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

21. CONSTANTINOPLE

While Yané was in hospital recovering from his wound, the elections for the new Ottoman Parliament pursued their ponderous, and largely fraudulent, two-stage course. To some extent, the original spirit of the Hürriyet was still in the air. The ballot boxes were carried about on triumphant cars decked with ribbons and garlands and escorted by little girls of various nationalities, who wore white dresses and held hands as a symbol of peace and amity. [1] But, while such picturesque processions may have satisfied the ordinary Turk who had never voted in his life and who was still happily dazzled by the absence of censors, spies and informers, they were a poor consolation for those who wanted real democracy on the basis of one person—one vote. Even had the letter of the law been observed, the elections could hardly be said to have reflected public opinion, since so many people were disenfranchised, including all women and all those men—chiflik peasants and proletarians—who owned no property in the shape of land or cattle registered in their name. In the event, however, the elections were made even less democratic by all manner of gerrymandering and infringements of the law, such as the arbitrary grouping of villages in such a way as to ensure a Turkish majority in wards where the Turks were in the minority, irregularities in electoral rolls, failure to honour agreements for electoral alliances, intimidation of voters, etc., etc.

Initially, while the Constitutional Clubs agreed to fight the elections on a common list with the Young Turks, the Serres Left proposed to boycott the elections in view of the limited suffrage, the two-tier system and the projected Senate. [2] When, however, the elections were already underway, the Serchani reversed their decision [3] and put forward as their candidates Yané himself and a lawyer named Hristo Dalchev. The latter, who enjoyed considerable popularity among all sections of the Bulgarian community for his defence of people accused of political offences, had originally been the choice of the Serres Constitutional Club, but had been won over by the

1. Charles Roden Buxton, Turkey in Revolution, pp. 185-188.

2. See Edinstvo, No. 1, 27.IX.1908. The Shtip Constitutional Club also boycotted the elections, not because they were protesting against the Election Law itself, but because they considered that it was being infringed. See TDIA, f. 225, op. 1, a.e. 407, pp. 85-86.

3. Edinstvo, No. 5, 11.X.1908.

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Serchani. The change in the latter’s attitude followed discussions between Yané and Enver-Bey, who visited him in hospital and urged him to take part in the elections. [4] What arguments Enver used have not been recorded, but, in the end, Yané appears to have been persuaded that a ‘half-election’, or even the ‘smaller part of an election’ was better than nothing, and could lead to changes in the law. Even after the reversal of the decision to boycott the elections, Konstitutionna Zarya continued to criticize the Election Law and to voice the hope that the new Parliament would make it its business to amend it. [5]

In the end, only four Bulgarians were elected to the Ottoman Parliament: Hristo Dalchev (Serres), Dimitŭr Vlahov (Salonika), Pancho Dorev (Bitolya) and Todor Pavlov (Skopje). Of these four, the former two were left-wingers, while the second two were representatives of the Constitutional Clubs. Yané himself was not elected, although he received more votes than Paskalev, the Clubs’ replacement candidate in the Serres Sanjak. The results need little explanation, for the limited suffrage, two-tier system and widespread irregularities at the poll all combined to render the elections of little value as an expression of genuine public opinion. The new Parliament, with its Young Turk majority, was composed mainly of people from the propertied classes, with a sprinkling of clerics, lawyers, headmasters, etc., and its practical achievements, measured in terms of legislation passed during the first few months of its existence, were virtually nil, because no draft laws were prepared.

The conduct of the elections—inadequate though they were—took two or three months, and the new Parliament held its first session on December 17 (new style), 1908. The Sultan attended the opening and drove the four miles from the Yildiz Palace to the Parliament building in a great procession, which included the Greek and Armenian Patriarchs, the Bulgarian Exarch, the representative of the Holy See, and the Diplomatic Corps. The procession was watched, and, at times, brought to a standstill, by enthusiastic crowds, waving scarlet flags inscribed with the words ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. [6] Francis McCullagh, who saw the Sultan at the opening of Parliament, described him thus: ‘a tottering old man, bent, ashy-faced, weary, and with a way of shuffling instead of walking which made him look ten years older than he really was. He wore his inseparable dark grey military overcoat, edged with red and provided with heavy epaulettes, but both his overcoat and his fez seemed too large for him and very much out of place. In fact, Shylock’s gabardine is the only dress that would suit Abdul-Hamid to perfection. ... He looked like some obscene

