Talk:Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising

Ilinden Uprising being of a Macedonian Phenomenon

Hello. There is an assumption that until 1944 Slavs of Macedonia unanimously identified as Bulgarian, when allegedly Tito "brainwashed" them to have an ethnic Macedonian consciousness. As a result, the Ilinden Uprising, as well as other events that are embedded in the memory of the Macedonian people (or to be politically correct, the Slavs of Macedonia) are regarded as Macedonian Bulgarian, claiming that Macedonian was a regional identity, part of a wider Bulgarian identity. However, the Ilinden Uprising was purely of a Macedonian character, which challenged Bulgaria's, Greece's and Serbia's efforts to incorporate Macedonia and its people into a Greater Bulgaria, Greater Greece and Greater Serbia respectively.

Below I will provide only sources that support the claim that Ilinden was a Macedonian phenomenon, instigated by IMRO who had an ethnic Macedonian consciousness, and not broader sources on ethnic Macedonian consciousness during the period and prior to the period, in order to be relevant to this topic:

1. In 1903, the Macedonian Committee, rendered desperate by the pressure of the Greek, Bulgar, and Serbian propagandists, as well as by the Turks, who were beginning to take more active measures against the "comitlara" or "committee people" as they called the revolutionists, precipitated an uprising in the Monastir district, under the leadership of Damyan Grueff, Deltcheff having been killed by soldiers some time previous. In the same book, the Macedonians are defined as separate, having their own ethnic Macedonian identity: In the same book, Macedonians are defined as: The committee was distinctly going to counteract their [the Serb and Greek] influence and efforts by arousing a spirit of nationality among the Macedonians which was neither Serbian nor Bulgarian nor Greek. And when the Bulgarian Government understood this thoroughly it showed itself unequally friendly. For Prince Ferdinand and his clique dreamed of Greater Bulgaria which they should rule. They wanted no autonomous Macedonia; even less did they want an independent Macedonia. In the same book, Macedonians and Bulgarians (from Bulgaria proper if you think the local Macedonians were Bulgarians) are described to have been hostile: From the very first the Bulgarian bands fought the forces of the committee as did the Greeks. Neither ever penetrated very far into the country from their respective frontiers, for the peasants were opposed to them and would not feed them, though they had plenty of money and did not succeed in bribing some. But of the three forces, Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian, the Bulgars and the Greeks were by far the most ferocious. The Serbs were inclined to fight fair, attacking only the committee's bands and such villages as sheltered them. The Greeks and Bulgars knew no such restrictions. They burned whole villages, massacred whole communities, including women and children, and frequently outraged women. The Macedonians fought Bulgars as bitterly and fiercely as they they fought Greeks and Serbs. The book also mentions on the efforts of the Bulgarian propaganda war, after having outlined that all of the leaders of IMRO were imprisoned and that the majority of the bands were cut from supplies: Only two leaders, and less than a hundred armed men, were left in northern Macedonia to resist the further advance of the Bulgarian propagandists. There are more examples from this book, but I don't want to go on, you get the point.
2. I provided this earlier, but was accused of misrepresenting the quote. To quote: The long-awaited revolt began at dusk on Sunday, 2 August 1903, Saint Elijah's Day—or Ilinden. The insurrection was confined to Bitola Vilayet be cause, according to one source, it was farthest from Bulgaria, a factor designed to show the Great Powers that the revolt was purely a Macedonian phenomenon.
3. In order to give a context, before stating this and describing the activities of IMRO, the author describes that in Macedonia, the Bulgarian national identity began being enforced to the local Macedonian (Slavs) after the establishment of the Bulgarian Excharcate Church (1870). This is now the quote that I want to refer to, which refers to my main contention: In 1895, the Supreme Committee, or what what alternatively became known as the External Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (EMRO) was established in Sofia. Referred to by some as the "Supremists," these pro-Bulgarian activists had split with the IMRO to proclaim that their ultimate goal was annexation of Macedonia to Bulgaria. EMRO opposed both the formation of Macedonian national consciousness and IMRO designs to create an independent Macedonian state. As showcased in this quote, EMRO who opposed the creation of a Macedonian state, and the development of the ethnic Macedonian consciousness split from IMRO, who continued to pursue the creation of the Macedonian state and the development of the ethnic Macedonian consciousness, which ultimately ended up in the Ilinden Uprising. In regard to the Ilinden Uprising, the author states: The Ilinden Rebellion of 1903 represented a moment of revolutionary consciousness in the minds of many Slavic-speakers in Macedonia. There are more examples from this book, but I don't want to go on, you get the point.

