Revolutionary Velko Markov

Velko (Vele, Velyo) Petrov Markov, known by the pseudonym Milton, was a Bulgarian revolutionary and Krushevo voivode of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO).

He was born in 1870 into a poor family in the village of Seltse in the Krushevo district, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He was educated by the local teacher Pavle, and in 1892 he went to seek work in Sofia, where he worked as a builder and carpenter. There he met Vasil and Lazar Glavinov and joined the socialist movement, becoming a member of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party.

In 1899 he returned to Krushevo and later moved to Bitola, where he again worked as a carpenter. In Bitola he founded a socialist circle and organised a socialist conference in the Krushevo district in 1900, at which a decision was taken to merge the socialist groups into IMARO.

In March 1901 Velko Markov joined Nikola Rusinski's Krushevo detachment and in August of the same year became Krushevo voivode. He faced the difficult task of organising the lowland villages, which until then had remained outside the organisation, to link them with the Bitola and Prilep Revolutionary Districts.

In the spring of 1902 Markov's detachment grew to include several prominent Bulgarian teachers and citizens from Krushevo who had gone underground because of the Krushevo affair. This strengthened the detachment's position and helped expand the revolutionary movement in the region.