110 years since the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising (1903)

The Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising of August 1903 was an organized revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was prepared and carried out by the Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization. The British researcher of the Balkans H. N. Brailsford wrote in his book Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future: "The moment for which the Bulgarian population had been preparing for ten years arrived on the festival of the Prophet Elijah's day — the evening of Sunday, August the 2nd, 1903." At the same time on the other end of the SMARO's territory, in Eastern Thrace, the leaders of the Adrianople Vilayet comitajis, had unanimously agreed that they were not ready for uprising, but out of a feeling of solidarity, had voted for a rising. So in Strandzha the rising had begun on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 19, 1903.

On August 19, a closely related uprising organized by Bulgarian peasants in the Adrianople Vilayet led to the liberation of a large area in the Strandzha Mountains near the Black Sea coast, and the creation of a provisional government in Vassiliko, the Strandzha Republic. This lasted about twenty days before being put down by the Ottomans.
(english text: wikipedia.org)

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