Bulgaria Marks 109th Years since Uprising of Bulgarians in Macedonia, Thrace

Society | August 2, 2012, Thursday // 14:54
Bulgaria: Bulgaria Marks 109th Years since Uprising of Bulgarians in Macedonia, Thrace The armed unit of Bulgarian rebel leader Hristo Chernopeev during the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903. File photo

People across Bulgaria marked Thursday, August 2, 2012, the 109th year since the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903, the greatest anti-Ottoman rebellion of the Bulgarians in the historic and geographic regions of Macedonia and Thrace.

On August 2, 1903, which is St. Elijah's Day (Ilinden) under the Gregorian Calendar, Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace rebelled trying to unify the country as large swaths of territories populated by Bulgarians were left in the Ottoman Empire at the Berlin Congress of July 1878 that amended Bulgaria's Liberation Treaty, the Treaty of San Stefano of March 3, 1878, between Russia and Ottoman Turkey. .

The Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprizing was an organized revolt against the Ottoman Empire prepared and carried out by the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee (BMORK), later renamed Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (VMORO), and then only Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO).

The uprising took place in the Bitola vilayet and the northeastern part of Adrianople vilayet - parts of the regions of Macedonia and Thrace. The rebellion in the Bitola vilayet was proclaimed on 2 August (Gregorian Calendar, which corresponds to 20 July of the Julian Calendar), 1903, Ilinden in Bulgarian, or St. Elias' Day, the celebration of the ascension of the Prophet Elijah to Heaven.

The Adrianople in Eastern Thrace vilayet joined the uprising on August 19, 1903, the Transfiguration, or Preobrazhenie in Bulgarian.

Although the rebellion in both regions initially was successful, the intervention of the Ottoman Turkish regular army led to the dissolution of the rebels' detachments. Some 26 000 badly armed rebels faced 300 000 Ottoman troops.

By the time the rebellion had started, many of its most promising potential leaders, including Goce Delchev, had already been killed, and the effort was quashed within eleven days.

The survivors managed to maintain a semi-successful guerilla campaign against the Turks for the next few years, but its greater effect was that it persuaded the European powers to attempt to convince the Ottoman sultan that he must take a more conciliatory note toward his Christian subjects in Europe.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Bulgarians fled the Ottoman atrocities to the free Principality of Bulgaria after the uprising.

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Tags: 1903, BMARK, IMRO, IMARO, VMORO. VMRO, FYROM, Berlin Congress, Gotse Delchev, national unification, Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turkey, Thrace, macedonia, Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, Uprising, St. Elijah's Day, Ilinden, rebellion

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