Revolutionary Pere Toshev

Pere Toshev, known by the pseudonyms Lefter and Kamen, was a Bulgarian revolutionary and active member of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO). He was born in 1865 in Prilep, then part of the Ottoman Empire, into the family of Naum Toshev and Kata Kepova, wealthy emigrants from the Debar district.

Pere Toshev received his primary education in Prilep and then continued his studies at the Bulgarian Boys' High School in Thessaloniki. In 1884, after participating in a school revolt and following a search, he was expelled from the school. The following year he settled in Plovdiv and completed the sixth class at the local high school. Toshev became a courier for the Bulgarian Commercial-Revolutionary Committee and participated in the Unification as one of the detachment members who seized the city's post office.

Between 1885 and 1890, Toshev and Andrey Lyapchev organised secret meetings in villages around Plovdiv and decided to establish a new Macedonian-Adrianople liberation organisation. In 1890 they toured Macedonia on a reconnaissance mission.

In 1892 Pere Toshev became a teacher in Prilep and founded the town's first IMARO revolutionary committee. The following year he moved to Skopje and became a teacher there. In 1896 he moved to Thessaloniki, where he became a school inspector and a teacher at the Bulgarian high school.

In 1901, following the Thessaloniki affair, Toshev was sentenced to 101 years of imprisonment in a fortress, but he was amnestied in 1902. He attended the Smilevo Congress in 1903 and led the Mariovo Revolutionary Area during the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising. After the uprising was suppressed, he worked with Gyorche Petrov to restore the revolutionary networks in the Prilep district.

In 1912, after Bulgaria and Serbia concluded a treaty of alliance, Toshev protested and was arrested. After his release he left for Macedonia, but Turkish detachments killed him on the road between the villages of Gradsko and Drenovo. His body was cut into pieces and buried in a roadside ditch.

In 1994 Pere Toshev's bones were reburied in Prilep. In May 2012 a memorial plaque honouring Toshev was installed in Asenovgrad.