150 years because the delivery of Efrem Chuchkov - 2024-05-29 22:23:48

/ world immediately information/ November 21, 2020 marked the a hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the delivery of my great-grandfather Efrem Chuchkov. Nonetheless, he’s utterly forgotten in Bulgaria. Though there may be an “Efrem Chuchkov” avenue in Sofia, its title is just about unknown to immediately’s Bulgarians.

Efrem Chuchkov, born in Shtip, is among the most distinguished figures of the Bulgarian nationwide liberation motion in Macedonia. As a revolutionary practitioner, he operated principally underground (he was chargeable for the navy half, i.e. for the preparation and group of the detachments) and subsequently sadly didn’t have time to write down memoirs or dictate them to Lubomir Miletić. As well as, in line with the memoirs of his companions, he was extraordinarily modest. Nonetheless, the oblivion through which his title sinks immediately doesn’t honor our nation, particularly contemplating that in our western neighbor he’s the article of monumental curiosity.

Efrem Chuchkov was the primary voivode based by Gotse Delchev Chetnik Institute of the Inner Macedonian-Odrina Revolutionary Group (see, for instance, the publications “Ilustracia Ilinden” from the 20s of the twentieth century). As early as 1898, he fashioned and led a detachment, initially in Maleshevsko, after which in Shtipsko, Kochansko, Skopsko, Kratovsko, Tsarevoselsko, and many others. He was all the time one of many leaders of the Group: head of the Skopje Revolutionary District, a member of the Central Committee of VMORO, and from 1908 till his loss of life in 1923 he was second in authority and rank within the Group (after Todor Aleksandrov, who , by the best way, started his revolutionary exercise as a Chetnik in Efrem Chuchkov’s troop).

Efrem Chuchkov was the best good friend and comrade of Gotse Delchev (a major a part of the intensive correspondence between them has been preserved). The 2 had been expelled collectively from the Navy College in Sofia (immediately’s Navy Academy) due to socialist beliefs. In follow, Gotse Delchev had unreserved belief solely in him. In his letters to these wishing to hitch the revolutionary exercise (for instance to Pavel Shatev), Delchev wrote: “Do you wish to be a part of the battle? Then go to Efrem Chuchkov. He, if he approves of you, provides you with weapons and cash, and settle for you into the Group.”

There are various attention-grabbing however little-known episodes of his revolutionary exercise. One in every of them is the next:

Throughout the Balkan Battle, in October 1912, along with his squad, then numbering a number of hundred individuals, and with the assistance of native volunteers, Efrem Chuchkov freed Shtip, Kochani and the Shtip area from Turkish slavery, capturing a whole bunch of Turkish troopers. Then he despatched a written request to the Bulgarian rulers to ship no less than some Bulgarian common troops there as reinforcements, in order that the realm wouldn’t be occupied by the Serbs. Whereas ready for a solution from the Bulgarian rulers, realizing that the Serbian military was transferring in the direction of Shtip, he established an improvised type of short-term Bulgarian rule there and determined to make use of deception by sending his males to the Kingdom to deliver 300 Bulgarian navy overcoats. With them, Chuchkov “dressed” 300 individuals from Shtip, and when the Serbs approached the Shtip Valley to occupy it, they stopped their advance, as a result of from the encircling heights, with their binoculars, they noticed within the city individuals whose clothes resembled the uniforms of the Bulgarian military.

To strengthen this deception, Efrem Chuchkov sends a written “notification” to the Serbs that Bulgarian common navy models have entered Stip and a Bulgarian navy commandant’s workplace has been established. Nonetheless, Chuchkov, in fact, doesn’t have any Bulgarian seal at his disposal, and should by some means “officialize” his notification. Subsequently, he heats up a silver five-lev Bulgarian coin, with which he presses the paper over his signature. Thus, in his letter to the Serbian command, a hazy semblance of a seal seems, which does the job.

All this delayed the Serbs for some time, however it couldn’t stop them from occupying Macedonia, and it is usually apparent that the Bulgarian authorities had some secret preparations with them – preparations which had been treacherous in the direction of the Macedonian Bulgarians. Efrem Chuchkov didn’t know this then. He additionally doesn’t know that the Bulgarian rulers intentionally lied to the Bulgarian folks that they’d wage a warfare of liberation for Macedonia, however in actual fact they had been attempting to overcome Thessaloniki, Edirne and Constantinople-Constantinople (cities that had been virtually by no means inside the boundaries of the Bulgarian state).

The reality shines when Efrem Chuchkov lastly receives a solution to his letter. On this reply, the insane Bulgarian rulers wrote to him that they’d not ship him a single soldier as reinforcement, however that as a substitute he ought to “ship his males to Chataldja”…

Later, after one other crushing nationwide disaster represented by the First World Battle, Efrem Chuchkov, along with Todor Alexandrov, rebuilt the Group. Though his youthful years have handed, Chuchkov refuses the official place provided to him in Sofia within the State Fee for Refugees and continues the trail of unlawful battle within the mountains of occupied Macedonia, which has already been reworked into Southern Serbia. His newly fashioned firm was defeated and nearly destroyed after a collection of unequal battles with quite a few models of the common Serbian military (in 1922 alone he fought 7 battles with Serbian navy models). Severely in poor health on account of the injuries acquired and the adversities of life throughout the intervals of illegality, Efrem Chuchkov died in Sofia on October 1, 1923.

Though forgotten by immediately’s Bulgarian state, the celebrated voivode and head of the Group Efrem Chuchkov is immortalized in a number of the folks songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians. He himself, as his contemporaries wrote, possessed superb musical and singing items, and his bewitching voice actually bewitched the opposite nice Macedonian revolutionaries within the night, after the conferences of the Central Committee of the Group. In contrast to a lot of our compatriots immediately, Efrem Chuchkov, who was a instructor of Bulgarian language and literature within the “authorized” intervals of his life, didn’t tolerate overseas pilgrimage, however adored the Macedonian and different nationwide dialects, which made up the previous and now nearly misplaced wealth within the Bulgarian language.

Efrem Chuchkov’s exceptional musical giftedness has been inherited to a very massive extent by a few of his great-grandchildren, similar to my brother Victor Chuchkov – a world-famous pianist and composer, and my sister Milyana Chuchkova – a distinguished microbiologist and long-time head of the well-known Bulgarian BCG laboratory vaccine, but additionally a gifted pianist with quite a few profitable performances. Milyana Chuchkova’s daughter – Olga Gyurkovska, great-great-granddaughter of Efrem Chuchkov, is a well-known operatic and vocal mezzo-soprano of worldwide fame.

Efrem Chuchkov, born 150 years in the past, gave his life for the liberty of Macedonia. Tribute to his vibrant reminiscence!

Efrem Chuchkov and Gotse Delchev (seated), and Kliment Shapkarev (Sofia, 1901)