Reflections on the Bulgarian Ilinden 1903: 120 years later

REFLECTIONS ON THE BULGARIAN ILINDEN 1903: 120 YEARS LATER 

Georgi N. Georgiev 

(Summary) 

The Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 was an uprising of the Macedonian and Thracian Bulgarians in the European vilayets of the Ottoman Empire, supported by the free Bulgarians living in the Principality of Bulgaria. This fact, which is the shortest possible definition of the uprising, has been simultaneously and universally recognized – first of all, by the Ottoman authorities themselves, and together with them – by the jealous and hostile to the Bulgarian national cause Balkan neighbours, as well as by ‘big’ and ‘small’ countries, by international observers of different origins. 

The questioning of the Bulgarian character of the uprising started to gain momentum much later, with the blurring power of politics and geopolitics which intervened to create misconceptions. This way they turned over time until today into an artificially maintained problem in interstate relations. The Bulgarian Ilinden of 1903 and the revolutionary struggle in Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace in general prepared the Balkan War of 1912. 

The Macedonian- Adrianople liberation movement provided the Bulgarian national state with the historic chance to solve the all-Bulgarian question inherited from the Revival period: a task with which, unfortunately, the Bulgarian political elite failed to cope. 

Keywords: Bulgarian Ilinden, Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, Macedonia, Adrianople Thrace