ÿþ<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb"> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"> <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=unicode"> <title>M. MacDermott - Yane Sandansky - 17</title> <style> <!-- p.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-autospace:none; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; margin-left:0pt; margin-right:0pt; margin-top:0pt} --> </style> </head> <body> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white" align="left"> <b> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="4">FOR FREEDOM AND PERFECTION. </font></span><i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="4">The Life of Yané Sandansky</font></span></i></b><font size="4"><br> <b>Mercia MacDermott </b></span></font> </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black; font-weight: 700"> 17. LEFT WING, RIGHT WING</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> The rift between Left and Right was now complete. The real reasons for this state of affairs went much deeper than the actual murders, which were, in fact, a consequence rather than a cause. The real reasons become plain only when the Organization is viewed not in isolation, but in the context of the political and economic processes then at work in the Bulgarian Principality and elsewhere, and when the Serres Left is seen as a part of the general Bulgarian Left.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> In the Principality, the first decade of the Twentieth Century was characterized by a rapid acceleration in the development of capitalism. All the necessary pre-requisites were at hand: a considerable accumulation of capital available for investment; suitable raw materials, such as wool, cotton, tobacco, coal, wood and grain, and a potential labour force composed of ruined peasants and craftsmen. Political power was in the hands of parties representing a section of the rising industrial bourgeoisie, who passed protectionist and other legislation to suit their own interests. This boom in the development of capitalism in Bulgaria coincided with the transition, on the part of world capitalism, to its higher stage of imperialism, characterized by the creation of monopolies, by the export of capital and by the division of the world between the leading industrial powers. Foreign capital entered the Bulgarian Principality mainly in the form of loans, the interest on which absorbed almost a quarter of the State budget. Many of the largest banks and insurance companies in the Principality were wholly or partly financed by foreign capital. It was not in the interests of the imperialist powers that Bulgaria should become a maching-building country and, therefore, in spite of the rapid development of capitalism, she remained a predominantly agrarian country, with light industry turning out food products, textiles, vegetable oils, matches, skins, etc.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Though still relatively weak and under-developed, the Bulgarian bourgeoisie was a rapidly growing class which needed room in which to expand its economic activity. For this class, the liberation of Macedonia was not purely and simply a matter of righting a crying wrong, and of restoring the unity of the Bulgarian people. In the minds of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie, side by side with humanitarian and patriotic motives, there existed a desire to dominate and exploit an area wider than the limited territory of the Principality. In all the neighbouring states, the bourgeoisie</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">293</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> was inspired by similar ambitions vis-à-vis Macedonia without, of course, having any real claim to the area on ethnic grounds. Ignoring the fact that these rival ambitions must ultimately bring their plans to nought, the Bulgarian bourgeoisie continued to pursue the  national ideal of reuniting the  entire Bulgarian&quot; people . From 1905 onwards, there was a marked deterioration in Bulgaria s relations with Turkey, and the latter, convinced of her neighbour s warlike intentions, began to make discreet inquiries to other nations as to their possible reaction to a future conflict between herself and Bulgaria.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Behind the ambitious bourgeoisie stood the ambitious Prince, whose dreams of imperial splendour went beyond the frontiers of San Stefano. The French diplomat, Maurice Paleologue, has described the curious prelude to an audience with the Prince in February 1908, when he was kept waiting for ten minutes in a small room containing a painting which, on examination, the Frenchman discovered to have been recently executed:  I quickly understood why he kept me waiting, why he had made me spend several minutes of enforced solitude in contemplation of the picture. Painted in a rather naive manner with bright colours, it showed the Bosphorus, Constantinople, Saint Sophia, the Great Wall, the Golden Horn, the Asian shore. High above this panorama, in the glow of an apocalyptic sky, the painter had depicted the victorious gallop of a splendid horseman, Tsar Ferdinand! No doubt about it, this crude painting was intended as the symbolic prelude to the interview to which I had been invited. <a