4. Report by Karayovov to Dobrovich, dated 22.X.1908. TDIA, f. 3, op. 8, a.e. 1308, p. 10.

5. Konstitutsionna Zarya, No. 18, 28.X.1908.

6. Charles Roden Buxton, Opus cit., pp. 195-199. Buxton, who, as a member of the Balkan Committee, was invited to be present at the opening of Parliament, mentions that the flags proved to have been made in Bradford!

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and treacherous beast of prey that, after having hidden in the bowels of the earth for years, is finally trapped, caged and brought forth, blinking and reluctant, into the blessed sunlight, while, afar off, the people shudder at the Horror.’ [7]

Not all saw him in the same light. Many Turks were still deceived by his hypocrisy and his guile, and believed him when he said that nothing had given him greater pleasure than the granting of the Constitution, and that he had laboured throughout his whole reign to achieve precisely this. [8] A beast he was, but a wily beast, and he continued to take the maximum credit for the Young Turks’ achievements and to make the maximum capital out of their faults and omissions. He celebrated the opening of Parliament by giving a gala-dinner in the Yildiz Palace for the deputies, who greeted his entry and his speech with cries of ‘Long live the Sultan!’. Among those who crowded around him to kiss his hand was the Constitutional Clubs’ candidate Pancho Dorev, who told him that the Ottoman Bulgarians were truly attached to the Sultan and Fatherland. [9] The Sultan for his part, informed his guests that he had never been so happy as at that moment, and amiably helped the veteran Young Turk, Ahmed Riza— now Speaker of the Ottoman Parliament—to water from his own special decanter, which was filled from a spring in Kagithané. [10]

Yané expected little from such a Parliament, but he was determined to make the most of the opportunities which it provided. Soon after he came out of hospital, in the second half of October, he left Salonika to consult with his comrades in the Melnik District, and spent five or six days resting in the half-Turkish, half-Bulgarian village of Levunovo, at the house of a woman named Yana Stoyancheva, who was an active member of the Organization. Her daughter, Paraskeva, had also helped the Organization since childhood by carrying messages hidden in her socks, etc., from village to village, under the noses of the Turks, for whom a little girl was beneath all suspicion. Paraskeva was one of the few children in Levunovo—and the only girl—who went to school. When she had finished the primary school, she was sent to Melnik to continue her education, and did so well that she would have gone on to the High School for Girls in Salonika, had not her father died.

Paraskeva recalls [11] that although Yané joked with the young people in the village, he looked ill and emaciated, and had to keep to a special diet consisting of milk, saltless bread, saltless chicken, and apples baked with sugar. Yané’s stay in Levunovo evoked great interest among the Turkish

7. Francis McCullagh, The Fall of Abd-Ul-Hamid, 1910, pp. 11-12.

8. Buxton, Opus cit., p. 23. Buxton commented that, in a sense, the Sultan was right, because the real author of the revolution was, indeed, Abdul Hamid!

9. Vreme, 22.XII.1908.

10. Sir Edwin Pears, Life of Abdul Hamid, 1917, p. 304.

11. The information concerning Paraskeva and the Potskov family is taken from oral memoirs related to the author by Paraskeva herself in 1977, and from material written by her and made available by her family.

