On November 28, 1907 Boris Sarafov was shot on the doorstep of his home by Todor Panitsa, sent by Yane Sandanski's group to befriend him and lull his vigilance. Together with Sarafov, Ivan Garvanov, the former chairman of the Central Committee of VMORO, was also killed. This atrocity had no precedent until then. After time it will become a routine, summarizes Prof. Doctor of Science Svetlozar Elderov for “Bulgarian Army”.
Boris Sarafov was born on July 12, 1872. in the village Libyakhovo, Nevrokopsko (today the village of Ilinden, Gotsedelchevsko), where his fate smiled from the first moment. He was born and grew up in one of the most famous, rich and respected Bulgarian families in the Serski Sanjak. His family history is the history of Bulgarians in this part of Macedonia.
Boris' maternal grandfather, Archimandrite Hariton, was the leader of the struggle against the Greek clergy and the first chairman of the Bulgarian Church Municipality in Siar. His father Petar Sarafov is at the forefront of the fight for Bulgarian education as a school inspector. His uncle Kosta Sarafov was a delegate to the First Church-People's Council in Constantinople and one of the leaders of the Kresna-Razlozh uprising. In 1885 Archimandrite Hariton and Peter Sarafov were exiled to Asia Minor on the slanderous testimony of local Greeks.
The two tough Bulgarians managed to escape to Bulgaria. Here, Petar Sarafov is a long-term translator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Confessions, later a Turkish language teacher at the Military School.
His wife Sirma, herself brought up in the spirit of true revival values, is the other pillar that supports the healthy Bulgarian spirit in the family. 10 children were born from their marriage. The eight who survive take different paths, but equally make their parents happy.
Officers, doctors and teachers, engineers and clerks – with their professions, they are true employees of New Bulgaria.
With the generous family inheritance, Boris Sarafov's future is predetermined – from the village school, through the Thessaloniki Bulgarian Boys' High School “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, next to the Military School in Sofia.
In 1893, not yet 21 years old, Boris Sarafov donned the officer's uniform and began his military career in the 15th Lom infantry regiment in Belogradchik. From the beginning of 1895 is already serving in the prestigious 1st Sofia Infantry Regiment in the capital. However, the young officer knows that he was born for another, even greater field. Such an opportunity is provided by the Chetnik campaign of the Macedonian Committee.
In the summer of 1895 four large detachments and several smaller detachments invade Macedonia. Among them stands out a group of junior officers from the Bulgarian army, whose names will henceforth be intertwined with every event in the history of the liberation struggle. Some of the detachments are repulsed at the border, others are wandering aimlessly in the mountains. However, Sarafov's revolutionary debut was triumphant.
On July 12, 1895 with a sudden and surprising attack, Boris Sarafov's detachment, numbering only 65 men, defeated the numerically superior Turkish army and captured Melnik. Telegraph agencies spread the news like lightning across Europe, newspapers raced to report details of the daring action. Sarafov returns the squad to Bulgaria with only two wounded. At the age of 23, he is already a national hero, and his name is famous in Europe and will not leave the pages of newspapers and secret diplomatic reports for a long time.
Many political interests are intertwined in the Chetnik action. Some win, some lose. Dr. Konstantin Stoilov's government improves diplomatic relations with Russia, Prince Ferdinand gains international recognition. Officers and Chetniks who manage to return alive earn nothing. Many of them will get to know the hardships of Hush life in free Bulgaria. But not Sarafov.
With family patronage and family ties, Boris Sarafov ventured around Europe. In September 1895 went to Petersburg, where one of his brothers was studying engineering, and entered the General Staff Academy as a listener.
Unwilling to accept Russian citizenship and replace the Bulgarian uniform with a Russian one, he went to Vienna via Berlin, where his other brother studied medicine. A meeting with Gotse Delchev in the spring of 1896. in Sofia gives him the opportunity to reincarnate in a new role. With a foreign name and a foreign passport, presenting himself now as a Russian pilgrim, now as a traveling theater actor, Sarafov ended up in Athos.
The monasteries of Svetogorsk are a wonderful setting for the grandiose plans he draws. Robbery of the vestry of the Zograf monastery, kidnapping for ransom of the Serbian king, who was visiting the Hilendar monastery at the time, fictitious kidnapping even of himself as a pretended Russian subject – these are only some of Sarafov's ideas. Behind these fantastic projects, which never came to fruition, was a more prosaic but strictly fulfilled obligation to the Ministry of War in Sofia – to collect detailed intelligence on the Turkish army.
After a while, all the officers from the Chetnik action returned to serve in the army. Boris Sarafov was appointed to the 5th Peh. Danube Regiment in Ruse.
Here he becomes an accomplice in a case that transforms the liberation struggle. On June 14, 1897 several junior officers from the Veliko Tarnovo garrison laid the foundations of the Bulgarian liberation brotherhoods – the super-secret organization that will be behind every major event in the liberation struggle.
Soon her network penetrated all the garrisons in the country and united half of the officers of the Bulgarian army. Sarafov quickly ranks among the most active members of the brotherhoods.
Removed from the helm of VMOK, Sarafov found a new, even more spacious and illuminated stage for his performances. In the following two years, he criss-crossed European capitals in search of money for the liberation struggle and sympathy for the Bulgarian cause. Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Geneva, Budapest, Belgrade – these are just some of Sarafov's stops, who feels as confident in a diplomatic tailcoat as he does in an officer's uniform or voivode's yamurluk. Or at least he thinks so.
In 1903 Sarafov's star shines in the zenith.
At the end of January, at the head of a large and excellently equipped and heavily armed company, with 10 horses, loaded with 300 kg of dynamite and hundreds of bombs, he set off on his most glorious campaign. For six months, he traveled across Macedonia and personally supervised the final preparations for the uprising. In April, the Smile Congress elected him together with Damian Gruev and Anastas Lozanchev as a member of the General Staff of the Bitola District.
On July 20, 1903 the first gun of the Ilindensko-Preobrazhensky uprising fires in Smilevo. Sarafov is everywhere where decisive battles are fought – in Ohrid, Bitola, Demirhisar. For two months the staff flag followed him closely. On September 17, together with about 1,000 insurgents, he was surrounded by an entire division in Mount Bigla.
One of the fiercest battles of the insurgent epic took place here. Thanks to the composure and audacity of their commander, the insurgents respect the enemy, inflict heavy losses on him and manage to tear the hoop. Two days later, the General Staff put an end to the uprising.
Sarafov again toured Macedonia to encourage the people and to keep weapons for new struggles. It wasn't until mid-September, after countless hardships, that he returned to Bulgaria.