FOR FREEDOM AND PERFECTION. The Life of Yané Sandansky
Mercia MacDermott

18. A DREAM OF BROTHERHOOD

Spring came to Pirin, the joyous, prodigal ‘white spring’, when the streams froth and foam with melting snow, and the fruit-trees—plum, pear and cherry—adorn themselves from head to foot in bridal blossom. After the ‘white spring’ comes the ‘green’, when the grass sprouts and the forests burst into leaf, with foliage as bright and fresh as jade. Then flowers in their millions clothe the earth with rainbows, and flame-plumaged hoopoes flash from tree to tree. Gone is the dead, frozen silence of winter, broken only by the wolf-howls of the wind and the explosive crack of trees snapping under the weight of snow. Everything sings and twitters and chirrups—the nightingales in the trees, the swallows under the eaves, the grass-hoppers in the meadows. Together with the cuckoos, the Vlah shepherds returned to Pirin, and bells of differing sizes, tuned in octaves and honey-sweet in tone, added their music to the songs of the birds and the water, as their flocks moved across pastures where the pressure of every step releases the perfume of thyme and marjoram. Born in the season of flowers and nightingales, Yané was appropriately sensitive to the beauty of nature. The springtime moved him deeply and intensified his desire to resolve the contradictions that he saw around him. He did not ask why there was misery and suffering in a world that was so rich and beautiful. He knew why, and he also knew—in broad outline at least— what had to be done.

Sometime in late April or early May, 1908, he called a few of his closest colleagues, including Buynov, Ikonomov, Arnaudov, Chudomir and Panitsa, to a meeting in the southern foothills of Pirin, at a place called Papaz Chair—the Priest’s meadow, which is, in fact, a particularly lovely grassy clearing surrounded by pine forests. The main item for discussion was finance. Opening the meeting, Yané said that, since Prince Ferdinand was much to blame for the debilitating internecine strife which was consuming funds and energy urgently needed for other purposes, he should be made to provide the money for the struggle against his own agents. Yané proposed that they kidnap the Prince for ransom, and the meeting unanimously agreed to the idea. It was decided that they should ambush him while he was travelling by car to Chamkoriya (Borovets) in Rila, where he had a hunting lodge, and that Yané should make the necessary arrangements with their comrades in Dupnitsa, Rila and Samokov. [1]

1. Arnaudov, Opus cit., p. 21.

313

The idea that miscreants should be made to finance their own downfall was one that strongly appealed to Yané’s sense of justice. Frederick Moore, correspondent of the London Daily Graphic, describes how once he met Yané lying wounded in an unnamed village just inside the Principality. According to Moore, Yané had been shot in a fight with Turkish troops and had crossed the border at night, crawling part of the way on all fours. ‘When, lying in bed, he was told that I was an American, he raised his head and, smilingly, asked pleasantly after Miss Stone, and told me to say to my countrymen that he was most grateful for the £14,500 which they paid for her release. He said that he wanted them to know that every piastre of the money went for the purchase of arms and ammunition with which to fight the Turks. . . He said to me that he was disappointed that the American Government had not demanded from his ‘Sultanic Majesty’ the return of the money, a thing, he said, any European Government would have done, because the Sultan was responsible for the safety of foreigners in his dominions. Sandansky said that he wanted the Sultan himself to pay for the arms used against him.’ [2]

The plans for the kidnapping of Prince Ferdinand—an old ambition of Yané’s—do not seem to have gone very far, and soon they were to be overtaken by far more important events.