If these sources are not suffice enough, I am willing to provide more sources.

I would like to encourage editors who are not Bulgarian, or Macedonian for that matter, to look into this, and assess the character of the Ilinden Uprising based on the sources that I have provided. This wikipedia article is pushing the Bulgarian historiographic POV, a number of the sources provided are Bulgarian, Macedonian ones are not permitted. I will not advocate for the permission of sources written by modern Macedonian historians to be included, because there are a number of non-Macedonian sources that support my contention. In order to ensure Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, it is essential that this is addressed, in a non denialist manner (since the only time the Macedonian POV is recognised is when editors want to criticize it). Thank you. Dikaiosyni (talk) 21:47, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I have already outlined this before, there was a different meanings to the term 'Macedonian' back then and in the book sources that you are using, during that time it was a geographic term used to describe a wide variety of different ethinicities that happened to be in the geographic regions of Macedonia.

"The designation Macedonian according to the then used ethnic terminology included local Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Vlachs, Albanians, Serbs, Jews and so on, and when applied to the local Slavs, it meant a regional Bulgarian identity." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotse_Delchev

And also it's worth mentioning the self-identification as Bulgarians by the leaders of the Ilinden Uprising.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it is about presenting historically accurate information, not different points of views from nationalists of various countries. And the reason why I removed your addition before it was reinstated with further clarification is because you are nitpicking quotes to fit your narrative with the obvious intention of making it seem that there was some kind of separate ethnic Macedonian identity.

It is also important to highlight that this user Dikaiosyni is likely part of a Macedonian Wikipedia taskforce by the United Macedonia Diaspora, this conversation may be meatpuppeted by other members such as Macedonia1913, Тутуноберач and other newly created accounts.

--James Richards (talk) 22:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi, per Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history) to weight different views and structure an article so as to avoid original research and synthesis the common views of scholars should be consulted. In many historical topics, scholarship is divided, so several scholarly positions should be relied upon. Some people masquerading as scholars actually present fringe views outside of the accepted practice, and these should not be used. To determine scholarly opinions about a historical topic, consult the following sources in order:

1. Recent scholarly books and chapters on the historiography of the topic
2. "Review Articles", or historiographical essays that explicitly discuss recent scholarship in an area.
3. Similarly conference papers that were peer reviewed in full before publication that are field reviews or have as their central argument the historiography
4. Journal articles or peer reviewed conference papers that open with a review of the historiography.
5. Single item "book reviews" written by scholars that explicitly discuss recent scholarship in an area., etc.

Of the sources presented by Dikaiosyni, only one meets the listed criteria and that is the book by Anastasia Karakasidou. I must point out that she is a specialist in the history of the Slavic-speaking population in Greece after the Balkan Wars, and not in the history of the IMRO before them. This Macedonian phenomenon thesis has been discussed another time and is inaccurate and incorrect. Without going into details, I will emphasize only three circumstances:

1. A group of conservative Bulgarians in Salonica organized a Bulgarian Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood. The latter was incorporated in IMARO by 1900 and its leader Ivan Garvanov, was to exert a significant influence on the IMARO. The members of the Bulgarian Brotherhood were to push the idea for the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising and later they became the core of IMARO right-wing faction. Under the direct leadership by the undeniable Bulgarian — Ivan Garvanov, the IMARO take a decision about the revolt. The decisions was taken in the early January 1903 at a congress held at the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. The leaders of the uprising were teachers from the Bulgarian educational school system or officers from the Bulgarian Army. The insurgents flew Bulgarian flags on many places.
2. The dogma of modern Macedonian historiography is that IMRO was an ‘ethnic Macedonian’ organisation. In its early Statute, the official name of the organisation was Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees. its membership then was restricted explicitly only for Bulgarians. The groups of such rebels associated with the organisation were called by the Turks simply the Bulgarian Committees. The acronym BMARC has been routinely abbreviated in Macedonian historiography to IMRO to avoid difficult questions about the presence in the same organisations of people nowadays described as ‘ethnic Macedonians’ from geographic Macedonia – together with ‘ethnic Bulgarians’ from the Vilajet of Adrianople in Thrace. In this case a present-day ethnic reality is projected wholesale into the past. In fact the abbreviation IMRO was accepted in 1920s by the right-wing strongly pro-Bulgarian nationalist faction.
3. The Adrianople region (Southern Thrace) became one of the Bulgarians' most coveted irredentas, second only to Macedonia. By the end of the 19th century, the total population in the Adrianople region amounted to almost one million people, nearly one-third of whom were Bulgarians. A Bulgarian national liberation movement began to develop here in close cooperation with the liberation movement in Macedonia, and acquired an organized character after the creation of the IMARO. It were the Macedonian revolutionaries who created the first committee of the IMARO at the Bulgarian Men's High School of Adrianople. Its actions culminated in the Preobrazhenie Uprising, which broke out two weeks after the Ilinden Uprising, on 6/19 August 1903. Since the organization links in such close way the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia and separately links both communities directly to the Bulgarians, these facts are still difficult to be explained from the Macedonian historiography. Jingiby (talk) 05:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