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population of the village, who had heard of him, but never previously seen the great ‘Sandan-Pasha’. Now they came, their curiosity mixed with awe, to shake his hand and bring him presents of banitsi and halva. Paraskeva, who was then seventeen years old, evidently made a favourable impression upon Yané, because, when he went on to Hotovo for a meeting with local leaders of the Organization, he suggested to one of them, Georgi Potskov— that the girl would make him a good wife. The Potskovs were one of the wealthier and more influential families in the village of Vranya. Both Georgi and his father had acted as district treasurers for the Organization, and they had kept the money in glass containers buried in their stock of unpolished rice. Tragedy had overtaken the family in September 1906, during the period when the Kaimakam of Melnik had been recruiting Albanian thugs to help the Turks terrorize the Christian population. One such group of thugs, in army uniform, came to Vranya and attacked the Potskov house, looting it and setting it on fire. Most of those inside, including Georgi’s mother, uncle and aunt, were either burnt to death or shot as they attempted to flee, but Georgi, wounded and with his clothes ablaze, had jumped into the yard, dowsed the flames in the basin of the fountain, and managed to escape in the confusion. Yané’s part in the aftermath of the Potskov fire vividly reflects two of his outstanding characteristics: his uncompromising strictness in matters involving the Organization, and his genuine concern for the welfare of all who served it faithfully. He first insisted that Georgi’s father account for the money that had been kept in their house, notwithstanding the extenuating circumstances of the fire. Most of the gold was rescued from the slow-burning rice, but, when it was weighed, it proved to be less than was written in the books. Yané then insisted—and Georgi’s father agreed—that the family borrow money to make up the difference. Later, in fact, the rest of the gold was recovered from the ashes. In contrast to this severity, Yané took a personal interest in the fate of young Georgi and wanted to see him happily married.

Paraskeva and Georgi took to each other, and were married on January 26, 1909, with Yané as their kum, or sponsor. Yané drew up the guest list and made all the arrangements; thus, it was a wedding in accordance with the Organization’s laws, with plenty of merriment, but no unnecessary expenditure. No gifts were given to the guests; neither did the bride have silken clothes nor the traditional necklace of gold coins. Yané had forbidden the hiring of drummers from outside, and the music was provided by a local bagpiper. Since Georgi had, as yet, no animals of his own, the bride rode on a fine mare, lent for the occasion by a rich Turk, named Ali Bey.

This was not the only occasion on which Yané engaged in matchmaking. He had a phenomenal memory which had eased his way through school, since he would remember his lesson from class and did not have to study it again afterwards. He was able to remember faces and names, even

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of people whom he had met only once; he remembered their families as well, and would ask after them at subsequent meetings. Public health was one of his major interests, and he was concerned about the long-term effects of prolonged inter-marriage within a static community; thus, on his travels from village to village, he would take note of unattached eligible boys and girls, and would suggest marriages which would both bring new blood into a given village and create good, stable families devoted to the Organization.

And yet, perhaps the real reason for his fondness for match-making went far deeper than his avowed interest in genetics, so deep that even he had never admitted its existence or analyzed its origin. By his own insistence on seeing every undertaking through to the end, he had condemned himself to a celibate, childless life, and his suppressed, unfulfilled longing for a family found an outlet in the creation of families which were ‘his’ by reason of his mediation and kumship. He took delight in visiting them, in standing godfather to their children, and in thinking up suitable names for them. He would often spend Christmas and Easter with Georgi and Paraskeva, and he christened all their sons, departing from the tradition that a boy should bear his grandfather’s name by calling them Goran, Leonid and Strahil. Soon after the Hürriyet, in September 1908, Buynov married his Mara, and they both went to live in Nevrokop. In due course, a daughter was born to them, and Yané, whom they invited to be godfather, named the child Pirinka, in honour of the mountain.

In the case of the Potskov children, Yané not merely chose their names, but also laid down the law as to how they were to be bathed and fed, passing on the knowledge which he had acquired from watching Mrs Tsilka care for Elena in the manner then favoured by New York paediatricians. When he arrived for Goran’s christening, in February 1910, an old woman was bathing the baby in Bulgarian style, with very little water, in case it caught cold. Yané explained that a baby should be bathed in a deep trough with lots of warm water, reaching three fingers’ span above its navel, and, rolling up his sleeves, he insisted on giving a demonstration, despite horrified protests on the part of those present that he would surely drown the baby. In fact, he managed perfectly, for he had greatly gained in practice and self-confidence since the time when Miss Stone had thrust the helpless, wriggling, new-born Elena into his arms. Yané told Paraskeva that she must not allow old women to bathe her children, but must do it herself in the way that he had shown her. Moreover, he advised her to feed the baby at definite times, regardless of whether it cried or not, and to iron its freshly laundered clothes and nappies with a hot iron in order to destroy bacteria. All that Yané had learnt from Mrs Tsilka and Miss Stone became as binding on Paraskeva and the other young mothers of Vranya as the Statute of the Organization itself.