In May 1908, the Serres leaders gathered in Bansko to await the arrival of the Strumitsa comrades for their joint congress, and they occupied themselves with the preparation of a second Open Letter, which, like the first, was drafted by Buynov, signed by the Regional Committee and published in Kambana. [3] The Letter opens with a bitter attack on the Ilinden group and their supporters, who are described as ‘bureaucrats’ and ‘ultra-opportunists’ sitting in ‘comfortable offices’, and as ‘supporters of Bulgarian monarchism, creatures of the Crown, the scum of society’. As usual, the Serchani do not allow themselves to be sidetracked into arguments and denials over details (‘we can hardly be expected to answer all the fantastic inventions which the reactionaries around Ilinden scatter about with such energy’), but deal only with such fundamental political issues as what constitutes real, as opposed to pseudo, revolutionary activity; the implications of reliance on aid from a government of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie and how such aid would affect the Organization’s independence and its ultimate goal of autonomy. The Letter also attacks the character and decisions of the Kyustendil Congress, making the same points and drawing the same conclusions as the Strumitsa delegates had done. This part of the Letter ends with the words: ‘For the umpteenth time the renegades demonstrate that they have parted company with the Interior, where they have already forfeited all ideological and moral

2. Daily Graphic, 27.VIII.1908. Moore spent some time in the Balkans as a newspaper correspondent, and is the author of Balkan Trail, 1906. There is no indication of the date of this meeting with Yané.

3. Kambana, 31.V.1908.

314

worth.’ The final section of the Letter consists of the texts of the various letters written by Daev, which, in their first Open Letter, the Serchani had promised to publish.

While the Serchani were waiting in Bansko for the Strumichani to arrive, disaster struck the local District Committee. A man from Gorno Draglishté was murdered, and some of his fellow-villagers took it into their heads that the Razlog District cheta was responsible. One of them was so indignant that he betrayed the entire District Committee to the Turks, and, on May 11/24—the Feast of Cyril and Methodius—all the members were arrested, with the exception of the Chairman, Hristo Kirov, who, forewarned, had decided to go underground and join the Razlog cheta. [4] At the time, the latter was temporarily with Yané’s cheta in Bansko, since provisioning became easier if both cheti were in the same place.

Bansko was a great keeper of secrets, and its architecture was such that the men were able to amuse themselves on the wide verandas and in the courtyards without being seen or heard from the streets. Often Yané would ask those with a talent for humour to entertain the company with funny stories or sketches; sometimes he would lead them all down into the yard to play leap-frog and other games, and sometimes he would become quite serious and would give a talk on some topic, or recall past battles and adventures. At one point, four local lads came to Yané to tell him that they had killed a Turk, and, fearing lest the authorities should send troops to besiege Bansko, he moved the two cheti to the upper quarter of the town, nearer Pirin, as a precaution, but no siege materialized.

Instead, news came that Vasil Popov, a former Sandanist from Nedobŭrsko, a village in the southern foothills of Rila, had been won over by the Supremists and was in the Rila Monastery with an armed cheta, waiting for a suitable moment to invade the Razlog District. Yané decided to send the Razlog cheta, together with the four lads who had killed a Turk, to the frontier to give the intruders a ‘warm welcome’. The cheta made its way to a point above Dinkov Dol, set up camp just below the frontier line and waited. The Vlah shepherds who were grazing their flocks on the high mountain pastures treated the chetnitsi as honoured guests and daily brought them bread, meat and other provisions. During the period of waiting, the cheta also made friendly contact with the Bulgarian frontier guards, and succeeded in convincing them that the Razlog chetnitsi were by no means the ‘wild beasts’ that they had been made out to be by the men’s officer, Lt. Nastev, a former Supremist voivoda. Vasil Popov appears to have thought better of his ‘invasion’

4. Before he fled, Kirov, like a true teacher, went to the school to enter the marks in the register, because the Feast of Cyril and Methodius was the conclusion of the school year. He managed to write in the marks of one class before the arrival of five policemen sent him scuttling into hiding. Later, the headmaster sought him out in the cheta to obtain the other marks which he had failed to enter!