References

It is not — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.29.224.143 (talk) 06:23, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Should the article refer to the peasantry of Macedonia in 1903 as "Bulgarian"?

The second paragraph of the article describes the peasants who supported the uprising as "local Bulgarian peasants". This claim is cited to five sources: "We the Macedonians" by Tchadar Marinov, The Macedonian Conflict by Danforth Loring, Contested Ethnic Identity by Chris Kostov, Blood Ties by İpek Yosmaoğlu, and "Famous Macedonia" by Tchavdar Marinov. None of these sources mention peasant support for uprising or describe the peasantry of Macedonia as Bulgarian on the cited pages. On the contrary, each explicitly says that the peasantry of Macedonia lacked a sense of national identity at the time of the uprising:

• Loring says (on page 65) that "At the end of World War I there were very few historians or ethnographers who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation existed. It seems most likely that at this time most of the Slavs of Macedonia, especially those in rural areas, had not yet developed a firm sense of national identity at all."
• "We the Macedonians" says (on page 109) that "However, from another perspective, Macedonia’s population from the turn-of-the-20th-century may seem—quite on the contrary—rather national or relatively well “nationalized,” involved in diverse political agenda and even developing its one. Of course, the very concept of a “Macedonian population” should be nuanced. If the large peasant majority was in most of the cases undoubtedly far from the univocal categories of “national identity,” the same does not hold true for its intelligentsia or 'elite.'"
• Kostov refers (on page 71) to "wide illiterate masses of peasants, who rarely expressed any ethnic identity"
• "Famous Macedonia" says (on page 314) that "The phenomenon of the Macedonian peasants’ unconcern for national allegiance was certainly not invented by scholars, but it became so well-known largely because of the complicated international setting of the Macedonian question: the battle of diverse national claims generated interest in the mentality of people whose national indifference in other geographic contexts went unnoticed.116 As in many other cases, for the Slav-speaking Macedonian peasantry the most important identity was often (albeit not exclusively) the confessional one."
• Yosmaoglu says (on page 15) that "As problematic as it is to accept the plans for an autonomous entity modeled after Switzerland as the progenitor of the modern Macedonian nation-state, simply capitulating to Bulgarian nationalists’ claims (i.e., that Macedonian Slavs were in fact Bulgarian) or to Greek nationalists’ dismissal (i.e., that Macedonian Christians did not know what they were) does not do justice to the people who lost their lives as these competing national projects claimed their loyalty. Here, it would behoove us to pause and consider whether by thinking of them as either this or that we place ourselves in an analytical straight jacket symptomatic of our own internalization of the notion that national consciousness is inherently exclusive and immutable."

