Revolutionary Yordan Silyanov-Piperkata

Yordan Silyanov Angelov, known as Piperkata, was a Bulgarian revolutionary and voivode of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation, born on 13/23 June 1870 in the village of Kozitsa, then part of the Ottoman Empire and now in North Macedonia. Coming from an extremely poor family, he did not complete the high school in Bitola and left his village for Bulgaria at a young age.

In Bulgaria he met hajduks, volunteers and participants in the Kresna-Razlog Uprising and made his first stay in the Pirin region with the voivode Doncho Zlatkov. In 1895 he participated in the Macedonian Committee's armed detachment campaign alongside Stoyo Voyvoda and Kocho Lyutata.

In 1897 he joined the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation in Duko Tasev's Kichevo detachment. After participating in Muharem Bey's killing, he was forced to leave Macedonia and again went to Bulgaria. Nevertheless, he returned to Macedonia with Mirche Atsev's detachment in June 1900 and established a detachment for agitation and organisational work in the Krushevo Revolutionary Area.

In 1901 he became a fighter under Nikola Rusinski and then voivode of a detachment in the Demir Hisar district. During the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, he participated with a strong detachment of 900 men, attacking the Albanian village of Pribiltsi and fighting at Gyurcheytsa in the Kichevo district. On 28 August 1903, while on his way to reconnoitre the area around the burned village of Tser, he fell into a Turkish ambush and died, struck by a Turkish bullet. After his death, his first deputy Dimitar Dechev took his place.

His widow, Ruzha Silyanova, applied for a Bulgarian national pension in 1943, which was approved and granted by the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Yordan Piperkata remains remembered in popular memory, and many songs and recollections have been composed about him.