Gotse Delchev

For other uses, see Gotse Delchev (disambiguation).

Georgi Nikolov "Gotse" Delchev Гоце Делчев
File:Gotze.jpeg Portrait of Gotse Delchev
Born	February 4, 1872 Kukush, Salonica Vilayet, Ottoman Empire (now Greece)
Died	Banitsa, Salonica Vilayet, Ottoman Empire (now Greece)
Ethnicity	Bulgarian
Organization	Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees, (later SMARO, IMARO, IMRO)

Georgi Nikolov Delchev (Bulgarian/Macedonian: Георги/Ѓорѓи Николов Делчев, known as Gotse Delchev, also spelled Goce Delčev, Cyrillic: Гоце Делчев, originally spelled in older Bulgarian orthography: Гоце Дѣлчевъ; 1872–1903) was an important revolutionary figure in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Thrace at the turn of the 20th century. He was one of the leaders of what is known today as Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a paramilitary organization active in Ottoman territories on the Balkans, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Born in Kukush, then in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, in his youth he was inspired by the ideals of revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev, who envisioned the creation of a Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious equality, as part of an imagined Balkan Federation. Delchev completed his secondary education in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki and entered the Military School of His Princely Highness in Sofia, but he was dismissed from there, because of his leftist political persuasions. Then he returned to Ottoman Macedonia as a Bulgarian teacher, and immediately became an activist of the newly-found revolutionary movement in 1894.

Although considering himself to be an inheritor of the Bulgarian revolutionary traditions, as a committed republican Delchev was disillusioned by the reality in the post-liberation Bulgarian monarchy. Also by him, as by many Macedonian Bulgarians, originating from an area with mixed population, the idea of being ‘Macedonian’ acquired the importance of a certain native loyalty, that constructed a specific spirit of "local patriotism" and "multi-ethnic regionalism". He maintained the slogan promoted by William Ewart Gladstone, "Macedonia for the Macedonians", including different nationalities inhabiting the area. In this way, his outlook included a wide range of such disparate ideas as Bulgarian patriotism, Macedonian regionalism, anti-nationalism and incipient socialism.

As a result, his political agenda became the establishment through revolution of an autonomous Macedono-Adrianopolitan supranational state into the framework of the Ottoman Empire, as a prelude to its incorporation within a future Balkan Federation. He revised the Organization's program, emphasizing the importance of cooperation among all ethnic groups in the territories concerned in order to obtain political autonomy. Delchev also lunched the establishment of a secret revolutionary network, that would prepare the population for an armed uprising against the Ottoman rule. However, he opposed the IMRO Central Committee’s plan for a mass uprising in the summer of 1903, favoring terrorist and guerilla tactics. Nevertheless, he was killed by an Ottoman unit in May. Thus the liberation movement lost its most important organizer, at the eve of the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising.

Today Gotse Delchev is considered as a national hero in Bulgaria, as well as in the Republic of Macedonia, where it is claimed that he was among the founders of the Macedonian national movement. Despite such Macedonian historical interpretations, Delchev had Bulgarian national identity and viewed his compatriots as Bulgarians. The designation Macedonian according to the then used ethnic terminology included Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Vlachs, and Serbs, and when applied to the local Slavs, it meant a regional Bulgarian identity. However, contrary to Bulgarian assertions, his autonomist ideas of a separate Macedonian (and Adrianopolitan) political entity, have stimulated the development of contemporary Macedonian nationalism.

Biography

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Delchev (left) and his former classmate from Kilkis, Imov as officer cadets in Sofia.

Early life

He was born in a large family on February 4, 1872 (January 23 according to the Julian calendar) in Kukush, then in the Ottoman Empire (today in Greece). By the mid-19th century Kukush was populated predominantly with Macedonian Bulgarians and became one of the centers of the Bulgarian National Revival. During the 1860s and 1870s it was under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Uniat Church, but after 1884, most of its population gradually joined the Bulgarian Exarchate. As a student Delchev began first to study in the Bulgarian Uniate's primary school and then in the Bulgarian Exarchate's junior high school. He also read widely in the town's chitalishte, where he was impressed with revolutionary books, and especially Delchev was imbued with thoughts of the liberation of Bulgaria. In 1888 his family sent him to the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, where he organized and led a secret revolutionary brotherhood. Delchev also distributed revolutionary literature, which he acquired from the school’s graduates who studied in Bulgaria. Graduation from a High school was faced with few career prospects and Delchev decided to follow the path of his former school-mate Boris Sarafov, entering the military school in Sofia in 1891. He at first encountered the newly independent Bulgaria full of idealism and dedication, but he later became disappointed with the commercialized life of the society and with the authoritarian politics of the dictator Stefan Stambolov. Gotsе spent his leaves in the company of emigrants from Macedonia. Most of them belonged to the Young Macedonian Literary Society. One of his friends was Vasil Glavinov, a leader of the Macedonian-Adrianople faction of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party. Through Glavinov and his comrades, he came into contact with a different people, who offered a new forms of social struggle. In June 1892 Delchev and the journalist Kosta Shahov, a chairman of the Young Macedonian Literary Society, met in Sofia with the bookseller from Salonica, Ivan Hadzhinikolov. Hadzhinikolov disclosed on this meeting his plans to create a revolutionary organization in Ottoman Macedonia. They discussed together its basic principles and agreed fully on all scores. Delchev explained, he has no intention of remaining an officer and promised after graduating from the Military School, he will return to Macedonia to join the organization. In September 1894, only a month before graduation, he was expelled because his political activity as a member of an illegal socialist circle. He was given a possibility to enter the Army again through re-applyng for a commission, but he refused. Afterwards he returned to European Turkey to work there as a teacher, hoping to organize a national liberation movement through the Bulgarian Exarchate's educational net.

Teacher and revolutionist

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The diploma of Delchev from his graduation from the Military school in Sofia.

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Diploma from the Bulgarian Exarchate's school in Stip, signed by Delchev as a teacher.

