Yane Sandanski

Voivode

Yane Sandanski
Yane Sandanski c. 1900
Native name
Яне Сандански
Birth nameYane Ivanov Sandanski
Born18 May 1872
Vlahi, Ottoman Empire
Died22 April 1915
Blatata, near Pirin, Tsardom of Bulgaria
Buried
Rozhen Monastery
Allegiance
Service / branch Bulgarian Army
Battles / warsIlinden Uprising
Macedonian Struggle
Balkan Wars
Signature

Yane Sandanski (Bulgarian: Яне Сандански, Macedonian: Јане Сандански; Originally spelled in older Bulgarian orthography as Яне Ивановъ Сандански (Yane Ivanov Sandanski);[1] 18 May 1872 – 22 April 1915) was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary.[2] He is recognized as a national hero in both Bulgaria and North Macedonia.[3]

In his youth Sandanski was interested in Bulgarian politics and had a career as head of the local prison in Dupnitsa. Then he was involved in the anti-Ottoman struggle, joining initially the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), but later switched to the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO). Sandanski became one of the leaders of the IMARO in the Serres revolutionary district and head of the left wing of the organisation. He supported the idea of a Balkan Federation, and Macedonia as an autonomous state within its framework, as an ultimate solution of the national problems in the area. During the Second Constitutional Era he became an Ottoman politician and entrepreneur, collaborating with the Young Turks and founded the Bulgarian People's Federative Party.[4] Sandanski took up arms on the side of Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars (1912–13). Finally he was involved in Bulgarian public life again, but was eventually killed by the rivalling IMARO right-wing faction activists.[5]

Sandanski's legacy remains disputed among Bulgarian and Macedonian historiography today. Macedonian historians refer to him in an attempt to demonstrate the existence of Macedonian nationalism or at least proto-nationalism within a part of the local revolutionary movement at his time.[6] Despite the allegedly "anti-Bulgarian" autonomism and federalism of Sandanski,[7] it is unlikely he had developed Macedonian national identity in a narrow sensе,[8] or he regarded the Bulgarian Exarchists in Ottoman Macedonia as a separate nation from Bulgarians.[9] Contrary to the assertions of Skopje, his "separatism" represented a supranational project, not national. More, the compatriots, who convinced Sandanski to accept such leftist ideas, were Bulgarian socialists, most of whom were non-Macedonian in origin. The designation Macedonian then was an umbrella term covering different nationalities in the area and when applied to the Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia, it denoted mainly the then Bulgarian ethnic community there.[10] However, contrary to Bulgarian assertions, his ideas of a separate Macedonian political entity, have stimulated the subsequent development of Macedonian nationalism.

As initial member of the SMAC, which served directly the Bulgarian governmental interests,[11] and then of the left wing of the IMRO, which advocated the creation of a Balkan Federation, Yane Sandanski remains one of the most controversial[12] Bulgarian revolutionaries.[13] While the Bulgarian communist authorities mostly liked him for his leftist sympathies,[14] after the fall of communism he is described by some nationalist historians as a betrayer of the Bulgarian national interests in Macedonia.[15] Sandanski is portrayed by them as an Ottomanist, and collaborationist of the Young Turks, seen as Bulgarian enemies, and as the man who started the fratricidal war into the IMRO. He has been accused also of being transformed himself from a revolutionary into a businessperson whose political motivation became only the money earning. On the contrary, in North Macedonia, the positive connotation of him, created in the times of Communist Yugoslavia is still alive. Since then the Macedonian historiography has emphasized the particularity of the IMRO's left wing,[16] while in fact Yugoslav communism and Macedonian nationalism are closely related.[17] Thus, he is portrayed by the Macedonian historians as a freedom fighter against the “Greater Bulgarian chauvinism” and the “Turkish yoke”.

