Gotse Delchev

I understand the world solely as a field for cultural competition among the peoples.

Georgi Nikolov Delchev (Macedonian/Bulgarian: Ѓорѓи/Георги Николов Делчев; 4 February 1872 – 4 May 1903), known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev, was a prominent Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary and leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization in Macedonia and Thrace.

Quotes

• I understand the world solely as a field for cultural competition among the peoples.
  • Quoted in Peyo Yavorov, Complete Works, vol. 2 (Sofia, 1977), p. 13

• May the splits and splinterings not frighten us. It is really a pity, but what can we do, since we are Bulgarians and all suffer from one common disease! If this disease did not exist in our ancestors, from whom it is also an inheritance in us, they would not have fallen under the ugly scepter of the Turkish sultans.
  • Letter to Nikola Maleševski (5 January 1899)

• Surely it is no small thing to be just a human being.
  • Quoted in Mercia MacDermott, Freedom Or Death, the Life of Gotsé Delchev (London & West Nyack, 1978), p. 2

• The liberation of Macedonia lies in the internal uprising. Anyone who thinks otherwise about liberating Macedonia is lying to himself and others.
  • Letter to Efrem Karanov (17 October 1895) - (Dino Kyosev, Gotse Delchev: Letters and other materials (Sofia, 1967), p. 274

• Comrades, our task is not to shed the blood of Bulgarians, of those who belong to the same people that we serve. But you all know who was responsible for the betrayal in Konomladi, which resulted in so many of our brothers being beaten and tortured, and which could have had other, more terrible consequences if it had been wholly successful. If those responsible are left unpunished, they will continue their dirty work and will multiply like toadstools after rain. And we, too, will bear a terrible responsibility for not having taken timely measures to cut off the mischievous and criminal hands which are reaching out towards what is sacred to our people. All faint hearts and weak spirits, whether they are Bulgarians or not, who are in the service of the Turkish authorities, must be made to feel that the avenging arm of the people's Organization is long and can reach monsters everywhere, and that there is no power on earth that can protect them from its merciless but just judgment. Some mischief makers have already fallen under its blows. Now it is the turn of the chief traitor to attone with blood for his crime against the people.
  • Quoted in Mercia MacDermott, Freedom Or Death, the Life of Gotsé Delchev (London & West Nyack, 1978), pp. 273–274

• 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 question. Any intervention by Bulgaria would provoke intervention by the neighbouring states as well, and could result in Macedonia being torn apart. That is why the peoples inhabiting these two provinces must themselves, through common effort and sacrifice, win their own freedom and independence, within the frontiers of an autonomous Macedonian-Adrianople state, counting only on the material and moral support of Bulgaria and the Great Powers.
  • Quoted in Mercia MacDermott, Freedom Or Death, the Life of Gotsé Delchev (London & West Nyack, 1978), p. 232