Meanwhile, in Ottoman Thessaloniki a revolutionary organization was founded in 1893, by a small band of anti-Ottoman Macedono-Bulgarian revolutionaries, including Hadzhinikolov. At this time the name of the organization was Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees (BMARC), in 1902 changed to Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (SMARO). It was decided at a meeting in Resen in August 1894 to preferably recruit teachers from the Bulgarian schools as committee members. In the autumn of 1894 Delchev became teacher in an Exarchate school in Štip, where he met another teacher: Dame Gruev, who was also a leader of the newly established local committee of BMARC. As a result of the close friendship between the two, Delchev joined the organization immediately, and gradually became one of its main leaders. After this, both Gruev and Delchev worked together in Štip and its environs. At the same time the Organization developed quickly and had managed to begin establishing a network of local organizations across Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet, usually centered around the schools of the Bulgarian Exarchate. The expansion of the BMARC at the time was considerable, particularly after Gruev settled in Thessaloniki during the years 1895–1897, in the quality of a Bulgarian school inspector. Under his direction, Delchev travelled during the vacations throughout Macedonia and established and organized committees in villages and cities. Delchev also established contacts with some of the leaders of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC). Its official declaration was a struggle for autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace. However, as a rule, most of SMAC's leaders were officers with stronger connections with the governments, waging terrorist struggle against the Ottomans in the hope of provoking a war and thus Bulgarian annexation of both areas. He arrived illegally in Bulgaria's capital and tried to get support from the SMAC's leadership. Delchev had a number of meetings with Danail Nikolaev, Yosif Kovachev, Toma Karayovov, Andrey Lyapchev and others, but he was often frustrated of their views. As a whole, Delchev had a negative attitude towards their activities. After spending the next school year (1895/1896) as a teacher in the town of Bansko, in May 1896 he was arrested by the Ottoman authorities as person suspected in revolutianary activity and spent about a month in jail. Later Delchev participated in the Thessaloniki Congress of BMARC in the Summer. Afterwards Delchev gave his resignation as teacher and in the Autumn of 1896 he moved back to Bulgaria, where he, together with Gyorche Petrov, served as a foreign representatives of the organization in Sofia. At that time the organization was largely dependent on the Bulgarian state and army assistance, that was mediated by the foreign representatives.

Revolutionary activity as part of the leadership of the Organization

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Delchev with his friend and biographer Peyo Yavorov

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Sultana Delcheva – Gotse's mother

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Delchev's father – Nikola

Delchev's involvement in BMARC was an important moment in the history of the Macedonian-Adrianople liberation movement. The years between the end of 1896, when he left the Exarchate's educational system and 1903 when he died, represented the final and most effective revolutionary phase of his short life. In the period 1897–1902 he was a representative of the Foreign Committee of the BMARC in Sofia. Again in Sofia, negotiating with suspicious politicians and arms merchants, Delchev saw more of the unpleasant face of the Principality, and became even more disillusioned with its political system. In 1897 he, along with Gyorche Petrov, wrote the new organization's statute, which divided Macedonia and Adrianople areas into seven regions, each with a regional structure and secret police, following the Internal Revolutionary Organization's example. Below the regional committees were districts. The Central committee was placed in Salonica. In 1898 Delchev decided to be created a permanent acting armed bands (chetas) in every district. From 1902 till his death he was the leader of the chetas, i.e. the military institute of the Organization because, he had considerable knowledge in the area of military skills. Delchev ensured the functioning of the underground border crossings of the organization and the arms depots added to them, alongside the then Bulgarian-Ottoman border.

His correspondence with other BMARC/SMARO members covers extensive data on supplies, transport and storage of weapons and ammunition in Macedonia. Delchev envisioned independent production of weapons, and traveled in 1897 to Odessa, where he met with Armenian revolutionaries to exchange terrorist skills and especially bomb-making. That resulted in the establishment of a bomb manufacturing plant in the village of Sabler near Kyustendil in Bulgaria. The bombs were later smuggled across the Ottoman border into Macedonia. Gotse Delchev was the first to organize and lead a band into Macedonia with the purpose of robbing or kidnapping rich Turks. His experiences demonstrate the weaknesses and difficulties which the Organization faced in its early years. Later he was one of the organizers of the Miss Stone Affair. He made two short visits to the Adrianople area of Thrace in 1896 and 1898. In the winter of 1900 he resided for a while in Burgas, where Delchev organized another bomb manufacturing plant, which dynamite was used later by the Thessaloniki bombings. In 1900 he inspected also the BMARC's detachments in Eastern Thrace again, aiming better coordination between Macedonian and Thracian revolutionary committees. Since the Autumn of 1901 till the early Spring of 1902, he made an important inspection in Macedonia, touring all revolutionary districts there. He led also the congress of the Adrianople revolutionary district held in Plovdiv in April 1902. Afterwards Delchev inspected the BMARC's structures in the Central Rhodopes. The inclusion of the rural areas into the organizational districts contributed to the expansion of the organization and the increase in its membership, while providing the essential prerequisites for the formation of the military power of the organization, at the same time having Delchev as its military advisor (inspector) and chief of all internal revolutionary bands.

After 1897 there was a rapid growth of secret Officer's brotherhoods, whose members by 1900 numbered about a thousand. Much of the Brotherhoods' activists were involved in the revolutionary activity of the BMORK. Among the main supporters of their activities was Gotse Delchev. Delchev aimed also better coordination between BMARC and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. For a short time in the late 1890s lieutenant Boris Sarafov, who was former school-mate of Delchev became its leader. At that period the foreign representatives Delchev and Petrov became by rights members of the leadership of the Supreme Committee and so BMARC even managed to gain de facto control of the SMAC. Nevertheless, it soon split into two factions: one loyal to the BMARC and one led by some officers close to the Bulgarian prince. Delchev opposed this officers' insistent attempts to gain control over the activity of BMARC. Sometimes SMAC even clashed militarily with local SMARO bands as in the autumn of 1902. Then the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee organized a failed uprising in Pirin Macedonia (Gorna Dzhumaya), which merely served to provoke Ottoman repressions and hampered the work of the underground network of SMARO.

The primary question regarding the timing of the uprising in Macedonia and Thrace implicated an apparent discordance not only among the SMAC and the SMARO, but also among the SMARO's leadership. At the Salonika Congress of January 1903, where Delchev did not participate, an early uprising was debated and it was decided to stage one in the Spring of 1903. This led to fiercing debates among the representatives at the Sofia SMARO's Conference in March 1903. By that time two strong tendecies had crystallized within the SMARO. The right-wing majority was convinced that if the Organization would unleash a general uprising, Bulgaria would be provoced to declare war of the Ottomans and after the subsequent intervention of the Great Powers the Еmpire would collapse.

