Voivode

Todor Aleksandrov
A portrait of Aleksandrov with an autograph and dedication to Yavorov (Sofia, 1912).
Native name
Тодор Александров
Birth nameTodor Alexandrov Poporushev
Тодор Александров Попорушев
Born4 March 1881
Novo Selo, Ottoman Empire (now North Macedonia)
Died31 August 1924
Sugarevo, Tsardom of Bulgaria
Allegiance IMRO
 Kingdom of Bulgaria
Service/branch Bulgarian Army
UnitMacedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps
Battles/wars
Alma materBulgarian Pedagogical School of Skopje
Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki
Spouse(s)Vangelia Aleksandrova
ChildrenAlexander Aleksandrov
Maria Aleksandrova

Todor Aleksandrov Poporushov, best known as Todor Alexandrov (Bulgarian/Macedonian: Тодор Александров), also spelt as Alexandroff (4 March 1881 – 31 August 1924), was a Bulgarian revolutionary, army officer, politician and teacher. He favored initially the annexation of Macedonia to Bulgaria,[1][2][3] but later switched to the idea of an Independent Macedonia as a second Bulgarian state on the Balkans.[4][5][6] Alexandrov was a member of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO) and later of the Central Committee of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO).[7][8][9]

In North Macedonia, Aleksandrov, who had been previously dismissed by the post-WWII Yugoslav Macedonian historiography as a Bulgarophile and national traitor,[10] has been recently added to the country's historical heritage, already as an ethnic Macedonian.[11] Though, this has caused political and public controversies.[12]

Biography

Aleksandrov was born in Novo Selo, Kosovo vilayet, the Ottoman Empire (present-day suburb of Štip, North Macedonia) to Aleksandar Poporushev and Marija Aleksandrova. In 1898, he finished the Bulgarian Pedagogical School in Skopje and became a Bulgarian teacher consecutively in the towns of Kočani, Kratovo, the village of Vinica, and Štip. He attended the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki.

In 1903, Aleksandrov distinguished himself as an extraordinary leader and organizer of the Kočani Revolutionary District. He was arrested by the Ottoman authorities on 3 March 1903 and sent to Skopje under enforced police escort during the same night. He was sentenced to five years of solitary confinement by the extraordinary court there. In April 1904, he was released after an amnesty. Soon afterwards, he was appointed a head teacher in the Second high-school in Štip. Aleksandrov, in co-operation with Todor Lazarov and Mishe Razvigorov, worked day and night to organize the Štip Revolutionary District. The results of his activities were detected by the Ottoman authorities and in November 1904 he was forbidden to teach. On 10 January 1905, Aleksandrov's house was surrounded by a numerous troops but he succeeded in breaking through the military cordoned and immediately joined the cheta (band) of Mishe Razvigorov where he became its secretary. Aleksandrov attended the First Congress of the Skopje Revolutionary Region as a delegate from the Štip district.

Bulgarian certificate of adulthood (baccalaureate) of Todor Aleksandrov (1898).
Todor Aleksandrov in uniform of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps of the Bulgarian Army during the Balkan Wars.
Todor Aleksandrov and Alexandar Protogerov as Bulgarian Army officers during the First World War.

His deteriorating health lead him to become a teacher in Bulgaria — the Black Sea town of Burgas in 1906, but after learning about the death of Mishe Razvigorov, he abandoned his work as a teacher and returned to Macedonia at once. In November 1907, Aleksandrov was elected as a district vojvoda (commander) by the Third Congress of the Skopje Revolutionary District.

On 2 August 1909, the Ottomans made another attempt to arrest him but failed again. In the spring of 1910, he and his cheta traversed the Skopje region and organized the revolutionary activities. In early 1911, Aleksandrov became a member of the Central Committee of the IMARO. In 1912, he became a vojvoda in the Kilkis and Thessaloniki districts where he carried out a number of sabotages against Ottoman targets, facilitating this way the Bulgarian cause in the First Balkan War. He supported the Bulgarian Army.

In 1913, he was at the headquarters of the Third brigade of the Macedonian Militia in the Bulgarian army. After 1913 he organized the IMARO resistance against other nationalities, such as Serbs and Greeks. With the inclusion of Bulgaria in the First World War in October 1915, Todor Alexandrov was mobilized. At that time, the structures of the Military Defense Forces completely merged into the structure of the Bulgarian army. Aleksandrov himself made considerable efforts to organize the administration in the territories occupied by Sabia. On 4 November 1919, Aleksandrov was arrested by the government of Aleksandar Stamboliyski but he succeeded to escape nine days later. In the spring of 1920, Aleksandrov went with a cheta to Vardar Macedonia where he restored the revolutionary organization and attracted the world's attention to the unsolved Macedonian question. At the end of 1922, there was a bounty of 250,000 dinars placed on him by the Serbian authorities in Belgrade.