href="#1.">[1]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> During the same year, 1908, Ferdinand treated Paleologue, who was thought by some to be a collateral descendant of the last Byzantine Emperor, to an account of the royal visit to Constantinople in 1886. Ferdinand had asked to be permitted to enter Saint Sophia alone, and had used the opportunity to search for the slab of porphyry which marked the place where the Byzantine autocrats had stood during religious services. He had pushed back a mat and disclosed  the slab of porphyry on which the Basileus Justinian planted his feet, shod in the imperial purple. And I, too, I, too, set my feet on the slab of porphyry! <a href="#2.">[2]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> The autonomy which the Internal Organization advocated might go a long way towards solving the problems of the peasantry in Macedonia and Thrace, but, obviously, it could satisfy neither the economic aspirations of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie, nor the imperial dreams of the Court. Hence their preference for Supremism in all its forms. Ferdinand and his Government needed a Macedonian Organization which would gear its activities to their needs and current policies, and they were prepared to pay handsomely</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="1."><font size="2">1.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Stephan Constant, <i>Foxy Ferdinand-Tsar of Bulgaria, </i>London, 1979, p. 216. See also Hans Roger Madol, <i>Ferdinand of Bulgaria, </i>London, 1933, p. 115. Here the translation from the French is slightly different.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="2."><font size="2">2.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Maurice Paleologue, <i>The Tragic Empress</i> Intimate Conversations with the Empress Eugenie, London, 1928, pp. 175-6.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">294</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> for such co-operation.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> It was not only the Left Wing of the Internal Organization that was in conflict with the rulers of the Bulgarian Principality. The Bulgarian working class, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and a large part of the intelligentsia all found themselves in the same position. Having won the General Election held in October 1903 by dint of gerrymandering and outright intimidation of the electorate, the ruling  Stambolovist National-Liberal Party proceeded to govern with a similar disregard for democracy and the public weal which earned them the hatred and contempt of most ordinary, decent-minded citizens. At the time of the Ilinden Uprising, the Bulgarian Army had not been in a fit state to embark upon a war with Turkey, but the Government was now making good the deficiency with a massive programme for the expansion and re-equipment of the armed forces. This involved large-scale purchases from abroad, in the course of which numerous Government supporters, and even ministers, engaged in profiteering to their own advantage, while the mass of the people paid through the nose. Indirect taxation, which inevitably falls heaviest on the poorest, more or less doubled in the period 1903-1907.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Labour relations were still in the <i>laissez-faire </i>stage, and, until 1905, Bulgaria had no factory legislation whatsoever. Wages were low, especially for women and children; conditions were frightful; the working day was on average 11-12 hours; sick-pay, pensions, holidays and other amenities were non-existent. The first decade of the Twentieth Century was, therefore, a period of numerous strikes and ever-intensifying class struggles, in which the working class rapidly grew in strength and militancy, under the leadership of the Bulgarian Workers Social-Democratic Party (Narrow Socialists) <a href="#3.">[3]</a> a solidly Marxist revolutionary organization, which, in 1904, created the Bulgarian equivalent of the Trade Union Congress.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> The Party of the Narrow Socialists was already a force to be reckoned with, not only on the industrial front, but also in Bulgarian political life. Dimitmr Blagoev and five other Narrow Socialists had been elected to the National Assembly as early as 1899. In 1902, seven of the Party s parliamentary candidates were successful, and it was largely due to their constant agitation that the Factory Law of 1905 was introduced. In 1910, the Party was to win the municipal elections in Samokov; the Red Flag flew over the Town Hall, and, until February 1912, when the enraged bourgeois opposition succeeded in putting an end to the  Samokov Commune , the Narrow</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="3."><font size="2">3. </font></a></b><font size="2">Apart from the BWSDP (NS) there were other less influential, Socialist groupings (Broad Socialists,  Progressists , etc.) whose main differences with the BWSDP (NS) consisted in their readiness to co-operate on a give-and-take basis with petty-bourgeois organizations, their rejection of strict Party discipline, and their belief that Trade Unions should be politically neutral, all of which the Narrow Socialists regarded as opportunism. Many of their members had originally been members of the BWSDP (NS), but had come to disagree with its totally uncompromising attitude to certain problems, and either resigned or were expelled. A number of these Socialists eventually rejoined the Narrow Socialists.