The left-wing faction led by Delchev, on the other hand, warned against the risks of such unrealistic plans, opposing the uprising as inappropriate as tactics and premature by time. Deltchev, who was under the influence of the leading Bulgarian anarchists as Mihail Gerdzhikov and Varban Kilifarski personally supported the tactics of terrorist attacks as the Thessaloniki bombings of 1903. Finally, he had no choice but agree to that course of action at least managing to delay its start from May to August. Delchev also convinced the SMARO leadership to transform its idea of a mass rising involving the civil population into a rising based on guerrilla warfare. Towards the end of March 1903 Gotse with his detachment destroyed the railway bridge over the Angista river, aiming to test the new guerrilla tactics. Following that he set out for Salonica to meet with Dame Gruev after his release from prison in March 1903. Dame Gruev met with Delchev in the late April and they discussed the decision of starting the uprising. Afterwards they negotiated with some of the Salonica bombers to ask them to give up the attacks as dangerous to the liberation movement, or at least to wait for the impending uprising. Subsequently Delchev met also with Ivan Garvanov, who was at that time the leader of the SMARO. After this meetings Delchev headed for Mount Ali Botush where he was expected to meet with representatives from the Seres Revolutionary District detachments and to check their military preparation. But he never made it.

Death and aftermath

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Telegram by the Ottoman authorities to their Embassy in Sofia informing, Delchev, one of the leaders of the Bulgarian Committees, was killed.

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The restored grave-place of Delchev near Banitsa during World War II Bulgarian annexation of Northern Greece.

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The ruins of Kilkis after the Second Balkan War.

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Map of European Turkey. Macedonia and Adrianople areas, which were given back from Bulgaria to the Ottomans as per the Treaty of Berlin are shown with green frontiers.

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The first biographical book about Delchev, issued in 1904 by the Bulgarian author Peyo Yavorov.

File:Gotse Delchev and Cheta Postcard 1904.jpg

Bulgarian postcard (1904) representing Delchev and an IMARO cheta. The inscription above reads: "The immortal Delchev."

Meanwhile, on April 28, members of the Gemidzii circle started terrorist attacks in Salonica. As a consequence martial law was declared in the city and many Turkish soldiers and "bashibozouks" were concentrated in the Salonica Vilayet. This led eventually to the tracking of Delchev's cheta and his subsequent death. He died on May 4, 1903 in a skirmish with the Turkish police near the village of Banitsa, probably after betrayal by local villagers, as rumours asserted, while preparing the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising. After being identified by the local authorities in Seres, the bodies of Delchev and his comrade, Dimitar Gushtanov, were buried in a common grave in Banitsa. Soon afterwards SMARO, aided by SMAC organized the uprising against the Ottomans, which after initial successes, was crushed with much loss of life. Two of his brothers, Mitso Delchev and Milan Delchev were also killed fighting against the Ottomans as militants in the SMARO chetas of the Bulgarian voivodas Hristo Chernopeev and Krstjo Asenov in 1901 and 1903, respectively. In 1914, by a royal decree of Tsar Ferdinand I, a pension for life was granted to their father Nikola Delchev, because of the contribution of his sons to the freedom of Macedonia. During the Second Balkan War of 1913, Kilkis, which had been annexed by Bulgaria in the First Balkan War, was taken by the Greeks. Virtually all of its pre-war 7,000 Bulgarian inhabitants, including Delchev's family, were expelled to Bulgaria by the Greek Army. The same happened to the population of Banitsa, the village where Delchev was buried. During World War I, when Bulgaria was temporarily in control of the area, Delchev's remains were transferred to Xanthi, then in Bulgaria. After Western Thrace was ceded to Greece in 1919, the relic was brought to Plovdiv and in 1923 to Sofia, where it rested until after World War II. During World War II, the area was taken by the Bulgarians again and Delchev's grave near Banitsa was restored. In May 1943, on the occasion of the 40-th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was set in Banitsa, in the presence of his sisters and other public figures. Until then Delchev was considered one of the greatest Bulgarians from Macedonia.

Controversy

In 1934 the Comintern gave its support to the idea that the Macedonian Slavs constituted a separate nation. Prior to the Second World War, this view on the Macedonian issue had been of little practical importance. However, during the War these ideas were supported by the pro-Yugoslav Macedonian communist partisans, who strengthened their positions in 1943, referring to the ideals of Gotse Delchev. After the Red Army entered the Balkans in the late 1944, new communist regimes came into power in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In this way their policy on the Macedonian Question was committed to the Comintern policy of supporting the development of a distinct ethnic Macedonian consciousness. The region of Macedonia was proclaimed as the connecting link for the establishment of a future Balkan Communist Federation. The newly established Yugoslav People's Republic of Macedonia, was characterized as natural result of Delchev's aspirations for autonomous Macedonia. However, initially he was proclaimed by its Communist leader Lazar Koliševski as: "...one Bulgarian of no significance for the liberation struggles...". But on October 10, 1946, under direct pressure from Moscow, as part of the policy to foster the development of separate Macedonian identity, Delchev's mortal remains were transported to Skopje. On the following day they were enshrined in a marble sarcophagus in the yard of the church "Sveti Spas", where they have remained since. At the time of the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, Bulgaria broke its relationship with Yugoslavia because "nationalist elements" had "managed to reach a dominant position in the leadership" of the CPY. Afterwards Bulgaria gradually shifted to its previous view, that Macedonian Slavs are in fact Bulgarians. Yugoslav authorities, in contrast, exerted efforts to claim Delchev for the Macedonian national cause, and started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population. As a consequence, Bulgarophobia increased in Vardar Macedonia to the level of state ideology. Aiming to enforce the belief Delchev was an ethnic Macedonian, all documents written by him in standard Bulgarian were translated into standardized Macedonian in 1945, and presented as originals. The new rendition of history reappraised the 1903 Ilinden Uprising as an anti-Bulgarian revolt. The past was systematycally falsified to conceal the truth, that most of the well-known Macedonians had felt themselves to be Bulgarians. As result, Delchev was declared an ethnic Macedonian hero, and Macedonian school textbooks began even to hint at Bulgarian complicity in his death. In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the situation was more complex, and before 1960 Delchev was given mostly regional recognition in Pirin Macedonia. Afterwards, orders from the highest political level were given to reincorporate the Macedonian revolutionary movement as part of the Bulgarian historiography, and to prove the Bulgarian credentials of its historical leaders. SInce 1960, there have been long-going unproductive debates between the ruling Communist parties in Bulgaria and the Yugoslavia about the ethnic affiliation of Delchev. Delchev was described in SR Macedonia not only as an anti-Ottoman freedom fighter, but also as a hero, who had opposed the aggressive aspirations of the pro-Bulgarian factions in the liberation movement. The claims on Delchev's Bulgarian self-identification, thus were portrayed as recent Bulgarian chauvinist attitude of long provenance. Nonetheless, the Bulgarian side made in 1978 for the first time the proposal that some historical personalities (e.g. Gotse Delchev) could be regarded as belonging to the shared historical heritage of the two peoples, but that proposal did not appeal to the Yugoslavs. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the fall of Communism, some new attempts were made from Bulgarian officials for joint celebration with the newly established Republic of Macedonia, of the common IMRO heroes, e.g. Delchev, but they all were rejected as politically unacceptable. Despite the efforts of the post-1945 Macedonian historiography to represent Delchev as a Macedonian separatist rather than a Bulgarian nationalist, Delchev himself has stated: "...We are Bulgarians and all suffer from one common disease [e.g., the Ottoman rule]" and "Our task is not to shed the blood of Bulgarians, of those who belong to the same people that we serve". If he was still alive in SFRY during the late 1940s, probably he would have finished up in an internment camp, as other former IMRO activists of that time.