In 1924 IMRO entered negotiations with the Comintern about collaboration between the communists and the creation of a united Macedonian movement. The idea for a new unified organization was supported by the Soviet Union, which saw a chance for using this well developed revolutionary movement to spread revolution in the Balkans and destabilize the Balkan monarchies. Alexandrov defended IMRO's independence and refused to concede on practically all points requested by the Communists. No agreement was reached besides a paper "Manifesto" (the so-called May Manifesto of 6 May 1924), in which the objectives of the unified Macedonian liberation movement were presented: independence and unification of partitioned Macedonia, fighting all the neighbouring Balkan monarchies, forming a Balkan Communist Federation and cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Failing to secure Alexandrov's cooperation, the Comintern decided to discredit him and published the contents of the Manifesto on 28 July 1924 in the "Balkan Federation" newspaper. Todor Aleksandrov and Aleksandar Protogerov promptly denied through the Bulgarian press that they have ever signed any agreements, claiming that the May Manifesto was a communist forgery. Shortly after, Alexandrov was assassinated in unclear circumstances, when a member in his cheta shot him on 31 August 1924 in the Pirin Mountains. He had a wife called Vangelia and two children (Alexander and Maria; a strong proponent of her father's ideals and IMRO's charter).[13]

View about the Macedonian Question

Todor Alexandrov's monument in Kyustendil, Bulgaria during 1920s.
An excerpt of a letter by Aleksandrov from 1919, where he emphasizied that the autonomy of Macedonia was understood only as a stage in the organization's struggle for the unification of the Bulgarian people. He also accused Gerdzhikov, Hadzhidimov and Petrov of agitating for an autonomous Macedonia as a distinct political entity with a separate Macedonian people and its own history.[14][15]

IMRO and Alexandrov himself aimed at an autonomous Macedonia, with its capital at Salonika and prevailing Macedonian Bulgarian element. He took into consideration the decomposition of Greece and the incorporation into the autonomous Macedonia of the Macedonian territory which was under the Greek dominion. The part of Macedonia which was in Bulgaria was also foreseen to be incorporated into the autonomous Macedonia. His view does not indicate any doubt about the Bulgarian ethnic character of Macedonian Slavs then.

Telegram from the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic dated December 6, 1918, claiming Alexandrov was restoring the IMRO-detachments in Macedonia, aiming "to maintain the Bulgarian spirit in the locals."

Controversies in North Macedonia

2008 monument controversy

A local association of Bulgarians raised a monument of the revolutionary on 2 February 2008 in the city of Veles.[16][17] After the local administration refused to provide a place for the bust it was raised in the yard of a local Bulgarian resident, Dragi Karov.[18] The following night Karov received a number of threats and the monument was twice thrown down by unknown individuals.[19] Soon after, the monument was removed at the insistence of local authorities, as an unlawful construction. This incident caused Bulgarian president Georgi Parvanov to call upon the Macedonian government to review the history of Alexandrov's deeds on his meeting with Branko Crvenkovski in the town of Sandanski.[20]

2012 monument controversy

In June 2012, a new statue called “Macedonian Equestrian Revolutionary” was erected in Skopje. As a consequence, an outcry among older residents erupted almost immediately when they noted the anonymous rider’s similarity to the historical figure. The statue was reportedly commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, but this was in question. The Ministry called the statue “the complete responsibility of the municipality of Kisela Voda (the City of Skopje)”. The city government denied this.[21]

Attempts to reach a spokesperson at the Ministry of Culture for comment have thus been unsuccessful. Earlier the same month the opposition Social Democrats took to the streets to protest the changing of hundreds of street names, including a bridge that was to be named after Aleksandrov.[22] Finally in October, a few months after the setting of the monument, on it appeared a board with the name of Todor Aleksandrov.[23]

2021 controversy

In the spring of 2021, the new Skopje municipal council majority by the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia decided to change back the names of many local sites. Thus, the bridge named after Alexandrov and the street named after the organization he led - IMRO, were renamed.[24] The former Skopje Mayor from VMRO-DPMNE Koce Trajanovski reacted that his successor Petre Šilegov has deleted part from the Macedonian history at the request of Bulgaria.[25]

Honours

Aleksandrov Peak on Graham Land, Antarctica is named after Todor Aleksandrov.

