The song Kostadin Kapetan and its presumptive character

The purpose of this article is to provide a possible response to the question: Who is Kostadin, the voivode, Captain, from the song “Kostadin Kapetan” (“Kostadin the Captain”). The lyrics of the song have the characteristics of the speech in the Nevrokop region and suggest that the song might be about a revolutionary from this region. 

 However, in the past few years there were arguments that this person was Konstantin Pavlov from the village of Karahadar, Lozengrad region, or Konstantin Nunkov from the town of Chirpan. The research assumes that Kostadin, the voivode, was probably the activist of the Inner Macedonian-Edirne revolutionary organization (IMRO) Kostadin Ivanov Drobenov from the village of Tarlis, Nevrokop region, known in the historic sources as Dinkata or Dine Ivanov. 

His name is mostly associated with the so-called Nevrokop affair of 1909, and also with the death of the voivode Petar Milev, whose murder is unjustifiably attributed to the detachment led by Drobenov. The study focuses mostly on the last months of Kostadin the Voivode’s life and the related events, which marked an important stage in the liberation struggles of the Macedonian Bulgarians.