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

22. UNEASY PEACE

When the Hürriyet made it possible for Yané to come out of the shadows and to work in the open, he chose Melnik as his permanent home. Here, he was in the centre of the district, within easy reach of its villages and constantly in touch with all that was going on. He would tour the Serres Region, and, when telegraphic communications proved inadequate for his purpose, he would travel to Salonika or Constantinople for consultations or discussions. Melnik was a pleasant place to live—southern and sunbaked, and yet cooled by breezes which blew along the courses of its two rivers, bringing the freshness of the upland forests and pastures down to the golden, sandy canyons. Melnik had little room for gardens, but fig-trees thrived wherever they could find a foothold, the balconies of the white houses were crowded with geraniums redder than the red-tiled roofs and brighter than the crimson wine, and, in late spring, more nightingales than were ever heard in the fountain-courts beside the Bosphorus sang day and night in the thickets around the town. To see the whole of his district at a glance, Yané had only to take the path that climbed the cliffs to the south of the town. Here, on the wooded heights, were the ruins of mediaeval churches and fortress walls, from whence, centuries before, the sentinels of Despot Slav had gazed forth, keeping watch on all the points of the compass, northwards towards the snowy summits of Pirin, southwards to Alibotush, Belasitsa and the road to the sea, westwards to Ograzhden, and eastwards to Orelyak, the peak which stands above Nevrokop like an eagle with outspread wings.

In Melnik, Yané lived in a house belonging to Georgi Kotsev. It was not a typical Melnik house, but had been built shortly before the Hürriyet, with a shop on the ground floor, where Bulgarians could purchase goods after the Organization had introduced its economic boycott against the Greeks. Now that he had a permanent home, Yané invited his sister, Sofia, to leave Vlahi, where she had continued to live after the Organization had executed her husband, and to join him in Melnik. She agreed to do so, for both of them were alone in the world, and such an arrangement was obviously to their mutual happiness and advantage. Yané adored Sofia; he never used her name, but always called her ‘Sister’, and his eyes would shine with tenderness when he looked at her, or joked with her. Paraskeva Potskova, who came to know both of them very well, [1]

1. After Yané’s death, Sofia stood godmother to all the subsequent Potskov children.

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commented: ‘I have never seen such love between a brother and a sister.’ The two of them were very much alike: their eyes and mouths were similar, and their characters had much in common. Both were cheerful, buoyant souls, who laughed from their hearts and were able to impart their courage and optimism to others. Yet, in relation to their own feelings and experiences, both were extremely reserved, and would let no one penetrate into the private world of their emotions and their sufferings.

Close as they were, there was one matter on which brother and sister could not see eye to eye. Yané hated to see Sofia wearing her widow’s black kerchief—perhaps because he found it an unpleasant reminder of former things—and he would often pull it off, and start winding her plaits into a stylish bun. ‘That’s how I like to see you,’ he would say, ‘I’ll buy you combs and pins, and you’ll go about like that.’ But she would always reply: ‘Let me be, Yané, my body is blackened (i.e. by poverty, hardship, etc.—M.M.) and I will not go about without a black kerchief.’

During the holidays, Yané and Sofia would be joined by their nephew, Ivan, (Vanché), for whom Yané had arranged a scholarship at the Lycée in Constantinople, a Turkish school, where the teaching was mainly in French. Ivan and Yané did not get on very well together, mainly, it seems, because Yané was too strict for the young man’s taste. He did not give lectures or make scenes over his nephew’s conduct, but would choose a moment when he could lay down the law tersely and apparently a propos of nothing. Once, for example, Yané noticed that Ivan was flirting with a Greek girl in Melnik. He waited until Ivan was massaging him to treat a chill, and then while he was bending over and their eyes could not meet, Yané simply said: ‘Until you have finished school, absolutely no marriage.’ Ivan understood what he was driving at, and although he made no answer, he stopped flirting with the girl. On another occasion, Yané noticed that Ivan was playing backgammon with Petŭr Govedarov, and, again, he waited until Ivan was rubbing him, and said: ‘If you want to go on the spree, I’ll give you a lira or two, but you are not to gamble.’ Later on, Ivan wanted to study in Brussels, and initially Yané was quite willing to agree, but, to Ivan’s intense disappointment, Chudomir talked him out of the idea by saying that Ivan would get into bad habits abroad. Alarmed by this prospect, Yané withdrew his support for the plan, and, as a result, Ivan was angry with him for a very long time, until finally Buynov smoothed things out between them. [2] When Yané’s constraint and displeasure became too irksome, Ivan would leave Melnik for Vranya, where he would stay with the Potskovs, for weeks on end, if necessary.

