death_date death_place birth_place other_names birth_date image article_title name
march 18 , 1947 sofia , bulgaria plovdiv , ottoman empire michel january 26 , 1877 mihail-gerdzhikov . jpg mihail gerdzhikov
 mihail gerdzhikov
mihail gerdzhikov

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 -lrb- msrc -rrb- .
later gerdzhikov studied in switzerland -lrb- lausanne and geneva -rrb- , 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 '' .
in 1919 the federation of anarchist communists of bulgaria -lrb- fakb -rrb- was founded at a congress opened by gerdzhikov .
in 1925 he was among the founders of imro -lrb- united -rrb- in vienna .
gerdzhikov had invested high hopes in the new socialist system after 1944 , but was soon disappointed by the newly established regime .
he died in 1947 in sofia .