Each of these sources is being used to support a claim that directly contradicts its content. The article, and whoever wrote this text, is lying about the content of these sources, presumably to pursue a Bulgarian nationalist agenda. My attempts to remove this lie have been "reverted" but I would appreciate it if someone with the power to edit the article without being reverted would remove this false claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RecentContributor2 (talk • contribs) 20:15, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining this. I thought this would be a SYNTH issue, however in this case the claim you point out indeed appears to be not only not supported by these sources but actually contradicted by them. It needs to be corrected. --Local hero ^talk 01:23, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I will only note that the citations above are not very precise and will point as an example at the reference # 1 by Loring Danforth on p. 65. The continuation of the quotation is: Of those Slavs who had developed some sense of national identity the majority probably considered themselves to be Bulgarians, etc. I think also two separate concepts are confused above. In one case, it is about the Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia, which is a broader concept. In the second case, it concerns the Macedonian Bulgarians, as part of them formed the core of the IMARO. Part of the peasants in Ottoman Macedonia had undoubtedly Bulgarian identity. As a compromise, however, I would suggest that the term Bulgarian peasants be replaced by more accurate one: Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionaries. The article presents plenty of sources that confirm the Bulgarian national consciousness of these activists. At the same time, I do not deny their regional Macedonian identity, according to the sources too.Jingiby (talk) 10:42, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the sources support that, either. They say that the leaders of the uprising came from the tiny intelligentsia or elite which had developed a sense of national identity, but I don't think they support assigning a national identity to all participants in the uprising. Additionally, Yosmaoglu says (on page 15) that "There was, in fact, an undeniable attachment to the ideas of autonomy for Macedonia and action independent of Bulgaria in the program and manifestos of IMRO from its inception, which can reasonably be considered as indication of a separate Macedonian identity."

Bechev says (on page lvii of the Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia) that the Slavic-speaking peasantry of Macedonia in the early 1900s had little sense of national identity. He then says (on page lviii) that "The IMARO was strong among the town-dwelling intelligentsia and craftsmen and also drew support from the rural masses attracted by its call for land redistribution at the expense of the big Muslim landlords". This shows that peasant support for the uprising was based on economic factors, not national identity. I think that these sources show that support for the uprising was too complicated to simply describe its supporters as "Bulgarian". — Preceding unsigned comment added by RecentContributor2 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

PS. Hundreds of Bulgarians from the Principality also participated in the uprising. They were Army officers, sergeants and simply volunteers. Jingiby (talk) 11:23, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I will emphasize three circumstances again. Each of the facts below can be confirmed by lot of reliable academic sources:

1. A group of conservative Bulgarians in Salonica organized a Bulgarian Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood. The latter was incorporated in IMARO by 1900 and its leader Ivan Garvanov, was to exert a significant influence on the IMARO. The members of the Bulgarian Brotherhood were to push the idea for the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising and later they became the core of IMARO right-wing faction. Under the direct leadership by the undeniable Bulgarian — Ivan Garvanov, the IMARO take a decision about the revolt. The decisions was taken in the early January 1903 at a congress held at the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. The leaders of the uprising were teachers from the Bulgarian educational school system or officers from the Bulgarian Army. The insurgents flew Bulgarian flags on many places. The Revolutionary Organization used the Bulgarian standard language in all its programmatic statements and its correspondence was solely in the Bulgarian language, and received financial and military help from Bulgaria. The local revolutionaries declared their conviction that the "majority" of the Christian population of Macedonia is "Bulgarian." The group modeled itself after the revolutionary organizations of Vasil Levski and other Bulgarian revolutionaries, each of whom was a leader during the earlier Bulgarian revolutionary movement.
2. The dogma of modern Macedonian historiography is that IMRO was an ‘ethnic Macedonian’ organisation. In its early Statute, the official name of the organisation was Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees. its membership then was restricted explicitly only for Bulgarians until 1902. The groups of such rebels associated with the organisation were called by the Turks simply the Bulgarian Committees. The acronym BMARC has been routinely abbreviated in Macedonian historiography to IMRO to avoid difficult questions about the presence in the same organisations of people nowadays described as ‘ethnic Macedonians’ from geographic Macedonia – together with ‘ethnic Bulgarians’ from the Vilajet of Adrianople in Thrace. In this case a present-day ethnic reality is projected wholesale into the past. In fact the abbreviation IMRO was accepted in 1920s by the right-wing strongly pro-Bulgarian nationalist faction.
3. The Adrianople region (Southern Thrace) became one of the Bulgarians' most coveted irredentas, second only to Macedonia. By the end of the 19th century, the total population in the Adrianople region amounted to almost one million people, nearly one-third of whom were Bulgarians. A Bulgarian national liberation movement began to develop here in close cooperation with the liberation movement in Macedonia, and acquired an organized character after the creation of the IMARO. It were the Macedonian revolutionaries who created the first committee of the IMARO at the Bulgarian Men's High School of Adrianople. Its actions culminated in the Preobrazhenie Uprising, which broke out two weeks after the Ilinden Uprising, on 6/19 August 1903. Since the organization links in such close way the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia and separately links both communities directly to the Bulgarians, these facts are still difficult to be explained from the Macedonian historiography. Jingiby (talk) 16:22, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I think this article should refer to the peasantry of Macedonia in 1903 as "Macedonians", since that is how they referred to themselves. They definitely didn't call themselves Macedonian Bulgarians. That is an ugly and artificial term coined by Bulgarian propagandists in the 1960-ties. Even Bulgarian sources admit that: "The local Bulgarians and Kucovlachs who live in the area of Macedonia call themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations also call them so." GStojanov (talk) 11:28, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