Delchev's views

Excerpt from the statute of BMARC, whose co-author was G. Delchev.

Excerpt from the statute of SMARO, whose author was G. Delchev.

The international, cosmopolitan views of Delchev could be summarized in his proverbial sentence: "I understand the world solely as a field for cultural competition among the peoples". In the late 19th century the anarchists and socialists from Bulgaria linked their struggle closely with the revolutionary movements in Macedonia and Thrace. Thus, as a young cadet in Sofia Delchev became a member of a left circle, where he was strongly influenced by the modern than Marxist and Bakunin's ideas. His views were formed also under the influence of the ideas of earlier anti-Ottoman fighters as Levski, Botev, and Stoyanov, who were among the founders of the Bulgrarian Internal Revolutionary Organization, the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee and the Bulgarian Secret Central Revolutionary Committee, respectively. Later he participated in the Internal organization's struggle and as well educated leader, became one of its theoreticians and co-author of the BMARC's statute from 1896. Developing his ideas further in 1902 he took the step, together with other left functionaries, of changing its nationalistic character, which determined that members of the organization can be only Bulgarians. The new supra-nationalistic statute renamed it to Secret Macedono-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Organization (SMARO), which was to be an insurgent organization, open to all Macedonians and Thracians regardless of nationality, who wished to participate in the movement for their autonomy. This scenario was partially facilitated by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), according to which Macedonia and Adrianople areas were given back from Bulgaria to the Ottomans, but especially by its unrealized 23rd. article, which promised future autonomy for unspecified territories in European Turkey, settled with Christian population. In general, an autonomous status was presumed to imply a special kind of constitution of the region, a reorganization of gendarmerie, broader representation of the local Christian population in it as well as in all the administration, similarly to what happened in the short-lived Eastern Rumelia. However, there was not a clear political agenda behind IMRO's idea about autonomy and its final outcome, after the expected dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Delcev, like other left-wing activists, vaguely determined the bonds in the future common Macedonian-Adrianopolitan autonomous region on the one hand, and on the other between it, the Principality of Bulgaria, and de facto annexed Eastern Rumelia. Even the possibility that Bulgaria could be absorbed into a future autonomous Macedonia, rather than the reverse, was discussed. It is claimed that the personal view of the convinced republican Delchev, was much more likely to see inclusion in a future Balkan Confederative Republic, or eventually an incorporation into Bulgaria. Both ideas were probably influenced by the views of the founders of the organization. The ideas of a separate Macedonian nation and language were as yet promoted only by small circles of intellectuals in Delchev's time, and failed to gain wide popular support. As a whole the idea of autonomy was strictly political and did not imply a secession from Bulgarian ethnicity. In fact, for militants such as Delchev and other leftists, that participated in the national movement retaining a political outlook, national liberation meant "radical political liberation through shaking off the social shackles". There aren't any indications suggesting his doubt about the Bulgarian ethnic character of the Macedonian Slavs at that time. Delchev also used the Bulgarian standard language, and he was in any way interested in the creation of separate Macedonian language. The Bulgarian ethnic self-identification of Delchev has been recognized аs from leading international researchers of the Macedonian Question, as well as from part of the Macedonian historical scholarship, although reluctantly. However, despite his Bulgarian loyalty, he was against any chauvinistic propaganda and nationalism. According to him, no outside force could or would help the Organization and it ought to rely only upon itself and only upon its own will and strength. He thought that any intervention by Bulgaria would provoke intervention by the neighboring states as well, and could result in Macedonia and Thrace being torn apart. That is why the peoples of these two regions had to win their own freedom, within the frontiers of an autonomous Macedonian-Adrianople state.

Legacy

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Commemorative medal of Delchev issued in 1904 in Bulgaria, designed by the painter Dimitar Diolev.

Delchev is today regarded both in Bulgaria and in the Republic of Macedonia as an important national hero, and both nations see him as part of their own national history. His memory is honored especially in the Bulgarian parts of Macedonia and among the descendants of Bulgarian refugees from other parts of the region, where he is regarded as the most important revolutionary from the second generation of freedom fighters. His name appears also in the national anthem of the Republic of Macedonia: "Denes nad Makedonija". There are two towns named in his honour: Gotse Delchev in Bulgaria and Delčevo in the Republic of Macedonia. There are also two peaks named after Delchev: Gotsev Vrah, the summit of Slavyanka Mountain, and Delchev Vrah or Delchev Peak on Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands in Antarctica, which was named after him by the scientists from the Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition. Delchev Ridge on Livingston Island bears also his name. The Goce Delčev University of Štip in the Republic of Macedonia carries his name too. Today many artifacts related to Delchev's activity are stored in different museums across Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia.

After long-lasting attempts from Bulgarian side to place a new memorial plaque on the death place of Gotse Delchev, one was placed on the steeple of the bell tower at Banitsa in July 2013, with the permission of the Greek authorities.

