Goryani
Encyclopedia
The Goryani Movement or Goryanstvo (: Goryanism) were an active guerrilla resistance against the Bulgarian communist regime. It began immediately after the Ninth of September coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

in 1944 which opened the way to communist rule in Bulgaria, reached its peak between 1947 and 1954, subsided by the late Fifties and ended by the early Sixties. The movement covered the entire country, including urban areas.

The members of the movement were dubbed Goryani (: ones of the forest), most likely not by themselves but pejoratively by the authorities or by street wits. Extremely scant official acknowledgements of the movement termed its members diversanti (: subversives, saboteurs and invariably stressed that they had been sent across the border by "imperialist centres".) Though helped to a significant extent by emigre Bulgarians and by foreign powers, the Goryani movement was mostly indigenous and spontaneous.

Its mode of action was traditionally Bulgarian, as practiced by the anti-Ottoman hayduti [Bulgarian хайдути: outlaws] and the anti-Nazi Partisans
Bulgarian resistance movement during World War II
The Bulgarian resistance movement was part of the anti-Axis resistance during World War II. It consisted of armed and unarmed actions of resistance groups against the Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Bulgaria authorities. It was mainly communist and pro-Soviet Union...

 (pejoratively called Shumkari; , those of the bushes): the Goryani hid in remote mountains, highlands and forests, relying on a large network of yatatsi in settled communities, conducted sudden armed raids to disturb official business and withdrew before capture. Largely composed of country folk who defended their land and property from the communists, the Goryani had no discernible ideology or platform and were united by their dislike of the communist authorities.

Very little information has survived on the Goryani, whose existence was steadfastly concealed and denied by the Bulgarian communist authorities, with historical data on them carefully classified and removed and witnesses or participants intimidated into silence or eliminated. Since the movement was practically devoid of any international dimension, its history has remained remote from the mainstream of world anti-communist resistance.

Origins

The new communist regime, aided by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

, imposed a policy of class war through several waves of terror: extrajudicial intimidation immediately after the 9 September 1944 coup
Bulgarian coup d'état of 1944
The Bulgarian coup d'état of 1944, also known as the 9 September coup d'état and called in pre-1989 Bulgaria the National Uprising of 9 September or the Socialist Revolution of 9 September was a change in the Kingdom of Bulgaria's administration and government carried out on the eve of 9 September...

, People's Court tribunals in the mid-Forties, the elimination of opposition to the Bulgarian Communist Party
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...

 in the late Forties and the hunt for "Enemies with a Party Ticket" at the close of the Forties and into the Fifties.

Armed resistance to the communists began in the immediate aftermath of the coup and reached sustainable proportions in the countryside after the execution of BZNS agrarian party leader Nikola Petkov
Nikola Petkov
Nikola Dimitrov Petkov was a Bulgarian politician, one of the leaders of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union . He entered politics in the early 1930s. Like many other peasant party leaders in Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria in 1945-1947, Petkov was tried and executed soon after postwar Soviet...

 in 1947 and the banning of the BRSDP social-democratic party in 1948. By the late Forties, the Goryani comprised mostly country folk, alongside members of the disbanded opposition hiding from the authorities, former soldiers and officers, former VMRO activists, plus a handful of former pro-communist Partizans, as well as communists who had been associated with executed "Enemy with a Party Ticket" Traycho Kostov.

Large-scale forced land colectivisation campaigns began in the Fifties. They involved mass intimidation of the peasantry, including threats, extrajudicial imprisonment and torture, and murder This brought a new upsurge of support for the Goryani Movement.

Numbers and scope

At first the Goryani were poorly armed and merely hid from the authorities or agitated against them in fear of arrest. By 1947 they had banded into armed Chetas [Bulgarian, чети: bands] in highland and mountain areas.

At that time, the overall number of armed Goryani was estimated at 2000 in 28 Chetas, with another 8000 illicit helpers supplying them with food, shelter, arms and intelligence. By the early Fifties, the DS secret police had identified some 160 Chetas, of which 52 were supplied from abroad or comprised hostile emigres who had infiltrated across borders. The movement was strongest in Southern Bulgaria, particularly in the localities of Sliven
Sliven
Sliven is the eighth-largest city in Bulgaria and the administrative and industrial centre of Sliven Province and municipality. It is a relatively large town with 89,848 inhabitants, as of February 2011....

, Stara Zagora
Stara Zagora
Stara Zagora is the sixth largest city in Bulgaria, and a nationally important economic center. Located in Southern Bulgaria, it is the administrative capital of the homonymous Stara Zagora Province...

, Velingrad
Velingrad
Velingrad is a town in Pazardzhik Province, Southern Bulgaria, located at the western end of Chepino Valley, part of the Rhodope Mountains. It is the administrative center of the homonymous Velingrad Municipality and one of the most popular Bulgarian balneological resorts...

 and the Pirin
Pirin
The Pirin Mountains are a mountain range in southwestern Bulgaria, with Vihren the highest peak, situated at . The range extends about 40 km northwest-southeast, and about 25 km wide. Most of the range is protected in the Pirin National Park...

