Sarafov, Boris

Sarafov family

His father, Peter Sarafov, was a Macedonian teacher who founded the Enlightenment teacher friendship in 1873. Uncle Kosta Sarafov and Boris’s grandfather, Archimandrite Khariton Karpuzov, were the leaders of the struggle for the independence of the national church in Macedonia (which the Istanbul fanariotic clergy “crushed” in 1766). In 1872, when Boris Sarafov was a one-year-old baby, the cause of Bulgarian autocephaly (in the rank of exarchate ) triumphed thanks to the energetic assistance of the Russian ambassador to Constantinople N.P. Ignatiev . And in the Macedonian Ohrid , the metropolis was revived, which was led by Nathanael (Boykikev) . In 1873, Metropolitan Nathanael published a fundamental historical and legal work in Constantinople, “For Justinian's rights to the Archbishopric of Ohrid or for the independence and autonomy of the Ohrid-Bulgarian clergy.”

On March 5, 1873, Peter Sarafov founded the first Macedonian school in the Macedonian city of Melnik . The school was located in the house of the priest-exarchist Atanas Pavlov, he was visited by children both from Melnik himself and from the surrounding villages. Being slandered by pro-Phanariotic Greeks before the Turkish authorities, Pyotr Sarafov, not having time to complete the school year, was forced to leave Melnik ^[2] and return to Libyakhovo .

Hero's Youth

Contrary to the wishes of the Macedonian people and the diplomatic efforts of N.P. Ignatieff , the Berlin congress convened in 1878 left Macedonia as part of the Ottoman Empire . And Boris Sarafov grew up under the Turkish yoke. In 1885, Peter Sarafov and archimandrite Khariton Karpuzov were arrested by the Ottoman authorities on charges of revolutionary activity. Soon, Peter Sarafov and Karpuzov were sentenced to 16 years imprisonment in Asia Minor. At first they were serving their sentences in Smyrna , and then in the city of Karaman . In 1887, they managed to escape through Istanbul to Odessa , and then move to Sofia. There, Peter Sarafov entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a translator.

Boris Sarafov first studied at the Libyakhov Exarchist School, and then - at the Solunsky Bulgarian male gymnasium . Here he joined the national revolutionary circle, where he met Gotse Delchev , Dame Gruev and Gorcha Petrov. In 1890, Sarafov graduated from high school and in the same year he moved to his father in Sofia and entered the military cadet at the Military School in the Bulgarian capital. He graduated in 1893 with the rank of second lieutenant and on August 2, 1893 was assigned to the 15th Infantry Regiment in Belogradchik . A group of Macedonian officers is organized there, including Sarafov, Hristo Chernopeev , Tanya Nikolov , Tom Davidov and Bobi Stoychev.

In 1895, Boris Sarafov was transferred to the 1st Infantry Regiment in Sofia with the rank of lieutenant.

Baptism of fire and further career

On July 12, 1895, the Sarafov couple , numbering about 70 rebels, attacked the city of Melnik , where his father had once worked. For some time, the Sarafts captured Melnik and released the prisoners of the city prison. This event received a loud response in the European press, and entered the Macedonian historiography as the Melnichsky Uprising.

After the uprising, Sarafov entered the Nikolaev Military Academy in St. Petersburg . In 1896, Sarafov left Russia for Turkey, either using his Turkish passport in 1890, or by making a fake document. Thus, hiding Bulgarian citizenship and the leadership of the Melnych uprising, and at the same time studying at the Russian military academy. In Istanbul, he visited the Bulgarian church of St. Stephen and encouraged local Bulgarians to donate to the Macedonian cause. Then, for the same purpose, he went to Mount Athos . He collected money both in the Bulgarian Zografsky Monastery and in the Serbian Hilandar Monastery . From Athos, Sarafov arrived in Solun, where he met with the leaders of WMO and together with them participated in the supply of weapons to the revolutionary couple in Macedonia. And returning to Bulgaria, Sarafov provided Minister of War Racho Petrov with valuable information on the deployment of Turkish units and several military topographic maps. After which he received an audience with Prime Minister Konstantin Stoilov , who promised to arm the Macedonian chetniks.

In 1899, at the Fifth Macedonian Congress, Sarafov was elected chairman of the WMO .