315

plan, for he dismissed his men and departed for the interior of the Principality, whereupon, the cheta also left the frontier and returned to Bansko. [5]

By now Chernopeev had arrived, together with Misho Shkartov (the Tikvesh voivoda), Petŭr Kitanov (the Gorna Dzhumaya voivoda) his deputy Ichko Boichev, and a number of other people, including a newcomer to the Macedonian scene—the Socialist, Pavel Deliradev. Born in Panagyurishté in 1875, Deliradev had studied history and geography at Sofia University, but had not been able to graduate because of political discrimination. (Later in life, however, he was to devote his energies to the study and popularization of Bulgaria’s mountains, and to the organization of mountaineering, hiking and other such associations.) In 1897, he had joined the Bulgarian Workers’ Social-Democratic Party, and subsequently attended several Party Congresses as a delegate. He had worked with Georgi Dimitrov during the founding of the General Workers’ Trade Union in 1904 and had been elected to its leadership, but, in 1905, he had left the Party with the splinter group known as Proletariy, and became one of the editors of its paper. During the same year, he had been in Bucharest, carrying out educational work among refugee sailors from the Battleship Potemkin, and he had been expelled from Romania for this activity. During the next two years, 1906-1907, he had been in the leadership of the general rail-workers’ strike in Bulgaria and had edited their paper Strelochnik (Pointsman) and Zheleznicharska Borba (Rail-workers’ Struggle).

In the autumn of 1907, Deliradev published a pamphlet entitled The Macedonian Question and Social-Democracy. [6] In it, he discussed whether the Macedonian movement should continue to follow the time-honoured path of the Balkan national liberation movements laid down when contradictions between the old and the new existed only in certain provinces of Turkey, thus precluding simultaneous struggle throughout the Empire and forcing revolutionary movements to break off pieces of the Empire rather than attempt to reform the whole. Deliradev concluded that the situation was now different to what it had been seventy, fifty or even thirty years previously, that, owing to the penetration of western capital, no part of the Empire was unaffected by change, and that, even in Asiatic Turkey, absolutism was an outgrown institution. He argued that the traditional slogan of ‘Macedonia for the Macedonians’ could not unite all who were ready to fight, because Macedonia was currently an arena of struggles, not between the subordinates and the masters, but between ‘subordinates and subordinates’. In Deliradev’s opinion, autonomy was as unrealizable as union with Bulgaria, because it, too, was an expression of

5. The account of Hristo Kirov’s adventures and the doings of the Razlog cheta is taken from Kirov’s memoirs. OIM Blagoevgrad, No. 1367.

6. The book was No. 1 in the Revolutionary Socialist Library ‘Alexander Antonov’, and was published in Sliven in 1907.

316

the consciousness and ideals of the relatively strongest element—the Bulgarians—and was, therefore, a solution unacceptable to the other national elements. Moreover, autonomy was out of tune with the general revolutionary trends within the Turkish Empire, of which Macedonia was only a part. A small Macedonian state might correspond to the needs of the peasants, but not to those of traders, industrialists and hired workers, who needed big towns, most of which would be outside the boundaries of an autonomous Macedonia. Like the Serchani, Deliradev considered that disorders intended to provoke outside intervention merely led to the ruin and demoralization of the population, and, in a caustic reference to Supremism, old and new, he wrote: ‘Beyond Rila, the Macedonian is an ardent fighter for the ideals of liberation, but here (i.e. in the Principality— M.M.) he becomes, consciously or unconsciously, a tool of reaction.’ [7] Deliradev believed that the Macedonian movement was unnecessarily forfeiting the possibility of real support from other democratic forces within the Empire, such as the Armenians and the Young Turks, and, while admitting that the latter represented ‘an extremely moderate liberal trend’, with a ‘conservative, even hostile’ attitude towards national movements, he stressed that one should take into account, not only what the Young Turks were, but what they could be, especially when strengthened with new revolutionary forces. Even though the Young Turks stood for the integrity of the Empire—and thus had common ground with the Old Turks—all revolutionary forces should unite in the struggle against absolutism and for democracy. The Macedonian movement had to get out of the narrow channel of national struggle and flow with the common revolutionary flood. The class principle should replace the national principle, and the chetnitsi should come down from the mountains and become citizens. Such were Deliradev’s main conclusions.

Early in 1908, Deliradev had joined the group which had formed around Odrinsky Glas, for which he wrote under the pseudonym of P. Bogdanov, and the paper came to adopt the policy outlined in his pamphlet, namely that, in view of the social and economic changes taking place in Turkey, the idea of Macedonian autonomy was outdated, and that the new situation required a struggle on a social, not a national, basis, for the abolition of absolutism and the modernization of Turkey on federal lines. While still in Sofia, the Strumichani had made contact with the group around Odrinsky Glas, and, after much discussion, had accepted their platform. Thus they had come to Bansko hoping to win the Serchani for their new ideas, and had brought Deliradev as their chief spokesman.

