Did Illinden Uprising Leaders had any Bulgarian connection ?

Answer 1

Ilinden Uprising leaders WERE BULGARIANS!!!

In a letter to Prof. Marin Drinov of May 25, 1888 Kuzman Shapkarev writes:
"But even stranger is the name 'Macedonians', which was imposed on us only 10 to 15 years ago by outsiders, and not as something by our own intellectuals... Yet the people in Macedonia know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on the one hand and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: "Bugari", although mispronounced: they have even adopted it as peculiarly theirs, inapplicable to other
Bulgarians. You can find more about this in the introduction to the booklets I am sending you. They call their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect the "Bugarski language", while the rest of the Bulgarian dialects they refer to as the "Shopski language". (Makedonski pregled, IX, 2, 1934, p. 55; the original letter is kept in the Marin Drinov Museum in Sofia, and it is available for examination and study)

Here is the text in the original:


"No pochudno e imeto Makedonci, koeto naskoro, edvay predi 10-15 godini, ni
natrapiha i to otvqn, a ne kakto nyakoi mislyat ot samata nasha
inteligenciya... Narodqt obache v Makedoniya ne znae nishto za tova arhaichesko, a dnes, s lukava cel ot edna strana, s glupeshka ot druga, podnoveno prozvishte; toy si znae postaroto: Bugari, makar i nepravilno proiznasyano, daje osvoyava si go kato sobstveno i preimushtestveno svoe, nejeli za drugite Bqlgari. Za tova shte vidite i v predgovora na izpratenite
mi knijici. Toy naricha Bugarski ezik svoeto Makaedono-bqlgarsko narechie, kogato drugite bqlgarski narechiya naricha Shopski."


And here:


Reference source for Gotse Delchev's numerous utterings of ' WE ARE BULGARIANS'......


Even Gotse Delchev, the famous Macedonian revolutionary leader, whose nom de guerre was Ahil (Achilles), refers to "the Slavs of Macedonia as 'Bulgarians' in an offhanded manner without seeming to indicate that such a
designation was a point of contention" (Perry 1988:23).

In his correspondence Gotse Delchev often states clearly and simply, "We are Bulgarians" (MacDermott 1978:192,273).


And here:


For fair use only.

" Considering the critical and terrible situation that the Bulgarian
population of the Bitola Vilayet found itself in and following the ravages and cruelties done by the Turkish troops and irregulars, ... considering the fact that everything Bulgarian runs the risk of perishing and disappearing without a trace because of violence, hunger, and the upcoming misery, the Head Quarters finds it to be its obligation to draw the attention of the respected Bulgarian government to the pernicious consequences vis-a-vis the Bulgarian nation, in case the latter does not fulfill its duty towards its brethren of race here in an imposing fashion which is necessary by virtue of the present ordeal for the common bulgarian Fatherland...

...Being in command of our people's movement, we appeal to you on behalf of the enslaved Bulgarian to help him in the most effective way - by waging war.We believe that the response of the people in free Bulgaria will be the same.


... No bulgarian school is opened, neither will it be opened... Nobody thinks of education when he is outlawed by the state because he bears the name Bulgar...


Waiting for your patriotic intervention, we are pleased to inform you that we have in our disposition the armed forces we have spared by now.

The Head Quarters of the Ilinden Uprising"


Damian GRUEV, Boris SARAFOV, Atanas LOZANTCHEV


This memorandum was handed to Dr.Kozhuharov, the Bulgarian consul in Bitola,


and transmitted by him to the government in Sofia with report N441 from
September 17th, 1903. "