Memorials

See also

References and notes

  1. ↑ Wojciech Roszkowski, Jan Kofman (2016) Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Taylor & Francis, ISBN 9781317475941, p. 883.
  2. ↑ Dmitar Tasić (2020) Paramilitarism in the Balkans Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania, 1917-1924, OUP Oxford, ISBN 9780191899218, p. 165.
  3. ↑ Robert Gerwarth, John Horne, War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War. (2013) OUP Oxford, ISBN 9780199686056, p. 150.
  4. ↑ J. Pettifer as ed., The New Macedonian Question, St Antony's Series, Springer, 1999, ISBN 0230535798, p 68.
  5. ↑ Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff, Dieter Langewiesche as ed., Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War: Goals, Expectations, Berghahn Books, 2012, ISBN 085745739X, p. 166.
  6. ↑ Spyros Sfetas, The Birth of ‘Macedonianism’ in the Interwar Period p. 287. in the History of Macedonia, ed. Ioannis Koliopoulos, Museum of the Macedonian struggle, Thessaloniki, 2010; pp. 286-303.
  7. ↑ Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question by Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002; ISBN 0275976483, pg. 99.
  8. ↑ Crown of Thorns: The Reign of King Boris III of Bulgaria, 1918–1943 by Stephane Groueff, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, ISBN 1568331142,p. 118.
  9. ↑ Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900–1996 (by Chris Kostov), Peter Lang, 2010; ISBN 3034301960, pg. 78.
  10. ↑ Безименa статуа причина за реакции во Македонија. A new nameless statue of a horseman installed in Skopje has caused anger among many who see in it a striking resemblance to Todor Aleksandrov, one of the most controversial figures in Macedonian history... The majority of historians evaluate Todor Aleksandrov as "the greatest traitor of the Macedonian cause", due to his pro-Bulgarian views. For more see: Sinisa Jakov Marusic, Skopje, BIRN, June 28, 2012.
  11. ↑ Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, p. 140.
  12. ↑ In 2021, the name of the Todor Alexandrov Bridge in Skopje, which was given to it in 2012 and provoked protests then, was changed back again. For more see: Зоре Нацева, Град Скопје ги врaќа старите имиња на Ленинова, Железничка, Мексичка, 4 Јули и други. Инфомах, March 25, 2021.
  13. ↑ Македоно-одринското опълчение 1912-1913 г. : Личен състав по документи на Дирекция „Централен военен архив“. София, Главно управление на архивите, Дирекция „Централен военен архив“ В. Търново, Архивни справочници № 9, 2006. ISBN 954-9800-52-0. с. 16.
  14. ↑ "Тодор Александров от Ново село, Щип, Вардарска Македония - "Писмо до Владимир Карамфилов от 6 юли 1919 г.", публикувано в "Сè за Македонија: Документи: 1919-1924", Скопје, 2005 година". Онлайн Библиотека Струмски. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
  15. ↑ "ИСТИНАТА ЗА АВТОНОМИЯТА НА МАКЕДОНИЯ ВЪВ ВИЖДАНИЯТА НА ВМОРО И НА ТОДОР АЛЕКСАНДРОВ". www.sitebulgarizaedno.com. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
  16. ↑ Sociétés politiques comparées 25 May 2010; Tchavdar Marinov, Université de Sofia ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’; New Bulgarian University - Historiographical revisionism and rearticulation of memory in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, p.3, note #5. Archived 15 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ↑ "Nameless Statue Causes Stir in Macedonia", BalkanInsight.com, 28 June 2012.
  18. ↑ Paul Reef, Macedonian Monument Culture Beyond ‘Skopje 2014’. From the journal Comparative Southeast European Studies https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2018-0037
  19. ↑ "News.bg — ВМРО откри паметник на Тодор Александров в Македония". news.ibox.bg. Retrieved 16 March 2008.
  20. ↑ "News.bg — Македония и България са с обща история, обяви Първанов". news.ibox.bg. Retrieved 16 March 2008.
  21. ↑ Нова статуа ги разбуди старите расправии во Македонија. BIRN, July 13, 2012.
  22. ↑ Martin Laine, Hero or villain? "New Skopje statue sparks controversy", Digital Journal, 29 June 2012.
  23. ↑ Утрински вестик, „Војводата на коњ“ и официјално Тодор Александров. Archived 2012-10-22 at the Wayback Machine, 18 October 2012.(in Macedonian)
  24. ↑ Советот на град Скопје ја усвои одлуката за промена на имињата на улиците, опозицијата најавува судска разврска. „Мета.мк“, 31 март 2021.
  25. ↑ Коце Трајановски: Шилегов го брише Тодор Александров на барање на Бугарија. Mar 26, 2021, Faktor.mk.
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