Revolutionary Gotse Delchev

Georgi (Gotse) Nikolov Delchev was one of the most significant Bulgarian revolutionaries and a leader of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees, later known as the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation. He is a national hero in Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

Gotse Delchev met Damyan Gruev, founder of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee (BMARC), again in Štip and became an active participant in the organisation. After joining, Gotse Delchev became the de facto leader of IMARO.

During this period, Gotse Delchev organised the organisation's border posts, including those at Kocherinovo, Rila, Kyustendil and Dupnitsa, as well as clandestine routes into the interior of Macedonia. In the summer of 1896, he participated in IMARO's Thessaloniki Congress and, with Gyorche Petrov, drew up the programme and statutes of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees, providing for their establishment on democratic foundations.

Gotse Delchev graduated from the Exarchate school in Novo Selo in the Štip region, where he had taught natural history, geography, geometry and geometrical drawing. He then became a teacher in Bansko, where he built an extensive network of committees in the border regions of Razlog and Gorna Dzhumaya, extending as far as the Nevrokop region.

In 1897, Gotse Delchev toured the Melnik region and established a revolutionary committee in Melnik. In the following years he became the organisation's foreign representative in Sofia and participated in the supreme councils of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee.

In 1902, Gotse Delchev and Gyorche Petrov drew up a new programme and statutes for the organisation, now called the "Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation". This period was marked by considerable success in organisational activity and in preparing detachments and voivodes for the uprising.

In March 1903, Gotse Delchev's detachment blew up the bridge over the River Angista on the Thessaloniki–Adrianople railway. In May of the same year, the detachment was surrounded in the village of Banitsa, where Gotse Delchev and Dimitar Gushtanov died while the others managed to escape. Gotse Delchev was killed on 4 May 1903, and his death was regarded as a grievous loss for IMARO.