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">295</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Socialist councillors brought in a number of progressive measures based on the decisions of the Party s Fifteenth Congress (1908): local taxes were based on income; kindergartens, orphanages, and cheap canteens for needy children were opened; free medical advice and medicines were made available to poorer citizens; municipal workers were granted an eight-hour day, and measures were taken to deal with speculators and profiteers. In the sphere of foreign affairs, the Narrow Socialists opposed the growing militarism displayed by the Bulgarian bourgeoisie, rejected the idea of reuniting Macedonia and Thrace with the Principality by means of war with Turkey, and advocated a strengthening of the internal revolutionary and democratic forces in the two provinces, with the ultimate aim of their becoming constituent republics in a Balkan Federation, i.e. a standpoint which coincided with the traditional thinking of the Internal Organization.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Not only were the policies of the Prince s ministers heartily condemned in many quarters throughout the Principality, but Ferdinand himself was far from popular owing to his excessive personal interference in public affairs. On January 3, 1907, on the occasion of the opening of the National Theatre in Sofia, he was actually booed by crowds of students and striking railway workers. The Government retaliated by arresting large numbers of students, most of whom were either conscripted into the Army, or sent to the provinces. When the professors protested against this over-reaction on the part of the Government, the latter closed the University and sacked the professors.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> All these events were taking place against the background of the epic revolutionary struggles in Russia, which began with the massacre of  Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg on January 9/22, 1905, reached their zenith with the nine-days armed uprising in Moscow during December 1905, and continued in various forms and places until 1907. Aimed at the abolition of Tsarism, the creation of a democratic republic, and the introduction of land reforms and an eight-hour working day, these struggles aroused enormous interest and sympathy in Bulgaria, a country where public opinion was traditionally Russophil, and where some of the slogans raised struck chords of topicality. While the parties of the governing bourgeoisie condemned the revolution in Russia, the workers and progressive intelligentsia greeted it with joy and did whatever they could to help by assisting Russian revolutionaries to buy arms in Bulgaria, putting pressure on the Government not to deport political refugees who sought sanctuary in Bulgaria, and sheltering sailors from the Battleship Potemkin who, under sentence of death for mutiny, managed to escape to Burgas.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> The <i>Serchani </i>must, therefore, be seen, not as a refractory,  anti-Bulgarian fragment of the Macedonian movement, but as one of the many sections of Bulgarian society which loved Bulgaria but opposed her policies, which were in conflict with the monarchy and the bourgeoisie, which read Socialist literature, sang the songs of the Russian Revolution and support-</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">296</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> ed the struggles of the Russian people, which they identified with their own. <a href="#4.">[4]</a> Their conflict with the Right Wing, including the ultimate rift between the two groups, must likewise be seen as being in essence one of the many manifestations of the sharpening class struggle in Bulgaria and elsewhere. This becomes increasingly clear when one examines the reaction in various quarters to the murder of Garvanov and Sarafov. Many opposition papers gave less space to the actual murders than to the ensuing mass arrests especially that of Anton Strashimirov, which provoked widespread public indignation. Columns of newsprint were devoted to scathing criticism of government policy both at home and vis-à-vis Macedonia, and there was a general consensus of opinion that the monarchy and the ruling National Liberals had been using the Right Wing of the Organization for their own partisan purposes, and that the murders were the result of their unwarranted interference in the affairs of the Internal Organization.