page_title: Mihail Gerdzhikov
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Mihail Gerdzhikov / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Cheta of Mihail Gerdzhikov
context_page_description: Mihail Gerdzhikov was a Bulgarian revolutionary and anarchist.
  He was born in Plovdiv, then in the Ottoman Empire, in 1877. He studied at the French College in Plovdiv, where he received the nickname Michel. As a student in 1893 he started his revolutionary activities as the leader of a Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee. Later Gerdzhikov studied in Switzerland, where he made close connections with the revolutionary immigration and established the so-called Geneva group, an extension of MSRC.
  Gerdzhikov was under strong anarchist influence and rejected the nationalism of the ethnic minorities in the Ottoman Empire, favouring alliances with ordinary Muslim people against the Sultanate and the idea about a Balkan Federation. In 1899 he came back to the Balkans and worked as a teacher in Bitola. Gerdzhikov became a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and a close friend of Gotse Delchev. He was the mastermind and leader of the peasant Preobrazhenie Uprising in July 1903, a revolt against the Ottoman authorities in Thrace. Gerdzhikov's forces, about 2,000 strong and poorly armed, managed to establish a “Strandzha commune”.
context_section_description: Gerdzhikov was born in 1877 in Plovdiv as the first child in the family of Ivan Pavlov Gerdzhikov and Magdalen Ilyich. He spent his childhood in Plovdiv, where he discovered the ideas of anarchism. He was strongly influenced by Russel Sudzilovsky, a personal friend of Hristo Botev, who resided in his home for some time. As a student influenced by left-wing ideas, he created an anarchist group in the Plovdiv High School in 1895, for which he was expelled. At the end of the same year, he connected with Macedonian high school students in the city and, together with his other classmates, followed the revolutionary movement of the Pre-Liberation era, with a strongly anarchist focus.
  Gerdzhikov then went straight to Lausanne and Geneva, where he participated in the so-called Geneva Group. In 1899 he returned to the Bulgarian lands and became a teacher at Bulgarian Classical High School in Bitola  and joined IMORO, where Gerdzhikov approached Gotse Delchev. In 1900 he was a delegate to the Zlatitsa Society of the Seventh Macedonian Congress.  In 1900 he was sent to the Thessaloniki to assist the activities of the IMORO Central Committee for the establishment of the committee and network in Edirne. When it was discovered by the Ottoman authorities, Gerdzhikov joined Hristo Chernopeev's company. Shortly thereafter, he formed a detachment in the Gevgelija region.
  In April 1901 he was a delegate of the Borisov Society to the Eighth Macedonian-Edirne Congress. 
  In April 1902, at Gerdzhikov's House in Plovdiv, the Plovdiv Congress of the IMRO was held. Since the summer of 1902 he has been managing and organizing the organization in Edirne, assisted by the sub-divisions of Ivan Varnaliev and Hristo Silyanov.
  At the Petrova Niva Congress, he was elected a member of the district's leading military unit and was one of the leaders in the preparation and conduct of the Preobrazhenie Uprising. 
  On 19 February 1903, Gerdzhikov led a 25-man squad to make an assassination attempt at the Constantinople-Edirne railway line outside the revolutionary Thracian territory at Küçüksinekli, Silivri Station
  He participated in the uprising itself, leading a group of 80 people from Kitka Peak to Strandzha an establishing the so-called Strandzha commune. Within a short time, Turkish rule throughout the Strandzha region was abolished except for in Malko Turnovo. Turkish posts along the border were destroyed, and village garrisons were expelled and the entire organizational territory in the area was liberated.
  After the defeat of the uprising he dealt with the accommodation of the rebels who withdrew to Bulgaria. He published articles in the Bulgarian and foreign press, appealing to the international community for intervention in the resolution of the Eastern question in the Balkans. Together with Varban Kilifarski he also published various newspapers of their own. 
  In 1910, Gerdzhikov, together with Pavel Deliradev, published the booklet War or Revolution, in which he declared himself against war, standing in the positions of the European social democracies.
  At the outbreak of the Balkan War in 1912, Gerdzhikov headed the Lozengrad guerrilla unit of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps. The unit was formed in Burgas at the end of September 1912 and returned to the Strandzha region on 5 October. Gerdzhikov's unit liberated  Vasiliko, Ahtopol, Rezovo and Samokov and established themselves in Midia. In early 1913 the squad was disbanded. 
  Following the outbreak of World War I, Gerdzhikov served in the Forty-third Infantry Regiment.
caption: Mikhail Gerdzhikov's Cheta
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