Memorials

• 

  Monument in Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria.

• Гоце Делчев – Благоевград – Крум Дерменджиев.JPG

  Monument in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria.

• Gotse Delchev Varna.JPG

  Bust in Varna, Bulgaria.

• Gotse Delchev Sofia.jpg

  Bust in Sofia, Bulgaria.

• Gotse Delchev Commemorative plaque.jpg

  Commemorative plaque in Banitsa, Greece.

• Monuments of Delcev and Gruev under Macedonian flag.JPG

  Statues of Goce Delchev and Dame Gruev in Skopje, Macedonia.

• The tomb of Goce Delčev in Skopje.jpg

  The tomb of Gotse Delchev in the church Sv. Spas in Skopje, Macedonia

References

• Пандев, К. "Устави и правилници на ВМОРО преди Илинденско-Преображенското въстание", Исторически преглед, 1969, кн. I, стр. 68—80. (Bulgarian)
• Пандев, К. "Устави и правилници на ВМОРО преди Илинденско-Преображенското въстание", Извeстия на Института за история, т. 21, 1970, стр. 250–257. (Bulgarian)
• Битоски, Крсте, сп. "Македонско Време", Скопје – март 1997, quoting: Quoting: Public Record Office – Foreign Office 78/4951 Turkey (Bulgaria), From Elliot, 1898, Устав на ТМОРО. S. 1. published in Документи за борбата на македонскиот народ за самостојност и за национална држава, Скопје, Универзитет "Кирил и Методиј": Факултет за филозофско-историски науки, 1981, pp 331 – 333. (Macedonian)
• Hugh Pouton Who Are the Macedonians?, C. Hurst & Co, 2000. p. 53. ISBN 1-85065-534-0
• Fikret Adanir, Die Makedonische Frage: ihre entestehung und etwicklung bis 1908., Wiessbaden 1979, p. 112.
• Duncan Perry The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Liberation Movements, 1893–1903 , Durham, Duke University Press, 1988. pp. 40–41, 210 n. 10.
• Friedman, V. (1997) "One Grammar, Three Lexicons: Ideological Overtones and Underpinnings of the Balkan Sprachbund" in CLS 33 Papers from the 33rd Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. (Chicago : Chicago Linguistic Society)
• Димитър П. Евтимов, Делото на Гоце Делчев, Варна, изд. на варненското Македонско културно-просветно дружество "Гоце Делчев", 1937. (Bulgarian)
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977. In English: Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography "Delchev", Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977.(Bulgarian)
• MacDermott, Mercia. (1978) Freedom or Death: The Life of Goce Delchev Journeyman Press, London and West Nyack. ISBN 0-904526-32-1.

