

In addition to economic corruption there was physical abuse and political lawlessness. There were gangs roaming the countryside robbing and killing people and looting properties, especially in Western Macedonia. It was estimated that in 1895 there were about 150 such gangs, which committed over 400 murders. The Turkish state neither cared nor seemed to have been able to protect the people.

So, it’s understandable why the situation in Macedonia came to a revolutionary boiling point in the second half of the XIX century and especially after the 1878 Berlin Congress.