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"><i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Rabotnichesky Vestnik (Workers Paper), </span></i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> organ of the Narrow Socialists, reported the actual murders in five and a half lines, on the back page, without expression of regret or condemnation. <a href="#5.">[5]</a> In an editorial published a few days later, the paper described the murders as being  the fruit of interference on the part of the ruling bourgeoisie in the struggles of the Macedonian Organization , and it went on to accuse the ruling bourgeoisie of making the Macedonian question the pretext for its militaristic policies, and of exploiting it  not for the liberation of Macedonia, but for the suppression of freedom here, and for the achievement of its own ends . <a href="#6.">[6]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> A paper of a very different colour <i>Bulgaria, </i>organ of the Progressive Liberal Party also reported the murders without much detail, and then proceeded to lay the blame on the Government:  The murders bear witness to the total degeneration of the<i> cheti </i>and the policy associated with them, which the present rulers pursue for entirely selfish purposes. This policy has rendered the situation in Macedonia appalling: it is the most loyal ally of Turkish power. For years on end, our rulers have played with fire in order to maintain, perhaps unconsciously, anarchy over there, while oppressing and pillaging here, under the banner of false patriotism; this policy has been chiefly instrumental in encouraging covetousness on the</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="4."><font size="2">4.</font></a></b><font size="2"> In its first number after resuming publication in September 1906, <i> Revolyutsionen List </i>carried an article about the terrible conditions in Russia and the heroism of her revolutionaries. Maxim Gorki a great hero in Bulgaria is mentioned as likely to become a minister in a future Provisional Government in the event of victory. The article goes on:  We shall be giving a constant chronicle of the events in Russia, from which the Macedonian revolutionary may draw valuable lessons, for he, too, like the Russian revolutionary, has to fight against a similar despotism, namely that of Turkey.&quot; <i>(Revolyutsionen List, </i>10.IX.1906.) Subsequent articles included a statement by Maxim Gorki criticizing France for not supporting the Russian Revolution, and the speech made in court by Zinaida Konoplyankova, who shot the general responsible for repressing the December Rising in Moscow.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="5."><font size="2">5.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Rabotnichesky Vestnik, </i>4.XII.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="6."><font size="2">6.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Ibid., 8.XII.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">297</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> part of our enemies, and, second only to the Turkish regime in Macedonia, has inflicted the heaviest blows against our national cause. This policy, born in original sin, was, and still is, dangerous and disastrous. . . In its hands (those of the Government M.M.) the Macedonian question was merely a means for thieving and exercising power. <a href="#7.">[7]</a> The paper also declared that, if Panitsa was guilty of perfidy, so also was the Government in closing the University and in its other repressive actions.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Other papers which castigated the Government, rather than the instigators of the murders, were <i>Proletariy</i>, <a href="#8.">[8]</a> <i>Kambana</i>, <a href="#9.">[9]</a> <i>Grazhdanin</i>, <a href="#10.">[10]</a> <i>Pryaporets</i>, <a href="#11.">[11]</a> <i>and Mir</i>. <a href="#12.">[12]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Anyone who glances through the newspapers of the period cannot but be struck by the scant sympathy expressed for Sarafov, despite the tragic circumstances of his death. <i>Pryaporets, </i>for example, gave him an obituary of only thirteen lines, while Garvanov received a column and a half. A similar disproportion occurs in <i>Mir, </i>which devoted a whole column to the praise of Garvanov s modesty, integrity, diligence, etc., but accorded Sarafov what must be the shortest, most ungracious obituary on record:  Sarafov s biography is known. <a href="#13.">[13]</a> What rankled with the editorial board of <i>Mir </i>was not so much the efforts of the Government to use Sarafov as a means of gaining control of the Organization for its own ends, as the unbecoming role played by Sarafov and some of his brother officers in connection with the General Election of October 1903. In order to ensure its own re-election, the governing National Liberal Party had arrested opposition candidates and leaders, and had employed gangs of thugs, including <i>haramii </i>in rebel uniforms, and Supremist officers, to terrorize the voters in many towns and villages. Complaints about these gangs were widely voiced in the Press and at sessions of the new National</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="7."><font size="2">7.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Bulgaria, </i>4.XII.1907. By<i> cheti, </i>the paper means those sent from the Principality.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="8."><font size="2">8.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Proletariy (Proletarian) </i>was the organ of a left-wing group whose members had originally been in the Narrow Socialist Party, but had left in 1905, and were dubbed  anarcho-liberals by their former comrades. The group included such people as Nikola Harlakov, Georgi Bakalov, Mihail Kantardzhiev, and Pavel Deliradev, most of who eventually rejoined the Narrow Socialists.