Since the main purpose of Yané’s presence in the Melnik District was to discuss the political situation, he organized meetings in all the towns

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and bigger villages. At a final gathering in Marikostinovo, it was decided to form a legal political party, and Yané and several of his comrades were charged with the task of going to Salonika to discuss the question with the leaders of the Salonika and Strumitsa Regions. [12]

Between the Serchani, on the one hand, and the Strumichani and Solunchani (members of the Salonika Regional Organization), on the other, there existed certain differences of opinion which led them to publish separate newspapers after the Hürriyet. The differences did not go very deep and were basically the same as those which had appeared at the joint congress in Bansko. Chernopeev, with his impulsive enthusiasm, was ready to merge the Organization with the Young Turk Committee and other democratic groupings in order to work for the extention of constitutional rights. He therefore wound up the revolutionary organization in the Strumitsa Region, and the Solunchani had done the same. Yané, with his superior political understanding and natural caution, had his reservations about the Young Turks, and, since he did not exclude the possibility of counter-revolution, he had, accordingly, kept the Serres Organization in full fighting trim and continued to collect funds for its maintenance. A further, subjective, reason for the division within the Left appears to have been a feeling among some of the lefter Socialists that Yané was apt to dominate everyone else, and that an individual leader was undesirable. Much later, one of these Socialists—Angel Tomov—admitted that they had been mistaken, that, in fact, the situation called for a leader as a focus for public attention, and that Yané was the natural choice. [13] Apart from Tomov, the Socialists who joined Chernopeev’s group included Pavel Deliradev, Dimitŭr Vlahov, Hristo Yankov, Nikola Harlakov and Stoyno Stoynov, none of whom had much direct experience of working in the Organization. Chudomir, alone of the leading Serchani, also attached himself to this group, while Dimo Hadzhidimov remained with Yané. Chernopeev and his group also published a paper, the name of which—Edinstvo (Unity)—reflected its policy of seeking maximum unity with the Young Turks. The relations between the two groups were perfectly amicable and comradely, and Konstitutsionna Zarya offered its good wishes to Edinstvo when it first appeared in October 1908, [14] and also gave favourable mention to Nachalo (Beginning), a monthly review edited by Tomov, Harlakov and Deliradev. [15]

Discussions between the two left groups were held at the end of December 1908 and the beginning of January 1909, and they agreed to unite in a Bulgarian People’s Federative Party (B.P.F.P.), and to merge Konstitutsionna Zarya and Edinstvo into a single new paper called

12. Arnaudov, Opus cit., p. 24.

13. Memoirs of Angel Tomov. TDIA, f. 1508, op. 2, a.e. 23, pp. 66-67, 83. Also Angel Tomov, Yané Sandansky i Mladoturskiya rezhim. Vŭzspomenatelen list, 2.IV.1945.

14. Konstitutsionna Zarya, No. 14, 10.X.1908.

15. Ibid., No. 20, 4.XI.1908.

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Narodna Volya (People’s Will). The paper appeared for the first time on January 17, 1909 (old style) with Angel Tomov as its editor.

In its last issue for 1908, Konstitutsionna Zarya had carried a leading article on the need for political parties based on the economic interests of the various classes. The paper declared that the State must serve the people, and that the people must be the masters and not the slaves. Formerly, the most urgent need had been for unity in the struggle against absolutism, but since society is based on class and the state is also a class state, the time had now come for the formation of parties based on class.