As explained elsewhere, the term "Macedonian" at the beginning of the 20th century didn't encompass an ethnic identity. Far from it. It only meant a regional designation. A person was Macedonian if they were born in the region of Macedonia. Their ethnicity was of their own self-identification and something completely different than the term "Macedonian". However, in 2022, this is not the case. The Macedonian ethnicity developed during the 20th century and thus this term now has a clear ethnic meaning, which didn't exist 100 years ago. Thus, it can't be used as an ethnic identifier for people who didn't identify with an ethnicity which emerged after said people passed away. TzCher (talk) 16:18, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

This was not a mono ethnic uprising. All Christians and even some Moslems took part in it. So if we use the term "Macedonian population" or simply "Macedonians" that would describe the population better than anything else. GStojanov (talk) 17:04, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Sources, you need a lot of secondary academic sources in English language to support your baseless claims. Jingiby (talk) 17:10, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Even in Bulgaria this uprising is known as Ilindensko

This uprising is named Ilindensko vostanie in Bulgaria also. Here are few examples:

• In 1917 Георги Баждаров от с. Горно Броди, Серско, Егейска Македония - "Годишнината на Илинденското въстание в Скопйе", публикувано във в. "Родина", брой 404, Скопйе, 1917 година
• In 1924 Панчо Дорев от с. Пътеле, Леринско, Егейска Македония - "Даме Груев. Илинденското Въстание. Един Спомен", публикувано в "Външна политика и причини на нашите катастрофи. Спомени, факти и документи.", София, 1924 година
• In 1943 Христо Силянов - "Освободителните борби на Македония; Том Втори: След Илинденското въстание", София, 1943 година
• In 1961 Георги Попхристов от с. Кърстоар, Битолско, Вардарска Македония - "Говор по случай 58 години от Илинденското възстание", програма "Христо Ботев" на Българското национално радио, София, 7 юли 1961 година
• In 2007 Анастас Лозанчев от Битоля, Вардарска Македония - "Политическо завещание (26.07.1945)", публикувано в "Хр. Тзавелла - Спомени на Анастас Лозанчев; член на главния щаб на Илинденското въстание", София, 2007 година
• In 2009 Ванчо Джоне (Иван Джонев) от Крушево, Вардарска Македония - "Кореспонденция с Никола Киров Майски (1957-1961); за смъртта на войводите Георги Ралев Свекянчето и Блаже Биринчето, за Илинденското въстание, Питу Гули и др.", публикувано в "Архив на Крушевския войвода Иван Джонев", Плевен, 2009 година

There are many more examples like this from all periods. This is the prevalent term used in Bulgaria. I propose we change the title to Ilinden uprising, and then in the first paragraph we can mention that sometimes in Bulgaria it is also named differently. GStojanov (talk) 15:36, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

I get more hits on Google books for "Ilinden Uprising" than "Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising". --Local hero ^talk 16:51, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

The result of the former move request was: not moved. There is a clear consensus to retain the current title.Jingiby (talk) 17:19, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

You must be joking to point out a discussion from over 8 years ago in which every single individual opposing moving the name was Bulgarian, right? --Local hero ^talk 20:42, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

No, I am not joking, just keep the rules. If you insist, you may open a new request about the title. Jingiby (talk) 11:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Lets open a new request for the move. Or we can just scrap this article and start a new one. The bias of this article is just too much. GStojanov (talk) 11:48, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

You could open a new request, if you think there are new sources/evidence/information, which may lead to a new result. As for the alleged bias, perhaps better to just try to edit it or suggest possible changes in the talk page, and then, once agreed, move it to the main article? Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 17:35, 5 August 2022 (UTC)