Gotse Delchev - Controversy

Controversy

After 1944, the Bulgarian policy on the Macedonian Question was changed under Bulgaria's new communist regime, which was committed to the Comintern policy of supporting the development of a distinct ethnic Macedonian consciousness. Communist Yugoslavia also began to implement the same policy. The region of Macedonia was proclaimed as the connecting link for the establishment of 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 the 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 the standartized in 1945 Macedonian language, 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.

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 and all suffer from one common disease " 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. 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 incorporate the Macedonian revolutionary movement again in the Bulgarian history, and to prove the Bulgarian credentials of its historical leaders. After 1960, there have been long going unproductive debates between parties in Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia about the ethnic affiliation of Delchev.

Following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the fall of Communism, some 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.