After the Young Turk Revolution, two specifically Socialist organizations were founded in Macedonia. One of them had its centre in Skopje and was led by Vasil Glavinov, from Veles, who started a newspaper entitled Rabotnicheska Iskra (Workers’ Spark). The other group, which was known as the Socialist Federation, had its centre in Salonika, and was led by a Broad Socialist named Avram Benaroya. Benaroya was a Jew from Vidin, and his group found support primarily among the Jewish workers in Salonika, Kavalla, Serres, Drama and Xanti. They published a paper called Lavorador (Worker), mainly in the Castillian Spanish dialect spoken by the Jewish population of Macedonia, but also with some articles in other languages, including Bulgarian. The two Socialist groups were at daggers drawn, since Glavinov’s Narrow Socialists regarded the Federation as opportunist and lacking in revolutionary constancy.

The new Bulgarian People’s Federative Party (B.P.F.P.) considered that the interests of the working class would be sufficiently taken care of by the Socialists, [16] whom its founders saw as colleagues, and therefore, as a leading article in the first number of Narodna Volya explained, the Party and its paper set out to represent the interests chiefly of ‘that section of the Bulgarian population, which comprises the majority and which is the most important element in the Party—the small-holders, chiflik peasants with insufficient or no land, small proprietors, craftsmen and traders, who are deprived of state care’. [17]

According to Narodna Volya, the interests of those sections of the population require the consolidation of the constitutional regime, the extention of liberties and the introduction of more far-reaching reforms in the structure of the State and the economy. These goals will be achieved only through organized pressure on the part of all nationalities, united in appropriate political parties. After warning its readers against the danger of reaction and of a resurgence of national animosities encouraged from outside, Narodna Volya summarizes its main slogans as follows: the provision of land for peasants with insufficient land or none; the promotion of occupations through the creation of accessible credit, convenient and

16. It should be mentioned that, at this time, the Bulgarian Socialists, including the Narrow Socialists, had not yet reached the Leninist conception of the union between the workers and peasants.

17. Narodna Volya, 17.I.1909.

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cheap communications, and the provision of technical and business know-how; the introduction of the principle of democratic rule, through universal suffrage, direct and secret voting, with proportional representation, freedom of the Press, freedom to combine in associations and to hold meetings; the introduction of local self-government; education to be conducted in the pupils’ mother tongue, and, under the overall control of the State, to be organized by bodies elected by each nation; each national department in the Ministry of Education to have at its disposal the taxes collected for the purpose from the nation in question; the existing spiritual bodies to concern themselves solely with spiritual matters, and not with education, which is to be placed under the direct control of the people. These demands, the paper points out, are of a character which will unite and not divide the democratic forces of the various nationalities within the Turkish Empire, and they have been specifically chosen for this reason: ‘We see the unification of the Bulgarian people and their cultural development neither in the secession of parts of the Empire to Bulgaria, nor in the ruin of any of the neighbouring states or of any nationalists within the Empire, but, on the contrary, only in their common prosperity, and in their common brotherhood, which will be achieved in the realization of an Eastern Federation.’ [18]

Another article in the same issue of Narodna Volya attacks the Constitutional Clubs for adopting a largely passive, wait-and-see policy towards the Young Turk Revolution, instead of actively engaging in battle for greater rights and freedoms. The Clubs are also attacked for not giving sufficient attention to the problems and sufferings of the other nationalities in the Empire, as though ‘of all the 38 million Ottoman citizens only the one million Bulgarian Exarchists were being ill-treated’. Such a policy merely isolated the Bulgarians from the other peoples, so that ‘impious hands’ could manipulate them. [19]

It was the intention of the founders of the B.P.F.P. that the Party should become the rallying point for the ‘vast majority of the Bulgarian people within the Empire’, and that in time the other peoples should take up the same demands, so that the Party would then become a section of a general People’s Federative Party which united all nationalities.

