Nikola Yanakiev Karev (; ; November 23, 1877 – April 27, 1905) was a Macedonian Bulgarian socialist revolutionary of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). He was also a teacher in the Bulgarian Exarchate school system in his native area,Bulgarians, inspired by the rise of nationalism, began to set up their own national churches and schools independently of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1870 they were also allowed to establish an Exarchate, which, within the framework of the millet system, became more than a mere religious institution, coming to represent the Orthodox Bulgarians as a separate nation in the Ottoman Empire. As such, the Bulgarian Exarchate established a network of national schools where it took care of both religious and secular education of the Orthodox Bulgarians under its jurisdiction. For more see: Maria Schnitter, Daniela Kalkandjieva, Teaching Religion in Bulgarian Schools in Adam Seligman (ed.) Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 70-95. and a member of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party. During the Ilinden Uprising he headed the short-lived Kruševo Republic. He is considered a national hero in North Macedonia and Bulgaria.Nikola Karev was a Bulgarian revolutionary, narrow socialist and teacher. He was an activist of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan liberation movement and a participant in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising. For more: Пелтеков, Александър Г. Революционни дейци от Македония и Одринско. Второ допълнено издание. София, Орбел, 2014. , стр. 210-211.
Biography Early years
Karev completed his early education at the Bulgarian Exarchist school in Kruševo and in 1893 moved to Sofia, the capital of Principality of Bulgaria, where he worked as a carpenter for the socialist Vasil Glavinov. Karev joined the Socialist group led by Glavinov, and through him, made acquaintance of Dimitar Blagoev and other socialists, and became a member of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party. From 1896 he participated in the Macedonian-Adrianople Social Democratic Group, created as part of the Bulgarian Workers' Social-Democrat Party.The politics of terror: the Macedonian liberation movements, 1893–1903, Duncan M. Perry, Duke University Press, 1988, , p. 172. In 1898 Karev went back to Ottoman Macedonia and graduated from the Exarchist gymnasium in Bitola. From 1900 he worked as a schoolmaster in the Exarchist schools in the village of Gorno Divjaci and in his native Kruševo.From 1900 to 1903, Karev was a teacher at the Bulgarian schools in the village of Gorno Divjaci and in his native Kruševo. Билярски, Цочо. „Никола Карев, Председателят на Крушовската република“, Сите Българи заедно. Jan 31, 2012.Николов, Борис Й. Вътрешна Македоно-одринска революционна организация. Войводи и ръководители (1893–1934). Биографично-библиографски справочник, София 2001, с. 74
Political and revolutionary activity The first Conference of Macedonian Socialists was held on June 3, 1900, near Kruševo, where they defined the core aspects of the potential creation of a separate Macedonian Republic, as a cantonized state, part of a future Balkan Socialist Federation, as a multinational polity offering equal rights to all its citizens.We, the people: politics of national peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, Diana Mishkova, Central European University Press, 2009, , p. 122. They maintained the slogan "Macedonia for the Macedonians", using Macedonian people as an umbrella term covering Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Aromanians, Albanians, Jews, Serbs, ethnic Macedonians, etc., living in harmony in an independent state. In this period Karev joined the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and became a leader of a regional armed band (cheta).Антони Гиза, Балканските държави и Македонския въпрос (превод от полски - Димитър Димитров, Македонски Научен Институт София, 2001) стр. 35.
On the eve of the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising, in May 1903, he was interviewed in Bitola by the correspondent of the Greek daily Akropolis Stamatis Stamatiou. In the interview, Karev expressed his position of a radical leftist.Michalopoulos, Georgios (2013). Political parties, irredentism and the Foreign Ministry: Greece and Macedonia, 1878-1910 [PhD thesis]. Oxford University, pp. 163-164. Stamatiou described him as a Bulgarized Macedonian.Per Chavdar Marinov at the eve of the 20th century the treatment of the Greek society towards the Macedonian Slavs was changed. Until then they were accepted as Bulgarians, but after the aggravation of the Bulgarian-Greek relations on the Macedonian question, it was "proved" that the Macedonian Slavs were in fact Greeks, and that their language was not Bulgarian. The name Bulgarians also was taken out of use for them. At the time, the Greek researchers claimed that the Slavophones were simply Slavicized Greeks. This idea suggests that the Macedonian Slavs had lost their original Greek language and culture over the centuries, and it was time to them to return to their Hellenic roots. For the Greek audience the Macedonian Slavs were in historical aspect Ancient Macedonians (i.e. Greeks), not related to the Bulgarians. They were labelled as Bulgarian-speaking Greeks and even Slavic-speaking "Macedonians". For more see: Tchavdar Marinov, "Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism", In: Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One, pp: 290–291. Per Stamatiou, Karev presented himself