One of Yané’s main concerns in the summer of 1909, after his return from Constantinople, was the setting up of the People’s Federative Party. The Foundation Congress took place in Salonika from August 3-10, in the

Paraskeva Potskova adored both the godparents of her children; for her they remained ‘the most respected, most loved and the best of people".

2. See Yurdan Anastasov, Spomen za Yané Sandansky, p. 483.

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Splendid Palace Hotel, overlooking the sea. Such was the public interest in the Congress that the guests (some two hundred) outnumbered the thirty-three delegates from fifteen districts. One of these delegates— F. Bayraktarov—from Skopje—was a Turk. The Congress was opened by Hristo Yankov, as the representative of the Salonika Organization of the Party, and he was accompanied on the platform by Dimitŭr Vlahov, one of the Bulgarian deputies to the Turkish Parliament. Two reports were presented to the Congress, one, by Yankov, on the state of the local Party branches and the building of the Party, and the other, by Angel Tomov, on the ideological basis of the Party newspaper Narodna Volya. The Congress discussed and adopted a Declaration, Programme and Rules for the new Party, and elected a Central Buro consisting of Dimitŭr Vlahov, Anastas Matliev and Hristo Yankov (all resident in Salonika), and six counsellors: Yané, Buynov, Chernopeev, Dobri Daskalov (Tikvesh), Dimitŭr Koshtanov (Gorna Dzhumaya) and Yurdan Shurkov (Veles). The Party decided to name itself the People’s Federative Party (Bulgarian Section), since it was hoped that other nationalities would adopt its programme and form their own sections within the Party, but, in fact, this never happened.

The Declaration reflected the ideals, and optimism, of those Bulgarian Socialists who were the driving force behind the new Party, and who, despite the setbacks and disappointments of the past year, still retained their faith in the possibility of so transforming the Ottoman Empire that it would form the nucleus of a future federation of free nations. By now, the outlook was far less encouraging than it had been when Yané had signed the Manifesto to All the Nationalities in the Empire in the name of the Left, and he himself no longer spoke so demonstratively of a common ‘Fatherland’ and ‘fellow citizens’, as he had done in the early days of the ‘Millenium’. Nevertheless, no one among the delegates was yet prepared to abandon the dream simply because its realization was becoming less easy, any more than the Socialists were prepared to abandon their beliefs, simply because their revolution was not just around the corner. The Declaration was, therefore, a statement of intent, a kind of credo which defiantly expressed the ideals and maximum aspirations of the Left.

The Declaration of the Party begins with the following words: ‘The interests of all national minorities in the Ottoman Empire coincide with those of the working masses of the people, with the interests of the revolution and the common interests of the State. The rapid development of the productive forces and the promotion of means of livelihood—this is the supreme need of the State. This need can be satisfied only by the further triumph of the revolution, which requires that the working population be relieved of onerous chiflik conditions and tax burdens, that local occuptions be stimulated and encouraged, and, most important, that the political conditions necessary for the economic progress of the country be created: the assurance of internal order and security by guaranteeing the

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full and free development and participation of the national minorities, and by the complete triumph of people’s power, which will make the interests of the working people the chief factor in the life of society and the State.’ The Declaration criticizes both the Party of Union and Progress and the Constitutional Clubs on the grounds that they represent the interests of ‘nationally-divisive, partisan, exploiting elements’, and are basically conservative forces having nothing in common with ‘the genuine triumph of people’s power and the revolution’. The Union and Progress organization, for example, is described as serving the interests of the Turkish bureaucracy and intelligentsia, of the big landowners and of the developing Turkish big bourgeoisie, whose present interests demand the retention of their own privileged position at the expense of the people, or of similar sections of other nationalities. The Constitutional Clubs are said to represent the interests of ‘privileged clerical and secular bureaucrats’ and of a rising bourgeoisie which seeks to grab markets and power for itself at the expense of other national bourgeoisies, and therefore they try to ‘organize under their own banner—the banner of a separate national struggle—all the forces of their own nation, and, as far as they are able, they disunite, and make use of, the revolutionary forces of the working masses of the entire people.’

