On April 21 (old style) 1912, near the village of Drenovo (today in S. Macedonia) the legendary Bulgarian voivode and revolutionary Pere Toshev was killed, cut into pieces and buried in a roadside ditch by members of the pro-Turkish anarchist organization "The Red Brothers".
This was recalled on "Facebook" by Asen Videnov for Edin Zavet.
Peter (Pere) Naumov Toshev is a prominent Bulgarian revolutionary and national hero, an active participant in the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization. One of the legendary figures during the glorious Ilinden-Preobrazhensky Uprising in the rebellious year of 1903. After the suppression of the uprising, with the help of Gyorche Petrov, Petar Atsev and Georgi Peshkov, he restored the revolutionary networks of the organization in the Prilep region. He used pseudonyms such as Lefter and others.
In 1912, Toshev went to Sofia to be treated at the clinic of his like-minded person, Dr. Stefan Sarafov. After the concluded alliance treaty between Bulgaria and Serbia, especially after the frivolous division of Macedonia into a disputed and undisputed zone, Toshev protested. He wanted to be admitted to the National Assembly and heard, but was arrested. Broken by the division of Macedonia, after his liberation he hurried to return to his relatives. After being issued an open letter from the Turkish embassy in Sofia, he left for Macedonia. Pursued from Sofia by members of the anarchist organization "Red Brothers", Toshev was killed on (April 21) May 4 on the road between the villages of Gradsko and Drenovo. Then the Turks cut him into pieces and buried him in the ditch by the road. After 5 days, his relatives found him. He was buried in the churchyard of the village of Farish, Tikvesh region.
Pere Toshev was born in 1865 in the large Bulgarian city of Prilep, then in the Ottoman Empire, and today in the Republic of Macedonia, into a family of wealthy and prominent emigrants from Debar region. His nephew was the voivode of the VMORO Spiro Toshev. He completed his primary education in Prilep, and from 1882 at the Thessaloniki Bulgarian Men's High School. He was expelled from it in 1884 after participating in a school riot and a subsequent search, during which a copy of the “Bulgarian Chrysostomata“ by Konstantin Velichkov and Ivan Vazov was found in it.
The same year he settled in Plovdiv and graduated from the 6th grade at a local high school. With the help of Spiro Kostov and Vladimir Kusev, Pere Toshev organized a division of the BTCRK in Stanimaka, which aimed to liberate Macedonia and the Edirne region. In Plovdiv, Toshev was a courier for the BTCRK and took part in the Unification, being one of the Chetniks who seized the city post office.
In the period from 1885-1890, Pere Toshev and Andrey Lyapchev again organized a number of secret meetings in the villages of Plovdiv. They decided to organize a new Macedonian-Edirne liberation organization. In 1890, the two toured Macedonia for reconnaissance purposes.
From 1892, Pere Toshev taught in Prilep, and a year later, after the establishment of the Internal Macedonian-Adriatic Revolutionary Organization, he founded its first revolutionary committee in Prilep. The following year, Pere Toshev taught in Skopje, where he headed the committee until his resignation in 1894, after which he was replaced by Hristo Matov. After that, Pere Toshev also taught in Bitola, where, together with Gjorche Petrov, they assisted the local revolutionary committee and published the newspaper "Na orzuje", where he also became close to Dame Gruev.
In 1896, with the help of the Supreme Committee and Dimitar Matov, who wrote to the school inspector Vasil Kanchov, Pere Toshev moved to Thessaloniki as a teacher at the Bulgarian high school. Since 1898 he has been in Thessaloniki and works as a school inspector, at the same time he is included in the Central Committee of the VMORO. In 1901, after the Thessaloniki affair, he was sentenced to 101 years in prison and exiled to Bodrum Kale, Asia Minor, but in 1902 he was amnestied.
„We, the undersigned, certify that we have received the sum of 513 leva through the Bulgarian Diplomatic Agency in Constantinople, as aid from the Macedonian-Odrijan students at the University of Sofia, for distribution among our fellow Bulgarian political prisoners in Bodrum Kale. P.Toshev H.Matov Iv.H.Nikolov 1902“
He participated in the Smilevo Congress in 1903 and declared himself against a general mass uprising. Pere Toshev refused to take his post in the central headquarters, but during the Ilinden-Preobrazhensko Uprising he led the Mariovo revolutionary region. After the suppression of the uprising, with the help of Gyorche Petrov, Petar Atsev and Georgi Peshkov he restored the revolutionary networks of the organization in Prilep.
He was a delegate to the Prilep Congress in 1904. At the Rila Congress of the VMORO in 1905, he was again elected a member of the organization's Central Committee. During the massification of Serbian propaganda in Macedonia in the River Basin, Pere Toshev tried to neutralize the Serbian bands in the region peacefully. After the capture of Dame Gruev, he personally met with Gligor Lyamev, and Dame Gruev was subsequently released. After the murder of Garvanov and Sarafov, he was briefly arrested as a suspect. After the Young Turk Revolution, Pere Toshev declared himself against the legalization of the organization. Pere Toshev, Anton Strashimirov and Gyorche Petrov published the newspapers "Konstitutsionna zarya" and "Edinstvo", ideologically close to the People's Federative Party (Bulgarian section). In 1910-1911 he was a school inspector of the Bulgarian schools in the Thessaloniki district.
In May 2012, a memorial plaque was placed in Asenovgrad on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Toshev's death. The unveiling of the memorial plaque was attended by many people, including Nikolay Toshev, grandson of Pere Toshev and chairman of the Union of Macedonian Organizations.
The Central State Archives of the "State Agency: Archives" store documents and letters related to Toshev's revolutionary activities. In 2013, the municipality of Blagoevgrad purchased an archive containing previously unknown letters, newspapers, photographs, personal belongings, receipts, diaries, and more of activists and leaders of the VMORO and VMRO. The collection includes valuable and rare original letters by Pere Toshev.
About him:
The great Bulgarian writer Simeon Radev says about Pere Toshev:
„Pere Toshev is, among the greatest Macedonian figures, the most unknown. He lived in solitude and died unnoticed. His quiet and melancholic image is, however, full of rare and precious charm. In none of his comrades was the inner life as pure, focused and abundant with moral wealth as in his.“
The legendary Anastas Lozanchev wrote about him during the period of the creation of the VMORO in 1894:
„Pere had formed ideas, with formed views on the revolutionary struggles, which no one else had at that time. He was an old revolutionary, who participated with other Macedonian Bulgarians... in the unification of Northern and Southern Bulgaria.“
The worker of the Supreme Committee Mikhail Dumbalakov wrote about Pere Toshev:
„The embodiment of honor, patriotism, bohemianism and kindness, Pere had given, in a harmonious combination, everything that should imperatively accompany a revolutionary. But the unfortunate Pere had never allowed that he would be used as a dead man by the crudely tendentious hand of dishonest historians who, in their desire to cast the true leaders of the revolution into oblivion and shadow, dug up the corpses of humble workers and with audacity and hysteria blasphemed the names of the humble soldiers of the revolutionary cause. The poor Prilep teacher would have sunk into the ground with shame if someone had ever suggested to him that a brazen and irresponsible time would come when, in front of the names of revolutionary leaders such as General Tsonchev, Colonel Nikolov, Sarafov, Colonel Yankov, Midshipman Todor Saev, Todor Lazarov and dozens of others, one would be embarrassed to look around at the name of the good guy known from Sofia beer halls, Pere Toshev.“
Asen Videnov for Edin Zavet