The Young Turk movement had its origins in Constantinople in the late 1860s, when a number of young writers, journalists, civil servants and officers, many of whom had studied at the capital’s new secular schools,

7. Deliradev, Makedonskiyat vŭpros i sotsialnata demokratsia, p. 24.

317

secretly banded together with the aim of doing something about the ruinous state of the Ottoman Empire. At one time or another, most of them were forced into exile in Paris, London and other western cities, where they founded newspapers and acquainted themselves with western literature, philosophy, sociology, constitutional government, etc. A few of them even participated in the Paris Commune on the side of the Communards. Most of these exiles eventually returned to Turkey and, indeed, were encouraged and coaxed to do so by their Government, which preferred to have them under observation at home. Their influence and agitation led to the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Aziz in 1876, and the granting by Sultan Abdul Hamid of a very moderate constitution, which guaranteed freedom and equality to all Ottoman subjects, regardless of nationality, and provided for a two-chamber Parliament, consisting of an Assembly, elected by male suffrage, and a Senate, appointed by the Sultan and invested with the right to overrule the elected chamber. The Sultan, in fact, succeeded in retaining almost unlimited powers, because, at the last moment, against the wishes of more progressive Turks led by Midhat Pasha, an addendum was added to Clause 113 of the Constitution, giving the Sultan the right to exile anybody whom he did not like.

It is one of the ironies of fate that the granting of the Constitution ushered in the most oppressive period in the history of the Turkish Empire, a period when not only Christian revolutionaries, but also the Turks themselves, were subjected to a nightmare regime of fear and repression. Abdul Hamid had not the slightest intention of putting the Constitution into practice. He soon disposed of Midhat Pasha, the Father of the Constitution, first by exiling him under Clause 113, and then by accusing him of murdering Abdul Aziz. The Constitution itself was not officially abrogated, but was quietly placed in cold-storage, and all the reins of government passed into the hands of the Sultan, whose sole aim was to protect his person and his power. To all the traditional ills of the ‘Sick Man of Europe’— economic and cultural backwardness, dependence on foreign loans and capital, trade deficits, lack of security for business and the individual, bribery, corruption, inefficiency, etc., etc.—were added measures of unbelievable obscurantism, and a network of spies and informers so extensive that people were afraid to speak openly even to their own kith and kin. The Press was muzzled and hobbled. Certain words were totally forbidden in print, among them ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘rights’, ‘despotism’, ‘tyranny’, ‘strike’, ‘constitution’, ‘Socialism’, ‘republic’ and ‘revolution’. Even ‘spring’ and ‘rebirth’ were taboo, since they might evoke liberal thought. Chemical and algebraic formulae had hidden subversive meanings read into them by the censor, who banned text-books in which they occurred. H₂0, for example, was construed as an insult to the Sultan (Abdul Hamid II is a cipher!). Letters were taxed not on weight, but on the number of pages they contained, so that they had to be given unsealed to the post office to be assessed—and censored. No reference was allowed

318

to the violent death of royalty, either in the theatre or in the newspapers. Together with the works of the early Young Turk writers and poets, those of Rousseau, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Schiller, Racine, Corneille, Hugo, Zola, Tolstoy and Byron were forbidden. The Swiss Family Robinson was banned because their dog was called ‘Turk’, and dictionaries were not permitted to contain the words ‘elder’ and ‘brother’ because Abdul Hamid had usurped the throne from his elder brother, Murad, who had briefly succeeded Abdul Aziz. A special office censored plays, considering every word, both in and out of context, and the cuts imposed often gave the opposite meaning to a sentence, or made nonsense of the plot. And so on, and so forth.