In contrast, the People’s Federative Party set itself the following basic aims: ‘the organization of the working people, in the name of their immediate and long-term interests, against monarchism, nationalism, and parasitic and exploiting classes, against the present constitutional reaction, supported both by the Union and Progress Organization itself and by the separatism of the Constitutional Nationalist Clubs; and the raising of a common Ottoman democratic banner against the banner of national separatism.’ The Declaration states that since the interests of the Bulgarian population coincide with those of all working people, the Party programme has been formulated in such a manner as to consist of demands both applicable and acceptable to all nationalities. ‘While the parties which struggle for national hegemony organize themselves under the banner of national separatism, and endeavour to rally all elements of their own nation against the other nations, the People’s Federative Party bases its organization on internationalism. Its ultimate demands on the national question are none other than the common ultimate demands of democracy: the guaranteeing of the fullest self-expression for every nation in the local community, in the sandjak, the vilayet and the province.’ In spite of the existence of common interests, the Party considered that, in view of the problems posed by differences in language, culture, etc., it should organize itself on a federative basis, with a General Central Buro and Treasury above the national sections. Since the interests both of the Ottoman Empire and the neighbouring states were menaced by the imperialist ambitions of the various Great Powers, the Party also raised the slogan of an Eastern Federation, which would be in a position

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to resist such inroads on their independence. The Declaration ends with the following statement: ‘The People’s Federative Party, which raises a new banner, which is formed in the name of a new political and social outlook, and which has a revolutionary mission in society, can organize itself and grow only in the process of uncompromising struggle with conservative and reactionary social forces and influences.’

The Programme of P.F.P. (Bulgarian Section)—whose first article reads: ‘Supreme power belongs to the people’—closely corresponds to the already familiar platform of the Left vis-à-vis elections, taxation, agrarian reform (now without confiscation of land), etc., but it goes into greater detail than previous statements on local self-government, both in administrative matters and in the exploitation of local natural resources, and it includes some additional proposals. For example, freedom to strike has been added to the other freedoms, such as freedom of conscience, speech, etc. This addition was necessitated by the recent introduction of anti-strike and anti-union legislation. [3] A large section of the Programme is devoted to economic questions, and the proposals include the following: the election of commissions to investigate complaints of improperly appropriated land, with a view to its restoration to its rightful owners; the furnishing of landless peasants with land sufficient to support a family, taken from landowners at property-tax value, and paid for, interest-free, over twenty years; state insurance against damage to crops by hail, drought and other natural disasters; travelling teacher-specialists to popularize technical education, and the introduction of free trade between the Balkan states and Turkey. The Programme calls for free, universal, compulsory primary education lasting six years; primary and secondary education is to be conducted in the pupils’ mother tongue, but the official language (i.e. Turkish) should be taught in secondary schools; each nationality should have its own schools, which would be controlled by councils elected regionally by the nationality in question, and the State Budget for Education should be divided proportionally among the different nationalities. The section on National Health calls for ‘the opening of hospitals in all district centres, and the opening of specialist departments in the regional centres; the placing of all mineral springs under the supervision of the health authorities; an increase in the number of doctors and medical auxiliaries, so that there should be one doctor with the necessary number of auxiliaries per 20,000 inhabitants, with a practice not more than 20 kilometres in radius; school doctors to improve hygiene in schools and the teaching of this subject in schools.’ The section on law includes a call for the abolition of the death penalty; for Justices of the Peace to be elected, and for the provision of free legal aid for the poor. Several articles of the Programme make proposals for labour legislation; hours of work should be reduced, and greatly so in unhealthy and dangerous

3. See Aliev, Opus cit., pp. 169-170.

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industries; there should be a ban on night work and overtime for women and children, no children under 15 should work, and young people between 15 and 18 should have a 6-hour working day; workers should be insured against accidents, illness, etc., at the expense of the State and the master.

The Party Rules offer membership to any Bulgarian who is an Ottoman citizen and over the age of 20, providing he is recommended by two people who are already members. Non-Bulgarians will also be accepted as members until such time as there is a separate section of the Party for the given nationality. Members are expected to be active in propagating the Party’s principles, in winning new members and in circulating the Party’s newspaper and other publications. An interesting detail reflecting the traditional Serres ‘Kulturträger’ policy is that every Party branch is assumed to have a library and to require a librarian as well as a Secretary and a Treasurer.