as a voulgarofron, (i.e. Bulgarophile),The term means someone with pro-Bulgarian convictions. For its English translation see Philip Carabott, "The Politics of Constructing the Ethnic 'Other': The Greek State and Its Slav-speaking Citizens, ca. 1912 - ca. 1949", p. 151, Anastasia Karakasidou, "The Slavo-Macedonian 'non-minority'", p. 129, 153, n. 26 and Nada Boshkovska, Yugoslavia and Macedonia Before Tito: Between Repression and Integration (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2017), p. 8. and replied he was a Macedonian."Per Eleftheria Vambakovska, the interview, contains contradictory claims and actually begins with an illogical claim. Karev asserts he is a Bulgarian-minded ("Bulgarophron"), and on the first question of the reporter: "Are you a Macedonian", he answers with "yes". The reporter and the Greek audience then, regarded Macedonia as a Greek territory and hence the people living here, according to them, must be Greeks and descendants of Alexander the Great. That's why he was so persistently trying to persuade Karev, that he is Macedonian, i.e. Greek. And if he was not a Greek, then he is "Voulgarophron", "Bulgarized Macedonian", etc. Otherwise, it is easy to see that the interview was adopted for the Greek readers in 1903. The interview begins with a question "are you a Macedonian"? that means Karev's ethnic origin was more important for the interviewer – whether he is a "Macedonian", which to the Greeks was a synonymous of a "Greek". Otherwise, to the Greeks "Bulgarian-minded" was not so important – the conviction is acquirable and it can by changed. "Bulgarophron", literally translated would mean – a man who thinks like all the Bulgarians. Today the Greeks have a similar term – ethnicophronos, which has similar meaning, namely – a man who thinks on his own nation – nationalist, a Greek who thinks about Greece. Today the Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia (Greece) call their countrymen who became hellenized, i.e. Greeks – ethnicophronos. The journalist, and not only he, regards Macedonia as a Greek territory and hence the people living here, according to them, must be Greeks, descendants of Alexander the Great. That's why he is so persistently trying to persuade Karev, that he is Greek. And if he is not a Greek, then he is "Bulgarophonos", "Bulgarian Macedonian", etc. Otherwise, it is easy to see that the interview is "slightly tuned", adapted for the Greek readers in 1903." For more see: Утрински Весник, Сабота, July 22, 2000 Архивски Број 329. По откривањето на интервјуто на Никола Карев за 'Акрополис' во 1903. Одважноста на претседателот на Крушевската Република. Елефтерија Вамбаковска, Глигор Стојковски; Академик Катарџиев, Иван. Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот, интервју за списание "Форум", 22 jули 2000, број 329.Stamatis Stamatiou, From Bitola. Interview with a member of the Committee. In response to an ironic question by Stamatiou whether he is a direct descendant of Alexander the Great, Karev answered positively, but added that "history says he was a Greek".Tassos Kostopoulos compares Stamatiou's distrust towards Karev's self-presentation with the profession of a "purely Macedonian consciousness" of the Bulgarian Army colonel Anastas Yankov during his short passage through Greece on his way back from Macedonia to Bulgaria in December 1902, after the failed Gorna Dzhumaya Uprising, which, contrary to Karev's, was received cordially by Greek nationalists and taken at face value even by the most Slavophobe Greek newspapers. See Tassos Kostopoulos, Faire la police dans un pays etranger, pp. 5-6, n. 21.. Per Tchavdar Marinov the manifesto issued by Anastas Yankov during the Gorna Dzhumaya Uprising promulgated only a specific “local Macedonian” patriotism, a phenomenon that was described at the beginning of the twentieth century by foreign observers such as Henry Noel Brailsford and Allen Upward. They likewise noted the legend that Alexander the Great and Aristotle were “Bulgarians.” Obviously, by the late Ottoman period, the ancient glory of the region was exploited for self-legitimation by groups with different loyalties—Greek as well as Bulgarian. At that time the anarchist Pavel Shatev described the first vestiges of the process of an ethno-national differentiation between Bulgarian and Macedonian, while some people he met felt “only Bulgarians”, but others despite being Bulgarians "by nationality", felt themselves Macedonians above all. It was generating a new identity that, during that period, was still not necessarily exclusive vis-à-vis Greek or Bulgarian national belonging. Marinov claims that people as Yankov, although Bulgarians by national identification and Macedonian supranationalist by political conviction, began to promote rarely the prognostics of some different ethnicity, which after the First World War were transformed into definitive Macedonian nationalism. For more see: Tchavdar Marinov, "Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism", In: Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One, pp: 293–294; 304. Furthermore, he explained that IMRO was not Bulgarian and it just seemed like that because only Bulgaria appeared eager to help them. He also pointed out that Bulgaria's expectation to annex the region was miscalculated, and that the revolutionaries would accept anyone's help in order to attain their goal. When asked what the revolutionaries wanted for Macedonia, Karev explained their plans to create a republic in the model of Switzerland, providing autonomy and democracy for its different "races".