Revolutionary Hristo Matov

Hristo Apostolov Matov was a Bulgarian revolutionary, born on 4 March 1869 in the town of Struga in western Macedonia. He was a member of the Central Committee and the representation abroad of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO), and a leader of the organisation's right wing. He used pseudonyms such as Aristid, Brutus, Drimkolov and Insarov.

Hristo Matov was one of eleven siblings, six of whom reached adulthood, including his brother Milan Matov, also a revolutionary activist. He was close to his cousin Tsarevna Miladinova, and his mother Petra was the sister of the well-known Bulgarian National Revival figure Georgi Chakarov.

Hristo Matov studied in his native town and later became one of the first pupils of the Bulgarian Boys' High School in Thessaloniki. In July 1893 he graduated in philology from Sofia University. In the 1893/1894 school year, he served as headmaster of the four-class Bulgarian school in Serres. In 1894, after the Macedonian Committee's armed detachment campaign, he joined IMARO as a Central Committee member, replacing Gyorche Petrov.

Hristo Matov taught at the Bulgarian Teacher Training School in Skopje and was its headmaster from 1895 to 1898. In 1896 he initiated the fifteen-year-old Todor Alexandrov into IMARO. He actively participated in the revolutionary struggle and undertook various educational activities in support of the organisation.