The Congress also passed a number of resolutions. The first of these dealt in detail with the plight of the chiflik peasants, who, in the words of the resolution, ‘are not only deprived of the right of ownership over the land which they work, land soaked with the blood and sweat of their grandfathers and forefathers, but are also subjected to a regime of unparalleled exploitation and maltreatment, unhindered by any law and recalling the harshest regimes of mediaeval slavery.’ Living in houses which, from the point of view of amenities, ‘cannot be distinguished from the stables and hen-houses of the beys’, these peasants still suffered from all the injustices and indignities that they suffered at the hands of the landowners and their agents before the Hürriyet: forced labour, extortion, excessive taxation, etc. The resolution enumerated the worst evils and made proposals for their elimination. Another resolution dealt with the problem of Turkish refugees from former parts of the Empire. In many districts, these had been settled on land taken from the Bulgarian population. The Congress demanded that such land be returned to its original owners, and that no more be given to new refugees.

A third resolution dealt with the question of schools, and of Bulgarian schools in particular. The question was an extremely important one, since schools were traditionally one of the main channels for nationalist propaganda of various kinds. The Congress called for a complete separation of education from all religious organizations, since, in the opinion of the delegates, the clergy served ‘not the cause of progress and culture, but that of ignorance and darkness’. In the case of the Bulgarian schools, this meant ending the Exarchate’s role in the management and financing of the schools, in the appointment of teachers, inspectors, etc., and the Congress proposed that a national assembly, consisting of three delegates for each district, directly elected by all Bulgarian Ottoman citizens over the age of 20, should meet to work out new rules for the management of schools and to elect a secular council, with a two-year mandate, which

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would give overall leadership to Bulgarian education within the Ottoman Empire. ‘Centralism and bureaucracy’ in the sphere of education were to be abolished, and the rural and urban Bulgarian communities, together with school governors, were to be given wide freedom in running their own local school affairs.

A curious feature of the period around the Congress were the persistent rumours, fed to the Bulgarian Press by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, that Yané was thinking of leaving the P.F.P. to join the Constitutional Clubs, or that he was actively working for a merger between the two organizations. Shortly before the Congress opened, Yané publically denied that he had accepted the Programme of the Constitutional Clubs, and that the Congress would discuss a merger. He said, however, that he was not against a merger, providing that the differences of principle between the two parties could be resolved. [4] Other rumours quoted him as saying that he was the boss of the P.F.P. in Macedonia, and, in this connection, the Congress had asked him for an explanation. According to Dnevnik, ‘Sandansky stated categorically, amid applause from the delegates, that he was in no way a boss, and that he knew nothing about the rumours. He was in favour of a central management body for the Party, but not of a boss as well. Sandansky subsequently declared that he worked as a true democrat, and that he worked as an ordinary member of the Party, in as far as he understood the principles of the Party. The rumours were malicious.’ [5] The rumours, however, continued to circulate even after the Congress, and Yané issued a fresh denial through the columns of Narodna Volya, [6] specifically referring to a report in Radev’s paper Vercbema Poshta that he was about to leave the P.F.P. for the Constitutional Clubs.

The ultimate source of these rumours can only be surmised, but undoubtedly they were intended to discredit Yané in the eyes of his own comrades and to disunite the Left. Misinformation about the Left was also evidently being fed to foreign representatives, since, in a letter to Sir Edward Grey, H.E. Satow (the British acting consul-general in Salonika) reported that Yané could neither read nor write! [7] Not all Bulgarian newspapers were guilty of rumour-mongering of this kind. The Conservative opposition paper Mir took the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency to task for daily peddling what it described as ‘some or other crude lie, intrigue or insinuation’. Mir also criticized the Bulgarian Government for slandering and persecuting the Left, and expressed its approval for the newly-published Programme of the P.F.P.: ‘The programme is of a character which could satisfy the most freedom-loving persons among us, without

4. Dnevnik, 7.VIII.1909.

5. Ibid., 11.VIII.1909.

6. Narodna Volya, 29.VIII.1909.

7. Public Record Office, London. Foreign Office 371.606, pp. 266-267. Letter dated August 30, 1909.

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wounding the feelings of any conscientious and sensible Bulgarian. We would like all Bulgarians to be "people-without-a-fatherland" and "traitors" of this kind.’ [8]