Abdul Hamid employed some 30,000 spies and informers, and paid them regardless of whether the information which they provided was true or false. No one was ever called to account for fabricated or inaccurate evidence, and mass demoralization and suspicion began to corrode an Empire already ruined economically. Brother spied on brother for gain and for fear of being thought disloyal to the regime. There were spies in hotels, spies at weddings and other gatherings, and spies in theatres and restaurants, who reported who saw what play, and who drank what beverage. Even Ministers and Marshals of the Armed Forces were not immune from whispered accusations, sudden dismissal, exile, and death, without trial or explanation. Abdul Hamid ruled on the principle of ‘après moi le Déluge’, squandering public money, corrupting the nation, and deliberately setting individual officials and whole national committees at each other’s throats, solely in order to prevent the emergence of any group sufficiently strong and united to threaten his personal power. And when all was said and done, it profited him little. Nervous, dispeptic, and obsessively afraid of the dark, he lived the drab, monotonous life of a semi-recluse, without real friends, virtually imprisoned in the Yildiz Palace, the victim of his own system and intrigues, of his own birth and lineage. It would, in fact, have been hard, if not impossible, for any Turkish Sultan to be a normal, balanced person, for Turkish princes spent their early years in the lewd, petty, stifling atmosphere of the Royal Harem, and, if they were not murdered in childhood—a common enough occurrence in the Imperial Family, because every wife wanted her son to rule—they were then confined in some isolated palace and deprived of all contact with the outside world, with politicians, diplomats, etc., lest they conspire to seize the throne. Thus, if, and when, they succeeded to the throne, they were men with cramped intellects, ill-prepared for the tasks that faced them, and unversed in all the arts of statesmanship except the struggle to survive. Abdul Hamid had been thus confined in his youth, and he, in turn, kept his own brothers, Murad and Reshad, in preventative isolation.

The Turks themselves dubbed his reign the era of zulüm—an expressive Turkish word which combines the concepts of ‘wrong’, ‘oppression’ and ‘cruelty’. Yet, in spite of Abdul Hamid’s spies, young liberally-minded

319

Turks—mainly students in the capital’s military and elite secondary schools, where foreign languages were taught—secretly read forbidden literature and formed themselves into conspiratorial groups. In 1889, one such young intellectual—Ibrahim Temo, an Albanian from Struga, who was studying at the military medical school, and had become acquainted with Freemasonry while on holiday in Italy—formed a secret group called ‘Ottoman Unity’, and made contact with other school groups in Constantinople. About the same time, an emigré group was formed in Paris around Ahmed Riza Bey, who was much influenced by the French Positivists. Contact between the various groups at home and abroad was maintained through the independent foreign postal services which operated within the Turkish Empire and were not subject to censorship.

In 1894, following the Armenian terrorist attacks on the Porte and the Ottoman Bank, and the ensuing massacres of Armenians by Turks, Temo and his comrades published a leaflet in the name of the ‘Ottoman Society for Union and Progress’, [8] in which they criticized the Armenians for taking independent action and called for a united struggle against despotism. The distribution of the leaflet in Constantinople led to numerous arrests. Many liberal Turks were exiled, and many emigrated, among them Temo, who went to Romania. In spite of this severe blow, secret cells continued to proliferate in Constantinople, especially in the military schools. Their basic aim, according to a statute dating from 1895-1896, was ‘the awakening of all our fellow citizens of the Fatherland—Muslim and Christian—for the changing of the mode of action of the present Government, which harms such human rights as justice, equality and freedom, hinders the progress of all Ottomans, and hands our country over to foreigners’. [9] Membership was open to all ‘Ottomans’, i.e. subjects of the Empire, both men and women, and an essential feature of their programme was the preservation of the integrity of the Empire.

From time to time, fresh ‘affairs’ and repressions forced members to flee abroad and swell the growing ranks of the Turkish emigrés in Paris, London, Geneva, Cairo, etc. The activity of these emigrés consisted chiefly in publishing newspapers, brochures and reports. In December 1895, Meshveret (Consultation), the newspaper founded by Riza Bey as the organ of the ‘Ottoman Society for Union and Progress’, published a programme containing the following main points: the preservation of the integrity of the Empire, no Great-Power interference in Turkish affairs, and reforms which would ensure the progress of the whole country

8. The new name was, in all probability, the result of contact between Temo and Riza Bey, and was inspired by the Positivist slogan ‘Order and Progress’.

