THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE’S RISE TO POWER AND THEIR FAILURE TO ACHIEVE INDEPENDENC

THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE’S RISE TO POWER AND THEIR FAILURE TO ACHIEVE INDEPENDENCE AND CREATE A MACEDONIAN STATE

When the Macedonian people along with their lands were handed back to the Ottomans in 1878 to be further abused and exploited, the Macedonian leadership came to the realization that no one was going to help the Macedonians so they had to organize and carry out a national struggle on their own.

The 1878 Congress of Berlin also awakened the Muslim Rulers in the Balkans to the reality that their Empire came very close to being destroyed.

So now we have the dynamics of the Macedonian people gearing up to free themselves and the Ottomans trying harder to stop them.

To maintain their state’s integrity the Ottomans had to raise taxes in order to pay the interest on the money they borrowed from the westerners and they also had to keep a close eye on potential insurrections and further loss of lands.

To prevent further uprisings and rebellions, the Turks stepped up espionage activities and searches for weapons in the villages. If by any chance weapons were found, the entire village was burned to the ground, even if the weapons belonged to thugs.

By the time taxes were paid a Macedonian family would be left with 25 to 40 percent of their meager annual earnings to live on.

To make ends meet Macedonian men were accustomed to taking on additional jobs within the Ottoman Empire or abroad to make enough to survive the winter. It has been said that after twenty-five years of achieving autonomy, Bulgaria was thriving economically thanks to the cheap labour provided by the Macedonian migrant workers.

The West, including the USA and Canada, were to some extent also beneficiaries of the cheap Macedonian labour. Unable to pay their bills, Macedonian men ventured further and further from Macedonia looking for work. The further they ventured the longer they took to return home sometimes spending more than a couple of years before returning.

It was never their intent to abandon their homeland, but as Macedonians found it more and more difficult to cope at home they began to settle in foreign lands like Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and even the USA and Canada.

Be they in Bulgaria, Russia, the USA, Canada or Macedonia, the Macedonia people’s preoccupation after 1878 was how to become free from the oppressive Ottomans.

The answer came to them on October 23rd, 1893 when a number of Macedonian intellectuals met in Solun and decided to form a Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with aims of destroying the Ottoman social system and seeking autonomy for Macedonia. Gotse Delchev was chosen to lead the revolution.

By 1896 the revolutionary movement was able to exert influence to a point where it acted like a state within a state, taking over administrative positions from the Ottomans, leading boycotts against Ottoman institutions and offering isolated villages protection from Greek and Bulgarian sponsored brigands.

Besides preparing for an imminent uprising, the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was able to organize cheti to defend the villages from marauding bands, Ottoman soldiers and from Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian hired armed bands.

However, before the failed Ilinden uprising the Macedonian leadership hardly concerned itself with the armed foreign bands or with the Greek, Bulgarian or Serbian nationalistic propaganda.

Unfortunately as the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization became more and more successful at its job, Ottoman authorities began to clamp down on it.

On January 31st, 1903 the Ottomans declared the organization illegal and sought ways to destroy it. One of the ways was to step up weapons searches in the villages, another was to capture and imprison its leadership.

With villages being destroyed at a rapid rate and leaders being lost to the prisons, the Macedonians had to accelerate their plans to carry out this massive national insurrection they were planning.

Unfortunately the Macedonians were finding it difficult to acquire the weapons, ammunition and supplies they needed for an all out strike and for a prolonged struggle. Some, including Gotse Delchev, believed more time was needed.

Unfortunately with Dechev’s death on May 4, 1903 and with most of the leadership still divided, a rash decision was made to carry out the uprising on August 2, 1903 during the Ilinden celebration.

According to newspaper reports from 1903, during the heat of the Illinden Uprising, Russia and Austria–Hungary urgently warned Macedonia’s neighbours, for the sake of peace, not to interfere in Macedonia. In other words, not to help the Macedonian people free themselves. (Hans Lothar Schteppan).

As we all know, the uprising did not go well and ended in tragedy. All the villages suspected of helping the rebels were destroyed and many people were killed and displaced.

In the aftermath people lost confidence in their ability to free themselves and for the first time began to look to their neighbours to save them.