Gotse Delchev

Georgi Nikolov Delchev (Bulgarian: Георги Николов Делчев; Macedonian: Ѓорѓи Николов Делчев; 4 February 1872 – 4 May 1903), known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev (Гоце Делчев), was a prominent Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary (komitadji) and one of the most important leaders of what is commonly known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), active in the Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Adrianople regions, as well as in Bulgaria, at the turn of the 20th century. Delchev was IMRO's foreign representative in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria. As such, he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), participating in the work of its governing body. He was killed in a skirmish with an Ottoman unit on the eve of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising.

Born into a Bulgarian family in Kilkis, then in the Salonika vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, in his youth he was inspired by the ideals of earlier Bulgarian revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev, who envisioned the creation of a Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious equality, as part of an imagined Balkan Federation. Delchev completed his secondary education in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki and entered the Military School of His Princely Highness in Sofia, but at the final stage of his study, he was dismissed from it as an alleged socialist. Then he returned to Ottoman Macedonia and worked as a Bulgarian teacher, and immediately became an activist of the newly-found revolutionary movement in 1894.

Although considering himself to be an inheritor of the Bulgarian revolutionary traditions, he opted for Macedonian autonomy. Also for him, like for many Macedonian Bulgarians, originating from an area with mixed population, the idea of being 'Macedonian' acquired the importance of a certain native loyalty, that constructed a specific spirit of "local patriotism" and "multi-ethnic regionalism". He maintained the slogan promoted by William Ewart Gladstone, "Macedonia for the Macedonians", including all different nationalities inhabiting the area. Delchev was also an adherent of incipient socialism. His political agenda became the establishment through revolution of an autonomous Macedono-Adrianople supranational state into the framework of the Ottoman Empire, as a prelude to its incorporation within a future Balkan Federation. Despite having been educated in the spirit of Bulgarian nationalism, he revised the Organization's statute, where the membership was allowed only for Bulgarians. In this way he emphasized the importance of cooperation among all ethnic groups in the territories concerned in order to obtain political autonomy.

Delchev is considered a national hero in Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Because his autonomist ideas have stimulated the subsequent development of Macedonian nationalism, in the latter it is claimed he was an ethnic Macedonian revolutionary. Thus, Delchev's legacy has been disputed between both countries. Nevertheless, some researchers think that behind IMRO's idea of autonomy a reserve plan for eventual incorporation into Bulgaria was hidden. Per some of his contemporaries and Bulgarian academic sources, Delchev supported Macedonia's incorporation into Bulgaria as another option too. Other researchers find the identity of Delchev and other IMRO figures to be open to different interpretations.