External links

• Works written by or about Gotse Delchev at Wikisource
• Quotations related to Gotse Delchev at Wikiquote
• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• p. 168.
• , pp. 55-56
• Todorova, Maria N. Bones of Contention: The Living Archive of Vasil Levski and the Making of Bulgaria's National Hero, Central European University Press, 2009, ISBN 9639776246, p. 76.
• Jelavich, Charles. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920, University of Washington Press, 1986, ISBN 0295803606, pp. 137-138.
• Raymond Detrez Detrez, Raymond. The A to Z of Bulgaria, Scarecrow Press, 2010, ISBN 0810872021, p. 135.
• "The French referred to 'Macedoine' as an area of mixed races — and named a salad after it. One doubts that Gotse Delchev approved of this descriptive, but trivial approach." Johnson, Wes. Balkan inferno: betrayal, war and intervention, 1990-2005, Enigma Books, 2007, ISBN 1929631634, p. 80.
• "The Bulgarian historians, such as Veselin Angelov, Nikola Achkov and Kosta Tzarnushanov continue to publish their research backed with many primary sources to prove that the term 'Macedonian' when applied to Slavs has always meant only a regional identity of the Bulgarians." Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900-1996, Chris Kostov, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3034301960, p. 112.
• "Gotse Delchev, may, as Macedonian historians claim, have 'objectively' served the cause of Macedonian independence, but in his letters he called himself a Bulgarian. In other words it is not clear that the sense of Slavic Macedonian identity at the time of Delchev was in general developed." Moulakis, Athanasios. "The Controversial Ethnogenesis of Macedonia", European Political Science (2010) 9, ISSN 1680-4333. p. 497.
• "Slavic Macedonian intellectuals felt loyalty to Macedonia as a region or territory without claiming any specifically Macedonian ethnicity. The primary aim of this Macedonian regionalism was a multi-ethnic alliance against the Ottoman rule." Ethnologia Balkanica, vol. 10–11, Association for Balkan Anthropology, Bŭlgarska akademiia na naukite, Universität München, Lit Verlag, Alexander Maxwell, 2006, p. 133.
• "The Bulgarian loyalties of IMRO's leadership, however, coexisted with the desire for multi-ethnic Macedonia to enjoy administrative autonomy. When Delchev was elected to IMRO's Central Committee in 1896, he opened membership in IMRO to all inhabitants of European Turkey since the goal was to assemble all dissatisfied elements in Macedonia and Adrianople regions regardless of ethnicity or religion in order to win through revolution full autonomy for both regions." Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, LIT Verlag Münster, 2009, ISBN 3825813878, p. 136.
• , p. 56
• The earliest document which talks about the autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace into the Ottoman Empire is the resolution of the First congress of the Supreme Macedonian Committee held in Sofia in 1895. От София до Костур -освободителните борби на българите от Македония в спомени на дейци от Върховния македоно-одрински комитет, Ива Бурилкова, Цочо Билярски - съставители, ISBN 9549983234, Синева, 2003, стр. 6.
• , pp. 27-28
• Detrez, Raymond. Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, Scarecrow Press, 2006, ISBN 0810849011, p. 135.
• "One of IMRO’s leaders, Gotsé Delchev, whose nom de guerre was Ahil (Achilles), is regarded by both Macedonians and Bulgarians as a national hero. He seems to have identified himself as a Bulgarian and to have regarded the Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians." Encyclopedia Britannica online, article Republic of Macedonia, section: History, subsection: The independence movement.
• "A more modern national hero is Gotse Delchev, leader of the turn-of-the-century Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which was actually a largely pro-Bulgarian organization but is claimed as the founding Macedonian national movement." Kaufman, Stuart J. Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. Cornell University Press, 2001, ISBN 0801487366, p. 193.
• In his correspondence Gotse Delchev often states clearly and simply: "We are Bulgarians" (MacDermott 1978: 192, 273).
• Roumen Daskalov, Diana Mishkova. Entangled Histories of the Balkans Volume Two. BRILL, 2013, ISBN 9004261915, p. 503.
• "The IMARO activists saw the future autonomous Macedonia as a multinational polity, and did not pursue the self-determination of Macedonian Slavs as a separate ethnicity. Therefore, Macedonian was an umbrella term covering Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Vlachs, Albanians, Serbs, Jews, and so on." Bechev, Dimitar. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, Introduction.
• During the 20th century, Slavo-Macedonian national feeling shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland... Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th. century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism... This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift. Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer. Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Ethnologia Balkanica Series. LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 3825813878, p. 127.
• Roumen Dontchev Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov. Histories of the Balkans: Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies. Balkan Studies Library, BRILL, 2013, ISBN 900425076X. pp. 300-303.
• Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan ghosts: a journey through history, Vintage books, 1994, ISBN 0-679-74981-0, p. 58.
• Vacalopoulos, Apostolos. Modern history of Macedonia (1830-1912), From the birth of the Greek state until the Liberation. Thessaloniki: Barbounakis, 1989, pp. 61-62
• An 1873 Ottoman study, published in 1878 as "Ethnographie des Vilayets d'Andrinople, de Monastir et de Salonique", concluded that the population of Kilkis consisted of 1,170 households of which there were 5,235 Bulgarian inhabitants, 155 Muslims and 40 Romani people. "Македония и Одринско. Статистика на населението от 1873 г." Macedonian Scientific Institute, Sofia, 1995, pp.160-161.
• A Vasil Kanchov study of 1900 counted 7,000 Bulgarian and 750 Turkish inhabitants in the town. Macedonia. Ethnography and Statistics. Sofia, 1900, p. 164.
• Aarbakke, Vemund. Ethnic rivalry and the quest for Macedonia, 1870-1913. East European Monographs, 2003, ISBN 0-88033-527-0, p. 132.
• Khristov, Khristo Dechkov. The Bulgarian Nation During the National Revival Period. Institut za istoria, Izd-vo na Bŭlgarskata akademia na naukite, 1980, str. 293.
• In one five-year period, there were 57 Catholic villages in the area, whilst the Bulgarian uniate schools in the Vilayet of Thessaloniki reached 64. Gounaris, Basil C. National Claims, Conflicts and Developments in Macedonia, 1870–191, p. 186.
• The Bulgarian movement for union with Rome initially won some 60,000 adherents, but as a result of the establishment in 1870 of the Bulgarian Exarchate, at least three quarters of these returned to Orthodoxy by the end of the century. The Archbishop of all Uniat Bulgarians Nil Izvorov went back in 1884 to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The clergy’s numerous shifts were symptomatic of the Great Powers’ game that the clergy got involved after the 1878 Berlin Treaty, which left Macedonia and Thrace within the Ottoman Empire, after they had been given to Bulgaria with the March 1878 San Stefano Treaty.
• A survey from 1905 established the presence of 9,712 Exarchists, 40Patriarchists, 592 Bulgarian Uniates and 16 Protestants. "La Macédoine et sa Population Chrétienne". D.M. Brancoff, Paris, 1905, р.98–99.
• Л. Чопова-Юрукова, Спомени за семейството на Гоце Делчев, сп. Септември, кн. 5, 1953, стр. 72; Ст. Стаматов, Спомени за Гоце Делчев и Борис Дрангов, София, 1935, стр. 15.
• Susan K. Kinnell, People in World History: A-M, ABC-CLIO, 1989, ISBN 0874365503, p. 157.