9. Quoted in Y.A. Petrosyan, Mladoturetskoe Dvizhenie, Moscow, 1971, pp. 174-175. Much of the material about the history of the Young Turks is taken from this work, and from G.Z. Aliev, Turtsia v periods pravlenia Mladoturok (1908-1918), Moscow, 1972.

320

and all subjects, regardless of nationality and religion. [10] Some eighteen months later, in August 1897, the same paper called for the restoration of the suspended Constitution of 1876, with amendments, the equality of all before the law, an independent judiciary, freedom of conscience, and the continuation of the dynasty. These points formed the basis of Young Turk policy during the coming years. It will be noticed that republicanism was not part of their creed. Although they attacked Abdul Hamid personally (‘This is not a Sultan, it is Satan himself on the throne’; ‘Not the Ruler of the Universe, but a yellow scorpion’; ‘By what right do you reign over us, drink our water, eat our bread, and, what is more, unashamedly call yourself our Lord?’), [11] they were not, in the main, against the Sultanate as an institution, and most of them took great pains to square their ideas with those of Islam. As regards methods in their struggle against despotism, Riza was against the use of force, while other groups, including those in Constantinople and Cairo, favoured a coup d’état.

Until the turn of the century, there were no real organizational links between the various groups. In 1899, however, the Cairo group proposed that a Congress be held in Brindisi, and, although nothing came of that particular suggestion, the idea of holding a Congress caught on. In 1900 All Fahri published a brochure in Geneva, calling for a Congress and appealing to all the revolutionary organizations within the Turkish Empire not to fight solely for their own rights, but to unite with the Young Turks in a common struggle against Abdul Hamid and his regime. This was followed by a second brochure, in a similar vein, by two brothers, Prince Mehmet Sabaheddin and Prince Ahmed Lütfullah, whose mother was Abdul Hamid’s sister, but who had nevertheless found it politic to flee their uncle’s realm. Addressed to ‘all Ottoman fellow-citizens of the Fatherland’, and calling for a united front of all nationalities against despotism, in the name of a better future, the princes’ brochure did much to arouse fresh support for the convening of a Young Turk Congress, while their wealth, freely placed at the disposal of the cause, made it possible for indigent delegates to attend.

The Congress took place secretly in Paris, during February 1902, and the delegates included not only Turks, but Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Albanians, Circassians, Kurds and Jews. The princes’ father, Damad Mahmud Pasha was elected honorary chairman, Sabaheddin as chairman, and a Greek and an Armenian as vice-chairmen. The discussions revealed considerable divergence of views among the delegates, and the resolution adopted was an attempt at compromise. Riza Bey, for example, favoured a centralized state, while Prince Sabaheddin, who was a follower of such French sociologists as Edmond Demolins and Frederic Le Play, favoured decentralization and the free development of private enterprise of the

10. See Petrosyan, Opus cit., pp. 172-173.

11. Quoted in Petrosyan, Opus cit., pp. 183-184.

321

kind prevalent in Britain and the U.S.A. The Prince also believed that it would be necessary to seek help from the Great Powers, while Riza was against any such approach. After the Congress, the movement split into two groups: the Society for Union and Progress, led by Riza Bey, and the Society for Personal Initiative and Decentralization, led by Prince Sabaheddin. Relatively little activity was undertaken by either until the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907 shook not only the Tsarist Empire, but also many lands beyond its borders, including Iran and Turkey. The mutiny on the Potemkin is said to have greatly alarmed the Sultan, but the revolutionary events on the Black Sea were greeted with admiration by many of his officers and most of the Young Turks. Twenty-eight Turkish officers, for example, signed a letter of sympathy to the family of Lt Pyotr Schmidt, who led the rising in Sevastopol, raised the Red Flag on the cruiser Ochakov, and was shot by the Tsarist authorities in March 1906. During 1906-1907, dissatisfaction with feudal oppression in Turkey led to a series of anti-government risings and demonstrations in Erzurum, Diarbekir and other places in eastern Anatolia. There were also risings in the Yemen and on the part of the Kurds, who were supported by the Armenians.