In the course of the discussions between the Serchani and the others, a Salonika People’s Federative Organization was established, and, in its second number, Narodna Volya explained that, although the Party did not yet exist as such, its programme would be similar to the views expressed in Edinstvo and Konstitutsionna Zarya, and, now, in Narodna Volya, and that, where there were groups of more than ten persons holding such views, they should form themselves into Clubs of the Bulgarian People’s Federative Party and maintain contact with the Salonika organization

18. Narodna Volya, 17.I.1909.

19. Ibid.

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until a foundation congress could be held. [20]

Branches of the B.P.F.P. rapidly sprang up in many towns and villages, where they organized public meetings to discuss outstanding problems and to send petitions to Parliament. On January 24, 1909, a meeting in Melnik, attended by 1,500 people, heard speeches by two Bulgarians and a Turk (the President of the Court), after which they sent a resolution to Parliament complaining of exploitation by beys and usurers, unjust taxes, etc. [21] On January 30, 1909, a meeting was held in Strumitsa, under B.P.F.P. auspices, to protest about Christians not being allowed to serve in the Army, as befitted citizens, and being forced to pay bedel, the exemption tax, as formerly. [22] On February 21, 1909, a B.P.F.P. protest meeting in Demir Hisar drew up a list of sixteen demands, including land reform, tax reform and election-law reform. [23] A similar mass meeting in Nevrokop drew up a list of fourteen demands, including improvements in education, the repair of roads and bridges, the organization of proper postal services, the substitution of military service for bedel, and the utilization of the national resources of the country. [24] In Razlog, on March 1, 1909, a meeting of 3,000 persons passed a resolution calling for tax reform, state medical services, inter-village postal services, measures to protect the forests, etc. [25]

During February and March 1909, again on the initiative of the B.P.F.P., a petition on behalf of the chiflik peasants—the most poverty-stricken and under-privileged section of the population—was prepared for presentation to Parliament. [26] In connection with this, the Salonika Buro of the B.P.F.P. approached the Central Buro of the Constitutional Clubs with a request for co-operation in gathering information about conditions on the chifliks and the organization of the petition to Parliament, since the B.P.F.P. had as yet no local people in certain areas, such as the Bitolya Region. Sad to relate, the hatred felt by Karayovov and his colleagues for the Left was stronger than their concern for the welfare of their landless, exploited compatriots, and they left the B.P.F.P.’s request unanswered. [27]

If the Constitutional Clubs failed to understand the importance of th agrarian question for the Bulgarian cause, the Greeks understood it all too well. The demands of the protest meetings in Melnik, Demir Hisar and Nevrokop, and the organization of the Petition were reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens by the Greek Consul in Serres, who,

20. Narodna Volya, 24.I.1909.

21. Ibid., 7.II.1909.     22. Ibid., 14.II.1909.     23. Ibid. 28.II.1909.

24. Ibid., 7.III.1909.      25. Ibid., 21.III.1909.      26. Ibid., 7.III.1909.

27. Ibid., 21.III. and 28.III.1909.

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in a report dated February 28, 1909, wrote with alarm about the growing charisma of the Sandanisti, owing to their championship of the chiflik peasants. [28] A week later, the Consul was expressing the opinion that the agrarian question was more important than the Church question, and was describing the economic policy of the Serchani as ‘a truly great and Satanic plan’, the success of which would be ‘an excellent victory’ for the Bulgarians, while for the Greeks, it would represent ‘final defeat’, since the majority of the peasants on chifliks owned by beys and Greeks were Bulgarians, and the ‘Greek centres would remain scattered and isolated minorities’. The only suggestion that the Greek Consul could make for averting the triumph of the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia was for the Greeks themselves to compete with the Serchani by going into the land-reform business themselves, buying up chifliks, giving part of the land to Bulgarians on a hire-purchase basis, and settling Greek-speaking refugees among them, so that ‘the present unmixed population will become mixed’. [29]

By February 1909, the extremely unsatisfactory state of affairs in the villages, and the recurrence of arrests, harassment and ill-treatment of Bulgarians by certain Turks, prompted Yané and Panitsa to go to Constantinople to warn the Young Turk leaders of the dangers inherent in such a situation, and to consult with the Bulgarian deputies in the Parliament. [30]

While Yané was in Constantinople, his mother died in Dupnitsa on March 8, 1909. Yané’s father was already dead, having died in 1907 at the age of seventy-six. Yané had been in the Rila Monastery at the time, and Nikola Maleshevsky had sent for him. Yané had gone at once to his home, bowed to his father’s body, kissed his hand, and then slipped out into the town. [31] This time, his nephew, Ivan (Vanche), who was studying in the Turkish capital, brought the sad news to Yané in the form of a telegram, and began weeping for his departed grandmother. In an attempt to conceal his own feelings, Yané gruffly reproved his nephew for his tears, saying that there was no point in crying. But Ivan was not deceived, for it was obvious that his uncle was himself close to tears. Yané adored his mother, and he must have felt not only natural grief, but also torturing regret that, throughout the years, he had been able to do so little for his parents’ comfort. It is not only the proverbial haidut who fails to feed