  1. ^ Движението отсамъ Вардара и борбата съ върховиститѣ, съобщава Л. Милетичъ (Издава „Македонскиятъ Наученъ Институтъ", София - Печатница П. Глушковъ - 1927), стр. 11.
  2. ^ "IMRO was founded in 1893 in Thessaloníki; its early leaders included Damyan Gruev, Gotsé Delchev, and Yane Sandanski, men who had a Macedonian regional identity and a Bulgarian national identity." For more see: Danforth, Loring. "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  3. ^ The way Bulgarian and Macedonian history and identities are intertwined is exemplified by the dispute over the identity of revolutionary heroes such as Gotse Delchev and Yane Sandanski. Bulgarian nationalists, for example, ridicule their Macedonian counterparts' identification with Sandanski, since archival documents refer to him as Bulgarian. For more see: Aarbakke Vemund, Images of imperial legacy: The impact of nationalizing discourse on the image of the last years of Ottoman rule in Macedonia, p. 121, in Images of Imperial Legacy, Modern Discourses on the social and cultural impact of Ottoman and Habsburg rule in Southeast Europe by Editor(s): Tea Sindbæk, Maxmilian Hartmuth, ISBN 3643108508, 2011; pp. 115-128.
  4. ^ The other prominent member of the Socialist Workers' Federation, besides the Sephardic Circle and the “anarcho-liberals,” was the People’s Federative Party–Bulgarian Section. The latter was founded in April 1909 by IMRO members who actively participated in the Young Turk Revolution and the “Army of Freedom” march on Istanbul to quell the countercoup in 1909. It was strongly divided along ideological lines and different strategic choices around social democrats like Dimitîr Vlahov (1878–1953), nationalists with socialist leanings like Iane Sandanski (1872–1915), and nationalists like Khristo Chernopeev. For more see: Maria Todorova (2020) The Lost World of Socialists at Europe’s Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s - 1920s; Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 64, ISBN 1350150347.
  5. ^ Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia; Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Edition 2, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019; ISBN 1538119625, p. 263.
  6. ^ In his youth Sandanski was a member of the Bulgarian nationalist Supreme Macedonian Committee, which main idea was the direct unification of Macedonia with Bulgaria, but later switched to the IMRO. However, the first name of the IMRO was "Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees", which was later changed several times. Initially its membership was restricted only for Bulgarians. It was active not only in Macedonia but also in Thrace (the Vilayet of Adrianople). Since its early name emphasised the Bulgarian nature of the organisation by linking the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia to Bulgaria, these facts are still difficult to be explained from the Macedonian historiography. They suggest that IMRO revolutionaries in the Ottoman period did not differentiate between ‘Macedonians’ and ‘Bulgarians’. Moreover, as their own writings attest, they often saw themselves and their compatriots as ‘Bulgarians’ and wrote in Bulgarian standard language. For more see: Brunnbauer, Ulf (2004) Historiography, Myths and the Nation in the Republic of Macedonia. In: Brunnbauer, Ulf, (ed.) (Re)Writing History. Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism. Studies on South East Europe, vol. 4. LIT, Münster, pp. 165-200 ISBN 382587365X.
  7. ^ The Internal organization's leaders rejected the national-separatist idea of promoting the Macedonian into a distinct language. They opposed Misirkov's program and his book seems to have been burned in Sofia by TMORO activists. When, in 1905, Čupovski tried to organize a "Pan-Macedonian conference" in Veles, he was expelled from the town by a local chief of the Internal organization. At the same time, the Macedonian nationalists did not recognize their program even in the allegedly "anti-Bulgarian" autonomism of Sandanski and, in 1914, accused him of "non-Macedonian" activity. For more see: Tchavdar Marinov We, the Macedonians - The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878–1912) in We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, edited by Diana Mishkova, 107–138. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009, ISBN 9639776289, 2009, p. 133.
  8. ^ It is nevertheless doubtful that Sandanski and the other leftists of this period developed Macedonian nationalism stricto sensu. During the constitutional regime established by the Young Turks, Sandanski and his followers set up a “People's Federative Party” that was supposed to include a number of ethnic sections, each one representing a distinct "nationality" of Macedonia... This federalist project, however, failed and the only section that was set up within the "People's Federative Party" was the one of Sandanski himself and of his "co-nationals," which was actually called the "Bulgarian section." For more see: Marinov, Tchavdar. “Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism. In: Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One, pp. 273–330; ISBN 9789004250765, Brill, 2013, p. 303.
  9. ^ In Macedonian historiography, Sandanski has been portrayed as a fighter for Macedonian independence against the Young Turks and the Turkish rule in Macedonia. I think that this interpretation is highly problematic. He certainly stood for the autonomy of Macedonia, but this does not mean that he regarded the Slavic Christians in Macedonia as a separate nation—namely, a “Macedonian nation.” For more see: Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu, «Yane Sandanski as a political leader in Macedonia in the era of the Young Turks», Cahiers balkaniques [En ligne], 40 | 2012, mis en ligne le 21 mai 2012, doi:10.4000/ceb.1192.
  10. ^ Bechev, Dimitar. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, Introduction.
  11. ^ Supreme Macedonian Revolutionary Committee, which had emerged in Sofia in 1895 served Bulgarian state interests in Macedonia. Opponents on the left would designate people on the right as ‘‘Vrhovists’’ (Supremists) and their pro-Bulgarian program and aims as ‘Vrhovizam’’ (Supremism). For more see: Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History Hoover Institution Press Publication, Hoover Press, 2013, ISBN 081794883X, p. 120.
  12. ^ Waller, Diane, "Mercia MacDermott: A Woman of the Frontier" p. 181; in Black Lambs and Grey Falcons (2nd ed.). Allcock, John B. and Young, Antonia, eds. (2000). Oxford: Berghahn Books. pp. 166–186.
  13. ^ Aykut Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey. Armenian Research Center collection. Volume 58 of Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology; BRILL, 1997; ISBN 9004107916, pp. 163-168.
  14. ^ Sfetas, Spyridon. (2017). The Fusion of Regional and Cold War Problems: The Macedonian Triangle Between Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1963–80; in The Balkans in the Cold War, Svetozar Rajak et al., Springer, ISBN 1137439033, pp.307-329
  15. ^ James Frusetta, Common Heroes, Divided Claims: IMRO between Macedonia and Bulgaria, in John R. Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe; Central European University Press, 2004, ISBN 9639241822, pp. 110-121.
  16. ^ Igor Despot, The Balkan Wars in the Eyes of the Warring Parties: Perceptions and Interpretations; iUniverse, 2012, ISBN 1475947038, p. 15.
  17. ^ Roumen Daskalov, Diana Mishkova as ed., Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume Two: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, BRILL, 2013, ISBN 9004261915, p. 499.