The year 1906 saw the rapid expansion of Young Turk activity within the Empire, including the founding in Salonika of a secret ‘Ottoman Society for Freedom’, whose members were mainly young officers. These set themselves the task of taking over the Third Army Corps, which was stationed in Macedonia. The Salonika Society made contact with the Paris Society for Union and Progress, and, in the autumn of 1907, the two societies merged to form a single organization with two centres. Fresh approaches were made to non-Turkish revolutionary groups, including the Armenian organization Dashnaktsutyun, on whose initiative a second Congress was called in Paris at the end of December 1907, after a number of preparatory meetings and discussions. The Congress was chaired in turn by the Armenian leader, Malumyan, Prince Sabaheddin, and Riza Bey. Again some difficulty was experienced in reconciling the varying points of view held by the delegates, with the result that all really thorny questions were shelved in favour of maximum agreement on a minimum programme. By now, however, even the non-violent Riza Bey had realized that, since all other means, including loyal appeals to the Sultan to act to save the Empire, had totally failed to produce results, it would be necessary to take revolutionary action. The Declaration of the Congress, which was signed by the organizations of the three chairmen, the Egyptian Jewish Committee, the editors of several emigré newspapers, and the Committee for Ottoman Concord (based in Egypt), called on all nationalities to work together to overthrow Abdul Hamid and radically to change the regime through the establishment of a parliament. After the Congress, the centre of gravity shifted from Paris to Salonika, as preparations began for an armed uprising in support of the Congress demands.

322

Strange as it may seem, in all these meetings the Internal Organization had no part, although the Young Turks were eager to enlist its support. Indeed, one of their leaders, Enver Bey, told Charles Roden Buxton, a prominent member of the Balkan Committee in London, that the Young Turks had studied the Internal Organization, which they admired and which had, unwittingly, given them many hints as to how to organize themselves. He said that they had seen—alas, all too correctly! —that the Organization’s worst enemies were its rival leaders, and that they—the Young Turks—were therefore doing their best to work collectively and thus avoid having leaders. [12]

Memoir material suggests that Yané had been approached by the Young Turks as early as 1905, and that he had actually been in contact with them, although it is not clear whether he met individual sympathizers or some organized committee. [13] There is also evidence to support the view that the Serchani were willing to attend the Paris Conference, but had not sent delegates because they were preoccupied with the execution of Garvanov and Sarafov and its aftermath. [14]

The Right Wing were certainly informed of the Congress, but Matov rejected out of hand the idea of going himself or sending a delegate. [15] After the Paris Congress, the Young Turks made fresh approaches, and their invitation for joint negotiations was discussed at the Kyustendil Congress, which decided to send no reply. Matov was the chief speaker in the debate and argued that there was no common ground between the Young Turks and the Organization, since the Young Turk ideal of preserving the integrity of the Empire under a constitutional government ruled out autonomy for Macedonia. No contrary opinion was expressed. [16] The fact that no voice was raised in favour even of exploratory talks without commitment is a further indication of how far the Right Wing had moved away from the Organization’s traditional principles embodied in the Statute written by Gotsé Delchev, which stated that its mission was to ‘unite in one whole all discontented elements in Macedonia and the Adrianople Region’. Even though their aim was autonomy for the two provinces rather than a constitution for the whole Empire, they would have lost nothing by at least making contact with a group of Turks who shared their abhorrence of the existing regime and represented all that was positive and forward-looking within Turkish society itself. They might

12. Charles Roden Buxton, Turkey in Revolution, London, 1908, pp. 134-135.

13. See Memoirs of Andon Kyoseto, TDIA, f. 771, op. 1, a.e. 102. Andon Kyoseto was against such meetings, and resigned from his duties in the Serres Region on finding that all the Serchani were in favour of them.

14. From an answer given by Pavel Deliradev to a question put to him by the Young Turk newspaper Ittihad ve Terakki, quoted in a report by the Bulgarian Commercial Consul in Salonika to Paprikov, Bulgarian Minister for War, dated 27.VII.1908. TDAI, f. 334, op. 1, a.e. 293, p. 65.

