several Bulgarian revolutionaries founded in Thessaloniki
To tell a very long story, very short, after the medieval Bulgarian empire was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1396 AD, Bulgaria was formally restored as a nation-state only on March 3, Prom bridesmaid dresses1878, as a result of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-78, itself brought about by the bloodily crushed Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876.
Under the San Stefano peace treaty between Russia and Ottoman Turkey, Bulgaria was set up as a state on a territory of 170 000 square km encompassing the three historic and geographic regions traditionally inhabited by Bulgarians – Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia.
Three months later, in July 1878, the Great Powers from the so called “European Concert” revised the San Stefano Treaty in the so called Berlin Congress, an outcome of their conflicting great power interests. As a result, two small autonomous Bulgarian states were set up – the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia (united in 1885. in Bulgaria’s “National Unification”).
Half of Thrace and all of Macedonia, however, both inhabited mostly by Bulgarians at the time – were left in the hands of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, with the Bulgarians and the Christians as a whole suffering from the brutal treatment of the decaying Ottoman regime.
Freedom-fighters such as Sandanski and Chernopeev sought to help unify Bulgarian-populated lands in Macedonia with those in Moesia and Thrace, after the Berlin Treaty divided liberated Bulgaria in five parts.
Bulgaria’s entire political and social life in 1878-1944 was marked by the desire to unify all Bulgarian-populated lands in one nation state – leading the country to participate in five wars in that period.
The Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace did not stay idle; actually, they were the pro-active side, even more so than the free Bulgarian lands.
In 1893, several Bulgarian revolutionaries founded in Thessaloniki, the most important Ottoman city in Europe outside Istanbul, the VMORO (Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization; initially called “Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee”; the “Bulgarian” ethnonym was dropped later to attract the other ethnicities to the cause).
The revolutionaries organized a secret network in the Ottoman provinces backed by cells in the free Bulgarian lands. A constant issue for them was the lack of money to fund their fight for freedom. In the summer of 1901 some of the leaders of the organization – Gotse Delchev, Rose bridesmaid dressesYane Sandanski and Hristo Chernopeev – got together to discuss the money issue and considered kidnapping important people for ransom as a good option. One of their ideas was to kidnap the Bulgarian king Ferdinand himself.
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