Revolutionary Konstantin Nastev

Konstantin (Kostadin, Kocho) Nastev Stoyanov was a Bulgarian military officer, captain and revolutionary, known as the Maleshevo voivode of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. He was born on 17 April 1880 in Thessaloniki in the Ottoman Empire, now in Greece. He was the son of the National Revival activist Naste Stoyanov.

Nastev completed the fifth class of the Bulgarian high school in Thessaloniki in 1897 and began studying at the Military School in Sofia in 1898. He graduated in 1902 with the rank of second lieutenant and joined the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. That year he took part in the Gorna Dzhumaya Uprising before returning to military service.

During the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903, Nastev was appointed the committee's Melnik voivode. He participated in the uprising, one of its most significant moments for him being the dramatic battle against Turkish forces on 4 September, in which the voivode Spiro Petrov and six of his men died.

After the uprising was crushed, Nastev returned to military service and fought in the Balkan War in 1912 as commander of the Second Battalion of the 45th Infantry Regiment.

In 1914 Nastev was formally discharged from military service but secretly reinstated. In August 1914 he was appointed second secretary at the Bulgarian consulate in Thessaloniki, where he directed Bulgarian military intelligence. His network of agents included Italians, Turks, Jews and Bulgarians. In December 1915 he was arrested by the French authorities, but at his own request was sent to the front, where he commanded the Third Battalion of the 21st Sredna Gora Infantry Regiment.

Nastev was killed on 16 November 1916 during the assault on Erovete Peak near Gruništa in the Bitola region. His personal archive is held by the Archives State Agency. During his military career he served in the 12th Reserve Regiment and the 2nd Iskar Infantry Regiment.