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="9."><font size="2">9.</font></a></b><font size="2"> The contributors to <i>Kambana (Bell) </i>tended to be Broad Socialists. Its outspoken criticism of the Prince frequently brought it into collision with the censor and the police, who would confiscate the offending numbers.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="10."><font size="2">10.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Grazhdanin (Citizen) </i>was a newspaper founded by the sacked University professors as part of their campaign against the personal regime of Ferdinand and government interference in academic freedom.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="11."><font size="2">11.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Pryaporets (Banner) </i>was the organ of the Democratic Party, which had originally reflected the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, but which was increasingly becoming the party of that section of the big industrial bourgeoisie which was Russophil in sentiment, and was linked with British and French capital, rather than German and Austrian.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="12."><font size="2">12.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Mir (Peace) </i>was the organ of the Narodna Party, which was conservative in sentiment and represented the interests of the Russophil big bourgeoisie.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="13."><font size="2">13.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Mir</i>, 30.XI.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">298</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Assembly. <a href="#14.">[14]</a> All this was, of course, common knowledge, and had even impressed itself upon foreign journalists, such as the American, Frederick Moore, who commented:  A political party which had gained the election largely by intimidation at the polls used Sarafov s aid to maintain its power. <a href="#15.">[15]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Garvanov had been in a Turkish prison at the time of the 1903 election and was therefore not associated in the public mind with political coercion. Even within right-wing Macedonian circles, Garvanov and Sarafov were not equally admired. Each of them had his own separate following, and the obituary of Sarafov printed in <i>Ilinden</i> a newly-founded organ of the Right Wing was so moderate in tone and so candid in its assessment of the deceased that it appears to have been written by a supporter of Garvanov! It reads in part:  A passionate, ardent personality, whose enthusiasms, feelings and impulses knew no bounds; a lively, rapid imagination, which often accepted dreams as reality. . . This restless temperament of his and this romantic s enthusiasm often made him swing from one extreme to the other, and to do things which, later, in quiet moments, his common-sense may have regretted. The paper also spoke of his  cocksureness and  reckless determination , his gestures of  theatrical conceit , and his tendency to be carried away when making speeches. <a href="#16.">[16]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> The only papers to lavish unqualified praise upon Sarafov were, predictably enough under the circumstances, <i>Nov Vek (New Century), </i>the organ of the governing National Liberals, and <i>Vecherna Poshta (Evening Post), </i>which tended to be pro-Supremist and anti-Socialist, and was one of the first Bulgarian papers to adopt the sensational style of the Western  yellow press .</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"><i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Nov Vek </span></i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> gave its readers few facts, but much rhetoric and many extravagant expressions of sorrow. Panitsa was compared to Judas, and the murders were said to have  dealt a mortal blow to the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia . <a href="#17.">[17]</a> Apart from defending the arrest of Strashimirov, so universally condemned by the rest of the Press as an assault on Parliamentary democracy, and declaring that the Macedonian problem should be left in the hands of the Bulgarian Goverrment, and not in those of</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="14."><font size="2">14.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Mir, </i>for example, specifically names Lt Sotir Atanasov (whom Sarafov later sent to stir up trouble in the Serres Region) as the leader of a pro-Government gang in Novoseltsi. (<i>Mir, </i>16.X.1903.) In his memoirs, a contemporary, K.D. Spisarevsky, mentions the use made by Radoslavov s Liberals of Sarafov s  gangs during the elections. See BIA NBKM, f. 626, a.e. 106, pp. 50-52.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="15."><font size="2">15.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Frederick Moore, <i>The Macedonian Committees and the Insurrection, </i> article in <i>The Balkan Question, </i>edited by Luigi Villari, London, 1905.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="16."><font size="2">16.