28. Y. Popgeorgiev and S.N. Shishkov, Bŭlgarite v Serskoto pole, pp. 30-34. Report dated 28.II.1909. Both the Greek original and a Bulgarian translation are given.

29. Ibid., pp. 34-37. Report dated 6.III.1909.

30. Memoirs of Yané Bogatinov, who was in Constantinople at the time, quoted by Yurdan Atanasov, Spomen za Yané Sandansky, p. 469.

31. Ibid., pp. 8-9. The exact date of Ivan Sandansky’s death is not known.

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his mother: [32] those who deny themselves wealth in the name of a cause are willy-nilly forced into the same position.

Three weeks later, Yané’s sorrow was still clearly visible. He had gone, all by himself, to spend Easter with the Potskovs in Vranya, and Paraskeva immediately noticed how silent and sad he was. Because as yet she hardly knew him, she concluded that he was dour by nature, and it was only later that she realized that, on the contrary, he was of an extremely merry disposition and loved to sing and dance. When the family understood the reason for his low spirits, they too became sad, and none of them went to join the open-air horo which was a central feature of Bulgarian Easter celebrations. They spent the holiday at home, keeping Yané company and trying to console him.

And then, suddenly, a day or two after Easter, in April 1909, there occurred the counter-revolution which the Serchani had foreseen and feared.

A revolution cannot stand still. It must run in order to remain in the same place, and it must run twice as fast in order to outdistance its enemies. But, having cast out the devils of reaction, the Young Turks had rested on their laurels and had stood aside, thus creating a vacuum, swept and garnished, into which the devils speedily returned.

The Turkish opposition to the Party of Union and Progress came from two main sources—the Ahrar (Liberal) Party and the Muslim League. The former had been set up in September 1908 by supporters of Prince Sabaheddin, as an opposition party. Its members included feudal landowners and businessmen who acted as agents for European firms and whose interests were affected by the Young Turk opposition to the entry of foreign capital. Young Turks who had failed to get into Parliament or receive lucrative appointments, and who blamed the Party of Union and Progress for their misfortune, also tended to gravitate towards Ahrar. Prince Sabaheddin himself was not a member of Ahrar, but he worked with it, as did the Grand Visir, Kyamil-Pasha. Ahrar was based solely in Constantinople and had no branches elsewhere. The Muslim League represented religious fundamentalists, who regarded the Young Turks as ‘Jacobins’ and worse, and who set out to defend the traditions of Islam and the rights of the Sultan as Caliph.

In February 1909, a Government crisis was triggered off by the dismissal of the Army and Navy Ministers, who were Young Turk supporters. Other ministers resigned, and Parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Kyamil-Pasha, who was replaced as Grand Visir by Hilmi-Pasha. This Young Turk victory led to even more bitter struggles with Ahrar, and the situation was exacerbated by the murder of the editor of the Ahrar newspaper Serbesti (Liberty). The assassin was never discovered.

32. ‘A haidut does not feed his mother’ is a well-known Bulgarian proverb. The Bulgarian word for a ‘ne’er-do-weal’ is nehranimaiko, which literally means ‘one who does not feed his mother’.

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Matters finally came to ahead on April 13, 1909 (new style), when troops stationed in Constantinople mutinied and gathered on the square in front of Agia Sophia, shouting their support for the Sultan and the Sheriat (Islamic law). The soldiers were joined by thousands of ignorant, ill-informed and disgruntled inhabitants of the capital, among them, no doubt, some of the Sultan’s out-of-work spies. The main cause of the mutiny was bribery and misinformation. [33] It was not a spontaneous expression of dissatisfaction or religious fanaticism, but was engineered from above and paid for with Hamidian go