Rumours were not the only weapons used against Yané during that summer of 1909. The reports which Karayovov regularly sent to Dobrovich, head of the Tsar’s secret Cabinet, reveal that both the Court and the leadership of the Constitutional Clubs were still actively trying to bring about Yané’s death. In a report, [9] dated May 4, 1909, and written on the headed note-paper of the Clubs, Karayovov informed Dobrovich that an unnamed former chetnik had arrived in Salonika the previous week, sent by Petko Penchev, and bearing a letter of recommendation to Karayovov and Rumenov. Another chetnik was expected shortly, and the two ‘were charged with the task of following and. . . Sandansky.’ It is not hard to imagine the verb so delicately replaced with dots. The report goes on to explain that ‘the people who have to assist here before and after the job find the plan misbegotten’, firstly, because the chetnik, who is ‘known to them, does not inspire confidence in success, since he has twice deserted from the cheti and surrendered his gun himself,’ and secondly because he has constantly been haunting the Club, and has been seen with people who, ‘for the police, have to stand aside from the job, even if they are directly assisting it. For these reasons, the people here refuse to do the job with the said chetnik’. Nevertheless, Karayovov goes on to say that thought has been given to ‘the job’, and that they have in mind suitable ‘active people’.

On July 9, 1909, Karayovov wrote the following report to Dobrovich, this time on the headed paper of ‘Agence Commerciale de Bulgarie’: ‘In one of my last letters to you, I explained the opinions of the people here on the question of Sandansky, and asked you to give me time. Now I can inform you that the idea adopted is already nearing realization. Sandansky is in Constantinople: there he is being shadowed by a double network of people, who have no contact with each other. It is possible that before this letter reaches you we shall have news of a job completed.’ [10]

The ‘double network’ came nowhere near completing ‘the job’, but, immediately after the Congress of the P.F.P., yet another attempt was made on Yané’s life. On August 14 (old style), he and Stoyu Hadzhiev had supper at the Vardar Restaurant in Salonika, a favourite haunt of the Left, and then set out for their rooms in the Hotel Kolombo. At various times during the evening, both in the streets and in the restaurant, they had been conscious of being watched and followed, and, when they reached a point near the Ottoman Bank, several shots were fired at them from behind. Yané was hit under the left shoulder blade, and the bullet passed close to his heart without, in fact, doing any serious damage, while

8. Mir, 15.VIII.1909.

9. TDIA, f. 3, op. 8, a.e. 1588, pp. 17-19.

10. Ibid., p. 41.

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Stoyu was hit in the thigh. They took a cab to the pharmacy of Dr Tenchev, who had given Yané first aid after the previous attempt on his life and who once again extracted the bullets. Later they both went to the Italian Hospital for proper treatment. Yané and Stoyu were able to identify two of their assailants, Alexander Vasilev and Yordan Velchev, who were both arrested by the Turkish police, and, in January 1910, both were sentenced to life imprisonment. Little information is available about Vasilev, but Velchev appears to have been a dubious character, to say the least. Bulgarian consular and police reports reveal that he was a former medical auxilliary, who, on joining the Army, had embarked upon ‘an extremely debauched and prodigal life’, and had been dismissed from the Service for ‘immoral behaviour’. He had then gone to Skopje, where he had embraced Islam—a step which he evidently regretted, since he had recently presented himself at the Bulgarian Consulate in Salonika, asking to be repatriated, and had been staying in an inn, waiting for his family to send him money. [11]

Velchev, the penniless philanderer, kicking his heels in Salonika, was well cut out to play the role of a hired assassin. As for the question of who hired him, the Left Wing press cast the blame on the Right Wing of the Organization and on the Bulgarian authorities. Hints of royal involvement were made by Left and opposition newspapers in Sofia, as Chaprashikov hastened to inform Ferdinand in a letter in which he also reported that Petko Penchev had announced his withdrawal from Macedonian affairs for the time being and his intention of completing his law studies in Belgium. [12] The retiring Penchev, however, was not accused of the new attempt on Yané’s life and both Kambana [13] and Narodna Volya [14] named Nikola Naumov, the representative of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency in Salonika, and Mihail Chakov, [15] as the organizers of the plot.