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Ilinden, </i>1.XII.1907. This is not the only sign that even some adherents of the Right Wing had reservations about Sarafov. Penchev, for example, admitted that Sarafov had displayed certain tendencies which served to justify the displeasure of Sandansky <i>(Ilinden, </i>18.XII.1907) and that he had been indulging in activity of a kind that set the whole Organization against him <i>(Ilinden, </i>12.I.1908).</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="17."><font size="2">17.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Nov Vek, </i>30.XI.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">299</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> sundry  figures and  workers , <a href="#18.">[18]</a> <i>Nov Vek </i>printed little about the murders and their repercussions.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"><i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Vecherna Poshta </span></i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> gave both men obituaries of just over a column each, although it clearly preferred Sarafov, whose portrait adorned the front page and who was said to be  a national hero ,  the personification of the revolutionary movement , and  the idol of the Macedonian slave . <a href="#19.">[19]</a> In the days and weeks that followed the murders, <i>Vecherna Poshta </i>supplied its readers with the full details both true and not so true about the scene of the crime, the autopsy, the funeral, the course of police investigations, the conjectured whereabouts of Panitsa, and other current facts and rumours. The organic relationship of the Macedonian organisations with Bulgarian politics in general was further accentuated when <i> Vecherna Poshta, </i>which was known for its anti-working-class sentiments, blamed the murders not only on Yané, but also on unspecified Socialists and anarchists, thus provoking indignant protests from <i>Rabotnichesky Vestnik</i>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> One of the most interesting commentaries on Sarafov and the political struggles within the Organization comes from the American journalist, Albert Sonnichsen, who spent several months in Macedonia during 1906. His criticism of the Right Wing, and of Sarafov, in particular, gains in significance when one bears in mind that, unlike his colleague, A.D.J. Smith, he spent those months, not with the <i>Serchani, </i>but mainly in the Bitolya Region, i.e. in a right-wing stronghold. Sonnichsen saw both the positive and the negative in Sarafov, describing him as  fairly well educated, of brilliant wit and magnetic personality , <a href="#20.">[20]</a> and commented:  Had he not been corrupted by ambitious Prince Ferdinand, it is probable that his undoubted ability and energy would have gained him an honourable place in Macedonia s history. <a href="#21.">[21]</a> Sonnichsen has no hesitation in naming Ferdinand as  Sarafov s master , <a href="#22.">[22]</a> or in blaming Sarafov for the introduction of  partisan broils into the Organization . <a href="#23.">[23]</a> He describes in some detail how Sarafov attempted to  gather the power of the underground republic into his own hands , <a href="#24.">[24]</a> using his magnetic personality to win  the blind admiration and loyal support of those youthful chiefs whose minds were of that type which follows only personal leadership, not yet broad enough to grasp an abstract idea and make that their guide to action. <a href="#25.">[25]</a> Where charm failed, cash succeeded:  Against him he had the brainiest and the most clear-sighted individuals, but behind him were the ignorant masses, and all those whom money could buy, for he was as adept in</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="18."><font size="2">18. </font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Nov Vek, </i>3/16.XII.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="19."><font size="2">19.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Vecherna Poshta, </i>30.XI.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="20."><font size="2">20.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Sonnichsen, p. 103.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="21."><font size="2">21.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Ibid., p. 223.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b><a name="22.">22.</a></b> Ibid., p. 222.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b> <a name="23.">23.</a></b> Ibid., p. 94.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="24."><font size="2">24.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Ibid., p. 109.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b><a name="25.">25.</a></b> Ibid., p. 107.