Revolutionary Dona Kovacheva

Dona (Donka) Kovacheva, known as Komunata, participated in the national liberation movement in Macedonia.

She was born in 1855 in the village of Paralovo in the Bosilegrad region, then part of the Ottoman Empire and now in Serbia. She was widowed at an early age. Her house in Kyustendil became a centre for activists of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation. Clothes and weapons for detachment members were stored there, underground activists stayed overnight, and detachments departed from it for Macedonia. Dona's guests ate communally in her home, and she also transported some of them across the border. Revolutionaries she frequently visited included Dame Gruev, Pere Toshev, Yane Sandanski, Gyorche Petrov and others.

From 1895 to 1903, Dona Kovacheva's house served as Gotse Delchev's headquarters. She died in Kyustendil in 1926.

Dona's house was restored in the late 1970s and declared a cultural monument, preserving the memory of her important role in Macedonia's national liberation movement.