Among the Sofia newspapers expressing indignation at the attack on Yané and Stoyu was Dnevnik, which came out with a leading article entitled Enough Blood! Dnevnik itself was not uninfluenced by the slanders against Yané, since it stated that he had spent his whole life as a haramiya and had no education whatsoever! Nevertheless, it declared that there was no justification for the attack and stated: ‘The authors of this business

11. TDIA, f. 334, op. 1, a.e. 326, pp. 10-11, 21-25.

12. TDIA, f. 3, op. 8, a.e. 1436, pp. 13-16. Report from Chaprashikov to Ferdinand, dated 23.VIII.1909.

13. Kambana, 17.VIII.1909.

14. Narodna Volya, 22.VIII.1909.

15. Mihail Chakov—a veteran member of the Organization—denied being in any way involved (see Dnevnik, 18.VIII.1909). He had been arrested on May 9th, 1909 in his native town Gyumendzhe on suspicion of having been involved in the first attempt on Yané’s life, but had escaped to Bulgaria. However, according to Tané Nikolov, at the time of the previous attempt on Yané’s life, Chakov had foiled a plot to murder him in hospital by informing him of Tané’s plan.

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committed a crime against Bulgarian interests and can expect protection from no one.’ [16] Ivan Kolarov, the correspondent of Dnevnik, who interviewed Yané shortly before the attack and visited him in hospital afterwards, prefaced his interview by saying that Yané was generally regarded as a ‘monster’ and that, ‘influenced by the prejudice of his enemies, we also have said, as once the crowds said to Pilate about Christ: Crucify him, crucify him!’ The allusion reveals the journalist’s change of attitude after actually having met the ‘monster’, and his article is objective and even sympathetic. He says, for example, that, at the P.F.P. Congress, Yané expressed ‘wise thoughts, clothed in the logic of practical experience’. [17]

Yané and Stoyu were able to leave hospital on August 21 (old style), completely recovered from their wounds. A week later, an attempt was made on the life of another left-winger, Gerasim Ognyanov, who had been one of the Strumitsa delegates at the Bansko Congress and had also attended the Congress of the P.F.P. Again the shooting occurred near the Hotel Kolombo. Still the Left took no vengeance. Indeed, earlier in the summer, in an interview printed in the Turkish newspaper Ittihad, Yané had spoken out against shooting vendettas, saying: ‘The time for bullets is passed. In a constitutional era there is no need to settle scores with bullets. If I wanted to take my revenge in that manner, I could kill twenty or thirty people.’ [18]

Questioned by Ivan Kolarov of Dnevnik, Yané had denied wanting to kill Tsar Ferdinand: ‘I have risked my head here. I am not afraid of Ferdinand. But I don’t need his life. Never, absolutely never, have I thought of killing him. He is not the evil in Bulgaria. We condemn official Bulgarian policy, which is against the interests of the people. No one desires the physical murder of Ferdinand. We want to kill him morally, and he will see after a time that Bulgarian policy has been mistaken over things in Macedonia.’ [19]

An interesting detail of the interview is Kolarov’s impression of Yané: ‘His thoughts are calm, but his body, weakened by the struggles, betrays a nervousness which may be due to rheumatism.’ [20] Since then, another bullet had added its legacy of pain and weariness. Others in his place might have been tempted to go abroad, to join the Constitutional Clubs, to accept a cushy sinecure. In all probability, Yané never even considered these possibilities, except in derision or jest. Misled by hostile sources, The Times [21] might compare him to Alcibiades, but the comparison was superficial and inept. Yané was no weather-cock politician, but a man wedded to an ideal, a man too proud to buy his life at the price of self-

16. Dnevnik, 18.VIII.1909.     17. Ibid.

18. TDIA, f. 176, op. 2, a.e. 451.

19. Dnevnik, 18.VIII.1909.     20. Ibid.

21. The Times, 18.VIII.1909.

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humiliation. He knew that whatever he did, there would be no forgiveness, and that they would kill him in the end. He preferred to die on his feet. And in the meantime, someone had to help the weak, someone had to stand up for the oppressed chiflik peasants. . .

It is symptomatic of Karayovov’s ‘patriotism’ that, in his letters to the Tsar’s Secret Cabinet, the chiflik peasants figure only in as far as Yané’s agitation on their behalf led him into conflict with the Young Turks, and therefore might possibly undermine his position. [22] In one very revealing report, Karayovov describes a meeting between himself, Rumenov, and a Turkish representative named Asim Bey, who advised the Clubs to follow Yané’s example and to reach an agreement to work with him. Karayovov writes: ‘We objected that if no such agreement had been reached, the reason lay in Yané’s demands, formulated last year, and in his methods of struggle, namely 1) forcible expropriation of big landowners’ property in favour of the peasants, 2) the separation of the Church from the State and the repudiation of Islam as the ruling religion, and 3) revilement of Bulgaria. The first two points undermine the Turkish State as it was created and as it is today.’ [23] Such a statement comes strangely from one who constantly refers to Yané as a ‘pomak’, i.e. a Muslim convert. But then, Karayovov was a master of hypocrisy. The Second Congress of the Constitutional Clubs passed a resolution condemning the attempt on Yané’s life, after Karayovov had done the same in an eloquent speech which, no doubt, made a deep impression on all those delegates who were unaware that their Chairman had spent the summer trying to do precisely what he now so piously condemned. [24]

