Hristo Tatarchev

Hristo Tatarchev (Macedonian and Христо Татарчев; December 16, 1869 – January 5, 1952) was a Bulgarian doctor and revolutionary,   the first leader of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace. He wrote a memoirs called The First Central Committee of the IMRO (1928). Tatarchev authored several political journalism works between the First and Second World War. According to post-WWII Macedonian historiography, he was an ethnic Macedonian.

Tatarchev was born in the town of Resen in Ottoman Macedonia to a rich family. His father Nikola Tatarchev was a successful banker, and his mother Katerina was a descendant of a prominent family. Hristo Tatarchev received his initial education in Resen, then he moved to Eastern Rumelia and studied in Bratsigovo (1882) and eventually at the Secondary school for boys in Plovdiv (1883–87). It was at that time when he participated in the Unification of Bulgaria and enrolled in a students' legion, which took part in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. Tatarchev was expelled from school because of "insubordination" and he moved to Romania, where he continued his secondary education. Later he studied medicine at the University of Zurich (1887–1890) and completed his degree in Medicine in Berlin (July 1892). He moved to Thessaloniki in 1892, where he worked as physician at the local Bulgarian secondary school for boys.

He was a founding member of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee (renamed to IMARO in 1906), which was established on October 23, 1893 in Thessaloniki. In the following year he was elected President of the Central Committee of IMARO. Tatarchev participated in the Thessaloniki Congress of BMARC in 1896.

In early 1901 he was caught by the Ottoman authorities and sent into exile for 5 years in Bodrum Castle in Asia Minor. Although he was granted amnesty on August 19, 1902, Tatarchev did not give up revolutionary fight and in August 1902 he became a representative of the Foreign Committee of the IMRO in Sofia. Being such, he met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Vladimir Lamsdorf (1845–1907), who had arrived in Bulgaria at the end of 1902. Tatarchev presented Lamsdorf with an IMARO-designed plan of reforms to be introduced in Macedonia. Tatarchev and Vladimir Lamsdorf organised a meeting to review the revolutionary ideas which could result in a successful revolt. During the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903, Tatarchev guided the revolutionary fight, as the emigrant representation turned out to be the sole governing body of the organization. To his credit, Tatarchev did not desert the revolutionary campaign when the uprising was quelled. Later he came in conflict with the supporters of Yane Sandanski and did not participate in the activities of the IMRO to the Kyustendil Congress in March 1908, where he was appointed as an adviser to the Foreign Committee of the IMRO. After the Young Turk Revolution he openly supported the Union of the Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs, but did not participate in its activities. In 1910 he was elected a reserve member of the Central Committee of IMRO. When Bulgaria entered the Balkan Wars and the First World War, Tatarchev was sent to the front as a regimental physician. At the end of the wars he was one of the initiators of the Temporary representation of the former IMARO.

In the fall of 1920 he entered the Macedonian Federative Organization. Shortly after that Tatarchev was forced to emigrate in Italy, because of significant discord between then IMRO's leader Todor Alexandrov and him. He lived briefly in his native Resen during the Second World War, when Macedonia was annexed of Bulgaria (1941–1944). Later he returned to Sofia, but in 1943 after the bombings there Tatarchev moved to Nova Zagora. He was offered in 1944 from the Germans to become a President of the Independent State of Macedonia, but he refused, because the Red Army was entering Bulgaria. Bulgaria also ordered its troops to prepare for withdrawal from former Yugoslavia. Because of the communist regime imposed in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia Tatarchev moved to Turin again, where he died on January 5, 1952.

In December 2009, his mortal remains were brought from Turin to Bulgaria by VMRO-BND, a contemporary national political party claiming descent from the IMRO. Tatarchev's reburial took place in Sofia, on October 23, 2010, exactly 117 years since the founding of the IMRO.

Honours
Tatarchev Nunatak on Oscar II Coast in Graham Land, Antarctica is named after Hristo Tatarchev.