 Kray (area).

The movement was strongest in the Pirin area in 1947 and 1948. The main Cheta led by Gerasim Todorov controlled the larger part of the Sveti Vrach (today Sandanski
Sandanski
-Municipality:Sandanski is the seat of Sandanski municipality , which includes the following 54 places:-Honour:Sandanski Point on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after the town of Sandanski....

) county in the southwest of the area, traversing as far as the Mesta
Mesta
The Mesta was a powerful association of sheep holders in the medieval Kingdom of Castile....

 valley and Razlog
Razlog
Razlog is a town and ski resort in Razlog Municipality, Blagoevgrad Province in southwestern Bulgaria. It is situated in the Razlog Valley and was first mentioned during the reign of Byzantine emperor Basil II....

 to the northeast, Nevrokop (today Gotse Delchev
Gotse Delchev
Georgi Nikolov Delchev was an important revolutionary figure in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Thrace at the turn of the 20th century...

) in the south and Dzhumaya (Gorna Dzhumaya, today Blagoevgrad
Blagoevgrad
Blagoevgrad is а city in southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Province, with a population of about 74,302 . It lies on the banks of the Blagoevgradska Bistritsa River....

) in the north. In the spring of 1948, thousands of narodna militsia police and troops invaded the northern Pirin, imposing a two-week emergency in the area. Gerasim Todorov and his men were encircled and he killed himself on 31 March. This cleared the area of Goryani for a period. In late 1948 Borislav Atanasov and other former VMRO fighters crossed the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 border and renewed resistance.

One of the very few officially acknowledged invidents involving anti-communist resistance involved the death in an armed skirmish of border guard Vergil Vaklinov on 2 July 1953. Vaklinov had ambushed diversanti who were claimed to have "fulfilled a task" in the Bulgarian interior and were about to cross the Greek border illicitly. The authorities elevated Vaklinov into a short-lived cult figure

By the early Fifties, the Goryani had a propaganda radio station, Radio Goryanin, which broadcast into Bulgaria from Greece. In mid-1951 the radio broadcast an appeal for an insurgent army to form in the centrally located Sliven area, where the movement was at its strongest. Some 13000 police and troops invaded the Balkan mountains near Sliven. Bulgarian leader Valko Chervenkv monitored events from an armoured personnel carrier in the mountain. The largest Cheta, led by Georgi Stoyanov-Tarpana, also known as Benkovski after a 19th Century Bugarian popular hero, was encircled by 6000 troops. It fought them on 1 and 2 June, managing to break the encirclement and rescue their wounded.

Few fell prisoner to the authorities. Some 40 Goryani were killed, but the Cheta commander fled along with his men. Stoyanov waas captured by the DS secret police in late 1951 and was later tried and executed. The following year his Cheta continued resisting the authorities anbd capturing villages. Thgus, it captured and held the village of Rakovo near Sliven for three days in 1952

During the same period, some 15 Goryani parachuted into the Kazanlak
Kazanlak
Kazanlak, formerly Kazanlık is a Bulgarian town in Stara Zagora Province, located in the middle of the plain of the same name, at the foot of the Balkan mountain range, at the eastern end of the Rose Valley...

 and Ihtiman
Ihtiman
Ihtiman is a town in western Bulgaria, part of Sofia Province. It is located in the Ihtimanska Sredna Gora mountains and lies in a valley 48 km from Sofia and 95 km from Plovdiv, close to Trakiya motorway....

 areas from training camps in Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

 and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

Despite the Bulgarian popular tradition of highland, mountain and woodland-based resistance, the movement was active in lowland and farming areas. The Dobrudzha area in the northeast of Bulgaria saw strong resistance activity, many villages being captured for short periods. The lowland Ruse
Ruse
A ruse is an action or plan which is intended to deceive someone. It may also refer to:*Ruse, a combination Rooster/Goose animal*Henrik Ruse , Dutch officer and fortification engineer*James Ruse , settler in Australia...

area also saw Goryani activity led by Tsanko Ivanov Tsankov-Mecheto and Tsvetana Popkoeva-Tsena. The Ruse Goryani took an oath formuated by Todor Tsanev. Their commander Tsankov was shot in combat, while Popkoeva was tried in absentia, to be captured and killed without trial in time to celebrate May Day 1952. Todor Tsanev was captured, imprisoned and sent to punishment camps for 11 years, to die peacefully in 1989

The end of resistance

Though the Bulgarian authorities brought the Goryani movement under control by the mid-Fifties, there were isolated incidents of violence into the late Fifties and early Sixties. Goryani were last encountered in the Sofia sewerage system in the early/mid-Sixties.

Sources

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