An accusation that has often been levelled at Yané by his enemies is that he was in the pay of the Turks, the implication being that he was a foreign agent and a traitor to Bulgaria. Those who make such accusations ignore the obvious difference between receiving money from the Turks before the Hürriyet, when the Bulgarian population was engaged in an underground struggle against the Sultan’s government, and after the Hürriyet, when, for a short period at any rate, Bulgarians and Turks worked together as citizens of a common revolutionary state. Even in this new situation, Yané was chary of accepting money from the Turks, except for certain specified purposes, because he had his reservations about the new regime, and because he valued his independence. Chernopeev, on the other hand, had no such doubts, and appears to have accepted funds to finance Edinstvo, [25] while Yané passed over to him money offered by the Turks to the Serres comrades. [26] The evidence for payments of Turkish

22. TDIA, f. 3, op. 8, a.e. 1588, pp. 14-15.     23. Ibid., p. 47.

24. Dnevnik, 23.VIII.1909.

25. TDIA, f. 3, op. 8, a.e. 1308, p. 12. Report by Karayovov to Dobrovich, dated 22.X.1908.

26. Ibid., p. 1. Report by Rumenov to Dobrovich, dated 22.X.1908.

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funds to the Bulgarian Left is vague and consists mainly of hearsay relaid by commercial consuls. [27] There is, however, documentary evidence to show that, from the spring of 1909 both Yané and Chernopeev were refusing to accept money from the Turkish Government. On May 13, 1909, Hilmi Pasha sent a telegram to the Chief Inspector in Salonika, saying: ‘We have been informed that Sandansky and Chernopeev have not been paid their salary for March and April. Do the necessary to pay them from the Extraordinary Credit of the Chief Inspectorate.’ On May 14 1909, the Inspectorate sent the following reply; ‘The salaries of Sandansky and Chernopeev for March and April have not been paid because they have not been asked for. Instructions have been given for them to be paid from the Extraordinary Credit of the Chief Inspectorate.’ [28] A month later, an announcement in Narodna Volya stated that Yané and Chernopeev had declined to accept the money, because it did not figure in the Budget, and they did not know why it was being offered to them. [29]

After the dethronement of Abdul Hamid, the Young Turks had, at last, taken power into their own hands, and had entered the Government. Hilmi Pasha was once again Grand Vizir; the victor, Mahmud Shevket, became Minister for War; Tallat became Minister of the Interior, and Young Turks were placed in other Ministries. The Bulgarian contribution towards the crushing of the counter-revolution was recognized by the appointment of P.F.P. supporters to a number of posts in local government, including two kaimakams (Melnik and Zuhna), several myudyurs (Gorno Brodi, Novo Selo near Strumitsa, Gyumendzhe, Poroi, Kresna, Goreme, Zelenikovo and Sasa), and two members of courts (Kukush and Bitolya). A Montenegrin named Yovo Ivanovich, said to be a former Bulgarian chetnik and now ‘one of Sandansky’s men’, was appointed inspector of Bulgarian and Serbian schools in the Bitolya vilayet. [30] Parliament resumed its sittings in May 1909, and embarked upon a spate of legislation, including moderate amendments to the Constitution, which gave more power to Parliament and less to the Sultan. Some of the legislation, such as the abolition of slavery, was undoubtedly excellent, although most of the laws pertaining to the development of the country were never implemented, owing to lack of funds. Other laws, however, were in practice oppressive. The laws against ‘vagrancy and suspicious persons’, for example, were used against former chetnitsi and voivodi of the

27. TDIA, f. 334, op. 1, a.e. 303, p. 146. Report of Serres consul to Paprikov, 19.XI.1908.

28. Dokumenti iz Turski dŭrzhavni arhivi. IV.1942, p. 284 (edited by Dorev).

29. Narodna Volya, 13.VI.1909.