• Brooks, Julian Allan. December 2005. "'Shoot the Teacher!' Education and the Roots of the Macedonian Struggle". Thesis (M.A.) – Department of History – Simon Fraser University, pp. 133–134.
• "Илюстрация Илинден", София, 1936 г., кн. 1, стр. 4–5; (Magazine Ilustratsia Ilinden), Sofia, 1936, book I, pp. 4–5; the original is in Bulgarian.
• MacDermott, Mercia. For freedom and perfection: the Life of Yané Sandansky. Journeyman, London, 1988. p. 44.
• Below is a statement that the cadet was expelled from the school on the basis of a memorandum of an officer, because of manifest poor behavior, but the school allows him to re-apply to a Commission for recovery of his status.
• Aarbakke, Vemund. Ethnic rivalry and the quest for Macedonia, 1870–1913, East European Monographs, 2003, ISBN 0880335270, p. 92.
• MacDermott, Mercia. . Freedom or Death: The Life of Delchev. Journeyman Press, London and West Nyack, 1978. 405 pp. ISBN 0-904526-32-1. Translated in Bulgarian: Макдермот, Мерсия. Свобода или смърт. Биография на Гоце Делчев, София 1979, с. 86–94.
• Banac, Ivo. "The Macedoine". In The National Question in Yugoslavia. Origins, History, Politics, Cornell University Press, 1984. pp. 307–328.
• Елдъров, Светлозар. "Върховният македоно-одрински комитет и Македоно-одринската организация в България (1895–1903)", Иврай, София, 2003, ISBN 9549121062, стр. 6.
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977, стр. 30. (Bulgarian) In English: Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography " Delchev", Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977, p. 30.
• Балканските държави и Македонския въпрос, Антони Гиза, превод от полски – Димитър Димитров, Македонски Научен Институт София, 2001; in English: Giza, Anthoni: The Balkan states and the Macedonian question. Macedonian Scientific Institute, Sofia. 2001, translation from Polish: Dimitar Dimitrov.
• Vladimir Ortakovski. Minorities in the Balkans Transnational Publishers, 2000, ISBN 1571051295, p. 43.
• Loyal Unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia, Keith Brown, Indiana University Press, 2013, ISBN 0253008476, p. 62.
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977, стр. 32–33. (Bulgarian) In English: Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography Delchev, Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977, pp. 32–33.
• Fires on the mountain: the Macedonian revolutionary movement and the kidnapping of Ellen Stone Volume, Laura Beth Sherman, East European Monographs, 1980, ISBN 0914710559, p. 15.
• Memoirs of Georgi Vasilev. Prinosi kam istoriyata na Makedono-odrinskoto revolyutsionno dvizhenie. Vol IV, p. 8, 9. From the memoirs of Petar Kiprilov, priest in the village of Pirok. Opus cit. p. 157.
• Иван Карайотов, Стоян Райчевски, Митко Иванов: История на Бургас. От древността до средата на ХХ век, Печат Тафпринт ООД, Пловдив, 2011, ISBN 978-954-92689-1-1, стр. 192–193.
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977, стр. 39. (Bulgarian) In English:Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography Delchev, Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977, p. 39.
• Modern history abstracts, 1450–1914, Volume 48, Issue 1–, American Bibliographical Center, Eric H. Boehm, ABC-Clio, 1997, p. 657.
• Елдъров, Светозар. Тайните офицерски братства в освободителните борби на Македония и Одринско 1897–1912, Военно издателство, София, 2002, стр.11–30.
• For example in a speech, addressed to the VIII extraordinary congress of the Bulgarian promilitary Supreme Macedono-Adrianopolitan Organisation in Sofia on April 7, 1901: "Само ако тукашната организация одобрява духът на вътрешната организация и не се стреми да й дава импулс, въздействие, т. е. не й се бърка в нейните работи, само в такъв случай може да съществува връзка между тия две организации.", НБКМ – БИА, ф. 224, а. е. 8, л. 602, in English: "Only if the external organization approves the spirit of the internal organisation /IMRO, editor's note/ and doesn't aspire to give it impulse, influence, i.e., it doesn't meddle in its affairs, only in such case relation between these two organisations could exist."; the document is kept in the SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library, the Bulgarian Historical Archive department, fund 224, archive unit 8, page 602.
• Socialism and nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1923, Mete Tunçay, Erik Jan Zürcher, British Academic Press, Amsterdam, 1994, ISBN 1850437874, p. 36.
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977, стр. 62–66. (Bulgarian) In English: Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography Delchev, Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977, pp. 62–66.
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977, стр. 69. (Bulgarian) In English: Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography Delchev, Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977, p. 69.
• Държавен вестник, бр. 282, 4.ХІІ.1914, стр. 1.
• Към Бяло море по стъпките на Гоце.
• On the plate was this inscription: In memory of fallen chetniks in the village of Banica on May 4, 1903 for the unification of Macedonia to the mother-country Bulgaria and to the eternal memory of the generations: Gotse Delchev from Kilkis, apostle and leader, Dimitar Gushtanov from Krushovo, Stefan Duhov from the village of Tarlis, Stoyan Zahariev from the village of Banica, Dimitar Palyankov from the village of Gorno Brodi. Their covenant was Freedom or Death." The plate was blown up by the Greeks in 1946. - сп. Илюстрация Илинден, 1943, бр.145-146, стр.13.
• Снимка на паметника на първия гроб на Гоце Делчев край село Баница, Серско, открит на 3 май 1943 г., 14 март 2012, Агенция "Фокус.
• Duncan Perry, "The Republic of Macedonia: finding its way" in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot (eds.), Politics, power and the struggle for Democracy in South-Eastern Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 228-229.
• Мичев. Д. Македонският въпрос и българо-югославските отношения – 9 септември 1944–1949, Издателство: СУ Св. Кл. Охридски, 1992, стр. 91.
• Livanios, Dimitris. The Macedonian Question: Britain and the Southern Balkans 1939–1949. Oxford Historical Monographs, Oxford University Press US, 2008, ISBN 0199237689, p. 202.
• Gold, Gerald L. Minorities and mother country imagery , Memorial University of Newfoundland. Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1984, ISBN 0919666434, p. 74.
• From recognition to repudiation: Bulgarian attitudes on the Macedonian question, articles, speeches, documents. Vanǵa Čašule, Kultura, 1972, p. 96.
• The historiography of Yugoslavia, 1965-1976, Savez društava istoričara Jugoslavije, Dragoslav Janković, The Association of Yugoslav Historical Societies, 1976, pp. 307–310.
• Yugoslav — Bulgarian Relations from 1955 to 1980 by Evangelos Kofos from J. Koliopoulos and J. Hassiotis (editorss), Modern and Contemporary Macedonia: History, Economy, Society, Culture, vol. 2, (Athens-Thessaloniki, 1992), pp. 277–280.
• "Сите ние сме Бугари". Македонски историци "на бунт" срещу общото честване на празниците ни. в-к "Дума", 07.06.2006.
• Ivo Banac. With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist splits in Yugoslav Communism Cornell University Press, 1988, ISBN 0801421861, p. 198.
• As a result of the Salonica Congress in 1896 a new Statute and Rules, providing for a very centralized form of organization were drawn up by Gyorche Petrov and Gotse Delchev. The Statute and Rules were probably largely Gyorche's work, based on guidelines agreed by the Congress. He attempted to draw members of the Supreme Macedonian Committee into the task of drafting the Statute by approaching Andrey Lyapchev and Dimitar Rizov. When, however, Lyapchev produced a first article which would have made the Organization a branch of the Supreme Committee, Petrov gave up in despair and wrote the Statute himself, with Delchev's assistance.