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">300</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> bribery as a Tammany politician. This campaign of corruption Prince Ferdinand financed. I know of none of my friends in the Organization, of any influence, who have not been approached by Sarafov or his agents at some time or other. <a href="#26.">[26]</a> Sonnichsen concludes:  This much is due Sarafov. His means were unscrupulous, but his end may not have been entirely selfish. Quite possibly his visions included a re-established Bulgar Empire, ruled over by a German Prince, hateful to all Bulgars, but still a Bulgar Tsar. No one doubts that he saw himself looming up definitely behind the imperial throne. To realize the bitterness of the opposition against him, it must be understood that the Bulgarian temperament is by nature democratic, to which imperialism is hateful; a temperament which takes more naturally to Socialism. Most of Sarafov s opponents were indeed Socialists, and recognized in him only the creature of Prince Ferdinand. <a href="#27.">[27]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Of Yané, Sonnichsen had this to say:  I often regret that I did not make the short detour necessary to meet Sandansky in Razlog. I feel that his was the leading mind. He it was who ended the last of Prince Ferdinand s intrigues in Macedonia by removing Sarafov from the field of activity. He and Chernopeev are the leaders of the Socialist wing in Macedonia, who would have substituted economic action for armed force. <a href="#28.">[28]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> After <i>Kambana </i>had published the <i>Open Letter, </i>and an appeal to the other side to offer <i>facts </i>in answer to the Serres accusations against the Right Wing, the paper dropped all criticism of the <i>Serchani, </i>and published an editorial which began thus:  It would be pointless to wait to hear from those affected by the letter of Sandansky and his comrades, to expect them to come out with an honest, open word of explanation. No the only word on their lips is the information of little significance under the circumstances that the authors of the letter are <i>cut-throats</i> . <i>Kambana </i>ironically agreed that they <i>were </i>cut-throats:  If they had not been cut-throats under the present conditions in Turkey and with the present attitude of the Bulgarian governments towards them, they would have been obliged either to lay their heads meekly under the executioner s chopper, or to shut themselves up in a monastery. If they had been less patriotic, and if they had had the impertinence to weep for their enslaved brothers from the corner of some office, as clerks well paid by the Bulgarian State, they would have come here to become top civil-servants, to be sent on paid business trips, to become, at least, diplomatic agents and secretaries. At worst, they could have become entrepreneurs and chairmen of Macedonian-Adrianople Charitable Brotherhoods. The paper pointed out that the great revolutionary heroes of the past, including Levsky and Botev, had also been called  cut-throats by the rich Bulgarian <i>chorbadzhii </i>who betrayed them to the Turks. <i>Kambana </i>continued:  Today Sandansky is a cut-throat, and so are his comrades, because they are organizing a free</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="26."><font size="2">26. </font></a></b><font size="2">Ibid., p. 109.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="27."><font size="2">27.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Sonnichsen, p. 110.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="28."><font size="2">28.</font></a></b><font size="2"> Ibid., pp. 266-267.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">301</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> and new Macedonia, and are hunting down and killing traitors and <i>haramiya </i> bandits, whose only desire is loot from the Macedonian villages and the Bulgarian State Treasury. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black">  If, this autumn, when he was in Sofia, Sandansky had agreed to visit the Minister for Foreign Affairs, as the latter several times invited him to do, so that he could come to terms, i.e. take money and ensure a good life for himself, here and along the frontier, in the pleasant western and eastern places oh! then he would not have been a cut-throat, but a patriot and worthy of honour and respect. But now, since he prefers a life of privation, exiled from the official world, a life of toil aimed at bringing the slave to his senses and preparing him for freedom, now he is for the Bulgarian patented patriots only an ex-sergeant-major, good for nothing except a bullet and the gallows. . .</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black">  The citizens of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Government have left their foreign policy in irresponsible hands. At Macedonia s expense, a personal majesty is being inflated; at the expense of Macedonian freedom, sons of Macedonia and Bulgarian patriots are building palaces and piling up wealth; in the name of Macedonian freedom, <i>haramiya cheti </i>are fixing elections and blackmailing people. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Referring to the <i>Serchani </i>as a  handful of brave, self-sacrificing people , who  are revolted by this trafficking with the Macedonian cause&quot;, people who have not sold their consciences or become servile mercenaries, <i> Kambana </i>concludes:  they desire to organize the slave for conscious struggle against political and economic oppression; they seek to win the confidence of the slave; they rely solely on his trust. They are harsh and cruel, perhaps. Yes such they are against the despot and the foe. But to their own people they are dear. <a href="#29.">[29]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> One of the papers which made violent personal attacks on Yané was <i>Vecherna Poshta, </i>whose editor-in-chief, Simeon Radev, described him