Mihail Gerdzhikov

Mihail Gerdzhikov
Born	(1877-01-26)January 26, 1877 Plovdiv, Ottoman Empire
Died	March 18, 1947(1947-03-18) (aged 70) Sofia, Bulgaria
Other names	Michel
Spouse(s)	Yanka Kanevcheva.

Mihail Gerdzhikov (Bulgarian language: Михаил Герджиков ) was a Bulgarian revolutionary and anarchist.

He was born in Plovdiv, then in the Ottoman Empire, in 1877. He studied at the French College in Plovdiv, where he received the nickname Michel. As a student in 1893 he started his revolutionary activities as the leader of a Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee (MSRC). Later Gerdzhikov studied in Switzerland (Lausanne and Geneva), where he made close connections with the revolutionary immigration and established the so-called Geneva group, an extension of MSRC.

Gerdzhikov was under strong anarchist influence and rejected the nationalism of the ethnic minorities in the Ottoman Empire, favouring alliances with ordinary Muslim people against the Sultanate and the idea about a Balkan Federation. In 1899 he came back to the Balkans and worked as a teacher in Bitola. Gerdzhikov became a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and a close friend of Gotse Delchev. He was the mastermind and leader of the peasant Preobrazhenie Uprising in July 1903, a revolt against the Ottoman authorities in Thrace. Gerdzhikov's forces, about 2,000 strong and poorly armed, managed to establish a “Strandzha commune”. In 1919 the Federation of Anarchist Communists of Bulgaria (FAKB) was founded at a congress opened by Gerdzhikov. In 1925 he was among the founders of IMRO (United) in Vienna.

Gerdzhikov had invested high hopes in the new Socialist system after 1944, but was soon disappointed by the newly established regime. He died in 1947 in Sofia.

Biography

Portrait of the young Mihail Gerdzhikov from the photo gallery of Georgi Danchov

Gerdzhikov was born in 1877 in Plovdiv as the first child in the family of Ivan Pavlov Gerdzhikov and Magdalen Ilyich. He spent his childhood in Plovdiv, where he discovered the ideas of anarchism. He was strongly influenced by Dr. Rusel Sudzilovski, a personal friend of Hristo Botev, who resided in his home for some time. As a student influenced by left-wing ideas, he created an anarchist group in the Plovdiv High School in 1895, for which he was expelled. At the end of the same year, he connected with Macedonian high school students in the city and, together with his other classmates, followed the revolutionary movement of the Pre-Liberation era, with a strongly anarchist focus.

Mikhail Gerdzhikov's troops during the Ilinden-Transfiguration Uprising

Brothers Michael, Stefan and Nikolay Gerdzhikov, photographer Andrey Andreev, Plovdiv

Mikhail Gerdzhikov's Cheta

Gerdzhikov then went straight to Lausanne and Geneva, where he participated in the so-called Geneva Group. In 1899 he returned to the Bulgarian lands and became a teacher at Bulgarian Classical High School in Bitola and joined IMORO, where Gerdzhikov approached Gotse Delchev. In 1900 he was a delegate to the Zlatitsa Society of the Seventh Macedonian Congress. In 1900 he was sent to the Thessaloniki to assist the activities of the IMORO Central Committee for the establishment of the committee and network in Edirne. When it was discovered by the Ottoman authorities, Gerdzhikov joined Hristo Chernopeev's company. Shortly thereafter, he formed a detachment in the Gevgelija region.

In April 1901 he was a delegate of the Borisov Society to the Eighth Macedonian-Edirne Congress.

In April 1902, at Gerdzhikov's House in Plovdiv, the Plovdiv Congress of the IMRO was held. Since the summer of 1902 he has been managing and organizing the organization in Edirne, assisted by the sub-divisions of Ivan Varnaliev and Hristo Silyanov.

At the Petrova Niva Congress, he was elected a member of the district's leading military unit and was one of the leaders in the preparation and conduct of the Preobrazhenie Uprising. On 19 February 1903, Gerdzhikov led a 25-man squad to make an assassination attempt at the Constantinople-Edirne railway line outside the revolutionary Thracian territory at Küçüksinekli, Silivri Station He participated in the uprising itself, leading a group of 80 people from Kitka Peak to Strandzha an establishing the so-called Strandzha commune. Within a short time, Turkish rule throughout the Strandzha region was abolished except for in Malko Turnovo. Turkish posts along the border were destroyed, and village garrisons were expelled and the entire organizational territory in the area was liberated.

After the defeat of the uprising he dealt with the accommodation of the rebels who withdrew to Bulgaria. He published articles in the Bulgarian and foreign press, appealing to the international community for intervention in the resolution of the Eastern question in the Balkans. Together with Varban Kilifarski he also published various newspapers of their own.

Kyustendil 1902, Baba Dona Kovacheva, Marco Sekulichki, Gotse Delchev, Mikhail Gerdzhikov, Petko Penchev

In 1910, Gerdzhikov, together with Pavel Deliradev, published the booklet War or Revolution, in which he declared himself against war, standing in the positions of the European social democracies.

At the outbreak of the Balkan War in 1912, Gerdzhikov headed the Lozengrad guerrilla unit of the Macedonian-Adrian militia. The unit was formed in Burgas at the end of September 1912 and returned to the Strandzha region on 5 October. Gerdzhikov's unit liberated Vasiliko, Ahtopol, Rezovo and Samokov and established themselves in Midia. In early 1913 the squad was disbanded. Following the outbreak of World War I, Gerdzhikov served in the Forty-third Infantry Regiment.

Social and political activity

The tomb of Mikhail Gerdzhikov in Sofia Central Cemetery

I. In Macedonia and Edirne: Memories of Mikhail Gerdjikov. II. The first IMRO Central Committee: Memories of Dr. Hristo Tatarchev. L. Miletic Announces. Sofia: Materials for the History of the Macedonian Liberation Movement, Published by the Macedonian Science Institute, Book IX, P. Glushkov Printing House. 1927. http://www.strumski.com/books/Mention%20on%20Tatarchev.pdf. 

After the War, he renewed his contacts with the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, but no longer played an active role in it. Mihail Gerdzhikov was one of the founders of the Federation of Anarcho-Communists in Bulgaria (FACB) on June 1919 in Sofia. When the Ninth Revolution was carried out in 1923, he left Bulgaria and lived in emigration - Constantinople, Vienna and Berlin (1924 - 1931). He supported the idea of a split with IMRO, and in 1928 - 1929 together with Georgi Zankov and a group of adherents, they seceded as a national revolutionary wing and formed Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United). Gerdzhikov met in Berlin several times with Georgi Dimitrov. At that time he maintained close links with the Vienna Center of the Comintern and with the BCP's overseas office.

He participated in the Constantinople Conference of the IMRO in 1930 and was a member of the Central Committee as a member of the Foreign Office. But after the conference he did not leave for Berlin, to participate in the Central Committee, but returned to Bulgaria in 1931.

He became a journalist and translator. On the eve and during the Second World War, 1939-1945, due to his advanced age, he was mainly engaged in journalism. He has collaborated on a number of periodicals. Although some of his associates were involved in the resistance movement, Gerdzhikov remained aloof, although he maintained ties with them. Following the September 9 coup, he signed in Sofia "Appeal to Macedonians in Bulgaria". After September 9, 1944, he addressed his comrades from the Macedonian-Adrian movement in the Zarya newspaper with a call to support the struggle and to call for the celebration of the new socialist system. However, he soon retired from active public activity, frustrated by the new rulers of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria. In 1946, he categorically refused to be included in the list of nominees for the award of the Preobrazhenie Uprising. He died on March 18, 1947 in Sofia