On February 1, 1900, the traitor Bulgarian Cyril Fitovsky, who became a Turkish agent, was liquidated in Romania. In Romania, on July 22, 1900, journalist Stefan Mihailanu, an employee of the Peninsula Balkanika newspaper, who published slanderous materials against WMO , was killed.

In the summer of 1900, Sarafov was again in St. Petersburg. He managed to get acquainted with Baroness Disterlo, with the ex-ambassador and ex-minister Count N.P. Ignatiev (correspondence was further established between him and Sarafov) and with the talented journalist A.V. Amfiteatrov . In St. Petersburg, in 1900, Sarafov and Pavle-Chupovsky began publishing the “Organ of Supporters of Independent Macedonia”. On the pages of this newspaper Sarafov postulated his departure from the Bulgarian-Macedonian platform.

- wrote Boris Sarafov. Sarafov left St. Petersburg for Vienna ...

Upon his return to Bulgaria, on March 24, 1901 , Sarafov was arrested on suspicion of organizing the murders of Fitovsky and Mikhaylyan, and he considered it best to resign as chairman of the WCO. In prison, Sarafov gave an interview to a Times correspondent in London, where he repeated his St. Petersburg thesis that "the Macedonians are not Serbs and not Bulgarians, but simply Macedonians." On August 2, 1901, Boris Sarafov was acquitted. In the fall of 1901, Sarafov met the Macedonian icon painter, architect and politician Isaiah Mazhovsky . A man of amazing fate, personally acquainted with the three Russian emperors, Mazhovsky persuaded Sarafov to sharpen the Macedonian agitation in Russia against active Serbian agitation. Sarafov, according to the memoirs of Majowski, was skeptical of his advice ...

Illyinden rebellion

In 1903, Sarafov was elected a member of the General Staff of the Ilyinden Uprising , led the actions of rebels in the Bitol Revolutionary District ... When the patriotic forces were at the end, members of the rebel General Staff Sarafov and Dame Gruev sent a letter to the Bulgarian government, demanding immediate military intervention, “in the face of critical the situation in which the Bulgarians of the Monastery vilayet were at the moment, (...) in the face of the threat now looming over the Bulgarian Fatherland! ”Sofia did not find it possible Protecting the Macedonians ...

The Turks drowned in the blood of the Ilyinden rebellion.

- wrote the historian Stoyan Boyadzhiev, deputy. Chairman of VMRO-SMO ^[3] ... Despite the defeat of the uprising, Sarafov was met in Sofia as a national hero. In the fall of 1903, Sarafov visited Belgrade and Paris .

- wrote in 1906, the St. Petersburg Frenchwoman A.V. Mezier .

Sarafov actively collaborated with the Armenian organization “ Dashnaktsutyun ” in the fight against the common enemy. In 1907, Boris Sarafov helped Dashnak Garegin Nzhdeh to enter the officer school named after Dimitra Nikolova in Sofia (which the wanderer Nzhdeh successfully completed with the rank of second lieutenant of the Bulgarian army).

SCR Split

The leader of the “left wing” of the Macedonian movement, Jane Sandanski, sentenced Boris Sarafov to death, placing him personally responsible for the failure of the Ilyinden uprising . However, Sarafov, in his innate nobility, did not believe in the possibility of an attempt on his life ...

The fundamental difference between the right and left wings of the WMO was the issue of cooperation with the Bulgarian state. The left was strongly opposed. Sarafov, Garvanov and Hristo Matov advocated constructive cooperation, without which even the physical survival of the Macedonian people seemed impossible.

Murder

The assassination of Sarafov was committed on November 28, 1907 by the famous militant Sandanist Todor Panitsa , who entered into confidence in the murdered. Together with Sarafov, the second foreign representative of WMO was killed - Ivan Garvanov . Third - Hristo Matov accidentally escaped death. Bulgarian historian and linguist Lyubomir Miletich wrote about the murder of Sarafov and Garvanov:

After the villainous assassination, in early January 1908, Sarafov’s friend - Tane Nikolov , together with his sister Nikolai Kostov-Xiin ^[5] - arrived in Sofia and offered security services to Hristo Matov and Vasil Chekalarov , who were under the control of the Sandanistites .

• Encyclopedia "Bulgaria". Volume 6, Publishing House at the BAS, Sofia, 1988.
• Eldarov, St. Boris Sarafov - Presidency of the entrance to the history - Belezhiti Bulgari (from the ed. Plamen Pavlov), Volume 8. Sofia, 2012.