as  a terrorist of internationalism , and proceeded to berate him for his alleged  spiritual poverty, and inability to rise to any ideological concept of any kind . According to Radev, Yané was a bandit pure and simple, totally lacking in policy, or doctrines, who opposed a rising in Macedonia because it would put an end to his banditry. <a href="#30.">[30]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Not all of those who disapproved of Yané agreed that he was lacking in ideology. On the contrary, some of them considered that his sin lay in too much ideology, rather than in too little. The newspaper <i>Den, </i>for example, referred to the Serres Left as  fanatical sectarians , <a href="#31.">[31]</a> while <i>Ilinden, </i>the organ of the Right Wing of the Organization, more than once accused Yané of being a Socialist, although Petko Penchev, who</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="29."><font size="2">29.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Kambana, </i>20.II.1908.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="30."><font size="2">30.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Vecherna Poshta, </i>16.XII.1907. Simeon Radev had edited <i>L Effort, </i>a paper published in Paris during the period of Sarafov s chairmanship of the Supreme Committee.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="31."><font size="2">31.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Den. </i>Quoted in <i>Ilinden, </i>5.XII.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> &nbsp;</span><img border="0" src="line_down.gif" width="596" height="18"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <font size="2">302</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> was singularly inconsistent in his allegations, did sandwich an article accusing Yané and his followers of being unable to define their ideology between other articles complaining of his Socialism!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"><i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Ilinden </span></i> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> commenced publication just before the murder of Garvanov and Sarafov, at a time when the chief sensation of the day was the engagement of Prince Ferdinand to Eleonore Reuss Köstritz. The tasks of the newspaper were stated in the first number as being:  bringing influence to bear for a common supra-party Macedonian policy; support for the Internal Revolutionary Organization; propaganda against propaganda against a war with Turkey; the enlightenment of public opinion on matters in Macedonia and the Adrianople Region. <a href="#32.">[32]</a> The paper s support for a future war with Turkey undoubtedly placed it among the supporters of the Government s foreign policy. According to <i>Grazhdanin</i>, <a href="#33.">[33]</a> <i>Ilinden </i> was actually being financed by the Government; <i>Proletariy</i> <a href="#34.">[34]</a> <i>&nbsp;</i>also alleged that the Right Wing group enjoyed extensive material and moral Government support.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Much of the material published in <i>Ilinden </i>consisted of attacks on the <i> Serchani </i>and on those Bulgarian newspapers, such as <i>Proletariy, Kambana </i>and <i>Grazhdanin, </i>which, in general, supported them. One of the chief contributors was Petko Penchev, who early on made yet another ideological right-about-turn. Having argued throughout 1906, in <i>Makedono-Odrinsky Pregled, Revolyutsia, Revolyutsionen List, </i>and in his own pamphlet, that the Organization had never been, and could never be, international, and that the internationalism of the <i>Serchani </i>represented something  new and unacceptable, he now came out with an article saying quite correctly that internationalism had always been in the Statute of the Organization, and that the so-called Series  new was not in fact new, and that there was more internationalism in the Bitolya Region than in the Serres Region! <a href="#35.">[35]</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> Penchev, however, had found other sticks with which to beat the <i>Serchani. </i> He attacked the latters cultural policy, which he said was the same as that of the Exarchate, except that Yané used a sword instead of a cross, and he also ridiculed their economic policy, including their plans for the formation of credit societies, the opening of chemists shops, the improvement of sanitation, roads, etc. all of which he scornfully labelled  fantasies which can exist only in the imagination of blind dogmatics . He went on to make the following astonishing attack:  Sandansky s Quixotic cultural activity also manifests itself in his ideas about the economic tasks of the Organization. Sandansky wishes to achieve in his region little short of the full economic equality of modern Socialism. In the name of</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="32."><font size="2">32. </font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Ilinden, </i>27.XI.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; color: black"> <b><a name="33."><font size="2">33.</font></a></b><font size="2"> <i>Grazhdanin, </i>12.XII.1907.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white"> <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></span></p> <p class="