• During Delchev's lifetime, the Organization had three Statutes: the first was drawn up by Dame Gruev with the help of Petar Poparsov in 1894, the second by Gyorche Petrov, with the help from Gotse Delchev and the third by Delchev himself in 1902 (this was an amended version of the second). Two of these Statutes have come down to us: one entitled 'Statute of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Committees' (BMARC) and the other – 'Statute of the Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization' (SMARO). The first hectographed Statute which was very brief is not preserved.
• Пейо Яворов, "Събрани съчинения", Том втори, "Гоце Делчев", Издателство "Български писател", София, 1977, стр. 13. (Bulgarian) In English: Peyo Yavorov, "Complete Works", Volume 2, biography Delchev, Publishing house "Bulgarian writer", Sofia, 1977, p. 13. [1]
• "Спомени на Гьорчо Петров", поредица Материяли за историята на македонското освободително движение, книга VIII, София, 1927, глава VII, (in English: "Memoirs of Gyorcho Petrov", series Materials about history of the Macedonian revolutionary movement, book VIII, Sofia, 1927, chapter VII).
• ...At first the revolutionary organization began to work among the Bulgarian population, even not among the whole of it, but only among this part, which participated in the Bulgarian Exarchate. IMRO treated suspiciously to the Bulgarians, which participated in other churches, as the Greek Patriarchate, the Eastern Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. As to the revolutionary activity among the other nationalities as Turks, Albanians, Greeks and Vlahs, such question did not exist for the founders of the organization. This other nationalities were for IMRO foreign people... Later, when the leaders of IMRO saw, that the idea for liberation of Macedonia can find followers among the Bulgarians non-Exarchists, as also among the other nationalities in Macedonia, and under the pressure from IMRO-members with left, socialist or anarchist convictions, they changed the staute of IMRO in sence, that member of IMRO can be any Macedonian and Adrianopolitan, regardless from his ethnicity or religious denomination... See: "Борбите на македонския народ за освобождение". Димитър Влахов, Библиотека Балканска Федерация, № 1, Виена, 1925, стр. 11.
• Гоце Делчев. Писма и други материали, Дино Кьосев, Биографичен очерк, стр. 33.
• Review of Chairs of History at Law and History Faculty of South-West University – Blagoevgrad, vol. 2/2005, Културното единство на българския народ в контекста на фирософията на Гоце Делчев, автор Румяна Модева, стр. 2.
• Идеята за автономия като тактика в програмите на национално-освободителното движение в Македония и Одринско (1893–1941), Димитър Гоцев, 1983, Изд. на Българска Академия на Науките, София, 1983, c. 34.; in English: The idea for autonomy as a tactics in the programs of the National Liberation movements in Macedonia and Adrianople regions 1893–1941", Sofia, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Dimitar v, 1983, p 34. Among others, there are used the memoirs of the IMRO revolutionary Kosta Tsipushev, where he cited Delchev, that the autonomy then was only tactics, aiming future unification with Bulgaria. (55. ЦПА, ф. 226); срв. К. Ципушев. 19 години в сръбските затвори, СУ Св. Климент Охридски, 2004, ISBN 954-91083-5-X стр. 31–32. in English: Kosta Tsipushev, 19 years in Serbian prisons, Sofia University publishing house, 2004, ISBN 954-91083-5-X, p. 31-32.
• Таjните на Македониjа.Се издава за прв пат, Скопjе 1999 at the Wayback Machine (archived October 27, 2009). in Macedonian – Ете како ја објаснува целта на борбата Гоце Делчев во 1901 година: "...Треба да се бориме за автономноста на Македанија и Одринско, за да ги зачуваме во нивната целост, како еден етап за идното им присоединување кон општата Болгарска Татковина". In English – How Delchev explained the aim of the struggle against the Ottomans in 1901: "...We have to fight for autonomy of Macedonia and Adrianople regions as a stage for their future unification with our common fatherland, Bulgaria."
• According to Hristo Tatarchev in 1893 by the establishment of the organization: ...We talked a long time about the goal of this organization and at last we fixed it on autonomy of Macedonia with the priority of the Bulgarian element. We couldn't accept the position for "direct joining to Bulgaria" because we saw that it would meet big difficulties by reason of confrontation of the Great powers and the aspirations of the neighbouring small countries and Turkey. It passed through our thoughts that one autonomous Macedonia could easier unite with Bulgaria subsequently and if the worst comes to the worst, that it could play a role as a unificating link of a federation of Balkan people... – Вътрешната македоно-одринска революционна организация като митологична и реална същност: Торино 1934–1936, Христо Татарчев, Издател Македония прес, 1995.стр. 99.
• The national question in Yugoslavia: origins, history, politics, Cornell Paperbacks, Ivo Banac, Cornell University Press, 1988, ISBN 0801494931, p. 314.
• Perry, Duncan M. (1988). The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Revolutionary Movements, 1893–1903, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, p.23.
• Delchev, openly said: "We are Bulgarians"(Mac Dermott, 1978:192, 273, quoted in Danforth, 1995:64) and addressed "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, quoted in Danforth, 1995:64). See: Center for Documentation and Information on Minorities in Europe – Southeast Europe (CEDIME-SE), Slavic-Macedonians of Bulgaria, p. 5.
• Академик Иван Катарџиев, "Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот", интервjу, "Форум": "форум – Дали навистина Делчев се изјаснувал како Бугарин и зошто? Катарџиев – Ваквите прашања стојат. Сите наши луѓе се именувале како "Бугари"..."; also (in Macedonian; in English: "Academician Ivan Katardzhiev. I believe in Macedonian national immunity", interview, "Forum" magazine: "Forum – Whether Delchev really defined himself as Bulgarian and why? Katardzhiev – Such questions exist. All our people named themselves as "Bulgarians"...")
• "Уште робуваме на старите поделби", Разговор со д-р Зоран Тодоровски, www.tribune.eu.com, 27. 06. 2005, also here [2] (in Macedonian); in English: "We are still in servitude to the old divisions", interview with Dr. Zoran Todorovski, published on www.tribune.eu.com, 27-06-2005.
• Проштавање и национално помирување (3), д-р Антонио Милошоски, Утрински Весник, бр. 1760, 16 окт. 2006, In English: "Forgiving and national reconciliation (3)", Dr. Antonio Miloshoski, Utrinski Vesnik, issue 1760, 16.10.2006.
• From a circular-letter № 1, written by Peyo Yavorov under the supervision of Delchev and addressed to all revolutionary committees in Macedonia and the Adrianople area, dated from June 1902.
• In a conversation in 1900, with Lozengrad comrades, he was asked whether, in the event of a rising, the Organization should count on help from the Bulgarian Principality, and whether it would not be wiser at the outset to proclaim the union of Macedonia and Thrace with the Principality. Gotse replied: "We have to work courageously, organizing and arming ourselves well enough to take the burden of the struggle upon our own shoulders, without counting on outside help. External intervention is not desirable from the point of view of our cause. Our aim, our ideal is autonomy for Macedonia and the Adrianople region, and we must also bring into the struggle the other peoples who live in these two provinces as well... We, the Bulgarians of Macedonia and Adrianople, must not lose sight of the fact that there are other nationalities and states who are vitally interested in the solution of this questions". Приноси към историята на въстаническото движение в Одринско (1895–1903), т. IV, Бургас – 1941.
• Македония в българската фалеристика, Автор Тодор Петров, Издател: Военно издателство "Св. Георги Победоносец", 2004 г., ISBN 9545092831, стр. 9–10.
• 16 юли 2013, Агенция "Фокус", Паметна плоча на Гоце Делчев е поставена на лобното му място в днешна Гърция.