15. Hristo Matov, Za svoyata revolyutsionna deinost, 1928, p. 53.

16. Silyanov, Opus cit., Vol. II, p. 565.

323

even have gained a great deal by early negotiations with the Young Turks, for, although they were not as yet aware of it, the movement was rapidly gaining strength on the Organization’s territory, especially in the Bitolya and Salonika Regions, and in less than four months it would seize power.

A new wind was already stirring the fusty atmosphere of the Turkish Empire. Deliradev and the Strumichani felt its breath as they crossed the frontier between the Principality and Macedonia, for, although they had been betrayed, the frontier officer, Major Ismail Faki, who was a Young Turk sympathizer, chose to allow the Bulgarian enemies of Abdul Hamid to continue on their journey to Bansko unmolested.

Deliradev was deeply impressed by Yané, of whom he had heard much—not all of it complimentary. On meeting him, he discovered that ‘he was not the sullen trouble-maker that his enemies made him out to be. There was nothing demonic in his character. On the contrary, Yané had a sunny personality, brimming over with love for justice and freedom’. [17] Deliradev’s detailed description of the leader of the Left has much in common with that given by Mrs Tsilka: ‘A fine, upstanding thirty-six-old, with an open brow and an old-time Slavonic beard. No posturing, no showiness in dress and weapons of the kind affected by many of his "comrades in arms". A child-like smile sprang from his heart through the gap of his chipped tooth and spread all over his face which radiated strength and faith. A piercing but warm gaze, ready every instant to become stern, or even bad-tempered, but warmth was his habitual, normal state. In no way did he parade his superiority over the others. He maintained the same easy sense of equality and comradeship even during the discussions. Like a diligent pupil, he heard out all opinions, even those of his youngest comrade. Outside the meetings, in the ordinary setting of cheta life, you see only the man, great indeed, but still a man wholly without repellent self-importance. Here was no monster of the kind described at length in the venal Sofia press and the "reports from the Interior" cooked up in its editorial offices. Instead of the terrible phantom, before us there stood or sat, joked, chatted, ate or sang, the most good-natured "Old Man" from the tales of Dickens or Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. A peasant from the Pirin village of Vlahi, spiritually matured and steeled in unequal battles. Modestly proud; consciously self-assured; profoundly believing in the success of the hard yet glorious struggle.’ [18]

The Congress, which lasted nearly two weeks, sat for four days in the Todev house, and then moved to the house of Nikola Razlogov, where it sat for a further two days, before moving to a secluded clearing in Pirin, called Echmishte, where it completed its work in the open air. Yané opened the proceedings in a dark, lamp-lit storeroom in the Todev house, with a speech which, according to Pavel Deliradev, [19] began thus:

17. Memoirs of Pavel Deliradev, p. 174.

18. Pavel Deliradev, Yané Sandansky, Sofia, 1946, pp. 25-26.

19. Memoirs of Pavel Deliradev, pp. 91-122.

324

‘Comrades! From the formal point of view, our present congress, at which only two regions of the I.M.A.R.O. are represented, does not confirm strictly to the letter of the Organization’s Statute, which provides only for general and regional congresses; on the other hand, nowhere in the Statute or Rules are joint congresses of neighbouring regions forbidden. In point of fact, however, we no longer have a united Organization; it has already been buried by those who have betrayed it. All our concern and efforts to maintain unity within it have been fruitless, as were our efforts in the past to achieve unity of action between the Internal Organization and the Supreme Committee; always have they ended to the detriment of the people’s revolutionary cause.

‘Our persistence in trying to maintain the unity of the Organization and to make its ideological position known, rested and rests on the realization that without unity there can be no successful struggles, just as without unanimity of thought on fundamental issues there can be no united action. And, as long as there was unanimity of thought regarding the independence of the Organization and its aims and means, its unity was assured.

‘In order to preserve the independence of the Organization from the sneaking ambitions of external factors, we have to fight on several fronts: against Supremism in Bulgaria, again